IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED…
Portia Da Costa
Once upon a time, I had a dream of becoming a published romance author, and writing books for Mills & Boon…
I always wanted to write romance, and my ever first attempt at writing was a short erotic love story about a handsome zombie and the mortal woman who fell for him. Even though there was no brain-eating involved, it was still colossally stupid, and probably one of the worst stories ever written, but I was so thrilled to have just written something that I didn’t care. And it was romantic. Sort of.
A few years passed, and I wrote more of these stories, just for my own amusement. Gradually, it got a bit easier, and the stories were slightly less stupid, and I started to dream of writing books, and being published. My day job was librarianship, and though I read in all different genres, what I really adored were Mills & Boon romances. As many as I could lay my hands on, especially by great authors like Sophie Weston, Sara Craven and Kate Walker. So obviously, my goal was to emulate these writers and become a Mills & Boon author. Foolishly, I hoped I could succeed quite quickly, and in 1988, I started submitting manuscripts. And submitting them and submitting them and submitting them…
I think I subbed about six or seven times in those early days, and even though I loved my stories and my characters, I see now that those first efforts were silly and self-indulgent with paper thin plots and zero emotional conflict. They had slightly more going for them than the zombie story, but there was still a big difference between what I was writing, and the high quality of the romances I was reading.
But then, fate took a hand, and I got shunted onto a slightly different writing track. A writers’ advisor took a look at one of my manuscripts, and amongst all the terrible plotting and the flimsy romantic conflict, she picked up on something I seemed to be pretty good at. Writing sex scenes. She advised me to try writing erotica, as that was an easier market to break into at the time. I took her advice, and with a speed that still surprises me today, I had a book accepted. And some stories. Pretty soon I started writing for Virgin’s famous Black Lace imprint, and I’ve been writing Black Lace novels ever since. My latest IN TOO DEEP, came out in November 2008, and KISS IT BETTER, my 15th title [including novellas] comes out in August 2009.
