NEWS FLASH! Jessica's book Christmas Eve Marriage won the Best Traditional Romance section of the Romance Writers of America's annual RITA contest.

OK, I’ll admit right now that I didn’t get into that red dress for my graduation, in spite of squandering a fortune on gym fees and even a personal trainer for a few sessions. All to no avail, though, so I had to go out and buy new black dress instead (well, rude not to, really). Here is picture of me looking extremely smug in my doctoral bonnet, and if you’re wondering why I’m holding the cardboard roll that is masquerading as my PhD at an odd angle, it’s because I was trying to hide the fact that I hadn’t had time to do my nails. I had a wonderful day, and was made much of by those I love most in the world. It did feel a momentous occasion, marking the end of nine years’ work on my thesis. Funding a PhD was the reason I started writing romance in the first place, so it did work out … although both the writing and the research took rather longer than I bargained for!

Anyway, the t ...

I’ve just re-read what I wrote on 8 th May and was touched by my confidence that I would have a complete draft of the next book completed by this stage … you’d think I would learn, wouldn’t you? It is all very well planning these things, but as it turned out I needed the last three weeks to faff around, go out for coffee, decide to lose enough weight to get into my red dress for my graduation in July (another plan that has yet to see any actual action), admire my new kitchen, buy the most beautiful pair of jewelled sandals and three outfits to go with them, and then worry about my credit card bill, and so on and so forth.

So really I have nothing to show for the last month, although I have done a synopsis, which I discussed with my editor today, as a result of which I am cutting the marriage of convenience angle but keeping the children. It is always really useful to throw ideas around with an editor (nearly as good as a bottle of wine at the bar at City Scre ...

I’ve got to admit, I was a few days late sending in my manuscript, but if I hadn’t had to spend a Saturday stripping wallpaper so that the plasterer could come in the following Monday (tip: don’t arrange to have a new kitchen installed the same week as your deadline – madness!) I would have scraped under my deadline by the skin of my teeth. As it was, I still had about ten pages to go before going away for the May long weekend, so I didn’t in the end finish until I came back last Tuesday. In spite of having four full months to think about and write this book, it ended up with the usual deadline frenzy in the last couple of weeks. I do seem to need the adrenalin rush of a looming deadline to pull my finger out and get down to work, but it is exhausting at the time – and (I am reliably informed) utterly exasperating for my loved ones who have to put up with me while it’s all going on.

Anyway, it is done out of my hand for now, while I wait to hear back from my editor about whether ...

STOP PRESS!!

Just when I was thinking that actually I had nothing new at all to report for this month, I had a very exciting phone call! It was from the Romance Writers of America on Good Friday to tell me that Christmas Eve Marriage was a finalist in the Traditional Category for the RITA awards – a huge thrill for me as I have never been short-listed for anything before.

I so nearly didn’t pick up the phone, too. I was turning my compost (the way you do) before I went away and debated with myself whether I could be bothered to take off my gardening gloves or not. Fortunately I did in the end manage to wrestle one off, or I would have missed the deadline to send in five more books for the final judging. I was due to leave for a couple of weeks ...

Well, my plan to have finished a 150 page draft by the end of March turned out as usual: I managed a hundred pages, decided it was all a waste of time, I would never be able to make a book out of it, my career was over, etc., etc., etc., gave up, and then started all over again. Although it feels like pointless rubbish, the first draft did make me realise that my heroine needed some additional motivation for her resistance to the hero, her estranged husband, when he turns up, so I had to think a bit more about what their marriage had been like and why it had broken down, and that turned out to be a useful exercise. I also felt that the plot as I’d originally planned it didn’t have enough focus to keep the tension going until the end, and I think I have solved that one too, although I may think differently when I do get to the end.

So I have drawn myself up a new timetable to finish by the end of April, although it is not ideal to be away in Scotland for a co ...

 As you may have gathered, the website was dormant all last year while I concentrated on finishing my thesis, and then got caught up in some very pressurised deadlines to produce two books at the end of the year - not to mention crises on just about every front as life went awry there for a while! But all that is now in the past and things are now back on track … which leaves me no excuse not to get on with refreshing the website. I’ve always had a very positive response to the writing diary, so here it is again. I did try and think of a way to change the format, but was completely out of inspiration so it’s just what it was before – if this is your first visit, it’s a bit of a ramble about what I’ve been doing and where I’m at on the writing front (usually stuck!)

So … here I am, hoping that the effects of having to rewrite an absolutely disastrous book over Christmas aren’t going to be lasting. It was my fortieth book, and I suppose I thought I kn ...

I am back in romance writing mode after the summer, and working on a book set in Crete, where I just happened to spend two weeks in August … I always like reliving my holidays! Am currently half way through Chapter 3, and all was going well until I was struck down with a lurgy which has left me looking and feeling utterly revolting. I am huddled over my blow heater, with the central heating on full, piggy eyes streaming, bones aching, nose red and raw, and feeling very sorry for myself altogether. The fact that this is obviously just a cold and I will be better in a day or two is not helping at all! I am a bit twitchy about falling too far behind on my writing schedule though, so really must pull myself together and get back to work.

This will be the last diary entry for the time being. I was concerned earlier this year that it might have been getting a bit repetitive after two years (you can catch up on my writing ups and downs below!), and once this book is finish ...

I have just sent off a first draft of the short story to be serialised weekly in July on www.eHarlequin.com. It’s to be called Just One Kiss, and I enjoyed writing it rather more than I thought I would, although it was difficult sticking to the 10,000 word length. My first version ran to over 13,500 words, so some pretty brutal cutting went on yesterday! I had some trouble, too, putting a “cliffhanger” at the end of each chapter, and remembering to recap the essential points of the plot each time for any readers joining half way through. But for someone as verbose as I am, it was a good exercise to write to such a tight formula, and fun to revisit the characters from the City Brides series, even if I ended up cutting most of their best lines. I even managed to get in a mention of Martha, the heroine of The Boss’s Baby Plan (which I had just finished the last time I updated the diary), making her Caro ...

Well, as suspected, I didn’t get the book finished while in London – one and three quarter chapters was the best I could do – and a crisis duly materialised when the chapter I had written while I was there vanished from the disk I was saving it onto. NB: always save onto the hard disk as well! I know this now, as I have been told it by countless men who have sucked in their teeth and shaken their heads at my rashness in entrusting my work to a floppy disk. By the time I’d heard this for what felt like the fifteenth time I was beginning to get a bit tight-lipped, but had to bite my tongue as it was a man who recovered my chapter (my hero!). And to be honest, it was worth enduring the lecture not to have to write it all over again. If it had been left to me, I would still be blubbing and beating my head against the desk with frustration – or possibly hunting round for a hammer to take out my feelings on the computer, because, really, what is the point of a machine that tells you the disk isn’t formatte ...