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Helen Bianchin worked as a legal secretary in her native New Zealand, then spent two years travelling and working in various parts of Australia. She met and married her Italian-born husband in the tobacco farming town of Mareeba, North Queensland, where she cooked for seasonal workers, helped out on the farm, and took care of hundreds of chickens, as well as several ducks and turkeys. Should she mention she also had to kill, clean and prepare poultry for the table?
Three years of hailstorms and crop losses resulted in a lifestyle change, and Helen returned to New Zealand with her husband and their daughter, where they added two sons to their family. Encouraged by a friend who enjoyed numerous anecdotes of Helen's life as a tobacco farmer's wife, the tentative idea of romance novel emerged. "Write what you know" ... So Helen created an Italian-born hero who owned a prosperous tobacco farm, meshing fact with fiction and authenticity! Six years after her first book was published, Helen and her family returned to Australia to settle in south-east Queensland where they currently reside. Their three children and four grandchildren live close by. Helen's interests include a love of reading, going to the movies, and watching selected television programs. She also enjoys catching up with friends, usually over a long lunch! A lover of animals, especially cats, at present count she owns a grey Himalayan Persian, a Birman, as well as a Maltese terrier.
Interview with Helen Bianchin |
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 HIS PREGNANCY ULTIMATUM Harlequin Presents December 2004 Buy Now
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Writerspace: Helen, I'm really delighted to have this opportunity to chat with you. To begin, could you please share something about your background with us? Helen Bianchin: Thanks, Lee, for the invitation to chat. I spent my formative years in New Zealand, an only child with a vivid imagination.. Life was relatively simple, with school, play and reading being the main elements in my life. Relatives frequently commented on my quietness, unaware I was silently weaving stories in my mind and creating fantasies. I was a dreamer, and even as a young child I had the "what if" scenario down pat! I could read a book, any book, and in my mind I’d extend the story, plot and characters, taking it to a new and different dimension. Around age nine, I began writing stories in an exercise book. It didn’t seem to be a conscious decision, just a strong urge to put pencil to paper, to convert the images in my head into words. Life intervened, and at age twenty-one I embarked on a working holiday in Australia, travelling its length and breadth over a two-year period before meeting my Italian husband in a small tobacco farming community in far north Queensland. We lived there for a few years, then returned to New Zealand to be with my parents who were both suffering ill-health. Writerspace: When did you know for sure you wanted to be a writer? Did you pick romance as your genre or did it pick you? Helen Bianchin: The urge to write re-emerged during the early 1970's, following my parents’ death. My husband worked, I was at home with three young children, and my love of reading focused on romance fiction. Tales of my years as a tobacco farmer’s wife living in a European community fascinated my friends, especially true incidents of arranged marriages and marriages of convenience among the Italian, Greek and Albanian families. My husband and I attended a wedding reception where the marriage had been arranged by two sets of parents in two different countries, the bride and groom were married by proxy, and the bride travelled to Australia to meet and live with her new husband. I found it intriguing why a couple would enter into a marriage without love ... and fascinating to witness affection and love evolve over time. A very dear friend suggested I should write a book featuring such a story ... I knew it had to be fiction, and a romance! Why not Mills & Boon, books I’d read for pleasure for years? So I began, with no idea as to format, length. I had no contact with other authors, published or aspiring. I simply wrote the story ... on a portable typewriter at one end of the diningroom table. The first effort was deemed too short, lacking in detail ... but the work had merit, and if I would rewrite ... The second effort was accorded too long with too much extraneous detail ... could I revise? The publisher offered a contract on the third effort! As a family we returned to Australia in 1981. Writerspace: Please tell us about you new release, HIS PREGNANCY ULTIMATUM. Helen Bianchin: I wanted to create a heroine with firm moral beliefs, who had managed to uphold those beliefs without too much difficulty. Until she came face-to-face with a man who would turn her world upside down and create an emotional maelstrom so intensely overwhelming it destroyed her willpower to resist him. I also wanted the hero to be similarly affected, not overcome by sexual lust, but consumed by something magical, together with the knowledge the emotion was mutual. Followed by how they each dealt with it, the heroine’s reaction to her unplanned pregnancy, and what would happen when Fate played a hand in placing them together again. I wanted to show Mia’s emotional struggle with Nikolos’ proposal, knowing it was born of honour and responsibility. His perception of marriage and her own were so different, and she couldn’t conform merely for the sake of a child she was prepared to take total responsibility. Yet there was this tangible link she shared with Nikolos ... an emotional depth beyond her control. What was she going to do about that? And Nikolos gave no quarter in his quest to succeed in making Mia his own ... for life. Writerspace: What do you love most about writing for Harlequin Presents? Helen Bianchin: Displaying the passion ... for life and love. The emotional depth to explore all the facets of love between two people, how it is born, evolves and emerges strong despite a conflict which threatens to tear that