Five Steps to a Becoming An Author

I've been a published writer for a heap of years and I'm often asked how I started. I'd dabbled as far back as school. Started stories but with no idea how to finish them.

This is my first published writing ever. It was bought by a magazine (still going strong) called Women's Weekly and they paid me £20. I was finally in print.

Ambition # 1 ticked.

I wrote an article about having a baby in Bahrein (she's now the lovely Mummy Blogger Hooked), was paid £40 for that and I had the money for a portable typewriter. Two articles meant it wasn't a fluke. I was a writer!

Ambition #2 ticked.

Every afternoon the BBC broadcast an iconic radio programme for small children called Listen With Mother that began "Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...'

I had small children and every afternoon we sat comfortably and listened. There were songs, poems and a story and I thought - as you do - how hard can it be to write a little story like that?

The answer was, is, that's it's a lot harder that you think. Starting is easy... Of you go with a lost button, a plain coathanger, a homeless cat.... Finishing it was the tough one but I battled through with the plain coathanger. It was a rubbish but I'd written a beginning, a middle and an end.

My second attempt, with the homeless cat found a home with D C Thomson, a famous British company publishing magazines and comics. A New Home was published in their Twinkle annual that year. Twinkle was a "picture paper" for little girls and I wrote a lot of stuff for them. (This is one...) Poems (they paid best), short stories for the annual and a ton of comic strip stories for the picture paper itself. I just wrote the words (and described what should be in the picture) - I didn't draw the pictures.

It looks very simple but you have to cram a lot into a very few words. It's direct, active and low on adverbs. Very good training. I was earning an income from writing, having meetings with a publisher to discuss what I might to do next. I was being taken seriously as a writer.

Ambition #3 ticked.

I also had half a dozen stories accepted by Listen With Mother and still have tape recordings somewhere of the programmes in which they were read out. That was huge. Really. And my son's Reception teacher had the whole class listen to one of them - and I made the local newspaper!

Ambition # 4 well and truly ticked.

It was fun and I loved doing this but it was no way to make a living as a writer. I needed to move on. I sold a few more articles to women's magazines, including the iconic The Lady.

The next big step was winning a competition in the magazine Writing with a short ghost story, which was a huge confidence boost. But where next?

I wanted to write full length fiction. I had just embarked on a children's story (involving a magic carpet and sheikhs....) when I read an article in a British newspaper about Anne Hampson and Charlotte Lamb (both living in tax exile - Charlotte in the Isle of Man, Anne in the West Indies.  Ambition #5 was to be Anne Hampson!

It was a very steep learning curve. I completed three manuscripts, got encouraging feedback from Mills and Boon and finally, with my fourth attempt - this time just three chapters and cheeky note saying that I'd like to know if they liked it enough for me to bother finishing it - I hooked the interest of an editor. She liked the writing, wasn't convinced by the plot and told me to start again.

I walked around in a daze for a week.

This was huge, my big chance and if I blew it...

I rethought my heroine and gave her some sound motivation, put her in the most uncomfortable situation I could imagine and nine months later - after three rewrites! - I finally got the call to tell me that they would be publishing An Image of You.

Ambition #5 ticked and nailed to the wall!

I loved the original cover and I also love that Mills and Boon have recently reissued this book in digital format so that it's available again.

My next book, The Sheikh's Convenient Princess, published early next year, will be my 65th title for Mills and Boon.

So do I have any ambitions left? Well I've never made tax exile like Anne Hampson and Charlotte Lamb, but yes. There's always something bigger, something just over the horizon to be reached for. I'll keep you posted!

Liz Fielding's A Summer's Lease will be free on Amazon from 8th-12th September.

Publishing anniversary

 Someone reminded me this week that it's exactly twenty-two years this past Friday when my first book - AN IMAGE OF YOU - was published by Harlequin Mills and Boon in the UK.

It was a dream come true. I'd had three books rejected but this one caught an editor's eye. My crusading, madcap, heroine made her laugh - rare in romances back then - and after quite a lot of rewriting (mostly cutting "background") I got the call. It took longer to get a book on the shelves in those days and it was nearly eighteen months before publication day (by which time I'd written three more books!)

