Mills & Boon is delighted to announce that Faye Acheampong has won Love to Write, a competition to find new series romance authors from underrepresented ethnic backgrounds. As the winning entry, Acheampong’s romance novel will be published by Mills & Boon in our True Love series in autumn 2023! Acheampong will also receive a grant to support her writing and a mentorship with one of our editors.

For Love To Write, we’ve partnered with Love Island 2019 winner, Amber Rose Gill to find new romance writers from under-represented ethnic backgrounds.

Love to Write was open to romance writers wishing to submit to our Modern, Historical, Medical and True Love series. The competition was launched as part of Mills & Boon’s continued commitment to building a truly inclusive list that serves as the home of romance for all readers.

Acheampong said: ‘I’ve always loved how fun romance fiction is, and I wanted the chance to contribute to the representation that Black British women have in this genre. I was shocked and happy to hear that I won the competition. Thank you so much to Amber, the judges and the Mills & Boon team for giving me this opportunity!’

The entries were judged by Amber Rose Gill, Mills & Boon author Nadine Gonzalez and three members of the Mills & Boon Editorial team, Rebecca Slorach, Bryony Green and Nicola Caws.

Gill said: ‘It’s been a real privilege to be a judge on the Mills & Boon Love to Write competition. Diversity is so important in publishing and I’ve loved being a part of this competition. The entries were amazing and there was so much creativity in the stories. I am so happy that Faye’s story won. It was festive and fun and everything you want from a story, I wanted to read more! I can’t wait for readers to be able to pick up this story when it publishes.’

Acheampong’s novel synopsis:

The festive season is in full swing at The Entertainment Emporium, a toy shop in London. Naomi Beckford, the manager, has a masterplan that will attract even more customers to the shop during its busiest period of the year: a Santa’s Grotto extravaganza! But when tragedy strikes and the actor hired to play Santa Claus falls ill, she’s forced to turn to the Emporium’s grumpy accountant for help.

Will Latimer hates anything and everything relating to Christmas…yet he agrees to Naomi’s plea for him to fill the role of Santa. He agrees under one condition: if he joins in with this “foolishness”, she will owe him a favour in return. However, what should be a simple deal becomes very difficult to uphold when their interactions tend to escalate into arguments.

When their icy partnership begins to melt and feelings start to leak in, will Naomi and Will be able to admit that they’ve received much more than they bargained for?

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We’re still interested in reading your submission. If you missed the deadline but would like to submit your manuscript, please take a look at our submissions guidelines.

By Lauren Gardiner