A 5-week live fiction experience for romance readers and writers

 

Fall Fictionfest

 

How romance inspires transformation, and how to write it for yourself.

 

Join Fall Fictionfest, a 5-week live reading and discussion experience where we explore how romance novels create transformation through voice, vulnerability, metaphor, difficult topics, reframing, and the power of language.

When we’re willing to write honestly into those moments, we give readers more than a story to follow. We give them something to feel. They might recognise their own longing in a character’s silence, their own fear in an argument, or a possibility they hadn’t considered in someone else’s choice.

Sometimes, seeing themselves in a fictional life lets them see their own life differently. Not because we’ve told them what to think, but because they’ve felt something that opens up another way of seeing.

Over five weeks we'll read current romance novels closely, as working writers, and track exactly how the author makes that change transformational to the reader. Each week you take the lessons and apply to a scene of your own.

What you'll get:

  • 5 live weekly sessions with Heather
  • Live Q&A hot seat session, every 2 weeks
  • A writing topic focus and reading guide each week
  • A weekly exercise for your own work in progress
  • A private community for the cohort
  • A small group of supportive, like-minded writers
  • Optional Focus hour - time to write

Fictionfest runs for five Mondays, 9 November to 7 December 2026, live at 8pm UK (3pm New York, 12pm Los Angeles). A welcome weekend from 6 to 8 November gets you settled, with the reading guide, community and the discussion space open before we begin.

Our anchor novel is In Five Years by Rebecca Serle, read across the five weeks, with short extracts from other current romance novels for comparison. Week 1 works from the opening chapters, so you have time to read as we go.

Each week you get a writing topic focus. We meet live to discuss the reading through that lens, then you take it to your learning to your own writing with a short exercise. Between sessions the group talks in a private community. It stays small, ten writers at most, so everyone gets to speak, ask questions, share and be heard.

Starts Monday 9 November 2026
5 live sessions, Mondays at 8pm UK
(3pm New York · 12pm Los Angeles)
Limited to 10 writers

Doors close Thursday 5 November

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