She published more than 70 novels and sold more than 34 million books translated into 29 languages, making her one of Australia’s most successful and prolific authors. Yet many are not familiar with her name.
Valerie Parv passed away suddenly last weekend, a week before her 70th birthday. She began as an advertising copywriter, and her first books, non-fiction home and garden DIY guides, were published in the late 1970s. In the 1980s, she began to publish in the genre she was most well-known for: romance fiction.
Her first romance novel, Love’s Greatest Gamble, was published by Harlequin Mills & Boon in 1982. This was, as Parv noted, a book which “broke a few moulds at the time”, featuring a widowed single mother heroine dealing with the fallout of her late husband’s PTSD-induced gambling addiction.
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Five years ago, Courtney Peppernell was browsing in the supermarket for a Valentineâs Day card. It was hopeless. She was celebrating an anniversary with her partner, but nothing seemed to express what she wanted to say, or was aimed at the LGBTQI community.
âI decided to write my own,â she says, kick-starting her writing career (later self-publishing
Pillow Thoughts, which included a love letter to her now-wife).
Poet Courtney Peppernell knows a thing or two about love letters.
Credit:James Brickwood
This sentiment echoes how many people feel about Valentineâs Day, when cliched greeting cards and heart-shaped paraphernalia have turned private musings into private enterprise. And it also highlights the power of a personally written love letter.