I am feeling very discombobulated today, which is a shame as I should be feeling elated at having sent off Honeymoon with the Boss at long last.  But I managed to break my glasses irreparably on Friday night , which meant that Saturday was spent replacing them as a matter of some urgency as I can’t read or write without them, and I still had two days to work on the book before my deadline.  It turns out that it takes two weeks to get a new pair of rimless glasses, so I had to settle for a pair with frames which I don’t particularly like and for which I had to fork out over £300!  And it’s a slightly new prescription which I’m finding hard to adjust to, so between the rims and the blurriness and a general feeling of frumpiness (not to mention the hole in my bank account)&a ...

Odd to think that this time last week I was in San Francisco ...  I’ve only been home four days, but already the RWA conference seems like forever ago.  The conference itself was something to have experienced, but I have to admit that Yosemite was the highlight of trip for me.  For the last few months I’ve been corresponding with Barbara Hannay  in Australia and Barbara McMahon in California as we tried to put together a workshop on writing for a global audience to present at the conference.  The plan was that we would all meet up and spend three days in Yosemite so that we could talk about it face to face at last, and I have to say that it worked brilliantly.  I kno ...

Greetings from San Francisco! Workshop went well, and I have survived the conference (just).  Looking forward to going home now, though.

Today's guest blogger is Donna Alward.  A big congratultions to Donna for winning the Traditional category of the Booksellers Best Awards at the conference!!!!!  Now, over to Donna...

When I was an aspiring author, one of my favourite “research” books was a Romance called “Christmas Eve Marriage ...

Jessica isn't here this week because, as we all know, she's in San Francisco for the Romance Writers of America conference!

So I'm here to remind you that Jessica, Barbara Hannay, Barbara McMahon and editor Lucy Brown will be giving a panel entitled "Emotion, Emotion, Emotion: Writing Romance with Global Appeal" from 9:45 to 11:45 on Friday morning (August 1).  Don't miss it!

And to fill in the time for those of you not able to go to the conference, here's an article Jessica wrote last week for The Pink Heart Society: 

This Writer's Wednesday Romance author Jessica Hart extolls on the pain of the dreadline...er...deadline...even as she prepares to celebrate a couple of pretty ter ...

Do you ever have times when it seems technology turns against you?  Every time I switch on a light at the moment, a bulb goes and the entire circuit cuts out.  My television has stopped working, for reasons best known to itself, the fuse in the iron has blown, a whole shelf collapsed in one of my kitchen cupboards, the shower door is broken and yesterday I had to admit defeat and go out and buy a new printer.  I am getting a little anxious in case my bad technological vibes extend to the plane next week!  I am a nervous flyer at the best of times.  I’m that white-knuckled passenger next to you who spends take off with eyes squeezed shut and hands gripped tightly together.  Pathetic, I know, but think of me on Thursday as I fly off to San Francisco… 

This week I'm delighted to welcome Nell Dixon who is just back from the RNA conference and is here to tell her about her latest book, out on July 12th!

I’ve always said I wished I could write like Jessica, so it’s a great honour to be invited to help celebrate her fiftieth book.

I think I’ve read most of those books and enjoyed all of them.
 Jessica was one of the authors who inspired me to try for publication and this July sees the first of my books for

As predicted, the sense of calm engendered by my walk around the Isle of Wight evaporated within a couple of days, as three major deadlines tapped me on the shoulder and reminded me they had to be met before 24th July, when I fly off to San Francisco.  This is always the point when I vow to take up yoga or something similarly effective at relieving tension, but of course, the moment the book is in, I forget all about it and revert to my usual indolence.  Unfortunately, the two other deadlines have coincided with Chapter 7 of my current work in progress.  As regular readers of this blog will know, Chapter 7 is the point at which the awful realisation strikes that the book is a disaster and will have to be completely rewritten.  I know, I know: it’s a pattern, and the only thing to do is to write through it, but I wish the t ...

I’ve just got back from a week away and am feeling bizarrely jet lagged, in spite of the fact that I’ve only come up from London on the train today.  There’s something about being on holiday that makes you feel as if you’re in a different time zone somehow, no matter how close to home you are.  I don’t think the Isle of Wight counts as an exotic location, but it feels a million miles away already.  We spent four days walking round the coastline, and loved it, even though I threatened to spoil everything by getting a blister on the first day.  I was so sure I’d worn my boots in, too.  At one point I wondered if I was going to have to give in and get a bus, which would have been SO disappointing, but fortunately I’d taken a pair of walking sandals, so I was ...

It’s a real pleasure to welcome Kate Hewitt to my blog this month.  If you haven’t come across Kate yet, then you have a treat in store. Kate is a relatively new author writing for the Presents/Modern line, and her third book, Ruthless Boss, Hired Wife, is out now. I read her first book, The Italian’s Chosen Wife, at Christmas and really enjoyed it.  It struck me then how much more sophisticated a read it was than my own first book which I was writing in the evenings and at weekends this time 19 years ago (er …I wish I hadn’t worked that one out!)  I had to write quite a few books before I really understood about things like hooks, motivations, emotional tension and the rest of it, and I always feel that Tessa, my first editor, ...

It’s a busy week, so I’m just dropping in for a brief hello.  All of a sudden life seems out of control again, but I am coming to the belated realisation that this is the norm for most of us nowadays.  My new resolution is to breathe deeply and remind myself that this is a pattern and that things do somehow, often inexplicably, get done in the end.  Am not, however, taking any bets on how long this serene resolve will last!

I’ve only managed about five pages of my rough draft since I last checked in, so pitiful progress to report on the writing front.  But elsewhere on the website, things seem to be happening without me, which is just as well. I was very excited to see that there are now 48 flags alight on the Where ...