It’s Meet the Author Monday! Each week we meet a new author and get to know a little about them, their writing process, publishing experience, and tips for other writers. Today we’re talking to Jane Holland, author of Her Convenient Vow to the Billionaire.
About Jane Holland:
Jane Holland grew up in a house of writers. Her mother was bestselling Mills & Boon author Charlotte Lamb, her sister also penned romances, and her father was a journalist and biographer. Small wonder she became a writer herself! Starting off in poetry, historical fiction and thrillers, she’s now proud to be following in her mother’s footsteps writing romance for Harlequin. A mum of five, she loves tramping the Cornish coast, and often writes with a cat on her lap.
About Her Convenient Vow to the Billionaire:
Debut author Jane Holland turns up the heat for the billionaire and the woman he never forgot in this marriage of convenience story!
The shocking twist to their reunion…
She must marry the tycoon!
Playboy CEO Rafael is determined to demolish the biggest demon from his past: the Greek orphanage he once called home. It’s a cruel reminder of all he’s lost, including his childhood sweetheart Sabrina. But then she shows up to stop him!
When Rafael offers to hand over the orphanage if Sabrina becomes his convenient bride, she scoffs. She’s still healing from the heartbreak of their last passionate encounter and marrying him will test her every limit. But as long-buried secrets are unveiled, Sabrina has no choice but to trust him…
Author Interview with Jane Holland:
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- Did you ever consider writing under a pseudonym?
I already write under a wide range of pseudonyms. Jane Holland is my maiden name, and I write thrillers, dual timeline historicals and category romance under that name. But I also write WWII sagas as Betty Walker, historical fiction as Victoria Lamb, historical romance as Elizabeth Moss, spy thrillers as JJ Holland, contemporary romance and romcoms as Beth Good, sweet contemporary romance as Pippa Summers, among other names and genres. This is for several reasons. Readers tend to expect a writer to stick to one type of story, but also writers sometimes need to ‘reinvent’ themselves after a dry spell, and changing your name and genre is a great way to attract a new publisher!
- How many unpublished and half-finished books do you have?
If I finish a book, I always publish it, even if I have to publish it myself, which I don’t generally mind doing (there’s no literary agent commission to pay on my self-published projects, and thankfully my agent is very understanding, especially when it’s a book she’s unlikely to be able to sell to a publisher). I have a few unfinished books, but not many, as I always pencil in time every year to work on unfinished manuscripts. One day they’ll get there and find readers.
- What does literary success look like to you?
Earning a living from writing alone. That was always my goal and I’ve reached it now. But you have to keep writing and promoting, or sales rapidly fall away, alas. So the daily struggle continues!
- How many hours a day do you write?
As few as possible! No, seriously, I get writing-fatigue if I try to push my word count too high these days. Ten years ago, I could belt out 10 thousand words in a single day and still feel fresh. Now, I focus on producing somewhere between 1 and 2K daily, and that’s about two hours’ work. But the rest of my schedule is just as important as actual writing time. I spend many hours a day promoting current or forthcoming books, chatting to readers on Facebook or TikTok, making videos for my YouTube channel, planning new books, and dealing with editor or publisher queries – or writing blog tour posts, like this one! I also spend some time every day just daydreaming about winning the lottery! (Though I would still write even if I was a millionaire… Life would be dull without a story on the go.)
- If you didn’t write, what would you do for work?
Funnily enough, before I became a full-time writer, I was a semi-professional snooker player! I played on the women’s world circuit for some years, my highest ranking being 24th in the world. These days, I’m a bit rusty with my cue, but love driving long distances alone, so maybe a truck driver?
- What is your favorite childhood book?
This is so difficult! Probably A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin, though there are many other (mostly fantasy) novels I could point to as being hugely influential over me as a child, by brilliant writers like Susan Cooper and Anne McCaffrey. (Indeed, when I later signed with Random House and visited their London premises, I spotted that they were the UK publishers of McCaffrey’s superb Pern novels, and was gifted almost a dozen of her paperbacks and glossy hardbacks, much to my fangirling delight!)
- What inspired you to start writing?
I was immensely lucky to have a mother who was a successful author. And a sister and father who also wrote. So I suppose you could say it felt like the family business, and I merely accepted I too would become a writer one day. By the time I was ten, my mum was already a bestselling novelist for Mills and Boon, writing as Charlotte Lamb. I grew up reading her books in proof copy and being the first to give each new book the thumbs-up. I even gave her a few ideas for stories, for which she paid me £25 a time! (Which was worth more in the 70’s!) I was an avid reader, hugely into the likes of Tolkien and CS Lewis, and by twelve had written my own sprawling fantasy novel which my mum kindly sent off to her agent. He sent it back with a note: ‘Great imagination. Too many characters!’ Later, I tried my hand at Mills and Boon romances, writing maybe half a dozen in my twenties, while looking after my small children. They were all rejected. I turned to poetry and had some success there, winning an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors and publishing five poetry books. I loved poetry but it didn’t pay the bills, so I kept trying with fiction, never giving up. Despite all that early promise, it took until my forties to really get a foot in the door with commercial fiction, signing with my current agency LBA in 2010 and selling a Tudor fiction trilogy to Transworld. Ever since then, despite bouncing from publisher to publisher, and genre to genre, I write two to three books a year in many different genres, and have had most of them published, so that I now earn my living solely from writing.
- What advice would you give a new writer, someone just starting out?
Always finish what you start. That sounds simple, but it’s actually the hardest thing to do. So many newbie writers start projects with great enthusiasm, then tail off and start something new because they felt it didn’t work or they had a ‘better’ idea. Newsflash. Those new ideas? They are never better. They’re just different. And you’ll give up on them too, eventually. Or you’ll finish a rough first draft, but never edit the book down to something publishable because it’s too much like hard work. Another newsflash. Writing is dreary, day in, day out, grindingly hard work. It’s a job, like any other, and you need to approach it with the same seriousness. Yes, you’re the boss. But if you don’t work hard, you won’t get paid – or get readers – and there’s no way around the boring bit of accumulating that daily or weekly word count. So, ignore the siren call of new ideas and finish the book in hand. Chapter One to The End. Like a donkey following a carrot. It’s that simple (and often that boring). When you get to The End, only then can you check if the book ‘worked’. And if it doesn’t work, guess what? You can fix it. But you can’t fix what hasn’t been written.
- How many books have you written? Which is your favorite?
I’ve actually lost count. And it depends what you consider a ‘book’. Somewhere over fifty full-length traditionally published novels, plus well over a hundred self-published novels, novellas and short stories, all under many different names. (I’ve been going a while!) My favourite? That’s very hard, but I guess The Manor House (a dual timeline suspense) is my current favourite. Written as Jane Holland, it combines lots of my own fav topics – poetry, tarot, astrology, romance, murder mystery, psychic powers, ghosts, the 60’s – and has found plenty of satisfied readers, which is a wonderful thing.
- If you had to describe yourself in three words, what would they be?
Driven, eccentric, family-centred
To learn more about Jane Holland, here’s where you can find her:
Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/janeholland1
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/JaneHollandAuthor/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@janehollandauthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jane_hollandwrier/
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