Laurie Johnson - Associate Editor, Mills & Boon

Today, in the latest of the series ‘Chatting with Publishers’, we are delighted to welcome Laurie Johnson to the blog.

Harper Collins is a huge organisation split into many component parts. Could you give our readers an insight into which imprints you are involved with and what is your particular role?

I’m an Associate Editor for the Mills & Boon Global Acquisition team within HarperCollins. We work with colleagues in London, Toronto and New York to acquire series editorial for global publication. In London, we work closely with the UK business, including HQ and Mills & Boon marketing teams to support wider UK publishing programmes. Within this role, I acquire and work with authors writing across all UK series: Mills & Boon Modern, Historical, Medical, Cherish and our brand new series, Dare launching in early 2018.

Because readers and writers are a nosey bunch, we’d love to have a pocket history of your career to date.

At university, I studied Creative Writing, which has put me in a good position to be an editor since we had to learn how to give—and take—constructive feedback on stories. I understand how brutal it can be, but appreciate that ultimately it’s a useful process. From there I became a magazine editor, I did this for four years before transitioning into commercial fiction publishing and finding my home at Mills & Boon. I’ve worked for Mills & Boon in the office and as a freelance editor for the last six years.

While this is a question that frequently comes up it would be helpful to know what advice you would give writers wanting to submit their manuscript to you.

Think about your characters. Mills & Boon romances are all about the characters. You could set your story anywhere within any situation, but the emotional journey your hero and heroine go on is what is key. Remember to dig deep into your characters, learn who they are, what their emotional conflicts are, what his/her motivation is, what’s the end goal? Don’t shy away from the emotional, keeping everything external and on the surface; get in there and learn what makes your hero and heroine tick. Use their internal, emotional conflicts to drive the story. Think about how they’re going to come together, what emotionally is going to keep them apart and how they’re going to use what they’ve learned over the course of the story to overcome their conflict and be together.

Ensure you read the guidelines for your desired series and read as many of our titles as possible. These provide the best guide to our readers’ tastes. And don’t give up. It can be disheartening to get a rejection, but do keep trying!

What does a work need to have to make you read beyond that first sentence; that first paragraph?

I look out for a strong, exciting voice that captivates my attention from the very beginning. If there’s an exhilarating story with three-dimensional characters we can’t help but love in there too, then that’s a real bonus. But mainly we’re looking for that great author voice we just want to read again and again.

Following on from the previous question, you may often know immediately when something isn’t right for you. If it is something in the story rather than the writer’s voice, would you encourage that author to submit something different or perhaps even send you a rewrite?

Yes, definitely. If it’s something that can be fixed, I’ll often send feedback so the author can work on it more. If it’s something more fundamental in the story, but the author has a strong voice, I’ll provide advice and ask them to submit another project.

What is the position regarding unsolicited submissions?

Harlequin Mills & Boon does accept unsolicited submissions. For more information, check out the guidelines and send your story to us via: https://harlequin.submittable.com/submit

Do you ever have time to read for your own pleasure; genres other than the ones that constitute your work? What would be your genre of choice?

I’ve always been an avid reader, although admittedly these days with reading for a living it’s a lot less. However, I always ensure I’m reading something for pleasure. This year I’m using the Goodreads Reading Challenge, it’s really helpful to keep track of what I’ve read and what I thought of it.

While I read a lot of competitive titles, which helps to identify trends in the romance market etc., I do breakout of the Romance genre as much as I can. My go to is usually Crime, I love authors like Kathy Reichs, James Patterson and Preston & Child. I also love a good Fantasy; I’m currently re-reading Harry Potter and I’m the proud owner of the entire Terry Pratchett Discworld collection! And an Action-Adventure, such as Thunderhead (Preston & Child again), anything about Atlantis or other lost worlds, always provides great escapism. The only genre I avoid is Horror, I’m a real scaredy-cat!

Have you ever become so drawn to a real place, albeit in a fictional context, that you just had to visit it?

Yes! I once read Books, Baguettes & Bedbugs by Jeremy Mercer, it’s set in a little bookstore in Paris called Shakespeare and Company that sits opposite Notre-Dame Cathedral. I was so excited to see it! It was exactly as described with books covering every conceivable surface, it was bliss to get lost in there for hours. It’s a fabulous bookstore and I highly recommend a visit for anyone who loves books!

If you didn’t do what you do, what would your dream occupation be?

To be honest, this is my dream occupation so I’d hate to be doing anything else!