Even today I still get the most enormous buzz when a box of new books arrives but I will never forget the first time. That moment when I opened the package of books, held one in my hand, saw that wonderful cover and could exclaim to the world that YES! I was a published author! Books in the library, on the shelf at my local supermarket and in the W H Smith in the nearest town. The town where I grew up published an article, with a picture. The local paper got involved and then a national. Lots of "Mum Writes Book" headlines!

It was the most wonderful time and the saddest. Within two months both my parents had died unexpectedly (and far too young) and the anniversary is inevitably linked. I'm just glad they were both there with me to celebrate that special day.

Now, exactly on this 22nd anniversary, by some quirky coincidence of fate, Harlequin Mills and Boon have republished An Image of You as an ebook, with a pretty new cover - sadly it doesn't reflect the fact that most of the action takes places in the Kenyan bush, but after more than sixty books covers never surprise me. :)

This will be my last post of 2014 so I just want to thank you for all the support, buying the books and put in a little plug for my new look - once monthly - newsletter. There's a sign up link on my blog  

The eternal question...

It's the one question every author is asked. All the time. Where do you get your ideas from? It's often hard to pin down an answer because so many things come together, often over a long time. A view here, a snippet of something from a newspaper there, something your mother said when you were a teen...

Once in a while, though, everything is there. Or maybe it's just because it was my first book that I know exactly how the idea for An Image of You emerged.

The setting was like a dangling plum, one I had to use. I'd lived in Kenya for a couple of years and spent several long weekends at a very small tented safari camp that was off the well-trodden beaten track. A dozen or so tents (with modern plumbing handily placed at the rear) beside the Tsavo River. A large canvas covered area for dining. A deep fire pit to sit beside at night where you could talk about the near miss from the charging rhino that had taken off the door of your jeep.

Add a television documentary where the wonderful Clive James had accompanied photographer Patrick Lichfield on a assignment in the same game reserve, staying at an almost identical safari camp with a bunch of glamour models, to photograph a much desired calender - with Patrick Lichfield standing in for my hero, Lukas.

Enter Georgette, my heroine, a feminist protestor who not only wanted to save the whales, but the entire world who has spent the night in jail after an "incident" - the last straw in her father's patience. In order to restore herself in his eyes she has to go to Kenya and take the place of our hero's injured assistant, who is working on the photographs of the famous glamour calender that is a major prop in the PR campaign of her father's motor parts company.

Georgette is outraged, but worse, far worse is that she's met the photographer before. And here I used another real event, a demonstration against the Miss World competition when it was held in London and a bunch of feminists threw flour at the judges. Because Lukas has been one of the judges in my fictional contest and had not only been showered with Georgette's flour bag, but had got her out of the event by the back way when she'd had every intention of getting arrested.

I've been thinking about this recently because Harlequin Mills and Boon have just re-released An Image of You as an ebook.

Ready, steady, click...

A gift for my readers...

This month is very special for me. December 2012 is the 20th anniversary of the publication of my first book by Harlequin Mills and Boon, An Image of You.

Sadly, I don't have an online version of that first book to give away to mark the occasion - Harlequin haven't yet issued it as a digital book and won't release it so that I can do it myself.

The good news is that  I have just republished another "vintage"Liz Fielding -  OLD DESIRES- and as a gift to all my readers, I'm giving it away free this week (from 9th-13th December) at Amazon.

I've linked to Amazon US, but you'll find it on whichever Amazon you use - US, UK, France, Germany... the list goes on. (Sorry Nook, Kobo and Sony users - but I'll do a voucher when it goes online at other stores in February.)

To give you a little more incentive to click and download, here's a little taste.

Holly closed her eyes in an effort to blot out the desire in his eyes, not quite trusting it, but knowing that it was far too late for her to fight the echoing response he must all too clearly see in hers. Knowing that she was helpless to resist.

He took her face between his hands, tilting her face upwards cradling it in his long fingers until she could bear it no longer. ‘Please…’ The word, barely more than a sigh, escaped her lips, but whether she was begging for release or capture she scarcely knew. Until he kissed her and by then it was too late.

Fill you boots, tell your friends - it's a party!

Happy holidays!

With gratitude for all the support, friendship and fun -

Liz xxx

The publication of my sixtieth book, FLIRTING WITH ITALIAN, this December is on the anniversary on the publication of my first book, AN IMAGE OF YOU, in December 1992, 19 years ago. Sixty books. Nineteen years.

