Sally Quilford's Blog

Orson Welles as Mr Rochester The tortured hero is the staple of romantic novels. Mr Darcy, perhaps a mild version of the tortured hero, felt awkward in public situations, giving Lizzie Bennett the idea he was a bit of a dry stick (I still find him a bit of a prig, I’m afraid). Mr Rochester (my personal favourite) was tortured by an ill-conceived marriage to a woman who turned out to be insane. But it seems to me that there is a worrying trend amongst romance writers to create heroes who are not just tortured, but who, as a result, torture others, particularly the heroine. I don’t necessarily mean physical torture, unless we’re talking Fifty Shades, but certainly emotional torture. Christian Grey is the epitome of this type of hero, with his emotional abuse of Ana Steele. I’m told, though I have no personal knowledge of this, that American readers in particular will forgive a hero anything as long as he turns out to be a nice guy at the end. Because we all know that in...

© Marilyn Barbone | Dreamstime Stock Photos I have touched on this subject before, in relation to conflict within a romance. But I thought it was a topic worth visiting in depth. It is a tendency of newer writers – myself included way back when – to give their hero and heroine rather convoluted and angst-ridden back stories. It is, after all, how we gain sympathy for them and get the reader on their side. Even now I will often make my heroines orphans just because it's a quick way to establish her need to love and be loved. In Dickens times, such angst was the staple of the novels he wrote in serial form. Poor little Oliver Twist was born in a workhouse, treated abominably by the people who were supposed to care for him, and then walked all the way to London alone, before being taken up by Fagin and his gang and terrorised by Mr Monk and Bill Sykes. He had a lot of angst to go through before he found his happy ending. Despite that, Dickens managed to include humour an...

© John Siebert | Dreamstime Stock Photos The language of love in romance novels is important in order to set the scene. It has also changed much over the years. Gone are the flowery purple passages of Barbara Cartland novels, where heroines swooned and ‘touched the stars’, or whatever other euphemism Barbara used to describe an orgasm. Love scenes now use more realistic language, sometimes explicit, sometimes not, depending on the market and intended readership. But I’m struck by how some authors get it completely wrong. A  Facebook friend recently pointed out the blurb of a novel which describes the heroine’s ‘sexy snort’. Even in the film Miss Congeniality , Sandra Bullock’s snort is shown to be an unattractive aspect of her behaviour. Though with Sandra Bullock being so beautiful, I think most men would probably forgive that! But such a snort cannot be described as sexy. At least not with a straight face… I have also read novels where the designated hero ‘leers’ at...

I’m only just getting my breath back after an action packed November. You’ll be able to read about some of it on the RNA blog soon as I tell Elaine Everest all that goes into arranging the RNA Parties. So to my big news regarding my writing. I had two acceptances in November. One was from exciting and well-respected publisher, Crooked Cat , who have accepted my crime novel, The Secret of Lakeham Abbey . It is an unofficial sequel to The Dark Marshes, but set about a hundred years later, just after World War II. It will be published some time in 2016 so more details when I have them. I also had another acceptance from the wonderful Maggie Swinburne at My Weekly Pocket Novels for what Maggie calls an ‘epic yarn’, Eye of the Storm , which is set in Egypt at the dawn of World War II (yes, I know I obviously have a thing about World War II...) and inspired partly by the Saturday matinees I used to watch at the pictures as a child and partly by the Indiana Jones films (with a hero c...

Hello folks. I really ought to keep this blog updated more often, so this is my attempt to do that. I don't normally write about my day to day life on my blog, as I'm mindful that I owe privacy to others in my life. But I figure I can keep everyone updated more regularly as long as I don't get too personal about others. Since 9th August I have been on a healthy eating plan as I need to lose 3 stone so that I can have an operation on my hernia. Those who have met me in the past year or so will have seen it, as it sticks out a mile (not quite literally, but it can feel like it at times). Sometimes people think I'm pregnant, which is quite flattering, considering my baby-making days are long since gone. However, as I tend not to disabuse people of the notion, it does get me a seat on the tube whenever I'm in London. For me the lump just brings to mind John Hurt in Alien, lying back on the table as his stomach explodes... It looks awful (to me) and I have to w...

This post has been inspired by the recent release of Grey, the latest blatant money-spinner, sorry, novel, from E.L. James. The novel tells the story of the original Fifty Shades of Grey, but this time from Christian’s point of view, not Ana’s. My first question when I heard this was why is Stephanie Meyer not suing? She did exactly the same with Twilight, from Edward Cullen’s point of view. That novel was stolen and leaked online, so Meyer didn’t publish it after all. Wouldn’t you know that just days before Grey was released, that too was ‘stolen’. I’ve had fun reading some of the reviews of Grey on Amazon and elsewhere. It’s definitely a Marmite type of book that people either love or hate. There’s very little middle ground. I’m not going to rubbish the book here (much…). I’m only going to talk about it from a craft point of view. One of the biggest criticisms is that the book is basically a cut and paste job of the first   novel in the series. Actually basically is ...

Originally posted on the Pocketeers blog. When I presented a workshop for the lovely Write Place Writing School at the beginning of November, I touched briefly on ‘writing in the now’ and wanted to explore that point further. As it wouldn’t be fair to share my students’ idea I have come up with a scenario to explain what I mean. Annie and James meet in university when they join the same band, with Annie as the lead singer and James as the lead guitarist/singer. They are each other’s first love, but at the end of university life they go their separate ways because James decides to move to America to pursue his musical career. Ten years later they meet up again, and James is a huge star, whilst Annie is a backing singer, working to keep a roof over her and her young son’s head. Annie is still hurt that James left her and thought his career more important than their love and she is also angry that he stole the song that they wrote together and which became his biggest hit. S...