love apart. Writerspace: One of the conflicts in HIS PREGNANCY ULTIMATUM is that of the 'other woman'. You've woven this conflict into the plots of some of your previous releases as well and you always do it with such style. I love the way your heroines tackle this conflict. In this case, your heroine, Mia Fredrickson came across beautifully - cool, intense, capable. Could you please tell us more about Mia. She is such a multi-faceted character and I enjoyed her playful rapport with her nephew, Matt. What is it about Mia that made her special to you? Helen Bianchin: Mia became very special in that she thought she had a handle on life. Not only life, but her life. She had a plan, she was in control. Her career was on track ... she was in the final stages of acquiring her pharmacy degree, she’d aspire to a managerial position, then acquire her own pharmacy. Somewhere in the future she’d marry and have children to a suitable man who’d share her goals ... a man she’d choose carefully, his honesty and fidelity being essential criteria. Yet all it took was one night, one man, to throw life as she knew it into complete and utter turmoil. Writerspace: As always, your hero, Nikolos Karedes is unforgettable and oh so macho. So easy to fall in love with this alpha! What do you love most about writing alpha heroes? How did you come about creating Nikolos' character? Did his essence evolve slowly in your mind or did he just appear out of the blue one day, demanding his own story? Helen Bianchin: Ah ... alpha macho heroes! I adore writing the European hero. They have enormous strength of character, firm beliefs, and such passion for love and life. They know women ... and possess the ability to cut through any emotional baggage. Nikolos’ character evolved as the story developed. I wanted a powerful man in control of his life, caught up with emotion he couldn’t control, and determined to make Mia his woman, his wife ... no matter what it took. Writerspace: Have you ever introduced secondary characters in your stories who have later gone on to star in the leading roles in a book of their own? Helen Bianchin: Yes. Paul Leandros’ son, Nicos, from DEVIL IN COMMAND features as the hero in THE GREEK'S BOUGHT WIFE due for August 2005 release. Sebastian Lanier from the novella THE SEDUCTION SEASON has two brothers, Raoul and Michel. Raoul has his own story in THE HUSBAND ASSIGNMENT released in October 2000. Michel features in THE MARRIAGE DEAL released in September 2000. Writerspace: What authors do you enjoy reading when you aren't writing? Helen Bianchin: So many, covering a variety of genres! In no particular order ... Iris Johansen, Linda Howard, Nora Roberts, J.D. Robb, Alex Kava, Erica Spindler, Anne Frasier, Robert Crais, Greg Isles, Stephanie Laurens, Tess Gerritsen, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Sandra Brown, Tami Hoag, Joy Fielding, Catherine Anderson, Christine Feehan ... Writerspace: How about hobbies? How do you like to spend your time when you aren't writing or reading? Helen Bianchin: I love the big screen movies, but don’t go to the cinema as often as I’d like, and often resort to viewing the movies I’ve missed on DVD or video. Writerspace: What are you working on at present? Helen Bianchin: The theme is a marriage of convenience between Gianna Castelli and Franco Giancarlo, taking the multi-national Giancarlo-Castelli conglomerate into the third generation. A year into the marriage Franco’s former lover, the newly divorced actress, Famke, returns to the scene in a determined bid to recapture Franco. I’m hoping to deliver the manuscript at the end of February, early March. Writerspace: Let's talk about research for a minute, Helen. Can you please share what sort of research you had to do (if any) for HIS PREGNANCY ULTIMATUM? When crafting the character of a foregin hero, how extensively do you research his country of orgin, or his traditions, culture and beliefs? I'm really curious about this from an aspiring writer's point of view. Helen Bianchin: Lee, I’m married to an Italian from the northern city of Treviso, and lived for several years in a town comprising many European people. Their culture, tradition and beliefs are very familiar to me ... something which helps tremendously when depicting the foreign hero! The most research I undertook was for a book titled “Desert Mistress”, featuring a Sheikh as the hero. Although only partly set in Riyadh, I needed up-to-date information on the Riyadh of the day, particularly the strict code adhering to women, what they were permitted to wear, where they were able to travel and how. I photocopied screeds of research material and their sources as authentication for my editor. Writerspace: Do you travel for research or is most of it based on sources like the internet and non-fiction books? Helen Bianchin: I would love to be able to say I’m well-travelled! However, the internet is a wonderful tool, so too are reputable non-fiction books as sources of reliable research. My travels so far have been limited between Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii. Writerspace: What can fans look forward to in the coming year from you? Helen Bianchin: THE DISOBEDIENT BRIDE featuring Lianne and Tyler Benedict, as separated husband and wife, is due for April 2005 release. THE GREEK'S BOUGHT WIFE features Tina Matheson and Nicos Leandros, and is due for August 2005 release ... the title says it all! Writerspace: What advice would you like to share with aspiring writers? Helen Bianchin: Believe in yourself, believe in your story ... and never, ever give up. Writerspace: How man readers contact you? Helen Bianchin: I love hearing from readers, and can be contacted via email Writerspace: Thanks so much for your time, Helen! I'm really looking forward to your next release! Helen Bianchin: My pleasure, Lee. Thanks for the invitation to participate. I’d like to add my sincere appreciation to readers and fans ... I hope you derive as much pleasure from reading stories as I enjoy the writing of them. Warmest best wishes to everyone for a wonderful 2005.
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