Carol Townend - Hot...or What!

Courtesy of Mills & Boon

Today we are delighted to welcome Carol Townend. We put some questions to her:

When did you decide to write your first book and how long did it take?

The first book I finished was Sapphire in the Snow which I probably wrote in 1987. I can’t quite remember because it’s so long ago! After some revisions Mills & Boon published it in 1989 and to my delight it won the RNA New Writers' Award. I think it took around six months to write, although I’d been thinking about the plot for a while before I began. It was written on an Amstrad, which was entirely different to a modern computer. I loved my Amstrad, but it struggled to cope with files larger than about 10 pages. Also, the novel took an age to print and came out in one long sheet. You had to separate the pages manually! I wrote about five novels on an Amstrad.

Have you always wanted to be a writer?

Yes, although it took me some time to really get down to it. I played about with various writing courses which were great except they kept trying to make me write articles when all I really wanted to write was medieval romance. When my daughter went to school, I wrote three romances quite quickly and was thrilled when they were accepted by Harlequin Mills & Boon. I guess the message there is to write what your heart tells you to write!

How do you fit your writing around your home life?

It’s a job and I treat it as such. After various displacement activities in the morning – putting on the washing machine, tidying up, dealing with mail etc – I try to get started on the WIP around coffee time. Ideally this is five days a week. I finish at 6. Sometimes I write at week-ends, but it’s important to have a life too…

How good are you at planning your work? Do you prefer to wing it?

A lot of planning goes in. I have a set of coloured school notebooks and pick one for each novel. They say ‘Oxford’ on the covers, but we buy them in French supermarkets on research trips. By the time the notebook is full, it’s usually time to start writing. Having said that, the story never goes to plan! My characters are wayward and tend to run off in all directions. In The Stone Rose, a medieval saga I wrote for Headline, one character got up and walked out of the book half way through. I tried to pin him down by breaking his leg – ha! It kept him in place for a short time, but as soon as the leg was healed he was off again. I let him go and in the end he came back again, and the book was better for it. So I’ve learned that the characters know best, and let them have their head. It makes for a more interesting journey. It also makes me wonder why I do all that planning!

Do you enjoy research?

I love it. I read history at university, so the interest in anything medieval has always been there. A great joy of writing medieval romance it that it give you an excuse to visit castles all over Europe. I like to explore the town/area where a book will be set and get the medieval map firmly in my head. It’s not always possible, but a visit to Istanbul resulted in the Palace Brides trilogy set in eleventh century Byzantium. Places are very inspiring. When visiting Quimperlé in Brittany, a whole novel popped into my head. An Honourable Rogue was inspired by the church at the confluence of two rivers.

What did you enjoy most about writing your novel and how do you relax when you're not working?

Finishing it! Writing is hard work and I am lazy…then I can enjoy reading, walks in the countryside, chatting with friends, cinema.

If you were a guest on Desert Island Discs what would be your chosen book?

This varies. This year it’s Transcendence by Shay Savage, an unlikely time-slip romance between a teenager of today and a cave-man. The cave-man cannot speak or understand language, and the idea that the heroine comes from the future is quite beyond his grasp. The entire novel is told from his point of view and there is no dialogue. It’s hard to pin down why I adore this book, but the fact that the hero constantly misunderstands the heroine makes for an extraordinarily poignant and moving read.

If your next title Lord Gawain’s Forbidden Mistress was turned into a film who would you like to play the main characters?

Pass. I think it’s important to let readers make up their own images of the characters. Suffice to say that Lord Gawain has sun-streaked hair and brown eyes. He’s a knight, so he is strongly built. Elise, aka Blanchefleur le Fay, is dark, the cover image fits her very well!

What is next for Carol Townend?

I’d like to write two more stories in the Knights of Champagne mini-series. After that, Sicily is throwing out lures. Spain is too. Who knows? I can’t plan too much in advance, but it’s likely to be medieval. And romantic, naturally!

Publication day of my next title: 1^st March 2015, Lord Gawain’s Forbidden Mistress. It is Book 3 in the Knights of Champagne mini-series.

Carol Townend writes medieval romances set in England and Europe. Born in Yorkshire, she went to a convent school in Whitby and studied history at London University.

