Blog Tour: Heartbreak Cafe series by Janet Quin-Harkin

I'm delighted to have been invited by Ellfie Books to take part in the blog tour for Janet Quin-Harkin's Heartbreak Cafe series. It's very exciting that the whole series is being re-published in February which is the first time in over thirty years. I was a huge fan of Janet's books when I was a teenager and I still have some of them among my collection now. 

The Heartbreak Cafe series centres around Deborah Lesley and her life as it’s turned upside down when her parents split up. She finds herself having to move house and find a job in the popular beach hangout Heartbreak Café where life is never dull. In this hit eighties series about teen life in northern California, themes of friendships, work, family, divorce, and love are ever present. From movie makers coming to town and surprising romances, the Heartbreak Café series will transport you to a retro California, full of sun, surf, and heartbreak. 

Janet has very kindly put together her Top 5 Writing tips for the blog tour:

1.Write the book you are dying to read but it’s not on the shelf.

2. Don’t ever write anything because you think it will sell. You have to be passionate about anything you write.

3. Nothing is written in stone! If a scene is serving any useful purpose it has to go, even if it’s the best prose you have ever written.

4. Once you have created characters, it’s their story. Let them go where they want to, do what they want to. If you are experiencing writer’s block it’s often because you are forcing characters to do something they don’t want to.

5. Don’t talk about writing that book someday. If you want to write, you have to sit down and write. Every day. Writing is a craft form, not an art. You only get better at manipulating words when you practice, practice.

Janet Quin-Harkin first found success as a picture book writer, winning several awards. She was then asked to write a teenage series and Heartbreak Café was born! The first in the series No Experience Required was an instant success when it was originally published in the eighties. By the time the third book came out she was selling half a million copies. Since then Janet has gone on to become a New York Times bestseller. Writing under the pen name Rhys Bowen, she is the author of the historical Molly Murphy and Royal Spyness mystery series. She has won the Agatha Best Novel Award and was nominated for the Edgar Best Novel. Janet is British and divides her time between California and Arizona.

Visit her website to find out more about Janet aka Rhys Bowen and her books. I've definitely got a hankering to read her Royal Spyness mystery series now!