I know everyone else has been back at work for a while now, but this week feels like the start of the year for me.  The last book (still to be titled) finally went through last Friday, after a last minute flurry when I was asked to add some tips for a Christmas party to go in the back of the book and since then I’ve been tidying up loose ends and trying to get myself organised.  Then came a request to write a blog for eHarlequin’s  “My Favorite Hero” event in February.  The brief was to write it from a hero’s perspective, so I sent an email from Rafe, the hero of Cinderella’s Wedding Wish to his ex colleagues in West Africa. I rather enjoyed doing that – 1000 words was a breeze after the slog of the last book!   The result should be up on eHarlequin on 6 February but if you want a sneak preview of what Rafe is like, you can always read an extract from the book here.

So now I’ve cleared the decks and must start thinking about the next book already if I’m not to end up in a frenzy like last time.  At least I’ve got my brief, from the Pick Your Own survey we ran last year.  As a result of your votes, I should be writing a book set in a city with a charming, laid-back hero and a sensible heroine and a marriage of convenience hook somewhere in there too … I have to admit that I haven’t got much further.  I did wonder whether to call the heroine Grace, which is a lovely name, I think, but that would mean I could never give Perdita’s friend Grace in Promoted: to Wife and Mother her own story.  Promoted: to Wife and Mother was originally intended to be the first of a trilogy - I opted out of writing three books one after the other - but there’s no reason I shouldn’t revisit Grace and Millie again one of these days.

So, maybe not Grace for my new heroine.  There, a decision made.  Progress already.  I haven’t actually agreed deadlines for 2009 with my editor yet, so I may have to have a chat with her before I get too carried away.  So far, I haven’t got many definite plans for the year.  Poor Mungo has to be left at the vet now to have his daily insulin injections, which means I can only really go away for a few days at a time, but I’m having a week in Greece at the beginning of August, and then, of course, there’s Tuscany at the end of September.  I saw a BBC programme about novelist Stella Duffy learning how to write a Mills & Boon on one of Sharon Kendrick’s courses at the Watermill at Posara, and I must say it looked lovely.  I am really looking forward to that and have been giving the course some thought. 

I don’t think I’ll make it back to the States for the RWA conference this year, but have just been remembering last year’s trip.  Barbara McMahon is blogging about our time in Yosemite with Barbara Hannay.   There was no electricity and we bonded over our mutual twitchiness about not being able to wash our hair!  Ah, happy days …