Anyone who’s ever driven around English country lanes will be familiar with the antics of the pheasant.  Beautiful birds, but foolish to a fault.  They explode out of the hedgerows without warning, and dash across the road, only to stop halfway across, dash back, jerk forwards again, panic, dither and finally take the plunge at the very moment you slam your foot on the brakes.  I’ve always been exasperated by all that frantic indecision, but right now I’m feeling a lot more sympathetic.  For as far as writing is going, I am that pheasant, and my deadline is the car bearing relentlessly down on me – only without a driver to jump on the brakes.  

I can see it coming, I know it’s going to squash me, and yet still I’m faffing aro ...

It’s been one of those weeks when one step of progress on the writing front is matched by three steps back on the life one.  I’m having my lovely bathroom refurbished – new taps and a new shower – and as usual this is taking six times as long as anticipated, and costing twice as much.  One good thing was that it made me clear out my bathroom cupboards.  I must have thrown away at least twenty of those free cosmetic bags you get when you qualify for a ‘free gift’ with two purchases (a marketing tool I fall for every time) and which always seem like they’ll be so useful .I’ve also got two bags of old make up that I can’t quite bring myself to go through, as well as assorted other rubbish that is now cluttering up my study and quite spoiling the look of my lovely new bookshelves.  I don’t like mess, and that’s making me twitchy, plus I’m missing my s ...

Oh, dear, I’ve been so very slack on the blogging front  this year …  I’m telling myself it’s because I’ve been writing a very different kind of book, but I suspect that’s just an excuse.  It’s an odd thing that I am never short of something to say to friends, but present me with ‘update blog’ on my ‘to do’ list and I’ll do anything other than knuckle down to it.  I was sent a card recently with one of those wonderful New Yorker cartoons on it, which of course I can’t now lay my hands on, but it showed two dogs, one saying to the other something like ‘Yes, I did have a blog for a bit, but I decided to go back to pointless, incessant barking’.  Pretty much how I feel about my own blogging!

Liz Fielding who is Queen of Blog ...

One of the best things about being a Harlequin author is the way our stories are translated and sold all round the world.  Every now and then a packet drops through my door, and I find a copy of one of my books in French or Arabic or Finnish or Indonesian … or any one of the twenty three languages they’ve been translated into so far.  Getting an edition in a new language is always exciting, and I can waste several minutes looking through the book carefully, as if I could actually read Greek or Hungarian. 

On Saturday, something even better arrived in the mail: my first mangas.

I know from my royalty statements that I’ve had other stories made into graphic novels, but this was the first time I’d s ...

It’s a lovely morning here and I’ve just been for a brisk walk up to the Millennium Bridgeand back (part of my pre trekking regime!)  I was full of good intentions to sit down and work as soon as I got back, but of course I just had to check my email first … and there was a message from the lovely ladies at CataNetwork Reviews to say that Cinderella’s Wedding Wish had won a coveted CataNetwork Reviewers’ Choice Awards for 2009. 

It’s ...

First of all, a big thank you to everyone who contacted me about Mungo.  I was so touched by all your kind comments and understanding.  All in all it was a quiet start to the year, not least because it took ages for my hearing to come back, but I got up just a couple of days ago and realised that I was quite suddenly better.  I still have a blocked feeling in ears which means my voice echoes disconcertingly in my head when I talk, but otherwise I’m raring to go again …

It’s probably no coincidence that feeling better has coincided with the planning of my trip to Australia this summer.  The whole venture has grown progressively more elaborate, but is going to be fantastic.  My dates have been creeping forward too, but I have finally fixed mid July to mid August and booked my ticket … and my credit card is likely to be steaming for some time to come!  I have an extraordinarily complicated ...

Well, my much-anticipated weekend in London didn’t turn out quite as planned, I’m afraid.  I was on my way to Harlequin Mills & Boon in Richmond for my celebration lunch when I had a phone call from the vet to say that my old dog, Mungo, was in some distress, so I came straight back that afternoon.  I brought him home for a last night, and the next morning sat with him in front of the fire until the vet came to put him to sleep.  Anyone who’s ever had to make that decision for a much loved animal will know what a sad morning that was for me.  I know it was the right thing to do, but Mungo was the centre of my life for nearly fifteen years, and I miss him terribly.  He was very old and a bit crotchety at the end, but I think of all the years of love and companionship he gave me ...

I have set up a fan page for readers who like Jessica Hart books over at Facebook.  Come and join me!  It can be your place to:

• discuss your favourite Jessica Hart books
• talk about when you first started reading Jessica's books
• add pictures of yourself reading Jessica's books
• add pictures of book covers - I've added the covers I have to get it started but there's a few early ones missing
• talk romance books in general

I know I say this every December, but what happened to the year???  A minute ago I was in Tuscany and now suddenly it’s nearly Christmas!  How time flies when you’ve got your head down and need to write a book in double quick time … But it’s done, revised (one short scene expanded) and I’m hoping very much that’s the last I’ll see of it until the proofs.   This story, initially plotted in the sea in Greece, elaborated with the help of the Ladies of Posara in Tuscany and fine-tuned walking along the river here in York is the sequel to Oh-So-Sensible Secretary (I know, what were they thinking?) which will be out in March 2010.  Does anyone remember ...

I’ve been doing some more teaching, this time as an evening class on writing popular fiction generally at the university here in York – not quite as glamorous as Tuscany, I know, but just as interesting in a different way.  One of the things we’re going to look at is the whole process of writing, so I have been giving that some thought lately. How *do* I write?  It’s easy to talk about character or plotting or dialogue, but actually getting the words onto the screen is a much more mysterious process.  For me, it certainly involves at least two rubbishy drafts and an awful lot of staring at the screen in despair.  The account of my day in