An Interview with Kate Walker

It's all about the Romance

An Interview with Kate Walker

A hangover from my days as a full time librarian is the real sense of joy i get from seeing people reading. It doesn't matter what it is, but when I witness another person getting real pleasure from a book it makes me feel all squishy. Regular readers of this blog will know how big a fan i am of that much maligned area of publishing, tie-in, and I make no secret of my soft spot for all kinds of pulp fiction.

So it will come as no surprise to most of you that I am equally vocal in my support of that much maligned publishing line, Mills & Boon. Romance as a genre tends to be looked down on by those into "serious" literature, and somehow it seems to be okay to mock Mills & Boon.

Yes, this annoys me. The rate that M&B fly off the shelves in book shops and libraries is something to behold, I can tell you. I have friends and family who devour M&B novels like they are junkies, getting through them at a phenomenal rate. They get loyal to a particular imprint, like Historical, Nocturne or Modern Heat. When they find an author they like they'll buy or borrow anything that she has written - and writers of all genres would happily kill for that kind of branding. M&B has been going for over 100 years. They know what works.

And yet despite my vocal support when in "librarian" mode, I've been known to stuff a M&B title into my bag when a colleague comes into the office so they don't see that I'm reading something called "Fabulous Lord, Inexperienced Lady". I also have some good natured banter with my best friend, who reads more M&B in a month than most of us get through in a year.
This, I suspect, is part of the problem that M&B - and, indeed, their writers - are facing. Even people like me, who read the stuff and will vocally support others reading it, feel a little bit embarrassed that we're reading a short romance novel instead of the new Martin Amis. I might love the pure escapism, but it feels like eating chocolate while on fat camp.



So what does it actually take to be a successful M&B writer? Kate Walker has published over 50 novels for M&B and is one of their most popular authors. She has also written the fabulous 12 point guide to writing romance, so is well placed to talk to us about what it takes to make a career writing for M&B and the misconceptions held about this genre.


Hi Kate! When did you start writing? How long between that and being published?
I always wanted to write and even as a child I was always scribbling stories in notebooks or other bits of paper. I wrote my first ‘book’ when I was 11 – it was all of 40 pages long and an adventure story for children. I could never quite settle to what I actually wanted to write so I tried short stories, historical novels, young adult novels . . . I even wrote a long story (it would probably be novel-length now – about a rock star called Mick O’Connell then I used to let my friends read as a serial each time I’d written an instalment. Then when I left university and married and started working as librarian, for a while I concentrated on short stories. I sold two or three but I never had much success and I was always someone who loved novels more than short stories. Then I left work when my son was born and I decided to concentrate on seeing if I could write for publication while I was at home. And one day I rediscovered Mills & Boon.

Talk us through your path to publication!

Part of this is in the answer to question 1 – but the important point was the rediscovery of Mills & Boon romances. When I was at school, a friend of my mother – Marguerite Lees - used to write for Mills & Boon. She was the first real published author I had ever met and, more importantly, she was the first person ever to really encourage me in my writing. Most adults- parents, teachers, told me that they thought my dream of writing for publication was just that – a dream.

It was rediscovering a reprint of a Mills & Boon novel (Witchstone by Anne Mather) that got me interested in reading romance again. I decided to try writing romance myself. My first book was rejected - with just a rejection slip – and I’m not surprised. I’d made the mistake of not reading the books that Mills & Boon were publishing now as opposed to the ones they’d published in the past. So I tried again. The second submission earned me an editorial letter – and editors are such busy people that they don’t have time to send letters unless they believe someone has potential. They said the book wasn’t suitable because it lacked emotional punch but would I read their current output and try again. So I did. Then I waited . . .There’s a lot of waiting in publishing. Eventually, one day in summer, I came home to find a large white envelope with a red rose on it lying on my door mat. The letter said that the editor who had read my book (Lesley Stonehouse, a lovely lady to whom I’ll always be so grateful) had liked it and with some small amendments they were interested in publishing it. I went down to London, discussed the amendments – and they were very small – and put those into the book. Then in December 1984 my very first book, The Chalk Line, was published.

Why Romantic fiction?

Looking back at everything I had written since I was a child, I realised that I had always included a ‘relationship’ element in my stories. And when I had tried to write short stories they were of the type that you could call romantic stories too. Also, in the books I enjoyed reading, the films I liked watching there was this male/female element that I really enjoyed. But also in a way I sort of fell into it. Marguerite Lees had written her books while bringing up 2 children as a single parent so I decided to try the sort of books she wrote as a first attempt. I was surprised to find that I had an ability to write them – and to write the sort of things that M&B were looking to publish. Then when I got into it I found that I loved creating these stories that Charlotte Lamb called ‘these complicated little books’. They are called romances but I like to describe them as relationship stories and I love creating couples, putting a conflict between them and them making them resolve that conflict. I like the emotional intensity and the concentrated focus of the books.

