Long-time Mills and Boon fan Daisy Cummins talks to Róisín Ingleon the eve of publication of her first foray into romantic fiction for the iconic brand
Daisy Cummins stepped inside the crowded cafe, her short, reddish hair hidden from view by a chic woolly hat. She found a seat and perused the menu, her sparkling eyes scanning the list of paninis and coffees absent-mindedly. She knew what she wanted and it wasn't the mysterious-looking Spanish waiter eyeing her with barely disguised passion while he spooned frothy milk onto a customer's cappuccino. Hot chocolate, she decided. If there was one thing she loved on a cold winter's day it was a warming chocolate drink.
Daisy fished the brand new Mills and Boon book from the depths of her practical yet stylish handbag. Chosen as the Frenchman's Bride, the title read, by Abby Green. The hot chocolate arrived and she smiled to herself.
The knowledge that her first Mills and Boon book would soon be on the bookshop shelves warmed her heart more than any hot beverage or lascivious Spanish waiter ever could. Contented, as though resting in the arms of a new lover, Daisy, aka Abby Green, sipped her hot chocolate while she waited patiently for her first publicity interview to begin.
Please forgive the above. It's just that when Daisy Cummins, daughter of feminist firebrand and former Irish Times journalist, the late Mary Cummins, tells you so enthusiastically about her recent runaway success with publishing giants Mills and Boon, you can't help but want to give it a go yourself.
She'd been reading the iconic brand of romantic fiction beloved of grannies, mothers and doctor's waiting rooms for years, and then, after her mother died seven years ago, she finally did something about her secret ambition to be a romantic fiction writer. Whatever would mammy think? "I think she's laughing her head off somewhere," says Cummins, an assistant film director who recently finished work on Cecelia Ahern's PS I Love You, starring Hilary Swank. "I think she's delighted for me."
In fact, during the past year, Cummins discovered that her mother had her own history with Mills and Boon. "My aunt told me she tried to get in with them herself at one point, which is really funny," she smiles.
Cummins first encountered the books as a 13-year-old on summer holidays with her grandmother in Co Kerry. "I found one in her bedroom and was immediately hooked," she says. "I started borrowing them from libraries and then I'd get them from Eason's, surreptitiously in case anybody saw me. They became my dirty little secret."
If her mother minded, she didn't let on and it wasn't long before her daughter had developed a serious, 10-a-week habit. Even in boarding school, in Bray, Co Wicklow, she would always have a Mills and Boon or two tucked under the desk.
Cummins explains her obsession by comparing her own life to that of the Mills and Boon heroes and heroines, the men inevitably swarthy millionaires, Sheiks or Greek shipping tycoons and the women, beautiful of course, who are swept away, often despite themselves, on a tidal wave of passion.
"I just remember being blown away by them, they are very emotional, very intense and there is a real alpha male hero," she says. "Mum being Mum always had this underlying thing that men are weak and men are evil, so for me the books were complete fantasy. It was a chance to escape my Mum's view and dream of another kind of world where men were strong and intelligent and emotionally mature and could become a woman's equal partner, without dominating her." Cummins was raised by her mother and had little contact with her father, a writer and publisher, who had four other children in England. "In the books the hero and heroine always end up marrying and providing a safe and secure environment for their child and not having that myself it was attractive to me. I have no bitterness towards my Dad but I did get wrapped up in that fantasy that the man could provide security and the woman would let him. My Mum just wouldn't have let a man look after her and I think that's partly why I escaped into the books. It was my own private rebellion against the 'men are evil' ethos."
At a party a few years ago, Cummins met another young woman who shared her passion. "We went into a corner and talked all night about our mutual love for Mills and Boon. Later she became my flatmate and she always talked about this urban myth that if you wrote one you could make a fortune. I was working long hours in film though and so didn't do anything about it. But when my Mum died it was a kind of catalyst." Clearing out a drawer shortly after her mother's death, an audio tape entitled And then he kissed her . . . how to write a Mills and Boon fell out and Cummins took it as a sign. She soon had a fully formed idea and sent off three chapters, but became despondent when she received a rejection letter from editor Katrina Lightfoot (a Mills and Boon heroine's name if ever there was one) detailing where she went wrong. What she didn't realise at the time was that getting such a detailed reply from a Mills and Boon editor is an accolade in itself.
"I later discovered there are people who spend years sending submissions in, trying to get them appraised and there are whole chat rooms devoted to getting accepted to Mills and Boon but I was just working away on my own," she says. After reworking her book and being asked for more revisions she finally got the call to say she'd been accepted. Though the remuneration at this early stage is small, light years away from the spiralling figures surrounding Cecelia Ahern, Cummins's third book, which is partially set in Dublin, has just been approved by Mills and Boon, for whom her pen name is Abby Green.
CUMMINS SAYS SHE finds it "surprisingly easy" to write the requisite sex scenes and explains that "throbbing manhood" is a bit of a cliche these days even for Mills and Boon.
"The sex is always fantastic, of course. Nobody wants to read bad sex," says Cummins.
Mills and Boon, who have been selling books since 1904, are among the few publishers who encourage unsolicited, unagented material and they receive more than 2,000 manuscript submissions each year. This year alone they have taken on 18 authors across the Modern, Romance, Medical, Historical and Modern Extra genres. And while women across the world attempt to crash through the glass ceiling, it seems there's still an insatiable appetite for the books, which revel in gender stereotypes; there's a Mills and Boon sold every five seconds in the UK alone, with titles including The Greek's Virgin, The Forced Bride, Taken By the Sheikh and Pregnant By the Millionaire.
THERE MAY BE a chemical explanation. A recent BBC television series, Reader, I Married Him, conducted a scientific experiment and deduced that romantic novels such as Mills and Boon had an effect on presenter Daisy Goodwin's system not unlike valium.
Cummins describes them as the literary equivalent of a relaxing hot bath or a bar of chocolate. The perception of Mills and Boon, she says, is of weak women beaten into submission by boorish men. "If you say you like Mills and Boon you get criticised for being a hopeless romantic in the worst kind of way. But people who don't read them can't judge them . . . I don't mind saying I am an unashamed romantic and that I enjoy reading about the tall, dark, powerful men in these books. Every woman wants that fantasy of being taken away from her life, swept away by a handsome stranger and for a couple of blissful hours that's what the best of these books offer," she says.
She is single herself at the moment. "When I think of relationships it's in a less idealised way than the books - he doesn't have to be a millionaire, he doesn't have to look like a Mills and Boon hero. But the men in the books have integrity and I'd like to be in a relationship like that, where you just know someone is mad about you. Mills and Boon books are about finding your soulmate," she says.
In response to her success some friends have said, "Well that's all very well, but you will write something else won't you?". "It might be considered the bottom of the literary pile but I would consider myself lucky if in 25 years time I was still writing books for Mills and Boon and making a living from it," counters Cummins. "It certainly beats standing in the rain with a walkie-talkie dealing with Hilary Swank." Reader, it couldn't have happened to a nicer girl.
Chosen as the Frenchman's Bride will be published by Mills and Boon in on Jan 5
Interview