It’s not just the books, though. The writing life tends to be a solitary one, but since my first book was published things have changed out of all recognition. There were no mobile phones in those early books. No internet. No email. My characters had to make do with a fixed landline to make those calls, write letters.

It was the same for authors.

My very first manuscripts were typed on a portable typewriter on the dining room table. By the time I sold my first book they were being laboriously printed out from a computer with the memory the size of a goldfish. Contact with my colleagues was via a photocopied newsletter produced by Valerie Parv in Australia and distributed by post in the UK by Charlotte Lamb. It was Charlotte who threw a tea party at the beautiful Brown’s Hotel in London where we all met for the first time and I was a bundle of nerves as I met iconic authors such as Carole Mortimer, Elizabeth Oldfield, Jessica Steele, Anne Weale and Sally Wentworth.

I need not have worried. Romantic novelists are the kindest, warmest, most welcoming women I’ve ever met. Many of them have become firm friends over the years and now that I am myself a veteran of the genre I never forget their kindness and do my best to pay it forward.

Millions of words. Millions of books. I did try and do the math but my brain fried. Whatever the number, it feels like a huge milestone and I’m delighted that FLIRTING WITH ITALIAN is the book I’m celebrating with. Set in Italy, one of my favourite places in the entire world here’s a little taste: -

     ‘Have you found him yet, Sarah Gratton?’
     For a moment she was mesmerized by the way he said her name. The vowels long and slow, like thick cream being poured from a jug. The man exuded sensuality. Every movement, every syllable seemed to stroke her…
     ‘Him?’ she repeated, before she began to purr. No… That wasn’t right. She was looking for Lucia…
     ‘The “…dark-eyed Italian lover…”?’ he prompted.
      Oh, great. He’d found Lex’s email. But no one who taught a mixed class of teenagers could afford to betray the slightest sign of embarrassment. The first hint of a blush and you were toast.
You had to look them in the eye, stand your ground, come back with a swift riposte that would make the class laugh with you, not at you.
     ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Are you interested in the job?’
      It would have been spot on if it had come out sharp and snappy as intended but something had gone seriously wrong between her brain and her mouth. Between concept and delivery.
      It was his eyes. Dark as night but with the crackle of lightning in their depths…

     Under that gaze, sharp had lost its edge, snap had turned to a soft, gooey fudge and apparently taking it as an invitation, he reached out, slid his fingers through her hair, cradling her head in the palm of his hand. There was a seemingly endless pause while she frantically tried to redial her brain.  Send out a call for the cavalry.
     Her brain was apparently engaged, busy dealing with a bombardment of signals. The sun hot on her arms, her throat, her breasts. The sensuous sweep of the mouth hovering above her own. The scent of warm skin, leather…
     The world seemed to have slowed down and it took forever for his lips to reach hers. Somewhere, deep inside her brain the word “…no…” was teetering on the brink. All she had to do was move her lips, say it, but her butter-soft mouth seemed to belong to someone else.
     When it parted, it was not to protest and as his mouth found hers a tingle of something like recognition raced like wildfire through her blood, blotting out reason. Her body, with nothing to guide it, softened, melted against him, murmured, “Yes…”

FLIRTING WITH ITALIAN is available in paper and eBook format in December 2011.

For more information check out my Website

Liz Fielding: Twenty Years

TWENTY YEARS

This month sees the anniversary of the day I signed my first contract with Mills and Boon – “Whereby it is mutually agreed between the parties hereto as follows respecting a work of fiction of approximately 50-55,000 words entitled AN IMAGE OF YOU (hereinafter referred to as “the work”) the complete typescript of which has been delivered to the Publisher and accepted by the Publisher.”

Even now, reading that, I get a bit goosey. Remembering the phone call from my first editor to say they’d bought it, signing the contract, the day the first box of books arrived. My first sight of the cover. Holding my book. Opening it and reading the first few lines and knowing that it wasn’t all some mad mistake. Rushing to my parents to show them.

It has been a long journey, with a few ups and downs on the way. Some rejections — yes, contracted authors do get rejections — and a few books, not many, that have whizzed through without a word being changed, which is wonderful and yet vaguely disturbing. I miss that chance to give it a final tweak.  

There have been covers that I’ve loved — my latest, a Riva called Tempted By Trouble is coming out very near the top! — and some I’ve hated. I’ll gloss over the titles. We all know that they are nothing to with the author and everything to do with marketing.