What type of writer are you?

I’m a fits and starts writer. When writing is going well, I write a lot, other times I don’t have a great word count. I try to be disciplined. With deadlines for at least 3 books a year, I need to do that, so I tend to be at my desk for office hours on working days of the week. And then I tend to ‘travel hopefully into the mist’ in my writing. I usually have a good idea of the characters – knowing my characters is the most vital element of my writing – and I know the conflict between them/the problem that keeps them from being together but then it’s rather like introducing two people to each other and seeing what happens. Sometimes I know exactly what the resolution will be, other ties I’m working it out as the couple that I’m writing about is doing the same. Openings tend to be slow as I’m working things out, developing the story, getting to know my characters, then the writing begins to speed up as I get into a book. Towards the end I write at my fastest and if a book is going well then, I can spend all day – sometimes from 6 am to 10 pm at my desk. Those days exhaust me so then I’ll always need to take a breather in between books.

What is your proudest moment to date?

There are quite a few of them. Getting that first letter of interest from the publisher, holding my very first book in my hands. The first acceptance came as a bitter-sweet moment as I had just learned that my mother had terminal cancer and she wasn’t expected to live very long. So it was wonderful to be able to tell her that I had succeeded in my dream, even if she never actually saw the book when it was published.

I have been able to go to several international Romance Writers Conferences – America, Australia, New Zealand – and to have people come up to me and tell me that they love my books is always a fantastic feeling. The letters and emails I get from fans are also wonderful. One time I was one of 15 authors chosen by the Japanese Readers’ club to meet with a group of fans who had travelled to England and they were all so enthusiastic about the books – it was amazing to think that what I wrote here in my home in Lincolnshire – gave them so much pleasure in Japan.

In 2007 my 50th title – The Sicilian’s Red-Hot Revenge was published and I received a gold pin from Harlequin Mills and Boon at an event with lots of my fellow writers and friends there, that was great. And recently a trilogy I wrote – The Alcolar Family – was reprinted in the Bestseller By Request collection and that was a lovely accolade . .

Oh, and my ‘how to’ book on writing romance – the 12 Point Guide To Writing Romance won an award as best book for writers when it first came out.

Speaking of which, what prompted you to write a how-to guide?

One of the things that amuses me about my how-to guide and the events that have spiralled off from it is that when I was at school and then university, I was so determined NOT to become a teacher. My mother taught, my sister too. Then I married a teacher . . . But I always hated the idea of standing in front of a class. So I became a librarian. I thought I would never be any good as a teacher and I was much better working with books in a behind the scenes way. Then when I'd been writing for a while my husband was working with a small publisher on some 'Straightforward Guides' to Creative Writing and the publisher asked me if I would write one on writing romance. It was a very simple one, basically aimed at absolute beginners. Later, I was involved with an on-line writers' group and I said that if I rewrote the book then I would do it differently. Someone asked me what the 10 most important things about writing Romance were - and I listed them, then said I really needed to add another 2 - and so the '12 Point Guide' was started.

As a result of that discussion, I ran some online 12 Point Workshops and they were hugely popular. People started asking if I had the details of the workshop in a printed form so I had some small booklets printed up and sold them at writing weekends/ workshops that i ran - they all disappeared so fat I couldn't keep up with the demand. So when another publisher asked about a book on writing romance I was able to show him the booklet and say that if he wanted it, I could expand the workshop and turn it into a full book. That was exactly what he wanted. So I revised and expanded the original workshop and turned it into Kate Walker's 12 Point Guide to Writing Romance. The original edition of this book came out in 2004 and it won the Best Book For Writers on the Cata Romance web site, plus a lot of 5 star reviews on Amazon. It also meant that I got asked to do a lot more workshops, book festivals and writing weekends because people had heard about the book. I now regularly teach and Caerleon Writers' Holidays, Fishguard Writing Weekends, and other courses as a result (Details are always on my web site)

How was it different from writing a novel?

Well it needed a lot more planning and organisation to make sure that I covered everything I wanted to say. I also wanted to make sure that it was not just a 'how to' book that could be read, but one that acted more as a workshop, like the original workshop I ran. So each chapter/each point ends on a section with Something to Think About, Something To Write, and a series of questions so that there is a practical element to the whole book too. I always say that if you can't get to one of my workshops then this will be the next best thing.

