It’s time for another guest blog, and I’m enormously pleased to welcome now Kate Hardy, winner of the this year’s Romance Prize.  Kate has come down to earth long enough to tell us about her new book, Sold to the Highest Bidder , which is also out this March, and about her writing in general.  I’ve always liked Kate, ever since she foolishly admitted to thinking that I was glamorous (I was two sizes smaller then) so she is clearly a very, very nice person.  She is also a very successful one, with a writing schedule that puts mine to shame.  Not only does she write for two romance lines – Medical and Modern Extra - she also writes local history books, instead of just talking about it, the way I do, and that’s apart from bringing up a family and everything that goes along with that.  I can do intimidated too, Kate! 

Anyway, (cue drumroll) here is Kate herself....

I’m truly delighted to be celebrating the publication of Jessica’s 50th book. That’s a fabulous milestone: and I know just how much work goes into creating a short romantic novel with believable characters and a good plot. Every word has to carry its weight, moving the plot forward and the characters together. And Jessica does it so well – not only do her readers love her work, but she’s won critical acclaim, too, with several awards to her credit. I was privileged to be on the shortlist with her in 2006 for the RNA Romance Prize (and I was on her table, too, so I could clap REALLY loudly!).

The first time I met Jessica, I was incredibly intimidated by her.  It was my first Mills & Boon author lunch, so I was feeling a bit overawed to start with… and then I saw this incredibly glamorous woman in a gorgeous red dress, with matching shoes to die for and perfect hair. She was terrifying.

At a different author lunch, we started chatting, and I discovered that actually (despite being beautiful and glamorous) she was really nice and we had absolutely tons in common. Dogs. Music. A love of history. (I should mention here, I’m also very proud of Jessica for getting her PhD.) I think if we lived nearer each other we’d be terribly bad influences on each other (lunch, shoes, lunch, chocolate… you get the idea). And I think we also have similar methods of working, in that personal experiences spark off ideas. I can’t claim to have walked barefoot on the exotic beaches that Jessica has (!), but my latest release, Sold to the Highest Bidder, has a lot of personal things in it.

I think one of the fun parts about writing is taking something personal as a springboard, and then taking it further. Starting with the house: it’s actually an amalgam of several houses. The exterior belongs to a house in Norfolk which I would dearly, dearly love to buy (but, as my husband pointed out, apart from the fact it’s outside our budget, a moat does not go well with two inquisitive children and an even more inquisitive spaniel); the vegetable garden belongs to Oxburgh Hall (one of my favourite National Trust properties; I could really imagine living there); and the rhododendrons and lake belong to Blickling Hall (where we’ve spent a lot of time as a family, wandering through the gardens and feeding the geese at the lake – even my wallpaper on my computer is a picture of my husband and children sitting by said lake). With the exception of the library (borrowed in part from Blickling, when it was being restored), the interior of the house is all my imagination – as are the four-poster and the renovation plans.

Although I write for two very different lines – Modern Heat and Medical Romance – I do have a similar approach to both, in that I use real life as a springboard. A Baby of Her Own, my very first M&B, started life at my daughter’s bedside in hospital (her first Christmas, aged 7 weeks – but there is a happy ending in that the book was accepted on her first birthday and published on her second. She’s now 7 and very savvy: she claims that, as she’s the originator of my career at M&B, I owe her royalties… and she’s happy to be paid in chocolate and shoes!). I also do quite a bit of research, which has to be accurate – for Medical Romances, clearly the research is into medical conditions, symptoms and treatments, whereas in Modern Heat the research has varied from how to do latte art (for Breakfast at Giovanni’s – best excuse ever for touring cafes) through to architecture (The Cinderella Project), how to make a firework (Seeing Stars – and that started in ‘real life’, when I was organising our school’s firework display), and meteorology (One Night, One Baby).

Jessica asked me to talk about what it’s like, writing for two such different lines – and originally, I thought I probably did write differently for each line. Then I thought about it some more, and I realised that although the lines are very different, the way I write my books still has a lot in common. With Medical Romance, the medical bits have to drive the story forward or shed light on characters – it’s part of the setting and part of the romance. With Modern Heat, my nerdy tecchy bits either drive the story forward or shed light on the characters, too. With Medical Romance, you need a real-world feel and lots of secondary characters (your hero and heroine are medics, so they have to see patients!), whose job is to shed light on the characters or help move the story forward; with Modern Heat, I tend to have secondaries who do the same thing (again, using Giovanni as an example – his big, noisy Italian family have an important part to play in the story).

Settings, then. Surely it has to be settings. Modern Heat is meant to be sassy and stylish and urban. A lot of mine are set in London – but my hospital books tend to be set in a big city, too. My country GP practices have a Modern Heat parallel: Sold to the Highest Bidder is set in a country house. (I bent the rules a bit. Country house isn’t urban – but it is stylish…)

Sensuality levels? Medical Romances are regarded as ‘tender’ in the US and ‘sweet’ in the UK, and Modern Heat (as the name suggests) sizzles. Hmm. I think my sensuality levels are broadly similar in both lines – I don’t close the bedroom door in my Medicals. I did try writing one where they didn’t have sex for most of the book (Their Very Special Marriage), but I found it quite difficult as my characters, um, like going to bed with each other. I’m possibly a little more adventurous with the settings of my love scenes in Modern Heat (hmm – how am I going to top the tractor scene in Sold to the Highest Bidder?), but then again saying that is probably going to prompt me into doing something different with a Medical!

How about alpha heroes? Surely the Modern Heat hero is more alpha? Hmm. My editor says that the Kate Hardy alpha hero is clever, with a big heart. Which fits both lines.

At the end of the day, a romance novel is about character, conflict and a satisfying resolution. So I’m beginning to think that it doesn’t really matter which line an author writes for: it’s the voice that’s important. I’d be just as happy reading a Historical or a Modern or a Medical by Jessica Hart as I would a Romance, because even though the lines are nominally different (Historicals being set before the second world war, Modern being international glamour, Medical being set in a medical setting and Romance being ‘sweet’), if the name ‘Jessica Hart’ was on the cover I’d know exactly what to expect: a book with warm, realistic characters, a great sense of humour, and little details that stick in the memory for years.

Congrats again on your 50th book, Jessica. And I look forward to toasting your achievement at the M&B party in September!