Fiona Harper's Blog, page 6

New Voices Workshop - part two

Okay, yesterday we looked at external conflict, now we're going to take a peek under the surface and talk about internal conflict.

What is internal conflict?

Let's go back to our car-racing hero from yesterday:
We have a hero who wants to win a race so he can get his hands on a cash prize so he can use it to pay a ransom for his son, who has been kidnapped. Unfortunately, he had an unscrupulous opponant will do anything to get to the finishing line first...

What if our hero had a terrible acciden...

New Voices Workshop - part one

I thought it might be useful to post the main points of the New Voices workshop I gave at Brixton library on 14th September, but since there is quite a lot to get though, I thought I'd seperate it into a few posts and put them up on consecutive days. Here's part one:


THE STORY INSIDE THE STORY
Using internal conflict to create a gripping romance


There are two levels to every gripping story:

Outer: the plot – the things that happen to the protagonist, the action of the story.
Inner: character - ab...

New Voices is almost here!

Last year Mills & Boon ran a hugely successful X-Factor-style romance writing competition, and this year it's back - bigger and better than ever!

New Voices 2011 launches on Tuesday 13th September!

Round 1: aspiring romance novelists can upload their first chapters to the New Voices site. The M&B team will whittle down the entries to 20 finalists.

Round 2: The finalists will then write the second chapter of their book, and the public and judges will vote on who goes on to....

Round 3: finalists ...

Swept Off Her Stilettos - hero and heroine casting

Coreen had "bit parts" into other books before she got a story of her own. That meant she was pretty fully formed in my head before I started writing Swept Off Her Stilettos. Initially, she appeared in my head like one of Alberto Vargas's pin-up girls come to life: sexy, cheeky and totally gorgeous.



Apart from the photograph I posted the other day, other good matches the Coreen would be:



Holly Willoughby, British TV presenter who caused a storm wearing a not-particularly revealing dress on ...

Book of the week!

Have just discovered that Swept Off Her Stilettos is Now magazine's book of the week, with a four star review!

Here's what they say:

Dita Von Teese's retro-luxe glamour would fade quickly into the background if vintage vixen Coreen Fraser stood beside her. Now that she's got fashion firmly wrapped around her finger, can she convince her crush Nicholas to put a ring on it? But when her best friend Adam reveals his own feelings for her, Coreen must decide where her affections truly lie.

Adventures in New York - part 2

On Sunday morning I met up with Love Inspired authors Camy Tang and Danica Favorite for a trip to church. We set off from our hotel in Times Square for Greenwich Village. As is always the way on the first day in a new city, we got lost. Thank goodness for Google Maps, Camy's iPhone and Danica's sense of direction!

However, one of the plus points of getting lost is all the wandering you do trying to find your way. We walked past the tea shop called Tea & Sympathy on Greenwich Avenue. Being Brit...

Swept Off Her Stilettos - Inspiration

Sometimes I have to root around in my memory to remember where the idea for a book came from, but not with this one. There was one big polka-dotted inspiration for this book: my heroine, Coreen.

She first appeared in Invitation To The Boss's Ball as the heroine's best friend, and immediately began to steal the show. Alice was a skinny redhead, not confident in her own sexuality, and I decided she needed a best friend and business partner who was her complete opposite, so up popped Coreen.

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Back from my travels: RWA - part one

Well, I've been a busy little bunny, travelling here and there for the last few weeks, and then I got home to find a family that needed some of my time and proofs for the next book to be checked, and a million and one other things on my to-do list. Anyway, I thought I'd belatedly blog about my travels and intersperse those blogs with the 'behind the scenes' info for Swept Off Her Stilettos'.

So here we go - RWA part one:

Heading into New York city for the first time was a surreal experience. ...

Two conferences and a total collapse

After doing the RWA conference in New York and then heading off to the RNA conference in Wales within a few days, I am officially wilting. And I've got two weeks worth of admin to catch up on too!

Will hopefully get around to posting about both of these events shortly, but in the meantime I have uploaded my photos to my Facebook page:

RWA pics here.

RNA pics here.

News round-up

Well, so much for posting from RWA! I got so busy I hardly had time to turn my computer on! I'm going to post an update on my adventures in New York in the next couple of days, but first I've got a few bits of news to share:

First off (and I'm really excited by this!) my latest book, Swept Off Her Stilettos, is available now at Mills and Boon! It'll be on the shelves next month in the UK, and also available online at Harlequin too. You can read a bit if you click on the 'browse' widget in ...