Raven McAllan’s Publication Journey
Raven McAllan’s Publication Journey
Welcome to Raven McAllan’s Publication Journey, another in the occasional series of guest posts by authors who reveal their journey to getting published.
Over to Raven:
Hi all, and thank you, Rachel, for inviting me here.
After over thirty years we have moved from The Trossachs in Scotland to the East Coast of Yorkshire, and I’ve exchanged mountains and midges for long vistas and the swell of the sea.
I write romance from Regency to the present day, some hot and some not and under three pen names. Raven McAllan—anything. Kera Faire—darker. Katy Lilley—romcom. Why?
It helps to put on the appropriate hat!
There’s nothing nicer than sitting down and getting lost in the world I’m creating. Luckily the lovely husband is a dab hand at making coffee, checking dinner isn’t burning and passing me a glass of wine.
I love writing, reading, exploring and discovering new places.
I dislike liver, kidney, people up themselves and midges—especially midges.
I’m not very good at technology, biting my tongue, and knitting.
I can’t really say when I first decided to write down my stories. As a child I told stories to my dolls, my mum and dad and anyone who would listen to me. I loved making up places, describing people and what they would do. And always having a happy ending.
As I got older and went to senior school, I was told my writing was too flowery. Not precise enough. That I had to be factual and not creative. (This was a long time ago)
Luckily my friend’s mum and dad, both English teachers, explained that I could write exactly as I wanted—just not to pass exams.
Good advice and I kept it in the back of my mind. I still didn’t get round to writing anything until I had children. Two short stories I wrote for them, their babysitter illustrated. Both were stories with a moral to them! Aimed at my son who was not the tidiest of five year olds, or the most decisive. The Tale of Rumple Rabbit was the story of an untidy rabbit who couldn’t find something important. George, the Whatever Bird, just answered every question with ‘whatever’, which had dire consequences. Great fun to narrate and write, but I’m not sure how effective they were.
That was it until we got our first computer. When you put a million (or so it felt like) discs in and out, got to where you could write something, were interrupted by the postie, the window cleaner or the cat being sick, and ended up doing it all over again. Two stories from then come to mind. ‘Kids, Cats and a Computer’—my primary school-aged children wanted that—and an awful submission to Mills and Boon, which was very rightly rejected. It was a mishmash of every romance book I’d ever read. Truly terrible.
And that was it. For years. Many years.
Until around fifteen years ago when the aforementioned M and B held a write a first chapter competition. How I heard about it was so very strange. I wasn’t on social media at the time. I’d been to an afternoon tea for my local Scottish Women’s Institute, called familiarly in those days ‘The Rural”. They were setting up a social media group, and so if I joined the site I could see what was going on. After faithfully promising my children not to have anything to do with them on there, I joined up.
There I saw the details of the writing competition.
Nothing loath, I thought I’d have a go. So I did and what a lot of rubbish it was. Cardboard, one dimensional characters. All telling no showing. You name it, I got it wrong.
But what I did get from that effort was to meet a lot of like-minded people and we set up our own help group.
It was due to them I got my first contract. We were all asking each other what we should write. I said I was going to write a Regency. When pressed said it was about two women and a man. So, they said go on then.
And I did. When I’d written it people checked for errors, helped me write a blub, and decide where to send it.
Two days later I got a reply—we would be delighted…
And that was the start. My first book was published in 2010. Sadly—or mainly thank goodness because I hope my writing has improved since then— that book, ‘Wallflowers don’t Wilt’, is no longer in print. The publisher, Breathless Press, is no longer here either, which is a shame. They were so generous. They let me play round with different ways of writing. I went from Regency to contemp. Hot and not, mixed sex, same sex… It gave me the chance to see which was best received and which I preferred. (That depended on how the story wanted to go, and what mood I was in.)
Over the years, I’ve discovered what I want to write and how I go about it has changed. The hunger, the need to write hasn’t, but my life has.
We’ve moved house, and apart from unpacking, finding places for things to go and trying, not very successfully to declutter, I’ve enjoyed discovering a new area of Britain. Great for ideas, and plots.
My books are now through three publishers, and I’m trying to sort out self publishing. Not the easiest thing for me to do, although Cassie O’Brien and I self publish our Christmas Anthos, she and our lovely editor Emmy Ellis do most of the work there. I just try to let people know what we are up to.
How to contact Raven:
read my blog on www.ravenmcallan.blogspot.co.uk
See what I’m up to on https://www.facebook.com/ravenkatyandkera
or on X https://x.com/RavenMcAllan
A few of Raven’s books:
Happy Ever after at Romansa Castle Series
Book 1 The Fix Up
Romansa Castle, where love is all around—if you dare to take a chance on it.
Arietta writes romance, she doesn’t participate in it.
