Harlequin Presents Writing Competition: Gill Clegg’s Synopis and Editorial Feedback

For all those gushing over Gill/Jilly’s first chapter, here is the synopsis for her story “The Boss’s Intimate Takeover” (named joint winner of the Harlequin Presents Writing Competition for Mills & Boon Modern Heat)! Editorial comments are also at the bottom of the post. ~Amy

THE  BOSS’S  INTIMATE  TAKEOVER synopsis by Gill Clegg

When a bright pink leaflet is thrust into his hand with Felicity Hayman’s name all over it, Ross Chamberlain’s curiosity is instantly spiked. Selling kisses for charity doesn’t quite sit with the judgement he’d made when he’d spotted her name in GM International’s files, the company he’s about to take over. He knows her type well: privileged; spoilt; only too happy for a rich doting father to pamper to all of her whims and then expecting the rest of humanity to fall in and just follow suit. He has, after all, emerged from a marriage to someone who turned out to be just that. And Felicity Hayman has gone one step further: setting herself up in a glitzy career through family connections and zero effort – unlike himself, who’d had to earn The Chamberlain Group mantle before his father relinquished it. And her promotion to features editor at ‘Single’ magazine was the first thing he intended to change.

He attends the fundraiser and soon begins to regret it. It’s a cause that touches him personally, having lost his own mother to breast cancer ten years earlier, and he sees quite clearly that Felicity Hayman has been deeply affected by the loss of her predecessor, Jenny Rutherford, to that same dreadful illness. And the physical attraction he feels towards her is something he just doesn’t need. Since his divorce six months ago, he’s cut women straight from his life, filling his time with work and business and avoiding all chance of temptation. He misses the sex, but not what comes with it: demands on his time, on emotions he just doesn’t feel. One-night-stands have long since lost their appeal and with one failed marriage disastrously behind him, he’s no intention of going down that road again.

But Fliss soon challenges those pre-conceived ideas – once she’s recovered from the considerable shock that the man she’d accused of being a sex-pest is, in fact, her new boss. And, what’s more, he intends to demote her – something he considerately tells her alone over dinner – in favour of his own appointee, whom Fliss immediately accuses him of bedding and giving her the job in return for her sexual favours. Right before tossing a glass of red wine down the front of his shirt and storming out of the restaurant.

The sparks are now flying; the battle is on – especially the battle to keep a lid on that

sizzling attraction between them. When Fliss goes to his office to grudgingly apologise and vehemently plead her case, Ross agrees to a compromise. He’ll give her three months to prove her worth; if she does it, the job’s back to her. For now, it’s back to the basics: research; interviews; outside assignments, the first of which is to cover Paris Fashion Week.

When Ross turns up on unrelated business those sparks soon flare into passion, and with time together away from the office they each begin to open up a little: Fliss about her feelings for Jenny, the mother-figure she’d never had who was supposed to give her away at her wedding when her father refused to attend. It’s clear as she talks that her father had never had time for her, too busy with his media empire, and that far from being a spoilt little rich girl, Fliss has spent her life seeking his approval by making herself fiercely independent. And as he talks about his own ambitions to steer his company bigger and higher, Ross sees the parallel between himself and Don Hayman and knows it’s something Fliss couldn’t put up with – just like his ex. History repeating both ways; no way could this possibly work.

He returns to London, keeping well away from the Single offices. Until he returns late one night and finds Fliss asleep at her desk. He’s about to wake her when he notices her screen: all about him, including his brief and disastrous marriage. They start off by arguing and end up making love but Ross still walks away, convinced they’ll both end up hurt.

Fliss shows up at Chamberlain headquarters, insisting on interviewing him for a feature on high-flying businessmen and their private lives. She asks him a series of no-holds-barred questions, undeterred by his curt ‘no comment’ replies, and winds it all up by straddling his chair, silencing him with a slow burning kiss, before flouncing out of his office. She’s made him think twice – choices, alternatives – and it doesn’t take long for Ross to make his decision. A life without love – without Fliss – would just be no life at all. The next afternoon Fliss shows up at the Mayfair Hotel, supposedly for some scoop of an interview, and it’s Ross waiting there in the penthouse suite: to interview her, the features editor of ‘Single’. Which, due to distractions, doesn’t take long and ends on one simple question: ‘Will you marry me?’

To which Fliss replies, without hesitation, ‘As long as you promise to show up.’

* * *

Big congratulations to Gill on her winning chapter aimed at Modern Heat!

Here are the main reasons why we loved Gill’s entry:

• Gill has a cool, sassy, natural voice that leaped out at us immediately.
• The hero and heroine were likable, intriguing, well motivated and had real layers and depth to them.
• The sexual tension between the couple was absolutely sizzling!
• Emotional conflict is woven in subtly but convincingly to ensure that we have a good sense of what will be keeping these two apart.
• There is some great dialogue with a good helping of wittiness that had us laughing out loud at times!

Meg and Gill will now be working on the rest of the story. The things that Gill needs to focus on as she develops her story The Boss’s Intimate Takeover are:

• Making sure that the emotional tension between the hero and heroine is sustained throughout the manuscript by fully exploring the characters and the great emotional conflicts that she has set up.
• Being careful to motivate the hero’s abstinence from women and sex in a believable way.
• Maintaining the sense of vibrant energy and fun which the first chapter oozes throughout the story.