Meet the authors and industry professionals who took part in The Marketplace at the Romance Writing Festival, Bournemouth on 18th October 2025 at the Royal Bath Hotel in Bournemouth.

Sadly Marysol wasn’t able to attend the festival, but you can still support her books!

Marysol James was raised in a small town in Canada and is still a small-town girl at heart. She’s a cancer survivor, cinnamon bun lover, and hardcore caffeine addict.

Marysol crosses genres in her writing, happily and enthusiastically. To date, she’s published 30 steamy, sexy, slinky Contemporary Erotic Romances spread over five different series, including the Amazon and iBooks best selling ‘Unseen Enemy’, ‘Dangerous Curves’, and ‘The Road Devils MC’ series. Her books incorporate action and adventure, suspense, military elements, and some surprising plot twists and turns.

Author Celebration – 12pm

Penny Mappoura-Salmon is the indie author behind The Dark Series — an emotionally intense, addictive, and deliciously dark romance saga about dangerous men, haunted pasts, and the women they were never meant to love.

A graduate of the BRIT School for Musical Theatre and former lead singer of a Greek wedding band (for over 20 years!), Penny brings passion, rhythm, and raw emotion into everything she writes. She spent years on stage in Greece and New York before returning to London, where she now manages a brasserie by day and crafts dark love stories by night.

Penny is married to her real-life inspiration — her Jamaican husband Jason — and together, they dream of opening a Greek-Jamaican beach bar on a sunny island where she can write, sing, and sip bourbon while the waves crash nearby.

She writes for the readers who crave obsession, redemption, high heat, and broken boys with violent hearts and soft spots for one girl only.

Author Celebration – 1pm

Helly Mayers writes sizzling love stories with emotional depth and sassy humour.

She loves promoting body confidence and creating relatable characters who redefine what is considered normal.

Curvy and strong, her female leads find love with confidence-boosting partners who cherish them not just the way they are but because of who they are!

As someone who is curvaceous, she longed to read stories where she could find herself represented and fall in love with a strong lead character. As for the male leads, they have to be more than just dominant!

Inspiring others is only one reason why she enjoys publishing her books. She strongly believes everyone should feel good about themselves and be proud of who they are.

Helly lives in London, where she moved after getting her master’s degree in media and working in the publishing and legal industries. She loves her hometown, Vienna, making it an easy decision to start the Danube River series.

Her debut novel, Find Me, a sparkling story that illustrates that beauty comes in all shapes and sizes, was released in 2025.

Author Celebration – 2:30pm

Sue Moorcroft is an award-winning Sunday Times and internationally published author of emotionally compelling, feel-good, page-turning fiction who has reached #1 on Amazon Kindle UK and Top 100 Amazon Kindle US, Canada and Italy. Her novels, short stories, serials, courses and columns have appeared around the world. An army child, Sue was born in Germany and then lived in Cyprus, Malta and the UK.

Author Celebration – 4pm

Alice G. May writes contemporary, historical and saga fiction.

Her new series, The Resistance Girls is inspired by the true story of a highly trained secret army of women working undercover to protect British coastal communities during World War Two.

Having always dreamed of being a writer, Alice finally put pen to paper in her forties.

She lives in the New Forest on the Dorset/Hampshire border and gains inspiration from walking both in the forest and along the coast.

Alice also writes non-fiction, including a memoir (The House That Sat Down Trilogy) and a colourful series of ‘How to Draw The Alice May Way’ books, suitable for all ages. She loves public speaking and regularly attends writing festivals, libraries and social groups to give presentations.

Carrie Walker is a Brummie born romcom lover with a lifelong passion for travel. She has lived in a ski resort, by a beach, in the country and the city, and travelled solo through Asia, South America and Europe.

Her own love life was more com than rom until she met her husband a few years ago and settled down with him and her dog Ziggy in a pub-filled village in Essex.

Longlisted for Helen Lederer’s Comedy Women in Print prize in 2021, writing has long been Carrie’s side hustle, penning columns and features for newspapers and magazines, while working in many other jobs. She has been the CEO of a global disability movement, a board director of a brand agency, the editor of a newspaper, a radio presenter, a football mascot, dressed up as a carrot for the BBC and now she is writing books. Escape to the Swiss Chalet is her debut novel.

