People and Personalities

Bedfordshire author Louise Allen, who has had over 20 books published with Mills & BoonŽ so far, has just released the final episode in her popular Regency romance series, Those Scandalous Ravenhursts.

The final book - The Piratical Miss Ravenhurst - introduces fans to the last of the Ravenhurst family, Clemence, and follows her adventures from pirates in the Caribbean to falling in love with a naval officer.

The Piratical Miss Ravenhurst

Louise, who lives in Biggleswade, writes solely for the Mills & BoonŽ Historical line and draws inspiration from the local countryside for her romances. For example, a Christmas novel called “Moonlight and Mistletoe” features a fictional village which is actually Aubrey in Hertfordshire.

"Virtually any place can trigger ideas for plots," she said, "but I am particularly inspired by the Caribbean, Venice, and the Bedfordshire countryside.

“I’m a Hertfordshire girl but I’ve lived in Bedfordshire for a long time and I just love the countryside. I love the Chiltern Hills and the little villages and so I quite often sneak them in to the books.

“The one I’m writing at the moment has a Bedfordshire village in it but I’d better not say because there are all these scandalous things going on!”

Passionate

She is also particularly passionate about the Regency period (1800 – 1830).

"I find it an endlessly fascinating era," she explained, "full of contrast and change, danger and elegance, luxury and squalor. Women had freedoms that would shock their Victorian grand-daughters, yet lived within social codes that both intrigue and appal us now...It is all so different, with the glamour of the past gilding it - and yet the characters seem to reach out and touch us now."

To support her books, Louise is meticulous in her research. The lengths that she will go to in order to ensure historical accuracy know no bounds and she gains hands on experience wherever possible.

"I've taken carriage driving lessons, Georgian cookery lessons and have even fired a black-powder musket!” she revealed.

“I'm [also] a fanatical collector of Regency fashion prints and Regency bat print china...it drives my husband to distraction!

“But I go up to the 1820s because I don’t like the fashions after the waists come down! And the men in the 1830s onwards had all those dreadful mutton chop whiskers, so I stick to my handsome regency heroes.

“[The cookery lessons] were fun too!” she continued.

“At Hampton Court they do all sorts of period cookery and we learned to do various things including making the exciting sounding Pap, which you make with semolina, orange flower water and sugar. It’s gorgeous – a sort of creamy pudding.”

Latest

While her latest book is set in her favourite era, it’s located many thousands of miles away from Bedfordshire.

Called “The Piratical Miss Ravenhurst” it’s the last of a series of six about the Ravenhurst cousins.

“It’s a bit of an anti-Pirates of the Caribbean” explained Louise.

“It’s set in the Caribbean and it’s got some pirates but they are a really nasty bunch, because I’m sure that most pirates weren’t romantic Jack Sparrows at all! My poor heroine, Clemence, finds herself at sea on a pirate ship with only the hero to rescue her!”

Louise penned her first historical story at the age of eight, inspired by a medieval castle near the house where she grew up. She went on to gain a degree in Geography & Archaeology, following her interest in "reading the landscape for clues about the past".

Her association with Mills & BoonŽ is a lot more recent!

“I used to work for Hertfordshire Libraries” she revealed, “and I would sometimes see real piles of Mills & BoonŽ books going out and I thought to myself “that looks easy, I’m sure I could make lots of money doing that!

“So I tried and discovered it wasn’t anything like as easy as I thought it was. But I got hooked and I loved the storytelling which is the really big thing about Mills & BoonŽ. I stuck with it and after quite a few rejections and some very polite ‘no, thank you’ letters I finally cracked it and I’m actually working on number 34 now! There are 26 [of my books] out so I’m always working several years ahead of myself!”

Continuity

Louise has already written the next three books and the ones coming out in 2010 are two of a series of eight that she wrote with five other authors!

“It’s what Mills & BoonŽ call a ‘continuity’” she explained.

“It’s a series of books written by separate authors, all of which can stand alone but they’ve all got an overarching plot that runs throughout.

“There’s a mystery at the beginning which is resolved at the end and a hero and villain that run all the way through as well.

“It was enormous fun [to do]” she added, “there were three of us in the States and three of us over here so we had to do it all by email. It took over 2,000 emails to work it all out!”

A Mills & BoonŽ book is sold every three seconds in the UK. They are available in 26 languages, with 50 titles published every month and a UK readership of over 1.3 million. But as the publishers are now over 100 years old, does Louise think that the books are still relevant to readers today?

“I think so” said Louise.

“Because they change constantly and that’s how they are so successful. They are over 100 years old now and they keep evolving. And they wouldn’t sell as well as they do if they weren’t relevant to women’s lives.

“The Mills & BoonŽ of today is completely different from the one of the 1940s, 50s and 60s. They still reflect women’s lives and women’s concerns but they are just different books.

“Even the historicals change” she continued, “especially the type of heroine. People don’t want the rather drippy society virgin, what they want are women with some guts and initiative who are setting out to make something of their lives.”