After piddling about for several years writing my first manuscript Lincoln’s Lady. I bit the bullet and subscribed to the New Writer’s Scheme run every year by the UK’s Romantic Novelists’ Association. This gave me a deadline to get the manuscript finished or I’d loose my fifty quid. Being as I loved Nora Roberts and Linda Howard and I’d read a lot of their category romances for Silhouette I wanted to target Special Edition. Unfortunately, by the time the RNA deadline approached the manuscript was 30,000 words too long and like most new writers I didn’t have a clue what to cut. I sent it off anyway and got a wonderfully encouraging report back full of invaluable tips. Interesting stuff like how not to give your readers whiplash with your point-of-view changes, why your heroine’s ex-boyfriend shouldn’t have more scenes than your hero and why trying to write African-American dialect when you come from Shepherd’s Bush might be a tad ambitious. I did the adjustments wrote a query letter to Silhouette and waited. One week later I got a request for the full and thought I was set for life. Turns out, the manuscript wasn’t as promising as the query letter. After an eight-month wait I got a form rejection letter and was gutted. But by then I’d started writing my second manuscript.
Monroe’s Woman was a linked story to Lincoln’s Lady -- about a Harley riding bad boy called Monroe (think Johnny Depp meets Steve McQueen by way of Sawyer in Lost) and a fiery, feisty English girl called Jessie. She’s looking for Mr Right, takes one look at Monroe and knows he’s about as Mr Wrong as a guy can get -- but then can’t stop looking at him anyway because he’s so flipping gorgeous and he’s looking right back at her.
Once again I gave myself a deadline by paying my fifty quid for the New Writer’s Scheme. I’d learned so much by then, not just from my failed first ms, but also from the many contests I’d entered at various RWA chapters, the workshops I’d done online, the Critters corner at RWA Online, etc.
I posted off the second ms (after several very late nights) on Wednesday 30th August, one day before the deadline. That Friday I got a message to ring Nicola Cornick who was running the scheme. I expected her to tell me she hadn’t got the manuscript in time. Instead she said she loved the story and she’d be happy to forward it to Bryony Green, senior editor at Mills and Boon Modern Xtra because she thought it was better suited to that line than my target line Silhouette Special Edition -- turns out my raunchy sex scenes were a bit too hot for the ‘family focus’ of SSE. To be honest, I was so excited after Nicola’s call, the rest of what happened is a bit of a blur.
Bryony got back to me the following week enthusiastic about the story but pointing out that it was 20,000 words too long. Would I be willing to cut it down while making a series of revisions – for example, there was a birth scene that came complete with amniotic fluids which Bryony politely pointed out was ‘a little bit icky’. She wanted the revisions in five days. I was so revved up by then I managed to do them in three -- although not a lot of sleep was involved. Bryony came up with the fantastic title Bedded by a Bad Boy and offered me a two-book contract. I immediately sent a text message to everybody I knew. Unfortunately, I was helping to chaperone a class of 28 eight-year-olds to the swimming pool that day and ended up having to field mobile phone calls all morning with my son’s teacher staring daggers at me. Thank goodness, no one drowned.
I wrote a good story (at least, I hope I did), but I also know I was incredibly lucky, too. That both Nicola and Bryony liked ‘my voice’; that Modern Xtra had just launched; that Bryony was actively seeking the kind of zingy, sexy romances I wanted to write; and that she happened to have a slot to fill just when my manuscript landed on her desk.