Liz Fielding, ELOPING WITH EMMY, and Giveaways!

Romance writer and multi published UK based novelist Liz Fielding when asked about....

WHERE DO YOU GET IDEAS?

 This is the universal question – the one thing every author is asked over and over again. It’s not often I can be absolutely sure. Usually stories evolve slowly. A photograph will spark something in the brain, characters will walk onto the stage that is waiting for them, a line of dialogue will hum in the imagination… And so it begins.  But occasionally you can pinpoint the exact moment a story began.

 That’s how it is with Eloping With Emmy.

 It was a Saturday afternoon. I was on my own – unusual – and I picked up the Radio Times (the magazine listing the television and radio programmes for the week) and that afternoon, buried amongst the sport, was an old movie that I’d never seen. It Happened One Night with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. I read the blurb, reached for the remote and grabbed a notebook.

 I had a great afternoon watching a fabulous movie – it won the entire sweep of major Oscars that year – Best Film, Best Screenplay, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director. Runaway heiress, down at heel hero… I made some notes, but mostly I just watched and over the next few days my writing brain began to play with ideas.

 Scenes ran through my head, made some more notes. Some ideas were discarded (I seem to remember one in a hayloft that that never made it onto the page), some jelled, none were anything like the scenes in the movie, but that’s not how inspiration works. It’s like the sparkplug in your car. It fires the engine, but after that you’re the one applying the fuel.

I sent the first three chapters to my editor and asked her what she thought and then got on with writing Wild Fire.

It was a while before she came back to me – on the day I delivered Wild Fire. And she wanted the rest of the book by the end of the month. Gulp. I had twenty-six days to finish Eloping With Emmy; I delivered the manuscript on the last day of the month.

My book isn’t anything like It Happened One Night. Emmy isn’t running away from marriage to a boring millionaire (!) and Tom isn’t down at heel in any way, although he is from a completely different social strata. They are, however, forced to stick together on their journey across England and France, even though their objectives are at odds. She is determined to reach the man she’s vowed to marry. His assignment is to stop the wedding, whatever it takes.

What I learned from It Happened One Night was the value of the journey as a crucible. According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary a crucible is – “A vessel, usually of earthenware, made to endure great heat, used for fusing metals. A melting pot. Fig. Used of any severe test or trial.”

And that – according to my very first editor - is what every great romance needs.

Leave a comment telling me what romantic movie you’ve loved and if there was a crucible, how it held the hero and heroine together.

I’ll draw a winner from the comments for an eBook download of Eloping With Emmy, a signed copy of my new Harlequin Romance, The Last WomanHe’d Ever Date and an eBook download of Liz Fielding’sLittle Book of Writing Romance.

Eloping With Emmy

Back Blurb


Hot shot legal eagle, Tom Brodie, has been landed with an assignment to test any man to his limits - do whatever it takes to prevent headstrong heiress Emerald Carlisle from marrying a fortune-hunter. He is not happy about it, and when Emmy stows away in his car, his day goes from bad to worse, but since she's the only one who knows where to find the man in question he has no choice but take her along for the ride.

It's a bumpy one!

Emmy is not a woman to sit back and let things fall as they will. She has a plan and she keeps Brodie on his toes in a rollercoaster chase across the UK and France. He's more than up to the challenge, but falling in love with Emmy along the way is always going to end with his heart in pieces.

THE LAST WOMAN HE'D EVER DATE

Back Blurb

Claire Thackeray: Hardworking single mom and gossip columnist. Hoping for the inside scoop on sexy billionaire Hal North, aka her teen crush!

Most wary of: Gorgeous men who set her heart racing. (Been there, got the T-shirt—and the baby!)

Hal North: Bad boy made good. Back in his hometown as new owner of the Cranbrook Park estate. Determined to put his troubled past behind him.

Most wary of: Journalists—especially pretty ones, like new neighbor and tenant Claire Thackeray.


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