A lovely thing to be able to say whatever one’s job. Thank you for joining us today, Laurie.

Laurie was interviewed by Natalie Kleinman. Thank you Natalie for a wonderful interview.

Natalie Kleinman writes contemporary and historical romantic novels. Her latest Escape to the Cotswolds, is set in the beautiful English countryside and was published by HarperCollins HQ Digital in June 2017.

Writing a trilogy: The Brides of Waterloo

Welcome to Louise Allen, Annie Burrows and Sarah Mallory who produced Harlequin's trilogy of historical romances, The Brides of Waterloo.

Sarah Mallory writes -





Sarah Mallory



In the summer of 2012 Louise Allen, Annie Burrows and I put our heads together and came up with a trilogy of romances set around Waterloo. The premise was that our heroes were battle-hardened soldiers and we needed a regiment for them, so we decided to try something a little different. We moved away from the glamour of the cavalry or rifle regiments and settled for an artillery unit, a troop called Randall's Rogues, a bunch of misfits who just happened to be excellent artillerymen. They had been given a last chance to redeem themselves and had been brought together into a crack unit under the command of their no-nonsense Colonel, Lord Randall. As Annie puts it, "A dirty dozen in breeches"!

Once Annie, Louise and I had put together our initial proposal, and mapped out three stories, we were ready to approach Harlequin.  The RNA conference was at Penrith that year and Louise and I met up with Harlequin's Senior Editor for the Historical line, Linda Fildew, to pitch our idea in person.  Linda was enthusiastic, took it away to think about it and later that year it was accepted with plenty of time for us to write the books and for Harlequin to plan it into their 2015 schedules.

Then the hard work began, we actually had to write the books.  This involved lots of collaboration, mainly by email (thank goodness for the internet), although Annie and I did meet up in Waterstones, Manchester, where we re-enacted our battle scenes using the cruet set plus any available napkins and a sugar bowl!



Annie Burrows

Louise drew up a spreadsheet for the characters and timelines for the three books, Annie kept a note of the Dramatis Personae and I, well I just wrote!  We managed to schedule our work so that we were all writing our books at more or less the same time, which meant we could swap notes and ideas while the stories were fresh in our heads.

I bagged Randall as my hero and had the honour of writing the first book in the trilogy while Melanie and Annie chose two rakish majors, hard-as-iron Adam Flint and the unscrupulous seducer Tom Bartlett respectively.   Fortunately in Brussels at the same time are three strong and resourceful women who prove themselves to be more than a match for our Rogues!

We decided the Rogues should be in blue uniforms, like Mercer's Battery, the artillery troop that inspired our story, and Annie also came up with a motto (Semper Laurifer, which means Always Victorious).  My heroine, Mary, who finds herself at loggerheads with Lord Randall, translates it as Never Fails – To Infuriate! We also gave the Rogues a regimental mascot, a large and very hairy stray that attached itself to the unit and was tamed by Louise's hero, Major Flint. The breed we chose is known as a Bouvier de Flandres, large dogs weighing up to 120 pounds, and looking very fierce, though actually they are very gentle. Ben, or Dog (you'll have to read our books to find out how he came by his names!) features in all 3 of our stories, playing a particularly important role in Annie's  book, A Mistress for Major Bartlett.



Louise Allan

There was a certainly amount of crossover with the timelines. A Lady for Lord Randall starts some time before Waterloo and continues after the battle, whereas Annie's book and Louise's A Rose for Major Flint actually commence once the battle has ended.  We therefore have each other's characters wandering in and out of our stories. That was a challenge, but great fun, too.

It is important, when collaborating on linked books, to have confidence in your fellow authors, to trust their judgement. Louise and Annie had already collaborated on an earlier series for Harlequin, and I had known both authors for years, so we were pretty confident we could work together.  We all threw in ideas and were not afraid to speak up if we disagreed (which happened very rarely).  When we needed to use each other's characters in a scene we shared that segment, to make sure we were in agreement and towards the end of the process we read each other's manuscripts to make sure the stories and characters did not clash. Our characters were created and they evolved, squabbled, laughed, cried and fell in love against the backdrop of Waterloo in 1815. Their authors worked, sweated and laughed a lot in the process.

We are all extremely pleased with our trilogy and we hope the readers will enjoy reading these three books as much as we enjoyed writing them.