The first edition of the 12 Point Guide To Writing Romance sold out and so it went into a 2nd edition - but I didn't just want this to be a reprinting and nothing more so I updated everything and revised it, I also added a large section which I called 'From The Authors' Desks'. For this section I got in touch with over 20 of my friends and fellow romance writers, and I sent them each the same set of questions - most of them answered these in detail. It also meant that I had hints, tips and advice from many multi-published authors who wrote for many of the different romance lines that are now published. This gave the book a wider range and lots more helpful points for the would be writer.

In terms of your writing career, what is your ultimate goal?

Writing contemporary romance is a constant challenge. I’ve been published for 25 years and in that time the genre has constantly shifted and changed – sometimes not by much, at other times making more of a difference. I have always kept as my goal to be able to be published in the genre and hopefully still be popular as it changes. It’s a real achievement to me to be published in such a popular and developing line of fiction, to please the readers of 2010 as much as the ones who read my first book back in 1984 – and to gather new fans, young and older, along the way.
Before you were published did you deliberately target M&B as a market for your novels?
As I explained above, when I first thought of writing ‘category romances’ there was no other possible published even to consider. So yes I deliberately targeted Harlequin Mills & Boon as a publisher because they published the sort of fiction I was interested in writing. I learned as much as I could about the sort of fiction they wanted from their authors and how they wanted it presented . If I was starting out again I’d do the same. Harlequin Mills and Boon have been publishing for over 100 years, they sell over 130 million books every year in 109 countries and 26 different languages – I have books in Greek, Japanese, Polish, Korean .. . That’s a wonderful distribution for any author and they are always looking for new authors.

Do you have an agent? If yes, what are the values and how did you sign with them; if no, why not?

No I don’t have an agent. This was just sheer innocence at the start – I wanted to be published and to be published you had to submit to a publisher so I did! And as I said, I was incredibly lucky I that my third submission was bought. (I understand that the average number of attempts before an author is bought is around 12.) After that, I was working with Mills & Boon who have a standard contract, one that they offer to all their authors, and I have never heard of an agent who has really managed to get anything new and different and better for their romance writing clients. Also, as I’ve already mentioned, I don’t need an agent to negotiate foreign sales for me – this is all done through Harlequin and their international editorial houses so an agent wouldn’t be useful to me there.

Despite being one of the biggest players in publishing, Mills & Boon - and thus quite often its authors – are not taken seriously. Why do you think this is? Has it ever bothered you?

Has it bothered me ? A lot! So many people claim that they ‘know’ that romances are all the same, that we have a ‘formula’ that makes it easy to just ‘churn out’ the books at a vast rate of knots (I wish!). Apparently we also have a list of ‘rules’ – things like the heroines must always be virgins, that her hero must be about 10 years older than her, that there must be no sex – or no sex till chapter five or . . . One woman actually believed that there is a computer that is programmed with names, nationalities, descriptions, occupations etc for the hero and heroine and it then runs off random combinations to create the books!

The problem is that so many people believe in what journalists (often very lazy journalists) or popular media and critics tell them – that the books are all the same. That they are slushy romances. That the hero is always a bully, and the heroine has no backbone and is too stupid to live. Most of these people have never even opened a Mills & Boon book, never mind read even a selection of the huge numbers of books by thousands of different authors over 100+ years. The laziness and repetition of continuing myths without bothering to check if they are actually true really infuriates me. I have no trouble with someone not liking my books – we can’t all please everyone all the time. But to dismiss all of the output of a publisher because you don’t like one book/one author is just ignorant.

The books are light reading, light romances. They are not meant to be great literature but escapist reading. But that doesn’t mean we can’t deal with adult and serious themes within the stories. I recently wrote a book where the conflict was based around the subject of Post Natal Psychosis and that earned me a lot of praise from both general readers and qualified experts in the field. I would only have written that if I felt I could do the subject justice and it looks like I succeeded.

But I think that most of the time the reason why I get angry at the way people sneer at Mills & Boon books and the readers who love them is that I hate snobbery in reading and writing. I have 2 degrees - one an MA in English from the University of Wales and one thing my studies taught me was to read any book and every book carefully and fairly. Then I worked as a children’s librarian and I really felt that when people are worrying that children – and many adults – don’t read enough – the last thing we should be doing is sneering at their choice of reading matter and making them feel embarrassed at choosing it. Women can be particularly bad at this and I never understood why. I read anything and everything. Some days I’ve worked through War and Peace or James Joyce’s Ulysses. Other days I want to relax with a romance. I don’t feel I have the right to look down on people who choose to read westerns or sci-fi or My Weekly Library . We all have the right to read what we want to read and I hate the way that critics sneer at M&B books and so insult the authors and the women who read them – and who have been reading and writing them for 100+ years.

What do you think are the main mistakes people make when writing romance / writing for M&B?

