Partial

About my partial. The explosive beginning has exploded. Vanished into the ether. Gone for ever. As you will no doubt realise I’m having to make some changes. Why is it that whenever I feel really happy with what I’ve written my ed thinks otherwise? The answer is because I’m too close to my work to see its faults. Even though you’d think I’d be able to do that after writing all these years! I don’t understand myself sometimes.

However, I’ve started again today. And guess what? I’m happy with what I’ve written. Don’t laugh. Don’t say, here she goes again. Because when I’ve finished the book I shall go over everything with a fine toothcomb. I might miss a few things but I’ll give it my best shot. It’s promised for the end of January so I need to pull out all the stops.

Will someone cancel Christmas this year?

Christmas Release

I’ve just heard that my 2004 book

HER HUSBAND’S CHRISTMAS BARGAIN
is going on sale in the US this Christmas.

Here’s a taste of the story.

When Italian businessman Luigi Constanzo discovers that Megan, his beautiful estranged wife, is also the mother of his child, he is incensed! She’s left him no alternative: he will do anything in his power to possess his wife and child.

Megan is less than impressed when Luigi turns up on her doorstep – the week before Christmas! Luigi is as arrogant as ever – and still as impossible to resist. But Luigi is adamant…Megan will be a wife to him – in every way – once more!


ALSO in Australia and New Zealand my 2002 Greek book
THE MEDITERRANEAN TYCOON is on sale in their ‘escape to…..’ series. It’s being twinned with the wonderful Sara Craven’s SMOKESCREEN MARRIAGE under the imprint ‘escape to… Greek Affairs’

I love it when I get copies of reprints or foreign editions – the trouble is my bookshelves are groaning under the load – and I refuse to put any of them out of sight!

Do Fish Have Feelings?

When the weather gets cold, when there are frost warnings - as we’ve had recently - we always pop a heater into our fish pool in case it freezes. (It doesn’t stop the whole surface from freezing but it keeps an area around the heater free from ice.) It consists of a round disc that floats and a covered element that hangs below it in the shape of a tube about six to eight inches long. It always amuses my DH and me when we see the fish huddling around it . They look like a group of children around a fire.

I read on Nicola Marsh’s blog recently about the waiting game. It’s a game I’m playing at the moment while waiting to hear from my editor about my partial. Penny found herself sharing Santo’s bed and is already regretting it and since they’re about to go on holiday to Santo’s home country of Italy, taking his five year old daughter with them, I wonder whether she’ll be able to resist him again? Or will the magic of Italy weave its spell?

While I’m waiting to hear from my ed I plan to do some Christmas shopping. I realised how quickly the festive season is coming when we visited Toys ‘R’ Us yesterday – with grandson in tow – and saw people with shopping trolleys piled high with toys. For their own kids? If so they’re very lucky. Or for friends and relatives offsprings? Who knows, but the shop was certainly doing a roaring trade.

Exercise

Sunday is not a writing day for me, but as I was on my treadmill this morning (Yes, I do try to exercise. Sitting on my bum all day isn’t good for the joints!) thinking about a part of my book that I’m not happy with, I came up with a solution and jumped off to write it down. Three times I did this. And the thought occurred to me that I could do with a tape recorder or something similar, to record my thoughts when I’m pounding the treadmill. Perhaps I ought to put in on my Christmas wish list?

Actually the treadmill’s a bit of a contentious issue between me and my husband. He bought it me because he said I never got any exercise. I had used to go for walks but somehow it dropped off. Perhaps because it’s no fun on my own. So when it was new I duly used it every day. You should have seen me the first time. I thought I was going to fall off. And I still can’t do it without hanging on like grim death. My sense of balance is atrocious. Always has been. Even as a child I could never roller skate.

But the thing is I don’t do it every day now. If I’m not writing I insist that I’m getting exercise by doing whatever else I’m doing, housework, gardening, shopping, ironing. Surely they’re all forms of exercise? Come on, girls, stick up for me!

Hero

This is Santo. My gorgeous hero. He's not always smiling. I have an amazing cutting from a newspaper where he's looking straight at the camera and looks most stern and forbidding. Exactly the look I want for my hero. I've discovered thousands of photos of this man (no prizes for guessing who he is) with a whole range of different expressions. (Actually, if you live the other side of the world you may not know him. So I'll tell you. It's Jose Mourinho. Ex England football manager. A controversial character by all accounts. Not that I follow football.)

