An aspiring author is celebrating after landing her first publishing deal.
Claire Lackford was awarded a two-book deal after beating off hundreds of fellow writers to take bronze in Harlequin Publishing House’s ‘So You Think You can Write’ competition.
Staff at Harlequin, which publishes the famously steamy Mills and Boon books, were so impressed with her work they offered her the contract.
Claire’s first book will be published in October in the UK and in America in 2015.
The book tells the story of Lady Aline, who is taken captive by the Duke of Roxholm and then develops feelings for the knight whose mission it is to deliver her to the Duke.
The mother-of-two, of Bond Street, Macclesfield, said: “After the competition ended I resubmitted the book in January with some changes Harlequin had asked me to make.
“They then called me in February to offer me the deal – I was on a ferry at the time coming back from France and was quite sea sick, so it went over my head a bit.
“But I am over the moon to get the deal, I was not expecting it. “It is strange, because now I am already working hard on the second book, and what was a hobby has turned something that feels like a job. Part-time teacher Claire, 38, publishes her work under the pseudonym Elisabeth Hobbes.
She said: “My family were all thrilled when they heard about the deal and are right behind me.
“My children have also been designing the front cover for me, which is nice. They keep asking me what the book is about so I’m trying to tell them as much as I can get away with as some of it is a little rude.
“I have the first few chapters for the second book done but Harlequin have asked for around 75,000 words by December 1, so I’m taking myself off to cafes and the library in Macclesfield, writing as much as I can.
“This book is about a woman who is widowed on her wedding day and chooses to live alone in her dead husband’s house. She returns each winter to visit her family but one winter she returns and her dad has a new steward. “That steward makes a bet with her brother he can kiss her by mid-winter’s feast, but he’s going to discover that the bet’s not going to be so easy to win.”