The biggest mistake that people make is thinking they can write a short romance when they have never ever read one. Or, even worse, thinking that they can write a short romance without ever having read one and believing the press that the books so often get. There is so much lazy reporting about M&B books - usually with the idea that there is a definite 'formula' (I wish!) and that there is somewhere a carefully detailed 'rule book' that tells the authors what ages and types their characters must be, the sort of plots we are 'allowed' and precise descriptions of just how much 'touching and kissing' and 'intimate contact' we are allowed in each chapter of the book. Some people are totally stunned to discover that the authors can actually 'go beyond the bedroom door' and write sensual scenes - they think this is something new when in fact the books have left that bedroom door well open since at least the 60s! All the myths - like the fact that our heroines 'must' be blonde, petite, virginal, can never have had any other partners and must always be years younger than the heroes would soon be dismissed if people would actually read the books that M&B are publishing. They will probably be very surprised. I know all about this mistake as when I first started writing my first attempt, I was working from memories of the books a friend of my mother had written and that i had read when i was a teenager - and it was only when I started reading the more up to date novels that I saw how much things had changed. And they continue to change, growing and developing and altering as society and lifestyles change. One of the hardest thinsg that I've had to do in the 25 years that I've been published is to keep following the subtle changes and variations - the fashions in what's popular and what's not just as in any form of popular culture and publishing.

The other main mistakes are to think that this books can just be 'dashed off' that they can be written carelessly and cynically and without much effort because the people who read them don't care much , they just devour them like a box of chocolates. That is so insulting to the millions of readers worldwide (one of the biggest mistakes is to see M&B as a small UK company instead of the worldwide international bestselling company it is with sales on 130+ million books in 109 countries - they say one of the romances is sold every 3 seconds!) And people think that because they are easy to read then they are so easy to write - that the authors just 'churn them out' . In my workshops I quote someone called Enrique Jardiel Poncela who said: "When something can be read without effort, great effort has gone into its writing. I know that writing what the great Charlotte Lamb once called 'these complicated little books' has been a constant challenge and every bit as demanding - often more so - than say writing my MA thesis. They are only short books but they need to pack a lot of punch with a story, emotion, characters, conflict and emotional development - a beginning , middle and end , all rolled into 55,000 words. And the fact that there are so few plots that fit the short romance novel means that you have to work even harder to make each book that bit different from everythings else that has gone before -even, by now, my own previous 57 titles!


What are you working on now?

I’ve just finished editorial revisions on my latest novel and I’m waiting to hear from my editor about them. My next book out will be A Good Greek Wife? Which will be published in UK in May (October in America) This is part of a special mini-series where four authors were asked to rewrite a Greek Myth as a Modern Romance. The myth I chose was the story of Ulysses. It was a lot of fun and a real challenge writing it. Next up is another rather similar miniseries, updating classics of English Literature. I’m really enjoying this one as I get to rework a real favourite book of mine – one I wrote my MA thesis on – Wuthering Heights.

And finally, could you sum up in one sentence a key piece of advice for anyone wanting to emulate your success in writing for M&B?

Treat the romance genre seriously – many authors (some of them very well known) have tried to write romance cynically to make a fast buck and that always shows. Romance needs to be written from the heart. And finally, my advice to anyone who wants to be published anywhere – read, read, read . . . read the current output of any publisher you want to aim your book at, see the sort of thing they are currently publishing and then try to bring your own particular voice, your own twist to the tried and tested. You will find it really, perhaps impossible, to be truly original but you can be true to yourself and so truly authentic.

Ooops – rather more than a sentence but I believe in that advice.




Thank you so much to Kate for sharing her experiences and advice about writing for Mills & Boon. Mills & Boon's website, which includes submission guidelines for it's various lines, can be found here, while Kate's website can be found here. her latest books The Konstantos Marriage Demand and The Good Greek Wife are out now, while her 12 Point Guide to Writing Romance can be purchased here.

Last week when I was bus I realised the twenty-something goth boy sitting next to me was working his way through a M&B Modern Romance; he wasn't trying to hide the title behind a text book, or anything. It made me smile. Then I pulled out my M&B Historical from where I had stuffed it beneath a distinctly cool sci fi novel, and thoroughly enjoyed reading it for the rest of the journey. If you have ever looked on a M&B with scorn, but haven't read any of their offerings, I suggest you give them a go - there's a lot more to this publishing phenomenon than many people give it credit for.


Kate has very kindly offered to give a signed copy of one of her novels to a Literary Project reader - all you need to do is leave a comment below saying "PICK ME!" If you're a fan of Romance, then you've got a real treat in store for you. If you've never given M&B a try, prepare to be converted. Please remember to leave a name so I can track you down if you win!