S. M. Mitchell is a swashbuckling night-owl pagan, whose love of pirates, the gothic and all things historical led to her starting her career as a dark fantasy author back in 2015. She has a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing and lives on the stunning Jurassic Coast in England with her crazy family and myriad of animals. When she’s not writing she can be found baking, gardening or bingeing Netflix.

Amy Lamorna Ireland was born and raised in Cornwall in the early 90s. She continues to live in beautiful Cornwall with her husband and two children, teaching English at a local secondary school, and using her tranquil surroundings as inspiration for her books. Amy spends as much time as she can exploring the great outdoors with her family – her son, daughter and crazy whippet, Rupert, a great excuse for long, glorious walks through the Cornish countryside and gardens.

Surrounded by the written word, Amy naturally loves anything to do with books – both reading them and writing them. All of her books will feature Cornwall, whether it be the main setting or a visiting location as her characters travel around the world.

International bestselling author and award-winning inventor, Lizzie Chantree, has been featured on television and radio. She discovered her love of writing fiction when her children were little and now writes books full of friendship and laughter, that are about women who are far stronger than they realise. She lives with her family on the coast in Essex.

Sarah lives on the south coast with her family and has written in a freelance capacity for magazines and business journals. She also writes collaboratively with two friends and they have had their short comedy sketches performed at various arts centres and venues across the south of England. Sarah’s first book, The Postcard in the Window, was longlisted in 2020 for the Comedy Women in Print prize (CWIP) for an unpublished novel (with the title New Members Welcome). Her second book in the series, It started with a shoe, was released in April 2024.

Nicola May is an international bestselling author renowned for her heartwarming and humorous romantic comedies. With eighteen books to her name, her work has captured readers’ hearts around the world, has been translated into fifteen languages and consistently ranks in the top 100 of Amazon’s Kindle bestseller charts. As a self-published author, she achieved the remarkable feat of reaching number one on Amazon twice, and has been a strong advocate for indie authors, pushing for a dedicated chart for them in The Bookseller magazine. Now signed to Storm Publishing, Nicola continues to write heartfelt rom-coms with her signature blend of warmth and wit.

When she’s not writing, she enjoys cream teas in her beloved Devon, hikes through nature, and occasionally places a bet on the horses.

Joanna lives in the south of England with her family, in a house with far too many books, and a cat who often ignores her. She hates to fly but loves to travel; she prefers paperbacks to eBooks, and she adores American sitcoms.

She has completed both a BA(Hons) in English Literature and a master’s degree in creative writing, all while her children were little. These days, she can often be found scouring the internet for her next book destination, failing miserably at the daily crossword, and writing her next novel sitting absolutely anywhere, but at her desk.

Lost and Found in Venice is Joanna’s second published novel with Orion Fiction. She is currently working on her third novel which takes place at the top of a volcano.

Dani is a Bristol, UK-based author of contemporary and fantasy romance.

She writes stories full of magic, sharp-tongued girls, hard-shelled boys (with gooey centres) and HEAs.

When she’s not writing she has a toddler/tornado who keeps her busy and an insatiable need to drink her own weight in tea and rewatch every TV series she likes at least three times.

Lisa Brace is an award-winning writer, who combines penning novels with running her own business in the beautiful surroundings of West Sussex.

****Her third novel The Fastest Girl on Earth, is out now***

Her second book, SWIM, a historical fiction novel was runner up as Historical Novel of the Year 2024 (Eyelands Book Awards), and finalist in Best Historical Fiction and Best General Fiction in the New Generation Indie Book Awards 2025.

Gary Dalkin is an editor and writer with 30 years of professional publishing experience across many genres, including Romance. He provides a full range of editorial services for writers and can help you make your manuscript as good as it can be, whether for submitting to a publisher or agent, or for self-publishing.

In addition, Gary offers author guidance and mentoring, as well as feedback and revision for submission packages, including the all-important cover letter and synopsis.

He has contributed to every issue of Writing Magazine since 1999, and his talk at this year’s Bournemouth Writing Festival with Sophie Beal, the director of Cadence Publishing, proved a great success. (He is the Senior Associate Editor with Cadence.)

Elanor provides a service that takes the stress out of keeping up with your social media leaving you more time to do what you love – write! She can help with planning, posting, content, advice and training. She works closely with clients to discover what works best for them and tailors the service to their needs. This can be a small one off project, or regular ongoing support.