By Katie Gowrie Last weekend the second annual Northern Hearts conference was held by the Toronto Romance Writers, and it was a pleasure to attend! I arrived bright and early Saturday morning at the Novotel hotel, ready for a day of romance-publishing awesomeness. After grabbing a coffee, I made my way into the main reception…
Category: Harlequin Editors
The Dare Editors’ Three Wishes for Submissions
This week we imagined that a magic lamp showed up in the mail room addressed to DARE editorial. After being delivered to our side of the office, an attempt to polish off a few smudges released a being with phenomenal cosmic power, the ability to grant our every heart’s desire, and a stylish goatee. The…
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Advice from the Archives: Sexy, Sensual or Sweet?
By Kathleen Scheibling Today’s updated post from our archives was written by Kathleen Scheibling, the Executive Editor of Harlequin Dare, back in 2015. Read on for her great advice on writing romance at different heat levels and targeting the right Harlequin series for you. Sex doesn’t matter. There, I said it. I better clarify something…
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What We’re Watching: The Love Witch
By Deirdre McCluskey “Historically, men are not used to watching films that are made from the point of view of women. They are almost never called on to do that.” filmmaker Anna Biller Our local public library allows members access to a great movie streaming site, and while browsing their collection, I came across what…
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My Secret Crush: Sansa Stark
By Katie Gowrie With the final season of Game of Thrones wrapping up, I need to be vocal about my undying devotion to Sansa Stark. I’ve loved her since the beginning, and that love was affirmed when I devoured A Feast for Crows—some people found it boring, but I loved it. Don’t get me wrong,…
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Editor Confessions: Dispatches from the Inbox
By An Editor At submissions@harlequin.com, we receive several hundred emails a year. That’s a lot of mail! In that giant virtual stack of mail, there are some things that crop up frequently, including letters and requests that can needlessly take an editor’s time (because the information is readily available on our submissions page, for example),…
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Top 10 Reasons Why We Reject a Project
By Patience Bloom Do you live in fear of the rejection letter? Maybe you’ve received a few and spend days trying to decipher the strange editor language. Just between us, we don’t really like writing these letters. In fact, we’d rather be buying new authors and showing off your amazing stories! But to be helpful,…
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Advice from the Archives: Keep It Fresh!
by Johanna Raisanen, Editor (from a 2014 post on this blog) So you’ve written a secret-baby story and you’re debating submitting to us. Well, you should! But perhaps you’ve been told that secret-baby stories are so cliché! I recently read an article about “the worst romance-novel clichés,” where the author lists a lot of tropes…
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Harlequin Refresh: What makes a manuscript stand out from the crowd?
We hope you enjoyed our month-long focus on author voice in romantic fiction and found it helpful! To round off the month, we asked our editors to let us know what makes a manuscript stand out from the crowd. What makes a romance submission unique and fresh? (And we included key tips from our guest…
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Harlequin Refresh: Romance plot cliches
Harlequin editors read a lot of romance books. Sometimes a scene idea or plot twist that seems fresh to a new author is actually one we’ve read many times. And that’s not surprising. When starting a new creative venture, it’s natural to emulate artists whom you admire, including aspects of their “voice” – word choice,…