Guest Post by Rhoda Baxter — Romantic Comedy Author

I’m thrilled to have Rhoda Baxter visiting my blog today. Rhoda and I are both published by Uncial Press and our next novels are being released on the same day — March 15th. 

Hi Trish, thanks for  inviting me to be a guest on your blog. I’m Rhoda, I live in East Yorkshire in England, and I write fiction while my kids are asleep.

When I started writing I tried to write serious fiction. Not for me, this silly, funny, chick lit stuff.  No. I had a degree from Oxford, dammit. I would write serious, grown up fiction. With Angst. And big words and nice imagery and issues and metaphor and Angst. Did I mention the Angst? Lots of Angst. The trouble was, my characters said stuff to each other that was, well, funny. The humour didn’t hurt the Angst, but it did hurt my vision of myself as a serious writer.

I joined the UK Romantic Novelists’ Agency’s new writer’s scheme and sent my first novel in for critique. I got back three pages of critique! Once I’d stopped whimpering into my chocolate, I read the feedback again and the gist of it was – ‘you can write, but stop trying to be so po faced and write something fun. Your natural voice is struggling to get out’. So, I thought, what the heck. I’ll write something fun and light hearted as a break, while I think about my next ‘serious’ book. It took about half the time to write that second book (Patently in Love) and I had a blast doing it. I write romantic comedy now, and I’m proud of it. Why would I want to write anything different when my characters make me laugh?

My next book Having a Ball is published by Uncial Press and will be released in March. It has a smart (if a little immature) heroine, a workaholic hero, eccentric old ladies, charity fundraisers and a very special old house. It made me giggle when I wrote it. I hope it makes you laugh too.

 My links:

Website: www.rhodabaxter.com

Twitter: @rhodabaxter

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rhoda-Baxter/215464681832206

Uncial Press: http://www.uncialpress.com/Rhoda-Baxter/

P.S. From Trish — Our books are both romantic comedies, but that’s about all they have in common. Mine is about rednecks in small town Alabama, and hers is about Brits and Sri Lankans in Oxford, England. We’re working on a meeting between our characters, where they discuss food! It should be funny.