Her first novel, Sapphire in the Snow, won the RNA New Writers' Award. In 2013, Betrothed to the Barbarian was shortlisted for the RoNA Rose Award.
Carol's non-fiction writing includes dozens of articles for Writing Magazine and Writers' News, and a portrait of the Romanovs using photographs from the Imperial albums. Carol lives in London with her husband and daughter.

  

Lord Gawain’s Forbidden Mistress will be published in March 2015, it is the third book in the Knights of Champagne mini-series set in twelfth century France.

Blog: www.caroltownend.blogspot.com

Amazon UK:

Thank you for joining us today, Carol.

The RNA Blog is brought to you by

Elaine Everest and Natalie Kleinman.

If you would like to write about the craft of writing or perhaps be interviewed about your writing life please contact us at elaineeverest@aol.com

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

 

Jane Lovering: Problems with technology!

Today we welcome Jane Lovering who reminds us how we can’t live without technology – or can we?

Have you tried recently re-reading one of those ‘Old Skool’ thrillers that used to be so popular?  Heroine trapped in a deserted warehouse, hero searching fruitlessly for her through the streets, while the villain bears down on her location hell-bent on murder and mayhem?  And have you too thought ‘why doesn’t she just phone the police?’

Jane Lovering

The advent of the mobile phone has dealt a bit of death-knell to ‘heroine in peril’ plots.  It is a lot harder for villains to confine characters to await their doom when one simple call would bring the police, the hero and a whole army of plot-killing devices to save the day.  Likewise, anyone with a computer, even those with a fairly limited knowledge of what all the buttons do, can Google – revealing those plans to turn that plot of derelict ground, for which the heroine has been offered a derisory sum, into a supermarket and leisure centre complex.

Technology is making us rethink our plots.  In the old days, when Planning Information was, as Douglas Adams said, ‘on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'. plots could, quite happily, revolve around secret purchases of land.  When a land-line or phone box was the only way to contact someone at a distance, misunderstandings and kidnappings were much easier to use as plot devices.  Nowadays, when even children have mobile computer devices almost permanently in their hands, and Google Earth can show you a picture of anywhere in the world at the push of a button, life for the author is, paradoxically, much more complicated.

Yes, the villain can search and remove a mobile phone from our MC. But, can he be sure that they also don’t have a concealed second phone? A tablet hidden in a pocket?  Body-searches can be time-consuming and slow the plot, but are necessary if the reader isn’t going to curl their lip in despair.  Even if disabled, mobile phones, I am led to believe, can be tracked by satellite, so the villain can’t just discard the phone, he (or she, I am well aware that villains are not all moustache-twirlers) must make arrangements for it to be disposed of at a distance.  Google can be used to verify an identity – no more getting away with presenting yourself as an Investment Banker, mister ‘Penniless But Hoping To Marry Rich Heroine’!
 

If any of this is a problem in your WIP, may I present the ‘Yorkshire Solution?’ Glacially-slow broadband connections means looking in an encyclopaedia is faster than Googling, and the vast number of mobile signal Dead Zones negate the whole ‘dispose of the mobile’ plot problems. Or, perhaps, write historicals, where none of these things apply? Either way, take care that modern technology doesn’t mean that the possibility of one quick check of Wiki and an e mail will render your carefully-crafted plot climax redundant…

Contact:

www.janelovering.co.uk

www.twitter.com/janelovering

www.ChocLitpublishing.co.uk

www.samhainpublishing.com/authors/jane-lovering

Books:

FALLING APART:  OUT NOW from Choc Lit Publishing – the sequel to VAMPIRE STATE OF MIND

HUBBLE BUBBLE - Choc Lit PublishingPLEASE

DON'T STOP THE MUSIC - RoNA ROMANTIC NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2012

STARSTRUCK -  Choc Lit Publishing

VAMPIRE STATE OF MIND - Choc Lit Publishing

Thank you, Jane, we may well be moving our setting to Yorkshire in future!

The RNA blog is brought to you by Elaine Everest and Natalie Kleinman.
If you would like to write something for the RNA blog please contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com

America Calling: Radio Ga Ga in the USA

We are thrilled to welcome, author Hazel Gaynor who tells us of her experiences with American radio.

