RNA BLOG: MEET THE TEAM!

It feels like a new school term here on the Romantic Novelists’ Association's blog. We’ve enjoyed our ‘blogging break’ during the summer and are looking forward to providing members with new monthly series and lots of interesting interviews and articles. This means we are now blogging three times each week.

I felt it was time to formally introduce our new blogging team who between them carry out interviews and keep the blog ticking over. I’ve introduced the five members below along with their writing biogs.

We also have six lovely ladies who will be writing our monthly series.  We’ve added to our list of series and welcome our new contributors, Jean Fullerton, Sheila Riley and Elaine Roberts.

Our monthly series writers are:

Francesca Burgess: Competition Monthly

Helena Fairfax: Ask the Industry Experts: (agents)

Jean Fullerton: Focus on: Chapters

Natalie Kleinman: Chatting with Publishers

Sheila Riley: New Releases

Elaine Roberts: Festivals and Workshops

Our blogging team:

Helena Fairfax 
Helena writes contemporary romance – and occasionally romantic suspense when she’s in the mood for danger. Her first novel, The Silk Romance, was written through the RNA’s New Writers’ Scheme and was a finalist in the Global eBook Awards. Helena’s later novels have been shortlisted for the Exeter Novel Prize and the I Heart Indie Contest. She lives in Saltaire, near the Yorkshire moors, and she walks this romantic landscape every day with her rescue dog, dreaming up her heroes and her happy endings.

Louisa Heaton 
Louisa writes romance for Harlequin Mills and Boon Medical. Having dreamt of romance from an early age, she met her future husband and only three weeks later (!) agreed to his proposal of marriage. Twenty years and four children later, she is still laughing at his jokes and bribing him to do the housework and feed the kids, whilst she sits upstairs and writes her stories. When not writing, Louisa can be found reading, sewing or walking their two dogs on the coastline near their home.

Ellie Holmes 
Ellie writes commercial women's fiction and romantic cosy mysteries.  Born in Essex but made in Cornwall, Ellie takes her inspiration from the beautiful Essex countryside and the sublime Cornish coast. Juggling commitments to family and friends alongside a part time job in the law and her writing, Ellie describes her days as hectic and her nights as long but says she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Karen King 

Karen writes sassy, contemporary romance just right for reading on the beach. She also writes YA and children’s books and is a writing tutor.

 When she isn’t writing, Karen likes travelling, watching the ‘soaps’ and reading. Give her a good book and a box of chocolates and she thinks she’s in Heaven.

Sue Merritt 

Sue is a former history teacher and is a mother of teenagers. Writing as Virginia Heath, Sue produces
historical romances for Harlequin Mills & Boon. Her debut novel, That Despicable Rogue, came out in May, and will be closely followed by two more books this year. When not being Virginia, Sue likes to go on foreign adventures with her long-suffering husband, shop for things she doesn't need and drink tea.

For any member wishing to be interviewed for the RNA blog about their latest venture, or who would like to write an article, please contact me on elaineeverest@aol.com. Here is a little about me:

Elaine Everest writes sagas, set in and around WW2 for Pan Macmillan. She is a qualified teacher and runs her own writing school in Kent, which has produced many successful writers. In the umpteen years leading up to her dream of being a published novelist Elaine worked in journalism, sold over sixty short stories to women’s magazines and written non-fiction books for dog owners. She enjoys the social media side of writing and loves broadcasting, be it about her novels or imparting her knowledge as a canine journalist. Amongst her competition wins are BBC Radio Short Story Writer of the Year and being shortlisted for The Harry Bowling Prize.

Elaine is a committee member of the RNA and has run this blog for almost four years. Please say hello to her on Twitter: @elaineeverest or come along and join the RNA Facebook Group and join in with our chats about all things writerly.

Our first blog article starts tomorrow. Why not sign up so you don’t miss our posts?

Link to the RNA blog

Helena Fairfax: Suffering from green shock!

It’s a great pleasure to welcome Helena Fairfax to the blog today,

Many years ago I spent a week in a hostel in the middle of the Yorkshire moors with a group of teenagers from an industrial city in Germany. They were on an exchange with a group of English lads from a similar urban environment. All had spent their teenage years in difficult, sometimes extremely tough circumstances, and were from various different ethnic heritages, ranging from Turkey to Korea. One thing these lads all had in common, though: they’d all been born and bred in a city.

I remember sitting in the coach with them on the way from Leeds/Bradford airport, watching them gaze out at the rolling heather, the moors stretching into the distance, all greens and purples, with not a bar, or a café, or a MacDonalds in sight.

 

One of the Germans murmured, with his face pressed to the window: ‘Ich habe Grün-Schock.’ Literally: I’m suffering from green shock. What a great expression!

 

Over the years I’ve thought a lot about that week on the moors, and last year I began to turn the experience into a story. I thought up a heroine who is a Londoner. Kate Hemingway, born Katerina Rudecka, spent time living homeless as a teenager and now volunteers with teenage girls, helping them in their turn to mend their broken lives.

I wondered how it would be if I took Kate and her group of London teenagers away from the city and into the middle of the Yorkshire moors. And then I wondered how it would be if they had a journalist accompanying them - someone from a completely different background; male, upper-class, and (outwardly, at least) appearing to have all the advantages a public-school education can offer. So, a completely random group of people, brought together out of the city and surrounded by sheep and moorland for a week. How would they all get on?

 

One of the teenagers in my novel is from Afghanistan, and I took the theme of my story from an old Afghan proverb: ‘There is a way from heart to heart.’ My story is filled with differences in culture: between town and country, between East and West, between rich and poor. And yet despite all these differences, where basic emotions are concerned, the human heart is the same the world over, with the same capacity for love. At the core of my novel is a romance (of course!), but it also deals with the love between best friends, between families, and with the intensity of teenage love. ‘There is a way from heart to heart’ is the positive, uplifting message I wanted to leave readers with at the end of my novel. I hope I’ve succeeded!

A Way from Heart to Heart was released by Accent Press on 18^th November.

After the death of her husband in Afghanistan, Kate Hemingway’s world collapses around her. Her free time is spent with a charity for teenage girls, helping them mend their broken lives - which is ironic, since her own life is fractured beyond repair.

Reserved, public school journalist Paul Farrell is everything Kate and her teenage charges aren’t.  But when Paul agrees to help Kate with her charity, he makes a stunning revelation that changes everything, and leaves Kate torn.
Can she risk her son’s happiness as well as her own?
 



 

Biog:

Helena Fairfax writes engaging contemporary romances with sympathetic heroines and heroes she’s secretly in love with. Happy endings are her favourite, and when one of her novels won a reader competition for "The Most Romantic Love Scene Ever" it made her day.
Helena was born in Uganda and came to England as a child. She's grown used to the cold now, and these days she lives in an old Victorian mill town in Yorkshire. After many years working in factories and dark, satanic mills, Helena has turned to writing full-time. She walks the Yorkshire moors every day with her rescue dog, finding this romantic landscape the perfect place to dream up her heroes and her happy endings.

 

A Way from Heart to Heart is available on:

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Follow Helena:

Facebook

Twitter: @helenafairfax

Pinterest

Blog

Thanks so much for having me, Elaine and Natalie!

A pleasure, Helena!

Would you like to share your story of how your book was created? Contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com for details.

The RNA blog is brought to you by

Elaine Everest & Natalie Kleinman