Laura Martin, author of Under a Desert Moon popped in for some coffee and cake this week. We got the chance to find out a little more about this new mum (and doctor), where she draws her inspiration from, and how travelling adds a new, exciting life to the books we’ve grown to love.

Laura first went to Egypt with her boyfriend (now her husband) five years ago and her imagination started to race as they cruised down the Nile. Here, with her man by her side, she saw workmen fixing up a tomb and sailboats with their sails billowing, right by a dead, floating camel. Just the one, mind you. ‘It was so different,’ she tells us, ‘like nowhere I’d ever been before.’ The setting and imagery stayed with her, which she says is how all of her books come into being.

Being an accomplished doctor, Laura started writing when she was at med school. Her classes and workload was intense but being away from home a lot, learning new skills, often left her feeling a bit lonely. She slipped away into her fantasies (as all good M&B writers tend to do) and soon found loneliness was a thing of the past. What’s more, she absolutely loved writing – especially historical and regency romance.

Laura admits her first manuscript is still not something she’s willing to share with the world, but she entered her second one into the 2013 ‘So You Think You Can Write’ competition and got the call to say our editors wanted more while she was on holiday in Mexico. (That must have made coming home a lot easier!)

You’ll be pleased to know that Laura’s hubby is incredibly supportive of her writing: ‘He reads every book when it’s done, before I send it off!’ What he doesn’t know however, or didn’t till quite recently, is that Laura bases all her male heroes on him, and things she’s learnt from him over the course of their 10-year relationship. He often does the dishes and tidies up when she’s working hard to meet a writing deadline (altogether now – aaaw!) He sounds like a true hero, if you ask us. That’s not to say she doesn’t bring herself into her books, too. Laura’s heroines often have some of the same personality traits: ‘Like when I flick my hair and go off in a strop, and then laugh about it afterwards!’

Laura does most of her writing on the sofa, on an iPad (with an attachable keyboard). Being a new mum she often has her son Jack sleeping beside her. ‘Being a mum is definitely working its way into my stories,’ she says. ‘Before I had a child I couldn’t have written about children in the same way, so it’s definitely inspiring!’ Sounds like we have a lot more new chapters to look forward to, as Laura begins a new one in her personal life.

So what’s next? ‘I was really inspired by Jordan when I went there two years ago,’ Laura tells us. ‘It was some of the best scenery I’ve ever seen.’ She explains that when it came to writing about a fictional Kingdom recently (for an upcoming book), it was Jordan she was picturing, right down to the flowers, the vast red deserts and mysteries of Petra. It helps to have been somewhere… you can really bring it back to life in your writing. It also helps that she’s already found her real-life Mills and Boon hero – swoon!

Thanks so much for talking to us Laura! We can’t wait to read Under A Desert Moon and your newest work, coming soon! xx

 

By The Mills & Boon team