LOCAL novelist Christina Courtenay was thrilled to learn on Monday night that she was the winner of this year’s Romantic Novelists’ Association award for a historical novel.

“It was very, very thrilling,” she said the following morning. “I was up against some wonderful books. I still can’t quite believe it and I can’t remember what I said in my speech, though my husband assures me I thanked all the right people.”

Christina received the award for Highland Storms, published by Choc Lit and already the recipient of a Big Red Read award.

Christina’s hero Brice Kinross needs a fresh start and welcomes the opportunity to leave Sweden for the Scottish Highlands to take over the family estate, but there’s trouble afoot at Rosyth in 1754 and there’s no welcome for Brice. The estate’s in ruins and money is disappearing.

He discovers an ally in Marsaili Buchanan, the beautiful redheaded housekeeper, but can he trust her?

The novel is Christina’s third published novel. “I started writing more than 20 years ago and have lots that have been consigned to a drawer,” she says. “When my first daughter was born I wanted to stay at home with her and thought, like you do, that I’d write a book. I was published a week after she left home at 21.”

Half-Swedish and having lived in Japan during her childhood, Christina has used her own background as inspiration for her novels.

Now living and working in Herefordshire following a move from London, she’s sure she’ll be turning to her new home for future books. “It’s such a lovely area, and I’d love to set a novel around Raglan Castle and the Black Mountains – there’s the same kind of mystical Celtic atmosphere you find in Scotland.