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Harlequin Author Betty Neels, My Example

booksbylyncote.com Posted on by

Have you ever read a Betty Neels’ Harlequin Romance?

Many people have a preconception of what a Harlequin Romance is and many are not at all accurate or flattering.

I challenge anyone to read a Betty Neels Harlequin Romance and not find it entertaining and uplifting.

In 1969, Betty already a retired nurse, overheard someone in her local library bemoan the lack of good romance novels. So she wrote one!

When Betty wrote her first Harlequin romance Sister Peters in Amsterdam (Nurses are called Sister in England or were!), the inspirational romance market I write for did not exist.

Betty wrote charming stories about heroines who were honest and quietly self-assured without being showy. Betty’s heroes are always the Strong Silent Type, masterful men usually with ties to Holland. Betty herself was married to a Dutch doctor if my memory serves me.

One of my favorite books of hers is Waiting for Deborah, a book in which she stretched her writing in many new ways.
http://www.amazon.com/Waiting-Deborah-Betty-Readers-Choice/dp/0373512570/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244502508&sr=1-1 Other titles that demonstrate Betty’s kind of romance: A Good Wife, An Innocent Bride, Heaven is Gentle and Discovering Daisy. Drop by www.eharlequin.com and enter her name in the Search window and you’ll find that her romances are still selling out!

In June of 2001, Betty passed away in her nineties after writing for Harlequin continuously from 1969– penning a total of 134 Harlequin Romances. Harlequin and the world lost a good solid novelist. Fortunately her romances remain and are still being printed and sold. I hope that at the end of my career, I will leave the legacy that Betty Neels did–good stories about real people that lift readers’ spirits in a genuine way.–Lyn

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About Lyn Cote

Lyn Cote welcomes other authors to her "Strong Women, Brave Stories" blog to share stories of women who triumph over the challenges common to all women.

Comments

Harlequin Author Betty Neels, My Example — 8 Comments

  1. YES – my first Harlequins were Betty Neels and Essie Summers – I collected all but the very first ones – before I’d begun reading them. I checked all over for the early ones and no used bookstore in many, many cities had any of them. I’m not sure what happened to those I’d collected all those years but I no longer have most of them – too many moves and too many lost boxes – including the very first draft of my own novel with all my story board/backstory materials – what a downer that proved to be when no one who helped us move could find those boxes in their trucks – I went back to the house to search to no avail. LOST forever – ugh!

    I will never forget Betty Neels’ Secret Pool – my all time favorite and what a emotional book for that writer. I’d read so many of hers up to that one that when the grief was described I was taken aback by the raw feelings it evoked.
    She had a way with words, that woman!
    Essie Summers could describe New Zealand and make me feel I was standing in the kitchen up in that mountainous sheep country with the power out from the raging storms and I shivered when the characters shivered she described it so well. 😉
    Oh – yes – patterns in their writing that no author need be ashamed of!
    Thanks for the ‘memories’, Lyn!

  2. I'm so happy to find that so many other people enjoy Betty the same way I do!
    Lyn

  3. I just came across my first Betty Neels book last week, the charming "An Unlikely Romance." So glad that others enjoy her so much as I do!

  4. Oh, I know what you mean, Lisa. Her books are like old friends.

  5. Betty was my muse. I still have one of her books which was a favorite that I pull out like comfort food every once in a while.

  6. I have not read any of these books, so please enter me for a drawing. May God bless

    mamat2730(at)charter(dot)net

  7. I discovered Betty later in life, but still love reading her stories. Right now I'm reading Stormy Springtime. We're about to leave Amsterdam and the hero kissed her!

  8. I grew up on Betty Neels!!! She was my grandma's favorite author so my grandma bought tons of her books and gave them to me to read. I remember winter nights, with a stainless steel mixing bowl filled with cheerios and milk, snuggled in bed slurping them down while reading Betty Neels! LOL

    Grandma is in assisted living now, so every week i take her her weekly Betty Neels "fix" 🙂 She loves it! 🙂

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