Spotlight on Heather MacAllister
(Published in July 2002)

By Cheryl Bolen

It's hard for anyone in the West Houston chapter to remember a time when multipublished, multi Rita finalist Heather MacAllister was not published, but Heather was a member of Romance Writers of America for six years before she made her first sale.

That first book, Deck the Halls, was published in December of 1990, one year after Heather got The Call. Deck the Halls had been a Golden Heart finalist, one of five GH finalists this talented author racked up on her road to publication.

None of the other four, including her young adult romance which captured the GH, sold.

Over the past 12 years, Heather has published 33 books, mostly Harlequin Romances and Harlequin Temptations. She has also been invited to write novellas and to write for continuity series, in addition to writing one book for eHarlequin.

This month and next, she has two different continuity series books coming out. The August book, Skirting the Issue, is part of the Single in the City continuity series Harlequin is publishing to showcase a variety of its top authors. After Darke is her September title in Harlequin's Coopers Corner continuity series. Another of her "skirt" books will be published in April, 2003.

The Queen of the Continuity Series, Heather has turned books suggested by Harlequin editors into books so well written that they have garnered her three Rita finalist nominations. She was a Rita finalist in short contemporary for Bride Overboard in 1998 and in traditional in 2000 for Hand-Picked Husband. The following year, she again finaled in the short contemporary Rita category for Moonlighting.

Though continuity series are more work to write and offer the writer less control, Heather enjoys the challenge, and she especially enjoys all the extra publicity Harlequin pledges to these series. The more hype, the more sales, the more money earned.

Heather joined the Houston Bay Area chapter of RWA in 1983 while she was living in Pearland. She joined the West Houston chapter after moving in 1989, the same year she made her first sale.

She held local chapter offices, including president, for (she thinks) six years. She chaired two spring workshops and the Emily contest.

At the national level, she has spoken at six conferences and served on the Professional Relations committee and on the Long Range Planning committee, for which she is current interim chairman.

Her busy schedule includes that she is wife, mother to two teen-aged sons, and writes three to four books a year.

She attributes her discipline to the fact she holds a degree in instrumental music education and plays the piano and viola, instruments that require daily practice.

"It used to take me as long to write a book as it did to learn a concerto," she said. "I'm faster now, but I don't play concertos anymore, either."

A typical writing day begins at 7 a.m. when she goes to her computer to check her e-mail. With her patented sense of humor, she said, "I make myself stop by 8 or 8:30." After that, she writes for the remainder of the school day. "When I'm on deadline, I find I need more time just so I can keep the book in my head and tie up all the loose ends," she said. "Then I'll write in the evenings and quit about 10."

She said her husband and sons know the meaning of the word deadline. "That doesn't mean they always pay attention, but they do know what it means."

Though she has never had an agent, she has been a member of a critique group since just after making her first sale. "As we all became more experienced, the way we critiqued changed," Heather said. They went from discussing line by line to reading for pace, plot and character consistency.

So what does this successful author seek as her ideal? She said she would like to write the perfect book, one that all English teachers in the world would assign their classes every year. "Thus I would receive royalties in perpetuity. I would accept a position with QEII on the around-the-world cruise, live in a suite, and lecture about how I wrote the perfect book. All spa treatments would be on the house."