The Avon Ladies

I wrote on Facebook last week that I had had a 'fascinating' day in London meeting some of the people involved in the editing, production and sale of my new Erotic Romance The Silver Chain, which is now available in free sample e-book form, and soon to be published both in e-book (4th July) and paperback (mid August).
  One of my friends, both literal and on Facebook, is a very successful Mills and Boon writer and asked me to clarify why I found it fascinating.
   When you have wanted to be a writer as long as you can remember - ok, 40 odd years now - have tasted intermittent publication and a trickle of royalties from erotic short stories and novels for 20 years, and been on the point of giving it all up to retreat into a darkened room to have a go at that 'literary' novel that is struggling to get out, it is quite simply the pinnacle of ambition, a writer's dream, to be asked by an established editor at Harper Collins to enter into the spirit ignited by 50 Shades and have a go at writing an equally good, if not better, trilogy.
   To have gone through the agonies known to every writer, the writing, revising, finally the long-awaited acceptance, more editing and proof reading before finally seeing the glorious cover before it goes to press is fantastic enough. But writing is such a solitary, soul destroying existence when the feedback feels so remote. To then find yourself walking into the head office of Harper Collins and be greeted with enthusiasm by all the lovely girls at Avon Books who think of me as Primula Bond, even though it's a pseudonym, was such an eye opener, and such a  vindication for all the efforts.
    I have been so reluctant to jump up and down (not that me old pins would allow it) with excitement at the opportunity they are offering me, and the potential offered by this book and its sequels if it sells well in the markets they are suggesting. But what I enjoyed about the meeting in London was manifold.
  1 They know my book its characters and its plot as well if not better than I do.
  2. They design a beautiful cover and are excited about it
  3. They go over the sequel with a toothcomb and ask me to make changes that make me feel a little like a pupil being given a particularly tricky piece of homework.
 4. They maintain their enthusiasim all the time I'm with them, and that continues over lunch at Pizza Express.
 5. I go back through London, my old stomping ground, get on the train, ponder a little about the work to come.
   And I feel like a writer who is being taken seriously.