Things have been getting quite hot and steamy in Leeds over the last few months in the name of romantic literature.  We’ve been keeping our special secret writing project under wraps but now it’s time to reveal our festival exclusive – Broken Shackles, a new romantic novel, inspired by Leeds and written by a group of writers from Leeds and Bradford!

The six women and one man, who barely knew each other at the start of the project, held a series of clandestine meetings to agree the main characters and plot – which is predominantly set in and around Leeds and West Yorkshire – before dividing up the ten chapters amongst themselves.

Each chapter was then written in isolation, with the entire collaboration only coming together at the very end of the editing process.

The saucy tale is set in Leeds and features an alpha male lead character called Nate Rothwell, a fictitious wealthy property developer from Bramhope, who falls for a young beautiful woman called Victoria Quartermain who works for a local youth theatre group.

The novel was inspired by the writers’ love for Mills & Boon, and written in the style of a classic romance novel, with chance encounters, steamy love scenes, plenty of misunderstandings, and of course, a fairy tale happy ending.

The 50,000 word book will be available as a download and will be launched at our Mills & Boon celebration cabaret evening on Saturday 15th October.