So what can I tell you about Santo? He's a workaholic naturally. Runs a global advertising agency. Although he's Italian he lives in England. He likes fast cars and race horses. He's divorced with a five year old daughter. And if I tell you any more I'll give the story away.

Oh, yes, he's never short of a girlfriend. He enjoys playing the field, no strings attached. Until he meets Penny! And in Penny he's certainly met his match.

Heroine

My new book is well under way so I thought I’d post you a picture of my heroine. I love this photo because she has a cheeky look in her eyes.

When I mentioned in a previous post that my protagonists names were Santo and Penny – they were just that, names. Now they’ve become real people. Penny is feisty, not afraid to speak her mind when she sees injustice done – which we see her doing on the very first page! I told you it was going to be an explosive beginning. She runs an antiques shop but it’s up for sale as it’s not doing very well, so she’s somewhat reluctantly taken up a position of nanny to Santo’s young daughter.

Penny has no current boyfriend – she was let down badly some years ago by a man who she thought loved her as much as she loved him. It turned out that she was one of a long string of conquests. It’s made her very bitter towards men, very wary, determined never to let another one close.

Enter Santo De Luca.

I’ll tell you about him tomorrow.

Eden Project

Before .........and.......... After

While we were away last week we visited the Eden Project in Cornwall. For those of you who don't know what this is, a disused china clay quarry has been converted into the most amazing global gardens. I call them gardens, but it's so much more. Huge biomes have been erected - like giant conservatories. Inside one is a rainforest containing nothing but tropical plants, the other is Mediterranean, and outside are such a variety of plants that it takes your breath away. I could tell you so much about it but it would take far too long. All I can say is that if you ever get the opportunity to go, please do so.

This is how it was summed up in the catalogue:

• Take an exhausted, deep, steep-sided clay pit 60m deep, the area of 35 football pitches, with no soil, 15 metres below the water table.


• Carve the pit into a flat-bottomed bowl and landscape the sides.


• Mix and add 83,000 tonnes of soil made from recycled waste.


• Add superb architecture that draws inspiration from nature to remind us of human potential.


• Colonise with a huge diversity of plants, many that we use every day (but don't often get to see).


• Harvest the water draining into the pit and use it to irrigate our plants (and flush the loos!)


• Season with people from all walks of life.

And by the way, I have the title for my Australian book. THE BILLIONAIRE’S BLACKMAIL BARGAIN. I think I told you that it’s not being published until September next year so it’s a long wait. And yes, Cade did get a bargain. He blackmailed Simone (his ex girlfriend) into becoming his mistress but then fell in love with her all over again. Although it took me longer to write this book than any other I really do miss Simone and Cade, I loved writing their story and I hope that when the book’s out you’ll love reading about them. It’s set in the Whitsundays, so there are long hot days – and even steamier nights!

Anne Weale

I was truly sorry to hear that Anne Weale had died. I have known her for very many years, she was truly a lady, so elegant and gracious - and always controversial. It was why many of HM&B writers admired her so much. She was not afraid to speak her mind and upheld all the old traditions, not always happy with the way things were changing. She will be sorely missed in the writing fraternity.

New book

I’ve been away for the last week (half term and took my grandson away) but now I’m back and I have the news I’ve been waiting for. My editor has read my plot and really likes it. She has a few reservations about the second half but I’ve been working on those and I’m ready to go. I’ve promised it her for the end of January, which sounds a long way away but I have so many things on this next week that I can’t see me starting it yet.

My hero is Santo (he’s Italian) and my heroine is Penny (she’s English) – unless I change their names – which sometimes happens. Sometimes when you’re writing you discover that the name doesn’t suit the character. I even find myself occasionally calling either my hero or heroine by a completely different name, and then I realise that that’s the name I should have given them in the first place.

Santo’s suddenly found himself in charge of a five year old daughter he never knew he’d got and Penny – you’ve guessed it – is going to be the child’s nanny. I’m planning an explosive start and can’t wait to get going.

Autumn

Don’t you just love Autumn? \There is a tree in front of my bedroom window that is turning all sorts of wonderful colours. The last few mornings it’s been quite misty but as the sun has broken through it has backlit the leaves and they looked stunning. It’s a pleasure to wake up in a morning just to see it.

Which reminds me that the second book I had published was called Shades of Autumn – set, as you can imagine, at this time of year. The hardbacks in those days were plain red with a paper sleeve and an artist’s impression of the characters. My hero looks like a young James Mason!