There have been award nominations, I have two Rita statuettes tucked away on the shelf under the stairs; sadly I had to give back the Betty Neels Rose Bowl at the end of the year. And I’ve been fabulous conferences in New York, Denver, Washington, Leicester and Egham and this weekend I’ll be at Caerleon for the Romantic Novelists’ Association conference. Forget “messing about in boats”; there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to beat spending a weekend with romance writers en masse.  

And in April I delivered FLIRTING WITH ITALIAN, my sixtieth story, to Mills and Boon. A diamond moment if ever there was one.

What I remember most, though, are the wonderful friends I’ve made during the last twenty years. Writers, who are the only people who understand exactly how you’re feeling when the words won’t come. Or when they do. Editors who have taught me so much, made me write better than I knew I could. But most of all readers. God bless you for buying the books. Thank you for posting lovely reviews on Amazon. For befriending me on my blog and on twitter and writing to me when a book has delighted you. Rushing to buy the latest title.

You are the ones who keep this industry going. Your enthusiasm, eagerness for new stories, your joy, anticipation as you open a glossy cover, click “download” onto to eReader. We do it for you.

So here I am, raising a glass of champagne to all of you.

Thank you for twenty wonderful years.

AN AWFUL WARNING

AN AWFUL WARNING…

For most of my adult life I was a trim 7 stone, 12lbs. That's 105 lbs for those of you who do things that way. If you’re working in kilos you’re on your own.

I had kids and lost the weight without any special effort. The pointer on the scales seemed glued to that 7/12 spot.

Back in 1991 I had a day job helping to organise the Brecon Jazz Festival and twice a day I tackled the steep hill from my house to the office, usually at a run (I also had two teenage kids so I was doing everything at run). I was writing in my spare time, stories a little girls picture paper called "Twinkle". The odd magazine article. Had a ghost story published.

Then I gave up the day job and concentrated on my writing and within a year I'd reached the goal I'd set myself when I sold AN IMAGE OF YOU to Mills & Boon. We moved that year and started building our own house. I am, of course, using “we” in its loosest possible sense. For the best part of a year, while the dh was on site doing man-stuff, I was holed up in a room in which we’d stored most of our furniture. There was just enough space for me to slide into my chair and get at the computer.

That Christmas, because I’d put on a little weight, I decided to buy a size larger skirt – it’s hell sitting all day with a tight waistband. With the twenty-twenty vision of hindsight it's clear that what I should have done was cut down on the fast food (building a house and writing four books in a year, the faster the food the better) and started jogging. Instead I kept my butt attached to the chair and went on writing. And the word number wasn’t the only thing increasing by the day.

It isn’t called “Writer’s Bottom” for nothing.

I’m not going to tell you my present poundage, just that I’ve tried diets – the Atkins was fabulous and had me whizzing around like a three-year-old on speed, but you begin to crave bread like a junkie craves a fix. I’ve done the really healthy diets, too, I’m on one now. I even joined a gym (I really, really hated that). I’ve lost weight. (It’s easy. You exercise more and eat less.) And then I’ve put it back on again.

Three weeks ago I decided that I needed to lose half a stone (7 lbs) before I do my mother of the bride bit so I treated myself to a wii and I'm suddenly an exercise junkie…

Five lbs of the Liz “mii” have already disappeared, the tummy is flatter, the legs are looking a little thinner. I get up each morning and put in half an hour of yoga, and stepping and even running and it’s not a trial. For the first time in my life I'm actually enjoying taking a little exercise. But there's no getting away from the fact that there's a long way to go before I begin to approach my ideal weight -- 117 lbs. (Apparently I was underweight for all those years.)

But I really, really wish that when I'd reached for that large size skirt back in 1991 someone had tapped me on the shoulder and said, "DON'T DO IT!"

So for any new writers out there who've got their butt glued to their chair for ten hours a day, for the writer whose skirt is getting a little tight around the wait, consider this a friendly tap on the shoulder from someone who's learned the hard way that it's a lot easier to take off 5 pounds than the 37 that I've still got to shed.

Award-winning author Liz Fielding's novella, The Temp & the Tycoon is published as part of the Mills & Boon Centenary Celebrations. Her next Mills & Boon/Harlequin Romance, Wedded in a Whirlwind, will be published in November.