Thank you Tina for allowing me to introduce myself on your website. My name’s Louise Wise and I write romance (feels like a confession!). My books include Eden, A Proper Charlie, The Fall of the Misanthrope and a non-fiction book called So You Want an Author Platform?

I began writing from an early age. Being the youngest of four, I think I found I could express myself better through writing. I was often seen in my bedroom scribbling away in a notebook.

I remember getting an Olivetti typewriter for my tenth birthday and I thought it was the state of the ark! When I was older, I bought myself an Amstrad computer and my little Olivetti ended up in the loft. By then I’d written four novels (I still have them), and submitted them to Mills & Boon. I was rejected, but looking back, I don’t blame M&B—they were terrible! (I do have some very nice letters of encouragement from M&B though).

I was always told ‘write what you know’ and so I used my interest in astronomy and began Eden. ePublishing was unheard of back then and getting a traditional publisher interested in it, even though I had an agent, was impossible. I was continuously told that Eden was ‘too original’ or ‘no market for the genre’. But, sadly, I believed in those who said it’d never sell and it remained forgotten and writing ePublishing took off and I thought I had nothing to lose by publishing Eden myself. It took off almost immediately, with 500 downloads in its first month!

I continued with A Proper Charlie and then my latest contemporary romance The Fall of the Misanthrope. I began another contemporary book (which is still in its draft state) but emails starting coming from readers who’d read Eden and loved it. They wanted more. They wanted its sequel.

I had thought of a sequel a long, long time ago, before I was ground down by the continuous rejections, and my idea resurfaced and took shape almost immediately. I wrote it in three months. My passion for Eden and love for the characters were still there! It was like meeting up with old friends and discovering we could carry on where we left off.

http://www.louisewise.com/