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, really taught me how to write.  It seems that nowadays new writers like Kate are already very professional by the time their first book is accepted, and I suspect I had it easy by comparison. 

Here’s Kate now:

I'm so thrilled to be here on Jessica's blog, helping celebrate her 50th book! Back in 1995, Jessica's book The Right Kind of Man (Skye and Lorimer's story) inspired me to try my own hand at writing romance. I was living in New York City at the time, and I can still remember sitting in a crowded diner on a rainy winter night, devouring the book along with my hamburger before I ever so reluctantly headed out to an evening meeting.

Soon after I began my first manuscript, aimed at Mills & Boon's Tender line, which has since morphed into straight Romance. That manuscript was set in New York City and the heroine was a young, spunky woman who worked in nonprofit--based pretty much on myself, I'm sorry to say. And no surprises here: it didn't sell.

Still, I kept trying, and wrote four more manuscripts aimed at Tender, all of them rejected. Then I took a long (six year) break and wrote short stories for women's magazines before finally deciding to try another romance in 2006. Yet this time the story that flowed from my fingertips and onto my computer was not aimed at Tender--in fact, after writing the prologue in one sitting, I realized with astonishment and some alarm that it was much more of a Presents story.

I still remember sitting back in bafflement, thinking, how can I write those strong Alphas? International, glitzy settings? All that drama and intensity?! Still, I kept writing, in part just to see where this was going. That was July 2006--in February 2007 I sold
that story to Presents, and it was released in December 2007 as The Italian's Chosen Wife. And then I started on my next Presents story, and realized that I actually could write those Alpha heroes, those glitzy settings... I even liked all that drama! But I'm still surprised by it, and every time I tap into that high emotion I shake my head and think 'where is this coming from?'

Yet that, for me, is part of the joy of being a writer--how your own writing can surprise you! For years I wrote what I thought Mills & Boon and all of its consumers wanted to read (they didn't) and when I finally wrote what *I* wanted to write, it was something completely different from what I expected. I'm about to start my seventh book (actually I should have started several weeks ago), and my third book, Ruthless Boss, Hired Wife, is out on shelves in the UK now. I'm still looking forward to being surprised as I see where each story and its characters take me, but to get away from all that high drama and enjoy a wonderful, take-me-away read, I still pick up a Jessica Hart. And funnily enough, in a few months I'm moving back to New York City--this time with my husband and soon-to-be four children--so I suppose everything really does come full circle!

Have you ever been surprised by what you've written?

Thanks, Kate!  I'll be taking a little break for a week or two but don't forget to keep visiting the Pick Your Own page to vote and Where Are You so I know which country you are visiting from!.