 It’s 8.20pm on 14^th April. My phone rings. My heart starts to race. I’ve been waiting for the call all day - my first live radio interview, with a station in Seattle. Ten minutes later, it is all over and a bit of a blur. I think I sounded reasonably sane. I managed not to swear. The kids didn’t interrupt me. One down, nineteen to go.

Two weeks earlier, my debut novel THE GIRL WHO CAME HOME – A Novel of the Titanic had been published in America. Full book-promo mode kicked in: guest posts, interviews, reviews, giveaways and, most unexpectedly, a U.S. radio tour, came my way.

It started with an email from my publicist: ‘Would you be up for a radio tour to promote the book?’ Would I what?! I expected a slot on one or two shows. It turned out to be twenty shows, spanning the entire U.S of A. Gulp!

Most of the interviews were scheduled for 15^th April to coincide with the 102^nd anniversary of the sinking of Titanic. Most were live on air. Some were pre-recorded. I chatted to energetic morning show hosts (like the alarmingly-named, but ever-so-lovely, Bulldog) and had more serious conversations with hosts like Cindy Wolfe Boynton at Literary New England. I spoke about my characters, Titanic, research, the writing process and my cat. I even managed to get in a song request for my children.

Promoting my debut novel live on air was a strange and wonderful experience. Now that I’ve had chance to reflect, here’s a little of what I’ve learnt …
 

1) The phone will work. It won’t inexplicably break, just because you’re expecting important calls from America. You don’t need to keep checking the dial tone (although, of course, you will).
 

2) No matter how quiet you ask the kids to be while they play Hobbits downstairs, real life carries on outside. The ice cream van will blare out ‘Pop goes the Weasel’, the neighbour will cut his grass and someone will call the fire brigade. All you can do is cringe, close the window and hope America can’t hear.
 

3) At least once, you’ll forget the question. Good idea to scribble them down as they are asked in case you go off on a tangent, or have a ‘Hobbit’ unexpectedly appear and distract you.
 

4) Listen to live streaming before you go on air. Every show is different. While you are prepared to talk knowledgeably about Titanic and your novel, you may find the host wants to chat about gin, Jägermeister and your cat. Really – they might.
 

5) Stand up when you’re talking and walk around. Someone once advised me to do this when I worked in an office and had a difficult phone call to make. It works.

 

6) Give the title of your book – preferably several times. Saying ‘my novel’ won’t help people identify it when they go to buy it.
 

7) Don’t be put off by the sixteen members of your family you’ve invited round for Good Friday lunch (yes, it really happened). They’ll threaten to start heckling after they’ve drunk all your Prosecco, but you must remain professional at all times – i.e. retreat to the attic and ignore them.
 

8) Keep an eye on the time, or set a stopwatch. Ten minutes passes very quickly. Make your point and don’t overrun. The stations work to tight schedules (and you have guests to feed, remember).
 

9) Keep a note of the host’s name. You don’t want to thank Tom when you are now talking to Bonnie. This is easily done when you have back-to-back segments and a ‘Hobbit’ hiding under the desk.
 

10) Have an extra bottle of Prosecco in the fridge for when it is all over and you can collapse in a deck chair in the garden.
 

If you’d like to hear the interviews, visit my website where I’ve posted a selection of podcasts. I’m also thrilled to be speaking at the 2014 RNA Summer Conference on ‘Romance and Disaster: Love and the Titanic’ and look forward to meeting lots of you there!

Hazel x

About Hazel:

Hazel Gaynor is a novelist and freelance writer. Her debut novel THE GIRL WHO CAME HOME – A Novel of the Titanic was published by William Morrow (HarperCollins) in the U.S, UK and Ireland in April 2014. Hazel is also a guest blogger and features writer for writing.ie  Originally from Yorkshire, she now lives in Ireland with her husband, two children and an accident-prone cat. 

Web: http://www.hazelgaynor.com/

Twitter: @HazelGaynor

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hazelgaynorbooks

http://www.romanticnovelistsassociation.org/about/author/hazel_gaynor

Amazon page: The Girl Who Came Home

Thank you Hazel

RNA blog posts are brought to you by Elaine Everest and Natalie Kleinman.

We are currently seeking articles on the craft of writing. Contact us on elaineeverest@aol.com if you would like to write something for the blog.