Happy ever after

Romance fiction sales are booming internationally, and a Kiwi author is among those cashing in. 

- SALLY BLUNDELL

Soraya Lane is living the dream.   More specifically, she is living her dream. As an only child growing up in Christchurch, she loved animals she talked her parents into buying a horse and aspired to be a vet. She loved reading, most memorably Bantam Books' Saddle Club series, and writing her own stories.

Now, she lives with her husband, Hamish, and two young sons on a 4.8ha farm on the edge of Christchurch with two cats, two dogs, four horses, two rescue sheep and a back catalogue of 26 historical and contemporary women's fiction titles which have topped Amazon charts and Kindle bestseller lists.

Late last year, Hachette, through its digital stablemate Bookouture, brokered a "highsix-figure" deal in Germany for her new Lost Daughter series and signed off sales in 14 other countries.

"I still can't believe it," says Lane, surrounded by a sea of Lego and an attentive Jack Russell called Oscar. "I've had this dream since I was so young."

Lane graduated with a law degree from the University of Canterbury but instead of entering the legal profession, she worked as a freelance journalist and copywriter while developing her writing career. In 2011, after seven rejected novels, Soldier on Her Doorstep was accepted by Harlequin Mills and Boon.

She was also doing a master's degree in creative writing and for her thesis began her first historical novel. Voyage of the Heart, released in 2014 by Amazon Publishing, sold more than 150,000 copies.

She wrote a further 13 contemporary titles for Mills and Boon; a young-adult series called Starlight Stables, published under her maiden name, Soraya Nicholas; and a further nine World War II historical novels for Amazon. During the first lockdown, in 2021, she pitched her Lost Daughter series to Bookouture over a Zoom call. She received a contract a week later.