Sarah Mallory - A LADY FOR LORD RANDALL – pub Harlequin May 2015

Annie Burrows - A MISTRESS FOR MAJOR BARTLETT – pub Harlequin June 2015

Louise Allen – A ROSE FOR MAJOR FLINT – pub Harlequin July 2015

Louise Allen is working on her 49^th historical romance for Harlequin Mills & Boon and her 44^th, Scandal’s Virgin, won the RoNA Rose Award 2015. She focuses on the late Georgian/Regency period and also writes historical non-fiction. To the Field of Waterloo: the first battlefield tourists, will be out on Kindle shortly.



Annie Burrows has been writing light-hearted Regency romances for Mills & Boon since 2007. Her first book, His Cinderella Bride was the top seller in the historical line that year. Subsequent books have gone on to win the coveted Reviewer's Choice award from Cataromance. Her books have charmed readers worldwide, having been translated into 19 different languages

Sarah Mallory has written over 20 historical romantic adventures for Harlequin Mills & Boon and won the RoNA Rose Award in 2012 and 2013 for two of her titles. She also writes as Melinda Hammond, and her latest time-slip short story And the Stars Shine Down is now available on Kindle.

Authors' photos – courtesy of Harlequin Mills & Boon.

Thank you, ladies for this most interesting post and good luck with your publications.

The RNA blog is brought to you by,

Elaine Everest & Natalie Kleinman

If you would like to write a piece for the blog please contact us on elaineeverest@aool.com

Nicola Cornick: Changing Times, Changing Genres

Welcome to Nicola Cornick who writes our first blog post for 2015.

Thank you very much for inviting me to the RNA Blog today. It’s a great pleasure to be here!

It was with something of a shock that I realised in 2013 that I had been writing Regency historicals for fifteen years. From the publication of my first traditional Regency, True Colours, by Harlequin Mills and Boon in 1998, I have had a wonderful time living in an alternative historical world. Along the way I have changed from a UK to a US publisher and now back again. The stories have become longer, more sensual and have ranged in setting from the ballrooms of London to the Highlands of Scotland to the far north of the Arctic.

It’s been an amazing time but for more than ten of those fifteen “Regency” years there was something else that I also wanted to write, a book with paranormal elements where the past and the present are entwined, and secrets and mysteries from centuries past are brought to light. I’d been promising myself for years that one day I would write this story but it always got squeezed out by contracts and deadlines until last year I thought that if I didn’t stop and write it now, maybe I never would.

I work as a guide and historian at the National Trust house Ashdown Park, a place with a rich and vivid history that has given me so much inspiration. It was a given that if I wrote a timeslip book then Ashdown and its history would take centre stage. So I started to plan a book set at Ashdown with three intertwined stories. One takes place in the 17^th century and involves Ashdown’s owner, the Earl of Craven and Elizabeth, the Winter Queen, to whom it is rumoured he was secretly married. A second strand of the story is based on the notorious love affair of the 19^th century Earl of Craven and the courtesan Harriette Wilson, and there is a contemporary thread revealing the connections that link the characters through the centuries.

 When I first started to write the book (as opposed to it being a collection of ideas in my head) I also started to have dreams in which I took on a series of ever more bizarre challenges (organising a competition for racing pigeons was one!) I felt scared. I had doubts. I think that maybe I was afraid deep down that I didn’t know how to write something so different. It was exciting to have the time and space for this new project but it was also disorientating because suddenly, after years of promising myself that this was the book of my heart, I actually had to prove it. I had to write it.

With three intertwined stories the book required a lot of planning, a detailed structure and a complex plot, three things that have never been my forte. My books usually arise out of the characters or from particular historical events. I get an idea and write off into the blue. This time, though, I was mixing fact and fiction and also mixing three time periods. When I tried to plan in detail my brain froze up so in the end I did what I always do and just plunged straight in and waited to see what happened. The whole book was a very, very steep learning curve as I struggled to create three stories that were individually compelling yet also wove together to create a much bigger canvas than anything I had ever written before. It was also a huge amount of fun!



Ashdown Park



Now the book is written and I am revising it to layer in some more character depth and texture, smooth out the wrinkles in the plot and tighten the pace. At the moment the most difficult thing to decide upon is the title – something suitably historical and a tad mysterious!  Please look out for the book coming in September from MIRA Books – by which time it will definitely have a name!

Thank you, Nicola for writing such an informative piece.

The RNA blog is brought to you by

Elaine Everest & Natalie Kleinman

If you would like to contribute an article or write about your latest publication please contact us on elaineverest@aol.com