The authors of our female commercial fiction list describe the Valentine's memories that have stuck with them.

Sarah Bilston:

The Valentine’s I most remember is from my middle-school days. For some reason that now strikes me as strangely cruel, our form teachers set up a post box in each classroom and encouraged the kids to send each other Valentine’s Day cards. The morning of February 14 was a torture. Katie Lazar and some boy called Adam were deluged with pink glittery homemade scrawls while the rest of us wished the ground would open and swallow us up.


Kate Furnivall:

My favourite Valentine’s Day happened when I was ten years old. February 14th was my Russian grandmother’s birthday – her name was Valentina. Long after her death we always celebrated her memory on her special day. That year my twin sister and I concocted a big heart-shaped cake, smothered it with sticky red icing and drew a white V on top. My mother cried when she saw it and we all went around with scarlet teeth for the rest of the day.

Nowadays I get cards and flowers. But I still hanker after that dreadful gooey red cake. Mmm!


Dorothy Koomson:

Up until 2003, most St Valentine’s Days merged into the big general mass of hours and days that is life. In 2003, though, my first book, The Cupid Effect, was published. It’s set in Leeds and I organised a launch up there with a reading at Borders and drinks in a local bar. Lots of my friends and family who hadn’t been able to make it to London for my first launch party – again organised by myself – came along. I read two chapters in front of about fifty people and then we had drinks. I ended up in a club and stumbled back to one of the worst hotels I’ve ever stayed via a Subway eatery. I remember forming lifetime friendships with a few of the girls in the food queue – they were extremely impressed with the fact I’d written a book and promised faithfully to buy one in the morning. I suppose it’s memorable for me, though, because it was the first 14 February that I became a published author. Every year around this time I do pause and remember the feeling of having my first book published – in case I forget how amazing it was to have a dream come true. So, this year, I’m hoping for diamonds, flowers or a trip in the TARDIS . . . in other words, something pretty spectacular to top that one.


Martina Reilly:

The Valentine’s Day I most remember was when I was fifteen and madly in love for the first time. We each had to choose our favourite song from my new Doctor Hook Album. Mine was ‘Years From Now’, while his was ‘Sharing the Night Together’. It kind of typified the chasm in our relationship and it was off within the week!



Polly Williams:

I went out to New York to meet a boyfriend of three months who lived in LA – we’d met in London and were attempting to do a transatlantic relationship thing. When I got to New York I discovered that the apartment he was meant to be staying in didn’t exist. After a few hours of stamping the streets of Soho with an unchic unwieldy suitcase, I found him at the Soho Grand hotel. That was February 13th. A few hours later, unsurprisingly, he revealed that he’d met someone else in LA but hadn’t wanted to tell me because I’d already booked my ticket to NYC. We actually spent Valentine’s Day together, arm in arm, walking along the Hudson. It was a beautiful, ice-bright, freezing day. I remember actually rather enjoying the drama of it all, as if NYC was a cinematic backdrop to a rom com gone wrong. The next day we kissed and parted.


Louise Candlish:

Over the years, the one thing my boyfriends have had in common is not ‘doing’ Valentine’s Day, so I have absolutely no hot air balloon stories – not even a memory of a heart-shaped box of chocolates. It sounds very slushy but my favourite Valentine’s moments have been the cards and cookies made by my daughter (now four). But even that’s already over – this year she is only making a card for the cat!