Carole Mortimer is one of Harlequin's most popular and prolific authors. Since her first novel, published in 1979, this British writer has shown no signs of slowing her pace. In fact she just celebrated the publishing of her 100th book!
Her strong, traditional romances, with their distinct style, brilliantly developed characters and romantic plot twists, have earned her an enthusiastic audience worldwide.
Carole was born in a village in England that she claims was so small that "if you blinked as you drove through it you could miss seeing it completely!" She adds that her parents still live in the house where she first came into the world, and her two brothers live very close by.
Carole's early ambition to become a nurse came to an abrupt end after only one year of training due to a weakness in her back, suffered in the aftermath of a fall. Instead, she went on to work in the computer department of a well-known stationery company.
During her time there, Carole made her first attempt at writing a novel for Harlequin. "The manuscript was far too short and the plotline not up to standard, so I naturally received a rejection slip," she says. "Not taking rejection well, I went off in a sulk for two years before deciding to 'have another go.'" Her second manuscript was accepted, beginning a long and fruitful career. She says she has "enjoyed every moment of it!"
Carole lives "in a most beautiful part of Britain" with her husband, children, and menagerie of pets, including a dog acquired several years ago in Canada, which is actually half-coyote!
"I really do enjoy my writing, and have every intention of continuing to do so for another 20 years!"
Kate Walker was born in Nottinghamshire, England, but the family moved to West Yorkshire when she was just 18 months old, and she has always regarded Yorkshire as home. She was the middle child in a family of five girls, growing up in a home where books were vitally important, and she read anything she could get her hands on.
Even before she could write she was making up stories. At the age of four she was telling the tale of The Three Little Raindrops-- Drippy, Droppy, and Droopy--to her two younger sisters. She can't remember a time when she wasn't scribbling away at something, and wrote her first "book" when she was 11.
But everyone told her that she would never make a living as a writer, and that she should work toward a more secure career. So she decided that if she couldn't write books, at least she could work with them, and settled for becoming a librarian.
On leaving school she went to the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth to study English and librarianship. While there, she met her husband, who was also studying at the college. They married and moved back north, eventually settling in Lincolnshire, where she worked as a children's librarian until her son was born.
After three years of being a full-time housewife and mother she was ready for a new challenge, but needed something she could do at home, so she turned to her old love of writing. Her first attempts at writing novels were done at the kitchen table, often working late into the night when her son was asleep, or during a few snatched hours while he was out at nursery school.
The first two novels she sent off to Harlequin Mills & Boon were rejected, but the third attempt was successful. She can still remember the moment that a letter of acceptance arrived instead of the rejection slip she had been dreading.
She must have read that letter over and over a hundred times before what it said sank in, and for days she kept checking it just to make sure she hadn't been dreaming. But the moment she really realized that she was a published writer was when copies of her first book, The Chalk Line, arrived just in time to be one of her best Christmas presents ever.
Fitting in hobbies around writing and being a wife and mother can be difficult, but Kate always finds time to read. She loves all sorts of fiction, especially romance, obviously, but she also enjoys historical novels, detective fiction, and long, absorbing biographies, and she can spend hours in bookshops, just browsing.
During her working hours, her four cats, all adopted from the RSPCA, keep her company in her study, though they have to be dissuaded from sitting on the piles of papers that they are convinced are there just for their benefit.
Kate is often asked if she's a romantic person because she writes romances. Her answer is that if being romantic means caring about other people enough to make that extra special effort for them, then, yes, she is.
Romance is about making the important people in your life feel valued and letting them know that you care. But she also writes about relationships and the difficulties people sometimes have in understanding each other, or expressing their feelings, or overcoming problems.
Sometimes, when the right words won't come, or an idea hasn't worked out as she thought, she wonders why she doesn't have a regular nine-to-five job-- but only sometimes. When the story's flowing and the characters come alive, she really can't imagine doing anything else. And there's a tremendous satisfaction in knowing that she's doing what she always dreamed of and proving wrong all those people who said she would never make a successful career out of her writing.
For as long as Janette can remember, plots and characters have taken up residence in her head. Her parents, both voracious readers, read her the classics when she was a child. That gave birth to a deep love of literature and allowed her to travel to exotic locales—those found between the covers of books.
Janette's artist mother encouraged her yen to write. As an adolescent, she began creating cartoons featuring her dad as the hero with plots that focused on the misadventures on their family farm, and she stuffed them in the nightly newspaper for him to find. To her frustration, her sketches paled in comparison to her captions.
Her first real writing began with fan fiction, taking favorite TV shows and writing the episodes and endings she loved—happily ever after, of course. In her junior year of high school, she told her literature teacher she intended to write for a living one day. His advice? Pursue the dream, but don't quit the day job.
Though she dabbled with articles, she didn't fully embrace her dream to write novels until years later when she was a busy cosmetologist making a name for herself in her own salon. That's when she decided to write the type of stories she'd been reading—romances.
Once bitten by the writing bug, she was consumed by the incurable passion to create stories. Still, it was seven more years and that many novels before she saw her first historical romance published. Now that she's also writing contemporary romances for Harlequin Books she finally knows that a full-time career in writing is closer to reality.
Janette shares her home and free time with a chow-shepherd-mix pup she rescued from the pound who aspires to be a lapdog. She loves to hear from readers—e-mail her at janette@jankenny.com.
Lee Wilkinson was born in Nottingham, the only child of loving parents. She was educated at an all-girls' school, and after leaving, tried her hand at several jobs, including modeling swimwear.
At 22 she met and married her husband, Denis. They had a traditional white wedding and a honeymoon in Italy, and have been happily married ever since. They have two children, a son and a daughter-- both now grown up and married-- and four lovely grandchildren.
Lee's writing career began with short stories and serials for magazines and newspapers before going on to novels. She has had more than 20 Mills and Boon romance novels published to date.
Amongst her hobbies are reading, gardening, walking, and cooking. Traveling is her main love, and teaming up with her daughter and American son-in-law, she and her husband spent a year going round the world, taking in India, China, Australia, New Zealand, and the States.
Last year she rented a palazzo in the heart of Venice, followed by a quick hop aboard the Orient Express. Lee is currently saving up for a whirlwind tour of Japan, a romantic and exotic destination she has wanted to visit since childhood.
At present she lives with her husband in a 300-year-old stone cottage in a picturesque Derbyshire village, which gets cut off by snow most winters.
