Book: Sealed with a Kiss
Click to buy
Genre: Commercial Women’s Fiction
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Publication date: 8th May 2014
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Book: Sealed with a Christmas Kiss
Click to buy
Genre: Commercial Women’s Fiction
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Publication date: 6th November 2014
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Book: Coming Up Roses
Genre: Commercial Women’s Fiction
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Publication date: 21st May 2015
Biography:
I’m Rachael. I live by the seaside with my partner and some of our six children in the North West of England and I decided to self-publish my first novel, a romantic comedy called Sealed with a Kiss, the year I turned forty. Within six weeks it had hit the Amazon top 10. It was downloaded over 130,000 times and I went on to sign a three book deal with Pan Macmillan and I now write full time. My partner is a writer too, which means our house is full of books and Very Important scraps of paper with bits of plot scribbled on. It also means (as one of my children pointed out, gloomily) we eat a lot more pizza than we ought to. In my spare time I like to daydream about future books, and potter in the garden, and indulge in all sorts of hippyish things like meditation and stuff like that. I read constantly – my first love is YA (I’m currently working on a YA novel which will be out next year) but I also love everything from poetry to psychological thrillers.
Website: http://rachaellucas.com
Facebook page: facebook.com/rachaellucaswriter
Twitter: @karamina
Location: Southport, UK
Blog posts:
- Five things I learned on a writing retreat: http://rachaellucas.com/2014/04/5-things-learned-writing-retreat/
- The writer roller-coaster http://rachaellucas.com/2014/05/feel-writer-roller-coaster/
- The A-Z of Rachael Lucas http://rachaellucas.com/2013/11/z/
- A mother who writes http://rachaellucas.com/2014/04/messy-beautiful/
Writer Superpowers:
I am a (semi retired) social media consultant and I’m fascinated by the ways that authors can use social media to promote their work – having used it myself to achieve a top ten bestseller, I’m aware that there are methods which can have a huge effect on the visibility of books. In a climate where publishers can’t always invest a huge amount in publicity it’s helpful for authors to know what they can do to make a difference. I’m full of ideas!
I’ve taken part in several panels at literary festivals on the subject of motherhood and writing which always gather a wide audience and they are lots of fun. Writing with six children between the ages of 8 and 15 brings a unique set of challenges and I’ve learned a lot about time management - and making pizza. And delegation. It’s great to show people that it can be done, even if you only have an hour a day in which to write.
I have changed from a pantser – someone who writes without knowing what’s going to happen next in my novel, allowing the story to grow organically – to a plotter. I now spend a long time working out the structure of the novel and don’t start writing until I have a strong outline. People are always fascinated by the HOW we write and this is a subject which I love talking about.
