Welcome fellow RNA member, Margaret Mounsdon...

Hi Margaret! It's great to have you on my blog today and I'm looking forward to learning more about you and your writing. Let's get started with my questions...

1. What is your favourite thing about yourself?

Having worked abroad and then for an international airline in customer relations I hope I can keep my cool in most situations.

2. What do you wish you’d known before you started writing?

That it would be so much fun.

3. Share a romantic moment in your life.

Before I was married my husband to be treated me to dinner in a French chateau and without my knowing it ordered a bottle of champagne. I had never drunk it before and it was a magical evening one I still remember to this day. We also had crepe suzettes and the headwaiter took a shine to us and poured extra brandy on them. I think it was the best meal of my life.

4. Is there one subject you’d never write about as an author? What is it?

Stories about other worlds do nothing for me.

5. Do you have any suggestions to help someone become a better writer? If so, what are they?

a)      I study my genre to find out why other authors were successful this also keeps me up to date with changing trends.

b)      I read my work out loud to identify anything that doesn’t flow.

c)      I often delete the first paragraph of a new chapter something that tends to stop me ‘waffling’.

d)      I limit my use of adjectives and adverbs and try to use strong verbs e.g. instead of walked I might put strode; trudged; tiptoed; crept; strutted.

e)      I use speech to move the story along. For example if a character is scared of heights I show it by having her gasping ‘I can’t do it’, clenching her fists and turning away from a ski lift or a fairground attraction, whatever.  

f)       After I have finished my ms I put it to one side for as long as I can then I re-read it with a fresh eye. It is amazing what you notice the second time round.

6. If you could be the original author for any book, what would it be? Why?

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier.

It has all the ingredients of a romantic thriller. The descriptions are wonderful and the characters long lasting. You can feel Mrs Danvers’ menace when she tries to persuade the second Mrs de Winter to jump out of the window onto the flagstones below.

7. What did you do growing up that got you into trouble?

I hate to admit it but I was a goody two shoes.

8. If I came to your house for dinner what would you prepare for me? Why?

I love poached salmon. I have a proper salmon kettle and it does the dish perfectly. I serve it with watercress sauce, new potatoes and seasonal vegetables. Then it would be our garden blackberries and apples in a crumble with lashings of custard. It’s a meal I love and I tend to put my heart in it and every time it has turned out well.

My two latest May releases are

Finn’s Forest

Ulverscroft Linford Romance

May cover #Romance on Ulverscroft Facebook page

Bit.ly/10aRYAp

Eirlys Pendragon believed the only way to deal with fear was to face up to it, but was flying down a zip wire into the arms of charismatic Finn Hart the right answer?

Festival Fever

People’s Friend Pocket Novel #809

Fleur Denman sets out to clear the family name but when festival funds go missing Ben Salt is amongst the first to point an accusing finger in her direction.

Margaret Mounsdon

margaretsromanceworld.blogspot.com

www.margaretmounsdon.co.uk

Twitter @SwwjMargaret

After years working abroad, then as a customer relations officer at Gatwick Airport I wound up in a nursing home for the elderly, on the front desk I hasten to add. It was only after I ‘retired’ that I decided to have a go at writing, something I had always wanted to do.

Three months into the Millennium I had The Call from Heartline Books and after that I was off doing a job I absolutely love. I have had short stories published in most of the women’s fiction magazines and now have twenty eight novels to my name, most available in large print and as ebooks on Amazon.