No news yet regarding my synopsis.

The Queen

Amongst other things I’ve been busy this week plotting out my new book. I’ve sent my editor a synopsis and now I’m playing the waiting game. Well, not entirely, because further ideas keep popping into my mind which I scribble down on all sorts of bits of paper. And then it’s like a jigsaw trying to fit them all together. By the time my editor gets back to me I’ll probably have an entirely different story.

I’ve also heard when my Australian book’s going to be published. September 2008! It came as quite a shock. Such a long time. I thought it would be in about six months. I guess I’ll have to put the thought behind me and concentrate on my new book.

I’m looking forward to meeting my Italian hero properly. He’s just a picture on my wall at the moment. It’s when he becomes a real person that the fun begins. Which reminds me of a book I was given as a Sunday School prize when I was about thirteen or fourteen. It’s called When the Fun Begins and is about a group of schoolchildren leaving school and starting work. I wonder if school leavers really see work as fun? The fun for me is creating new characters, becoming a part of their lives, living a different life for a few months. I’m getting quite excited just thinking about it.

Oh, I almost forgot to tell you about the highlight of my week. A new Armed Forces Memorial was opened by the Queen on Friday for all the service men who have lost their lives since the Second World War. We were fortunate enough to get tickets and after the ceremony we (my DH and I) were walking along one of the pathways watching old planes doing a fly by as a salute to those named on the Memorial, when a policeman asked us to step to one side because a car was coming. It was the Queen and Prince Philip! We thought they’d left. I waved and she smiled and waved back and the Prince waved as well. We were just a couple of feet away from them. We felt so lucky.

Blackpool

We went to Blackpool to see the Illuminations over the weekend. It’s been a year or two since we last went and I have to admit they were excellent this year. (For those of you in other countries who don’t know where Blackpool is, it’s on the north west coast of England and is a favourite holiday resort with excellent beaches and a theme park with rides that are not for the faint hearted – which is me!)

We took our grandson and one of his friends and they had the time of their lives, and when darkness fell we were all duly impressed with the Lights which are strung both along the road and across the road. Apparently the Illuminations started in 1879 with 8 arc lamps and now they stretch for six miles and can be seen from space. They cost 2.4 million to stage and attract over 3.5 million visitors in 9 weeks – and I wished I’d taken my camera so that I could have shown you one or two of the displays.

Perhaps another time…

It's a yes!

Hurrah, hurrah, my Australian book’s been accepted!

I have no title for it yet and no idea when it will be published but I am so pleased. Now I can finally put it to bed. Simone and Cade can take a rest as well until it’s their turn to enter the world of books. Of course they do live in the Whitsundays – so you can just imagine what they’ll be doing, can’t you? Sailing, snorkelling, lazing around until the yacht charter company’s up and running again. (Big sigh!) All this makes me wish I was still with them. Never mind I have new people to meet. My next hero’s going to be a gorgeous Italian. I can’t wait to get started with him – except that I haven’t quite worked out his story yet…

No news

I’ve been away for a few days catching my breath after my London trip and I was hoping to have news from my editor when I got back. However she rang me to say she hadn’t yet had time to read my manuscript – so the waiting goes on. I’ve caught up on some reading – which is sheer luxury because I hardly ever find time to read when I’m working on a book, and we’re revamping part of the garden, which is a major project..

I’d like to plug a book here. My friend Margaret Callaghan has just had an on-line romance released by Moonlit Romance. She’s been trying so hard to break back into the market after two of her previous publishers stopped publishing romance, and at last she’s done it. The book is called Chasing Rainbows and can be purchased here. I’m in the middle of reading it at the moment and can’t wait to get back to it. I’ll tempt your appetite with the opening paragraph:

Hell, but she was beautiful, the most beautiful woman in the world. His woman, he’d foolishly believed, that long hot summer that stubbornly refused to fade in his mind. Because try though he would, he couldn’t forget he smell of her, the taste of her, the feel of her. Or maybe the stark truth was he didn’t want to forget. Because he’d loved her, and she’d lied. And for that he’d never forgive her. And savouring the memory kept the hate alive.

And last but not least, the winner of my September competition over on my website is Nathalie Najm. Nathalie, if you email me your address I’ll send your prize.

It was an interesting competition, I had more responses than I expected, and it was hard deciding the winner. Thank you to all who took part; I’ll be announcing another competition soon.