I'm blogging on the eHarlequin 2007 RNA Romance Prize blog this month.  Here's what I posted today:

I've decided to make it a day trip to London from York next Friday, but that still means booking Mungo into kennels for a couple of nights, as it's too long a day to leave him on his own, and he's too old and grumpy to allow anyone else to take him for a walk. It's also meant forking out for a flexible day return at an extortionate price, but once dog and trains were under control, I could turn my attention yesterday to the knotty problem of what to wear ...

You will be amazed to hear that I have not, in fact, been inundated with calls from top designers wanting to style my "look" for the Awards Lunch, but having seen some of the disasters at the Oscars I can't help feeling I'm better off without them. I turned instead to my two goddaughters, aged 16 and 13, who have been staying with me all this week while their mother (my own persona ...

I'm blogging on the eHarlequin 2007 RNA Romance Prize blog this month.  Here's what I posted today:

I was in the kitchen, foraging for some comfort food, when Norma Curtis rang, and the Romance Prize was the last thing on my mind. It took me a little time to register why she was calling, and when I did I wasted rather a lot of time explaining that there had obviously been some mistake, as I had been on the shortlist LAST year, not this one. Eventually Norma managed to convince me that no, she hadn't muddled up her notes, and yes, she had called the right person. I must say that I was very surprised indeed to make the final for a second year running, and even more so when I remembered to ask which book had been shortlisted. I think I expected it to have been Business Arrangement Bride, but when I trotted back upstairs to flick through a copy of Her Ready-Made Family, I have to say that it was better than I'd remembered!

I often find it takes a year or ...

I'm blogging on the eHarlequin 2007 RNA Romance Prize blog this month.  Here's what I posted today:

I wish I had a fabulous story like Nicola's to explain how HER READY-MADE FAMILY came about! No glamorous Cavalier ghosts for me, I'm afraid ... I suspect the inspiration for my book came from the amount of time I seemed to spend at my local vet with a dog and two cats (sadly both gone now). I've always thought that there's something very attractive about a man who can handle animals gently and firmly (a bit like a big man holding a baby, very hard to resist!) I'd have to say that my Westie, Mungo, clearly doesn't agree. He HATES going to the vet and cringes and shakes in the waiting room in the most embarrassing way. What a baby.

I gave Morgan, the heroine of HRMF, a Westie too, although hers is overweight and inherited from her mother. I like Morgan. She's got a big nose and is a bit spiky and brisk and neurotically insecure (now, who does she remind ...

I'm blogging on the eHarlequin 2007 RNA Romance Prize blog this month.  Here's my post from today in case you don't make it over there:

Hello, everyone! My turn to blog today, and I'm very chuffed to see a photograph of my mantelpiece on display on eHarlequin! That is indeed the much-coveted Betty Neels Rose Bowl that I won last April, full of the gorgeous roses that Harlequin Mills & Boon sent me after I got home. I've put other flowers in the bowl over the course of the year, but none have been as lovely as those original roses. It was a real honour to have the rose bowl to admire on my mantelpiece all year, and I've got to admit that I'm really missing it now! My sitting room has been looking a bit empty since I handed back to the RNA to have this year's winner's name inscribed, but I gave it good farewell polish so it should be suitably gleaming for whoever is lucky enough to take it home on 27th April!

It's hard to believe now that I dith ...

April already, and the ticking of deadlines grows ever louder ...  But I am one down, three to go for the year, so things could be worse.  Almost one down, anyway.  One doesn’t want to count one’s chickens before they are fully hatched;  I sent off my completed manuscript on Wednesday night and am waiting to hear back from my editor if she wants any revisions.  Hopefully she won’t want me to do anything major to it (all digits crossed)  which means I should now get cracking with the 30,000 word story that has to be in by the middle of May.

I’ve just been writing a rough (a very rough) outline, full of maybes and questions to myself, for that.  The story has had a slow but rather typical gestation, starting out in London with lunch with my editor, followed by a long tube journey with my friend, Diana, who has been having her plotting ideas dismissed for nearly twenty years now.&a ...

Thanks to Jane, Donna and Melissa, who all commented on the last blog, I’m back again (and not sure whether to thank them or to think … darn it!)  I’ve been in London, where I had a very nice lunch with my lovely editor, followed by martinis at the Goring Hotel … absolutely fabulous and after three the world was looking a much better place, I can tell you, although I nearly passed out when I saw the bill!  They were delicious though, so I really think one of heroines will have to be taken for a drink there one of these days – it’s what research is all about.

 I couldn’t wait to  leave London when I lived there, but I really enjoy going back now, and the city was looking its best in the spring sunshine.  The only problem with London is how big it is, and how far you have to walk – and the fact that I have never been able to  find comfortable shoes ...

Here I am, back staring at a blank screen and pondering the nature and benefits of blogging.  Blogs are like mobile phones or computers … it hardly seems any time since they were a kind of specialised interest – you knew what it was, sort of,  but it wasn’t anything to do with you – and suddenly they’re everywhere and you wonder: when did that happen? 

The first time I came across a computer was when I worked for Operation Raleigh in the 1980s, and it took up a whole room.  Now it’s hard to imagine life without them.  I wrote my first few books on an electric typewriter, endlessly Tippexing and altering page numbers, but eventually inherited my brother’s Amstrad, which changed my life.  I’m always very resistant to new technology and then adapt with the fervour of a new convert the moment I succumb (usually about five years after everyone else has ...

In the end I managed 42 pages of an initial draft – phew!  I feel quite happy with the story line, and think I can see how it’s all going to work. The trouble is that once I’ve got over the panic of what the story is going to be, it feels in my head as if I’ve already done it, and I can’t be bothered with writing it all out!  But there’s only one way to get the story from my head onto the page, and that’s writing …

Now comes the hard graft of bulking it out and making the characters and their emotions come to life.  I find it very hard to concentrate at this stage, and have been endlessly distracted over the last couple of days by visiting Liz Fielding and Natasha Oakley, who’ve been blogging on eHarlequin, and attending the Pink Heart Society Party.  Much time was wasted trying to register at Yahoo and eHarlequin, and I got thoroughly confused about what ...

In spite of spending the last two weeks telling myself that today is the day I am going to sit down and start writing, I have only managed five pages of rough notes so far.  It’s extraordinary how much time I can waste doing anything other than sit down at my computer and write.   Actually getting to the computer isn’t too much of a problem; it’s the opportunities for procrastination that it offers, especially now that I have broadband.  I have never been one for surfing the internet, but as soon as Chapter 1 beckons, there I am, Googling like mad on the tenuous grounds that it is really “research”. 

I’ve decided to open the book with my hero and heroine meeting on a leadership development course.  There’s not much call for leadership development when you’re an author, but I have plenty of friends who seem to spend their whole time being sent on these courses.  One was very miffed to find that on some psychometric tes ...