A posh wedding? No thank you, not when it’s the wedding of an ex-but-not-for-long-boyfriend. And an ex-but-never-really-a-friend-flatmate.
Her brother has other ideas. He answers ‘yes’ for her and sends his friend to be her partner.
Moss Kirby, heartthrob film star.
Arietta reckons no one would believe he was interested in her…would they?
Is he?
She’s about to find out.
https://www.totallybound.com/book/the-fix-up eBook and Paperback
The Scandalous Proposal of Lord Bennett
To have and to hold?
Reluctant debutante Lady Clarissa Macpherson has never forgotten the forbidden kiss she shared with notorious rake, Lord Theodore Bennett, all those years ago. Even now, he’s the one man who sets Clarissa’s pulse racing and her skin tingling – no matter how hard she tries to ignore it!
Yet, when Theodore rescues her from the unwanted advances of a drunken Lord at a society ball, she finds herself in a most scandalous predicament – engaged, to the most eligible bachelor in London!
Wedded? It appears so, but bedded? Clarissa demands more from her marriage than simply surrendering to her new husband’s sexual desires, especially when she realises she’s falling deeper in love with him every single day. Theodore must prove that she’s the only woman for him – and surrender his heart!
Yet resisting her new husband’s delicious seduction may prove the hardest thing Clarissa has ever done…
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B013L2OHW0
Hong Kong Heat
Hotshot. Hot bod. Hot lover. What more could a woman want? Debra had never expected her stay in Hong Kong to create so much heat.
Debra Scotburn had never thought of herself as a cougar, until she fell in lust at first sight with a much younger man.
Braam—Abraham Van Meister, a hotshot and hot-bod troubleshooter—doesn’t do commitment. That is until an older, curvy, vivacious brunette robs him of his ability to control a certain body part.
Unable to keep their hands off each other, they embark on a passion-filled holiday fling.
Surely that is all it can ever be? Braam’s work takes him all around the world at a moment’s notice, and Debra is on the last leg of her middle-aged crisis induced gap year.
When misunderstandings tear them apart, can they both admit their love and find the trust needed to make this more than just a fling?
https://www.totallybound.com/book/hong-kong-heat eBook and Paperback
Writing with Cassie O’Brien
The Christmas Anthologies
Book 1 Once Upon a Christmastime
Lady Caroline’s Unexpected Christmas Guest
The last thing Bertie expected to do whilst attending the Duke of Avondale’s Christmas house party was to fall in love. Can he persuade the shy and reclusive Lady Caroline he is the man for her?
The Darling Dowager’s Christmas Treat
The Duke of Ancester is not a man to take no for an answer and certainly not from the young widow he has decided to marry. To escape his persistence, Isabella departs the capital, and travelling incognito, sets out to spend Christmas at the remote property she owns in Yorkshire. But the duke is hot on her heels.
Fairy Dust Wishes
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, and the shop floor of Robins and Son’s department store is thronged with customers. Working behind the perfumery counter, Megan encounters the shop’s seasonal Santa, and her generosity in helping him out of a fix changes her life forever.
Elle’s Christmas Surprise
Elle knows just what she wants for Christmas. Some quiet time in the company of a good book and a bottle of wine and definitely no turkey and tinsel parties. Bah humbug! Her giftshop is busy with customers, her plans are in place, until a blast from her past walks in with other ideas in mind.
eBook and Paperback
Writing as Katy Lilley
New Beginnings For Bryony Bennett
When Bryony Bennett's godmother dies and leaves her a huge inheritance, Bryony jumps at the chance to get away from it all and start again.
She packs up her life and moves into the (almost) idyllic Cliff Cottage—only to find that starting over is never quite a simple as you imagine.
Faced with grumpy neighbours, hostile locals and more than her fair share of disasters, Bryony embarks on a mission to make sure her new life is everything she wants it to be.
But will she ever win over the locals and truly be happy in her new life...
Writing as Kera Faire
The Dispatcher
Death Isle, 1
Her life or his?
When Astrid Mickelson found out the man she loved was The Dispatcher—a government operative, who kills for a living without remorse—she left to stop herself from accidentally betraying him. However, Orlando Darke, the only man she’s ever wanted, is impossible to forget, and it seems once more back in her life.
For his part, the Dispatcher had never forgotten the love of his life. When he is sent to bring her in for being a traitor, he does what he does best…dispatching her to safety, to enable him to find the real culprit.
As the threat thickens, so does the sexual tension between them. But can there be a happily ever after in their future?
https://www.evernightpublishing.com/the-dispatcher-by-kera-faire/
More Publication Journeys
I hope you enjoyed Raven McAllan’s Publication Journey. Here are links to other authors who share their Publication Journey stories on this blog: