I was the happy recipient of a large Valentine's day card, and a box of Black Magic chocolates when I got up this morning. My darling husband had left them on my chair at my desk... No possibility of missing them that way...
Reading the online newspaper headlines, before I ventured out into the yucky weather, I came across a hark back to the past of Mills and Boon.
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| Love and Romance |
Apparently there is a Mills and Boon archive in the University of Reading's Special Collections.
There has to be an archive somewhere considering how long they've been in existence...
In this archive there is a book, 'Boons Mots: An Anthology of Artless Extracts from the writings of Mills and Boon's Authors' signed by The Editors...
There are a number of extracts from various novels by their authors, including Violet Winspear, who began her Mills and Boon career in 1961. There's even a questionnaire from her that it seems she sent to the editors.
She was obviously aware of writing for the readers when you look at some of the questions she asked.
Her questions went from A-Z, and Z had 4 sub-sections.
My favourites are H, and P... :D
Of the quotes, I did smile at the extract from Violet's 'The Passionate Sinner'. Perhaps the editors were just having a bad day, or remembered the questionnaire!
The writers' club I attend, once had a couple of Mills and Boon authors. Our bi-annual trophy for a novel is in memory of one of the long serving members, Gwladys Bungay, who was published by M&B as Gwladys Duke.
Whatever you may think of the article/extracts, it just shows that writers have always had same creative issues...
photo courtesy of http://freedigitalphotos.net and by grauer razvan ionut
Happy Valentine's Day, Carol.
ReplyDeleteHope you had a lovely day too, Patsy. And presumably cake was involved somewhere? :-)
ReplyDeleteI liked 3, 6 and 8 - especially the discourteous bedouins
ReplyDeleteObviously there was a lot of stereotyping even then, Lizy. :)
DeleteI remember Violet Winspear books - must have been when a teen I think and went through a stage of reading M&B!
ReplyDeleteShe was certainly a prolific author, Rosemary- thanks for sharing your memory of reading Violet's books.
DeleteThe M&B of our teenage years were quite subdued compared to nowadays. :)