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Guidelines

THE JOY OF

WRITING MILLS & BOON

I had not…

heard of Mills & Boon until I returned to the UK from Malaya (as it was known in the 1950s when I was there). My husband and I rented furnished rooms in Bristol from an elderly widow who was a romance addict. Luckily the first book she insisted I read was by one of Mills & Boon’s best writers, Rosalind Brett, set in Africa. I was 24 and reporting for the Western Daily Press, but I felt a romance set in Malaya would be good practice for a more ambitious novel later.

The first book…

I wrote for M&B was Winter Is Past, about a girl who, returning to Malaya after years at a UK boarding school, finds her father, a rubber-planter, has been shot by Communist terrorists, and has left her in the care of another much younger planter. I was reporting for the Yorkshire Evening Press at York when Alan Boon telephoned to tell me Woman’s Own had offered £250 for the serial rights – he would pay an advance of £150. £400 sounds peanuts now, but then it was serious money to someone earning £600 a year. I wrote 78 romances for them, the last being The Man From Madrid in 2002.

My books sold…

all over the world and earned a lot of money. But Flora, published in 1983, led to me breaking out into mainstream publishing in 1987. Readers wanted to know more about one of the characters at the end of the book, so I wrote a 250,000-word contemporary novel, All My Worldly Goods, published by Century and in paperback by Arrow. It was followed by Time & Chance.

My formula…

for novels was: background plus man plus woman plus powerful attraction plus obstacles equals gripping love story.

Today, some of my titles, such as Sullivan’s Reef, Do You Remember Babylon? and Yesterday’s Island would not be accepted.

Mills & Boon novels…

don’t have room for sub-plots, because of their length, 55,000 words. Secondary characters have to be kept to a minimum and never fully developed. In the general market novels, pretty well anything goes.

When serialisation…

was key, magazine editors often had rigid ideas about what readers would find acceptable. Titles used to be chosen by authors. Today, some of my titles, such as Sullivan’s Reef, Do You Remember Babylon? and Yesterday’s Island would not be accepted. Titles now are usually editorial choices incorporating buzzwords such as ‘Millionaire’, ‘Mistress’, ‘Pregnant’ or ‘Virgin’.

I would advise…

anybody who wishes to write for Mills & Boon to make a close study of the guidelines published on their website (www.millsandboon.co.uk) and that of Mills & Boon’s parent company Harlequin (www.eharlequin.com). Also click on the book publishing link at the Torstar site (www.torstar.com).

The financial rewards…

are not what they were. But readers’ letters – now mostly emails – are one major pleasure. I remember a touching letter, on pink paper, from a young woman in India who was sad that she would have to settle for an arranged marriage rather than the kind of love match described in my romances.

by Anne Weale

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