Helena Fairfax: Why Hotels Make a Wonderful Setting for Writers

Helena Fairfax is known to followers of the RNA blog for her interviews with literary agents. It's a great pleasure to welcome Helena to this side of the desk to talk about her novel Felicity at the Cross Hotel, which is released today.

Happy publication day, Helena, and welcome to the spotlight!

Thank you! I'll just pull up my chair...!

Hotels make a wonderful setting for writers. When I was a student I worked for several months as a barmaid in a hotel in the Bavarian Alps. I was trying to improve my German, and I did improve it…kind of! I came home knowing how to swear in dialect, knowing the Bavarian for a white wine spritz (ein Weissweinschorle, if you're ever in the Alps and urgently in need of one), and with an accent that the rest of Germany found side-splittingly funny. And because of the working environment, I also made close friendships with people I would never have met otherwise.

Hotels make a great setting for books because they bring together such a wide range of people. Everyone in a hotel has a story to tell and no matter what their background they are all forced to interact with one another - from the barmaid like me to the billionaire who drinks champagne for breakfast and leaves enormous tips in dollars.

View from my room in Bavaria

The hotel I worked in was in a remote spot right at the top of a mountain, but even in the heart of London the staff of a hotel can feel cut off from the rest of the world, especially if they live in. This feeling of isolation has provided the perfect creepy setting for some brilliant books like The Shining, or Pyscho, or Jamaica Inn. Being temporarily thrown together with someone else, in an idyllic setting far from others, can also make deep relationships grow quickly and provide the perfect setting for romance to flourish.

The Lake District (photo courtesy of Pixabay)

The hotel in my novel Felicity at the Cross Hotel bears a strong resemblance to my own hotel in the Alps. They are both on a mountain, in a romantic setting, and full of unlikely people thrown together. I even based my fictional head waiter – Johnny – on an Italian waiter in my hotel called Gionni. Gionni was desperately in love with one of the chambermaids. Sadly, his love was unrequited, and he would pour his heart out at great length to me as I poured out the Weinschorles and frothy beers during the evening shift. My fictional Johnny suffers in a similar way, and my heroine Felicity goes to great lengths to try and help him.

The friends I made in my Bavarian hotel are still really close friends today, many years later. Felicity at the Cross Hotel is about love and friendship, and feel good romance.

Blurb:

A quaint hotel in the Lake District. The Cross Hotel is the perfect getaway. Or is it?

Felicity Everdene needs a break from the family business. Driving through the Lake District to the Cross Hotel, past the shining lake and the mountains, everything seems perfect. But Felicity soon discovers all is not well at the Cross Hotel …
Patrick Cross left the village of Emmside years ago never intending to return, but his father has left him the family’s hotel in his will, and now he's forced to come back. With a missing barmaid, a grumpy chef, and the hotel losing money, the arrival of Felicity Everdene from the notorious Everdene family only adds to Patrick’s troubles.
With so much to overcome, can Felicity and Patrick bring happiness to the Cross Hotel … and find happiness for themselves?

Author Biography:

Helena Fairfax was born in Uganda and came to England as a child. She's grown used to the cold now which is just as well, since these days she lives in an old Victorian mill town in the north of England, right next door to the windswept Yorkshire moors. Helena walks this romantic landscape every day with her rescue dog, finding it the perfect place to dream up her heroes and her happy endings. Subscribers to Helena's newsletter receive news of free stuff, competitions with prizes, gossip, and links to cool websites she's been looking at when she should have been writing.

Helena's Website

Felicity at the Cross Hotel is released today - hooray! - and available here on Amazon 

Thank you for letting me sit on this side of the RNA blog's desk!

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Thanks for dropping in, Helena, and many congratulations on release. We can't wait to meet the characters in the Cross Hotel!

If you would like to write for the RNA blog please contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com

Mandy Baggot Loves Digital!

Mandy Baggot doesn’t just love writing romance. She loves the digital age that facilitates spreading the word. This is what she has to say:

As a reader I enjoy lapping up new books in any medium I can get my sticky hands on them in! Kindle, Kobo, Sainsbury’s e-books – I have accounts with them all. The Works, Waterstones, WH Smith – I’m a browser and a sucker for a cover I can fondle.

But, as a writer, I’m currently riding much higher with my latest romantic comedy, Truly Madly Greekly in the digital arena.

So what’s so great about digital publishing?

1)      Fast

It doesn’t take as long to prepare and publish an e-book. This doesn’t mean the novel doesn’t go through a rigorous editing process (I’m going through one of those right now!) but digital done right can cut down the process by months.

2)      Flexible

You can make amendments quickly and easily – change the cover, add bonus content at a later date etc. You can also jump on trends as they occur. This might be getting something into the marketplace quickly to hit on a special event – a tennis romance in time for Wimbledon, a gardening tale for the Chelsea Flower Show, athlete heroine for the next Olympics etc.

3)      Price

Digital publishing doesn’t have a lot of the costs involved with traditional paperback publishing. You can offer books at a more competitive rate to readers and still make money.

