This week I'm delighted to welcome back Kate Walker in the last of my guest blogs.  As Kate explains, she was the first other HMB author I'd ever met, and as author of more than 50 books herself, not to mention the invaluable Kate Walker's 12-Point Guide to Writing Romance , who better to help me celebrate that 50 book milestone?  Welcome, Kate!

Some years ago,  back before the internet and easy communication  transformed my life, and the life of every other romance  writer I know,  I asked my editor if there was anyone else who wrote for Mills & Boon and lived anywhere close  enough to my part of England to make it possible to meet up occasionally.  She suggested that I would get on well with one particular author and  she was right. And so, over a delicious lunch in her lovely house, Jessica Hart became one of the very first authors I really connected with.

So it is a real delight to be able to be celebrate Jessica's special milestone book – her 50th – with her. I was specially thrilled to be with her at the RWA Conference in San Francisco when she was presented with her special gold pin to mark this achievement and to be able to congratulate her in person.

I took a photgraph of the event in the hope of being able to post it with this blog but it turned out too dark to see anything, so that didn't work out. (Note from webmistress: Harlequin sent Jessica the photo below from the milestone presentation.  Jessica is second from the left)

And now I'm able to say Congratulations again here on this blog.  Sincere congratulations, Jessica- 50 books is an amazing achievement. I have a copy of  Last-Minute Proposal sitting on my TBR pile, just waiting for me to finish my own current book so that I can dive in and I can't wait.

So 50 books is a milestone – but it's also something of a problem. I should know, I celebrated my own 50th title last year. 50 books, 50 plots, 50 happy-ever-afters . . .  So now what do you do next? How do you keep fresh and head off to write the next book, the next five. . .hopefully, maybe one day, heading for 75 or even that magical 100?  The problem is that as you start to write what you think is  a new idea, you suddenly remember 'But I did this in book 23 . . . or book 16  …' We all know that there are not that many different plots in writing romance, so it's pretty difficult to be totally original. But I really don't want to be writing just the same books all over again.

'How do you keep things interesting after 50 books,' Jessica said when I asked her what to blog about. And as that question came just as I was complaining that my latest hero, a brooding Italian who has just had his errant wife come back into his life, wasn't co-operating at all and I was having a fight to write  his story, we both laughed and said, 'perhaps not'. 

But later, when I thought about it, I realised that it's exactly because of my struggles with this particular hero that writing romances still keep me interested after the 50th title, and heading up towards the 60th. And that's because my books are not 'love stories',  not plots and themes, but they are first and foremost relationship stories. Stories of how two people work through the problems, the differences, the emotional conflicts that keep them apart so that they can have a wonderful future together.

Because I write for Modern Romance (Harlequin Presents)  I'm often accused of writing pure fantasy – after all, the line is crammed full, wall to wall,  with billionaires, sheikhs  or Greek tycoons. But the point is that a billionaire, or a sheikh, or a tycoon, is still a man. And the problems  that I give my heroes are the problems that any man could have, whether he was a billionaire tycoon, or the local plumber. Because they are emotional problems. And we all know how difficult they are to deal with. Emotional problems can only be dealt with emotionally. And so these billionaires find that the problems they have to face are the sort that they can throw all the money in the world into solving them and it just won't work.  They have to come up with an emotional solution.

And that's because they're dealing with  two other problems – a woman  - and the sort of love that they've never experienced before. So it's how they – and their heroines deal with that  that makes the story of the novel.  

And that's why this job never becomes boring. Difficult, yes, but not boring. Because each hero and each heroine is a new person, someone I've never 'met' before. Someone who has a different background, a different personality, different experiences from all heroes or heroines who have gone before. I don't know these people at the start, but I get to know them and I get to learn about their story. And then I tell their story so that readers can learn about it too and, hopefully enjoy it.

So my awkward Italian of  the moment is a very different man from Angelos, the hero of my September book Bedded By the Greek Billionaire. That's what makes him a challenge. If he wasn't, he'd be no fun to write – certainly not in the least interesting to write.  Which really answers Jessica's  question doesn't it?

Writing romance is all about the people in the books. It's about  the heroes and the heroines, who they are, what they do, how they react to each other, how they behave.  That's what makes the important part of the story, the real heart of the novel. So I think that as we celebrate Jessica's 50th book ,  the title at the top of this blog just says it all - 50 heroes, 50 heroines...50 happy endings!

Congratulations once again Jessica – and here's to many more fascinating, entertaining and interesting heroes and heroines in your books.

Tell me what you love  about reading romance and everyone who posts will have their name put into a draw to win a signed copy of Bedded By the Greek Billionaire - and as it's M&B's 100th birthday, I'll slip in  a copy of my special Centenary celebration novella The Duke's Secret Wife. 

Thanks, Kate!  You can also win an advance copy of Last-Minute Proposal, which isn't out until October!  Just send me an email telling me what Tilly is doing in the opening scene (a big, fat clue: there’s a photo of me doing it on the same page!) and I will send you a book and a bag.