Harlequin is celebrating it's 60th birthday today - Happy BIrthday Harlequin! - by giving away free books! Visit HARLEQUIN CELEBRATES to download yours!

Here is the complete list --

Harlequin American Romance, Once a Cowboy by Linda Warren

Harlequin Blaze, Slow Hands by Leslie Kelly

Harlequin Historical, His Lady Mistress by Elizabeth Rolls

Harlequin Intrigue, Crime Scene at Cardwell Ranch by B.J. Daniels

Harlequin Presents, Price of Passion by Susan Napier

Harlequin Romance, The Bride’s Baby by Liz Fielding

Harlequin Superromance, Snowbound by Janice Ka ...

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 wha ...

Well, just when you thought I’d finished with all the self-congratulation …  I’m thrilled to have been short-listed for the RNA’s Romance Prize again this year with Promoted: to Wife and Mother, so will be off to the Awards Lunch in London on 10th February to see who’ll be taking the rose bowl home this year.  Also on the shortlist is last year’s winner, Kate Hardy, who was talked about her book  Sold to the Highest Bidder on the blog here last year.  Congratulation ...

Well, here we are in 2009 – it hardly seems possible.  I was waxing lyrical about Egypt yesterday, remembering getting off the train in Aswan and the absolute hush as we watched the sun set over the Nile, or cycling out to the Valley of the Kings at midday, after all the tour groups had gone in the cool of the morning, so we had the tombs to ourselves (cue gusty sigh), and then I realised that it was twenty five years ago.  A quarter of a century.  It makes me feel quite odd just thinking about how quickly time goes – except when you’re bogged down in a book, when every minute drags, of course! 

Am not quite sure why I’m feeling so nostalgic at the moment.  Perhaps it’s because I’ve been to see the film “A ...

Hhhmmnn … interesting to re-read my last blog and see how confident I was about version #6.  What touching faith!  In the event, it was version #7 that made it to the end – or even version #8, if we’re going to be picky. I was just about to email the manuscript to my editor when I realised that I’d miscounted the total number of words, and had 5,000 more than I’d thought I had.  NOT a good moment.  I had to slash and burn my way through the manuscript again, cutting whole scenes, to get rid of 2,500 words.  I don’t suppose I actually had my eyes screwed up while I was doing it, but that’s certainly what it felt like!  All in all, it was a real Mistletoe Marriage of a book (plus RSI – excellent!) and I feel as if I’ve been lashed to my computer for months.  I let myself have a morning off to have coffee with a friend a couple of weeks ago, and it fel ...

Remember me?  Long time, no blog, I know.  It feels like a lot longer than a month since the party, but the balloons have yet to go down and are currently decorating my shed while I wait for them to deflate as I can’t quite bring myself to pop them.  I was hoping this might be symbolic, but given that I have been horribly, horribly blocked on the writing front ever since, I have had to conclude that maybe not!   I have just restarted this book for the sixth time.  The heroine’s name has changed four times, and is now back to the original (Cassie), the hero’s twice.  These are not good signs!  I closed down, shut myself away and had an excruciating week when I wrote four thousand words a day, knowing that it was all useless, but unable to think of anything else to do.  It was like trying to run waist-deep in mud.  Ugh.

The problem, I eventually realised, was that ...

The 50 Books Party was a huge success and I had a wonderful time, so feel as if I have been well and truly celebrated!  The champagne cocktails were fabulous.  I’m not sure if you can see in the photograph but a friend gave me a box of the sweetest pink and white sugar hearts, which I used instead of a sugar cube at the bottom of every glass.  They were soaked in brandy and then topped up with champagne, and I can absolutely recommend them as a way to get a party going! 

There was no chance to take photos during the party itself, and a ...

As usual, time is running away with me and I am making very slow progress on my current book, in spite of regularly scaring myself by counting up the ever-decreasing number of days left before the deadline.  I’ve been preoccupied on other fronts, not least of which is the preparation for the party I’m having this Saturday to celebrate 50 books … and that will be absolutely and positively the last celebration, I promise!   I have been buying cases of champagne (well, sparkling wine) and candles and making delicious little cheesy biscuits in the shape of hearts but putting off the less exciting aspects of getting ready, like cleaning the house, in the hope that they’ll seem less important in the last

This week I'm blogging on Kate Hewitt's blog where where Kate and I are chatting about the differences between Presents and Romance. 

Unbelievably, October is here already!  This is both good and bad.    Bad because it means I’ve only seven weeks to write the next book and I haven’t written a word yet.  (Why do I do this to myself every time?  I suppose I must need the adrenalin rush, but I really wish I could break myself of the habit.) But good because it means the culmination of all this celebration when my 50th book, Last-Minute Proposal, hits the shelves at last.  I’ve been making such a fuss about it all year that I’ve got blasé about the wh ...