#IrishWritersWed ‘A Write Revolution!’ Adrienne Vaughan @adrienneauthor

One of the many joys of blogging is meeting some amazing and truly special people. Today on Irish Writers Wednesday I am thrilled to have one such wonderful person, the lovely Adrienne Vaughan.

Adrienne is the author of many novels, including three award-winning standalone novels in The Heartfelt Series.

Adrienne has written a piece for us all today entitled ‘A Write Revolution!‘ so grab a cuppa folks and settle in…

A Write Revolution!
by Adrienne Vaughan

As a writer, I doubt I would ever had made the grade without the recent revolution in the world of publishing.

I’ve always written and – this might have something to do with my Celtic roots – have always dreamed of my work being shared, talked about and above all enjoyed. So, being a fan of the ‘let’s do something different’ and ‘shake things up a bit’ approach, I watched fascinated from the creative hinterland as the publishing revolution gained pace.

My personal attempts at revolution have always been tempered with a certain amount of compromise.

Family history recounts on being told not to remove my beautiful Holy Communion dress after the event, I simply pulled my jeans on underneath – complete with gun and holster! The Wild West still had to be tamed, fancy rigout or not!

And my teenage years saw me experimenting with lots of vaguely anarchical personas, sporting peacock blue highlights and full length evening gloves while attending the Dublin College of Journalism – the Oscar Wilde collection ever present in my glitter satchel. Well, if you couldn’t shock sleepy commuters on the 15b to Rathmines of a Monday morning, what hope had you of ever capturing David Bowie’s heart? It had to be done.

So for this ‘subliminal’ revolutionary, the adage, ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’ has always held true.

I’ve been a poet forever, reaching dizzy heights, aged twelve, as runner-up in the Goldenbridge Convent of Mercy’s poetry competition with a dramatically dystopian verse entitled Ball of Confusion. I was mercilessly beaten by an eight year old who wrote a sonnet to her rabbit – a lesson in mass market popularity perhaps?

As a huge fan of short stories I’ve written many, primarily for my own entertainment, over the years and as is every writer’s ‘rite of passage’ one complete novel still languishes beneath the bed.

Yet while I was scribbling in notebooks, sending endlessly rewritten opening chapters and the dreaded synopsis to every name in the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook, the wave of total anarchy that was the phenomena of E. L. James ‘50 Shades of Grey‘ changed everything.

Forever the reporter, I travelled to London to hear the author explain how her global success came about and with the scales lifted from my eyes vowed to embrace the revolution and become a published author myself.

I’d recently joined the Romantic Novelists’ Association and encouraged by the hugely successful Regency novelist Amanda Grange, I together with Lizzie Lamb, June Kearns and Mags Cullingford formed an indie group – New Romantics Press ‒ to publish our debut novels.

Who knew that just four short years later, I’d be holding a copy of ‘Fur Coat & No Knickers’ – my short story anthology ‒ in my hot little hand, making it my fifth book!

My Review ~ Fur Coat & No Knickers

These days, although I work full-time in PR, I write everyday both early in the morning and late at night, because once the opportunity to realise my dream presented itself, I clasped it with both hands. And as Mairead and I agree, sleep is overrated!

My genre is romantic suspense, so it’s no surprise my first three novels, The Hollow Heart, A Change of Heart and Secrets of the Heart feature a feisty campaign-driven journalist and a remote Irish isle, where she takes on not only the suspicious locals but a reclusive movie-star escaping Hollywood, his love-life and an all-consuming career. Meld this with illegal gun-running, a ‘babies for sale’ scam and a wildly eccentric postmistress – and I’m thrilled to say each standalone book in the Heartfelt Trilogy, has been recognised with a Festival of Romantic Fiction award.

Having completed my fourth novel, Scandal of the Seahorse Hotel – set in London, Ireland and New York, currently with my literary agent, the renowned Lisa Eveleigh – I’m writing a historical thriller A Most Deadly Affair, featuring a beautiful Dublin socialite, who inherits the family funeral business in the 1950’s, taking on her embittered brother as he sets up a rival firm.

I don’t deliberately set out to write Irish stories, so far that’s just where my characters take me, writing can’t be forced and I’d soon be told if anything came across as ‘plastic’.

But it does mean I can layer my stories with the language, humour, food, music and irreverent fun for which the Irish are so famous and when – as happens in reviews – my work is compared with the late, great Maeve Binchy well, it certainly makes my Irish eyes smile, that’s for sure!

Adrienne thank you so much for joining us all today with this thoroughly enjoyable post. Further details are available in the bio below with links to Adrienne’s website and twitter account.

Adrienne Vaughan – Journalist/PR and Author

Adrienne Vaughan has been making up stories since she could speak; as soon as she could pick up a pen she started writing them down. No surprise she wanted to be a journalist, ideally the editor of a glossy magazine, where she could meet and marry a rock star! Today, she runs a busy PR practice, writing novels, poems and short stories in her spare time.

With Irish parents, Adrienne was born in England and brought up in Dublin. She now lives in rural Leicestershire with husband, Jonathan; two cocker spaniels, Winston and Wellington and a rescue cat called Agatha Christie – ‘So named because we never know who she’s going to kill next!’

They have a home in the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland and visit often. Although being a writer has always been her dream, Adrienne admits she still harbours a burning ambition to be a Bond girl.

To date she has written three award-winning standalone novels in The Heartfelt Series, The Hollow Heart, A Change of Heart and Secrets of the Heart. Her latest novel Scandal of the Seahorse Hotel is currently with her literary agent – exciting!

Her highly-acclaimed short story anthology Fur Coat & No Knickers is now available – as are all her other books – as both eBooks and paperbacks from Amazon.

Adrienne Vaughan is an award-winning author of 5 Star romantic suspense.

Website ~ http://adriennevaughan.com/

Twitter ~ @adrienneauthor