Meet The Coffee Crew

I’m Nell, and I was born and continue to live in a small area of the UK known as the Black Country. Happily married to the same man for almost twenty-five years, we have three beautiful daughters, a tank of tropical fish and a cactus called Spike. During the day I work for a disabilities charity in my local community.

In my spare time I enjoy travelling with my family in our touring caravan and exploring the countryside. I have a passion for cathedral architecture and historic buildings. I also enjoy walking, gardening and art.

Ever since I can remember I’ve loved stories and books, both reading and writing them. My first poem was published by a local paper when I was thirteen, since then I’ve had several poems published and was first runner up a few years ago in a national short story competition. I’ve also had several non-fiction articles published in professional journals.

Writing romance remains my first love and I write the kinds of stories that I love to read. My publishers to date include: Little Black Dress, Samhain Publishing, Moonlit Romance, By Grace, Freya's Bower, Astraea Press, D C Thompson, and Linden Romance. I am also proud to say that I was the winner of the RNA’s Romance Prize in 2007 with my book Marrying Max, and Love Story of the year in 2010 with Animal Instincts.

I'm Phillipa and I first started writing when I was four, when I sent in a joke to The Beano. After leaving school, I went on to read English Language & Literature at Oxford. Since then, I’ve worked in a vinegar brewery and in advertising, journalism and PR.
I didn’t start writing fiction until 2005, after joining an Internet creative writing site. My first novel, Decent Exposure, a sexy romantic comedy set in the Lake District, was published in October 2006. It topped the Play.com Romance chart, won the RNA New Writers Award and was made into a TV movie called Twelve Men of Christmas which aired on the Lifetime channel in December 2009. Hopefully, it will make its way to the rest of the world and/or on DVD very soon.
And wow! How time flies when you’re having fun. I’ve now had four books published by Little Black Dress and thanks to my lovely readers, they’ve all reached Number One on the Amazon LBD chart. The latest is called It Should Have Been Me which also hit number four in the Malaysian fiction charts.
My books have been or are being translated into all kinds of languages including Thai, Turkish and Russian. They will all be published in the USA from November 2010 by Sourcebooks. Some are available in large print too.
I live in a Staffordshire village with my husband and daughter but I try to spend part of the year in the Lake District – walking, visiting literary locations and trying to track down the ultimate Lakeland pub and tea shop.

I'm Elizabeth (Liz) and from an early age I had a vivid imagination and created stories full of larger than life characters and their adventures. I took the first step towards becoming a writer when I was eight years old, creating and performing in a school play which was a rather surreal version of Coppélia – and quickly realised I preferred writing to acting!

Always an avid reader, I discovered the novels of Georgette Heyer in my teens and was captivated by the Regency period.  When I began to write historical romance in my spare time, I used the exhilarating Regency era as my inspiration.

I live in a village on the edge of the Staffordshire countryside and, apart from writing, I enjoy walks in the country, visits to the theatre (if I can combine both on a visit to nearby Stratford-on-Avon, so much the better :0)  ) and scouring second hand bookshops for Regency reference books to add to my collection.

I am a member of the Romantic Novelists Association and the Historical Novel Society.