4)      Ride the electronic wave

More people that ever own tablets for entertainment and recreation. You don’t have to have a specific e-reader to read digital books – any tablet, smartphone or P.C. has the capability to download a free app to read books on. Some people are becoming readers for the first time because it’s cheap, convenient and accessible.

5)      New writer opportunities

Since Kindle Direct Publishing was born, more and more storytellers are taking the plunge and getting their work into the marketplace. Self-publishing and digital publishing have let authors take much more control over their work and I’m embracing that!

Writing and reading have never been hotter and I say, long may it continue.

About Mandy:

Mandy Baggot is an award-winning romantic fiction author, writing hot heroes and emotional reads. She is represented by Kate Nash of The Kate Nash Literary Agency.

In 2012 she won the Innovation in Romantic Fiction award at the UK's Festival of Romance and has since scooped Top Ten Reads/Book of the Year places from a number of UK book bloggers.

Traditionally published by US publisher Sapphire Star, Harper Collins' digital first romance imprint, Harper Impulse, and most recently, digital fiction specialists, Bookouture, a great story is never far from her fingertips!

A contributor to writing blogs and short story anthologies, Mandy is also a regular speaker at literary festivals, events and women’s networking groups.

Mandy loves mashed potato, white wine, country music, World's Strongest Man, travel and handbags. She has appeared on ITV1's Who Dares Sings and auditioned for The X-Factor.

Mandy is a member of the Romantic Novelists' Association and the Society of Authors and lives near Salisbury, Wiltshire, UK with her husband, two daughters and cats, Kravitz and Springsteen.

Links:

Website

Amazon UK

Amazon US

Twitter

Facebook

Thank you, Mandy, for joining us today and giving us such a comprehensive explanation.

The RNA blog is brought to you by  

Elaine Everest & Natalie Kleinman 

If you would like to write for the RNA blog please contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com

Deirdre Palmer: Remarkable Things!

W are pleased to welcome Deirdre to the blog to tell us about her journey to be published.

It was a happy day when I received that magic email from Crooked Cat Publishers telling me that

they’d like to publish ‘Remarkable Things’. It had been a long wait, during which I darkened the doors of the NWS more times than is decent, but we won’t go into that! The wait had its advantages, though, because it gave me time to learn something about the industry, and I soon realised that it wasn’t enough to write the book to the best it could be. I needed to connect with world of writing so that I could show to a prospective agent or publisher that I was deadly serious and was intent on performing more than the proverbial one trick.

I went to some writing workshops, and although some had limited usefulness, they were fun and I learned how to write to order, and fast, something I’ve never found easy. Then I took a part-time creative writing course at the University of Brighton, where I worked, and learned how to write outside my comfort zone and how far the writing possibilities could stretch. I also made my first writer friends, one of whom became a trusted beta reader. You do need writer friends, whether they read for you or not; it’s a lonely business otherwise.

I tried entering competitions. My first attempt resulted in a ‘Highly Commended’ from Writing Magazine, and I won a small prize for flash fiction, but the most exciting success was being placed fourth – twice - in the Mail on Sunday Novel Competition, which had over 1000 entries each time. The six winners had lunch in London with the judges, including such literary stars as Fay Weldon and Deborah Moggach. I say ‘stars’ but we winners were the stars because they treated us as such, and I came away not only with more tips than I could write down on the train journey home but feeling like a proper validated writer. The MoS comp no longer runs, unfortunately, but the organiser, from the Society of Authors, is hoping to get another competition off the ground before long.

When I had the chance to join a blog group called The Write Romantics, there was another experience within my grasp. Not only did I find a brilliant bunch of friends to share this crazy world of writing, I had another ‘string’ to add to the CV. There’s a growing trend among agents and publishers to request a CV and if you can boost a submission with experiences like competitions, courses and blogging, all to the good. You don’t have to win a competition to mention it – a shortlisting or near miss will do just as well.

Like the proverbial buses, a second contract from Crooked Cat Publishing came hot on the heels of the first, and I’m pleased to say that my second book, ‘Dirty Weekend’, will be released later in the summer.

 

‘Remarkable Things’ is published by Crooked Cat Publishing, initially as a Kindle ebook.

 About Deirdre:

Deirdre lives in Brighton, on the south coast.  Most of her working life has been spent in administration, mainly in the public sector, and most recently at the University of Brighton.  She ‘graduated’ from the NWS to full RNA membership last September when she received her first publishing contract from Crooked Cat Publishing.  Before that, she successfully self-published a romcom, set in Brighton, called ‘Falling to Earth’. She belongs to a thriving blog group called ‘The Write Romantics’ and contributed to their anthology, ‘Winter Tales’, published last November.

 

Links:

http://deirdrepalmer.com/

https://www.facebook.com/deirdre.palmer.735

https://twitter.com/DLPalmer_Writer

http://thewriteromantics.com/
 

Thank you for visiting the blog today, Deirdre and good luck with your writing.

The RNA blog is brought to you by,

Elaine Everest & Natalie Kleinman

If you would like to be featured on the blog please contact us at elaineeverest@aol.com