It’s a huge pleasure to welcome this week Natasha Oakley.  Natasha  is one of my very favourite Harlequin authors, and she’s certainly on a winning streak this year!  She’s nominated for a RITA, is shortlisted for the National Readers’ Choice Award and has already won the Romantic Times award for 'Best Presents of 2007' with her book, The Tycoon's Princess Bride (although actually, we like to think of her as a Harlequin Romance author really).  So I’m thrilled that she has found the time to come along as my guest blogger this week.  I’ve had a sneak preview of her wonderful book, Wanted: White Wedding (how come everyone but me gets these great titles???) which is out now in North American and the UK, and I can tell you this is a typical Natasha Oakley book, with warm, realistic characters and a hero it’s impossible not to fall in love with! 

Over to you, Natasha – and good luck with all those awards!   I’ll be cheering you on in San Francisco!

Wow!  50 books!!  Just the thought of it makes me want to lie down in a quiet room to recover. 

I am so thrilled and a little bit star struck to be a part of Jessica’s 50 book celebrations - because she wrote the first Harlequin Mills & Boon I ever read.  In 2001.  I know; I was a bit of a late starter!  But my passion was theatre.  I’d fallen in love at fourteen and I’m a committed sort.  I trained at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art (A contemporary of Minnie Driver.  Boy, how I hate how thin that girl has stayed.) and I thought I’d act until I dropped. 

Only in 2000 things changed.  My husband was diagnosed with cancer.  To say that diagnosis was life-changing is a complete understatement.  My beautiful, blessed life had the equivalent of the ‘Monty Python foot’ slammed straight in the middle of it.  Add to that the fact we had five children under the six at the time and you’ll have an idea of how completely miserable I was.  That aside, it was clear my job as a mum was to keep things steady and, for that, I needed to stay at home.

So ... with confidence born out of complete ignorance I decided I would become an author.  Lots of actors write, I thought.  But what?  Plays?  TV?

I considered them all.  The only thing I was really sure about was that I couldn’t cope with an unhappy ending.  What I was living was tough enough.  There may be great literary merit in the lesbian’s one legged transvestite brother’s murdered lover but I knew I wasn’t going to be writing it.

Embarrassing now to admit but at this point I really hadn’t read many novels apart from 19th century literature, Georgette Heyer and Mary Stewart.  Plays were another matter.  I was always looking for that illusive ‘perfect’ audition speech.  And I watched films.  Anything with a happy-ever-after kind of ending.

That’s when I realised I liked romance.  So I checked out the romance market and made a startling discovery.  Mills & Boon sell.  Those ‘little’ books that are derided so often in the British press sell amazingly well.  Something like 3 books every second in the UK alone.  And then I discovered Mills & Boon was the UK’s brand name for Harlequin and those ‘little’ books sell well worldwide.

That’s when I went to the library.  I borrowed 10 books that first time – and among them, first off the pile was ‘The Convenient Fiancée’ by Jessica Hart.  I loved it.  I loved Polly’s beautiful shoes, the ones that pinched her toes but made her legs look fabulous.  I loved Simon, the family friend Polly thought was slightly boring who turned out to be more exciting than anyone she’d ever met.  I loved that final scene at the family wedding.  The engagement ring with the sapphire which matched Polly’s eyes.  Oh, and that scene where they’re picking it out ....

It was just fab!  And from that moment my fate was sealed.  I was going to write for Harlequin Mills & Boon.  And, just because sometimes dreams do come true, I now do!  What’s more I get to be a part of Jessica’s celebrations.  So, congratulations on 50 books – and here’s looking forward to the next 50!

This month my ‘Wanted:  White Wedding’ is out in both the UK and North America.  Personally, and I admit I’m a little biased, I think Daniel Ramsay is particularly sexy.  I kind of had Jeremy Northam (you know, Mr Knightley to Gwyneth Paltrow’s ‘Emma’) in mind when I started writing him but he morphed into his own man by the end.  Actually, that’s a total gratuitous excuse to post a picture of him on Jessica’s blog, but why not?  I refuse to apologise.

And here’s a really short excerpt taken from somewhere in Chapter One:

“Get that, will you?”
     “I’m -”
     “The phone.  Take a message,” a disembodied male voice shouted, followed by a grunt.  “I’ll be through in a minute.”
     “I -”
     “Phone!  Just answer the phone!”
     For a brief second she wondered whether she’d inadvertently stepped into a farce, and then Freya shrugged, stepping over a pile of vinyl records and an old gramophone to reach the other side of the desk.  What did it matter?  And at least it would stop that infernal noise ricocheting about.
     “Ramsay Auctioneers,” she said into the receiver, her eyes on the closed door.
     “Daniel?  Is that you?”
     Hardly.  She rubbed a hand across her eyes, the humour of the situation finally reaching her.  “I’m sorry, Mr Ramsay isn’t available at the moment.  May I take a message?”
     “Can you tell him Tom Hamber called, love?”
     Her right eyebrow flicked up and she reached over the scattered papers for a pad of florescent stick-it notes.  In her real life she’d have paused to tell Tom Hamber she wasn’t his ‘love’.  She might even have told him that while she could pass on a message she was by no means certain she would ... 
     “Have you got that?  You won’t forget?”
     “Tom Hamber called,” she said dryly, drawing a box around the two words she’d written.  “I think I’ll manage to remember.”
     “Tell him I need to speak to him before midday.”
     Freya added the words ‘before midday’ to the note, then turned at the sound of a loud crash.  “I’ll leave him a note,” she said in to the receiver.  Whether he actually found it really wasn’t her problem.
     “That’s it, love.”
     She set the receiver back on its cradle, ripping the top note off the pile.  One thing she was certain of:  there was no way on earth she was going to let her Grandmother sell anything valuable through this crazy set-up.  She looked at the confusion on the desk and stuck the note firmly on the telephone.
     “Thanks for that.” 
     Freya turned and found she was looking up into a pair of brown eyes.  Very definitely up.  At five feet ten - more in heels - it wasn’t often she had to do that. 
     Why did that feel so good?  Some deep Freudian something was probably at the root of it.  He had to be at least six foot two.  Quite possibly more.  And those eyes …  Dark, dark brown and sexy beyond belief.   
     “I was holding up one end of a table and couldn’t let go.” 
     Freya pulled her eyes away from his and wrapped her sheepskin jacket closely around her.  “Right.”
     “Did you get a message?”
     “Yes.  Y-yes, I did.  Yes.” The corner of his mouth quirked and she stumbled on, feeling as foolish as if she’d been caught drooling.  “It was a Tom Hamber.”
     “Ah.”
     “He wants to speak to Daniel Ramsay before midday.”
     “I can do that.”
     The most horrible suspicion darted into her head.
     “I’m Daniel Ramsay.”  He smiled, and Freya felt as though the floor had disappeared beneath her. 
     This couldn’t be Daniel Ramsay.  From her grandmother’s conversation she’d conjured up a very different picture.  Someone altogether more parochial.  More …
     Well …. less, if she were honest.  Much less.  Truthfully, this Daniel Ramsay looked like the kind of man you’d quite like to wake up with on a lazy Sunday morning.  A little bit rumpled and a whole lot sexy.
     “You’re a little late.”  Then he smiled again, wiping his hands on the back of dark blue denim jeans and the effect was intensified.  “But not to worry.  I get here about eight thirty, but I told the agency nine thirty was fine.”
     He held out a hand and she automatically held out her own.  His wedding ring flashed.  Of course a man who looked like this one would be taken.  They always were - even if they pretended not to be.   
     A familiar sense of dissatisfaction speared her.  It was amazing how many men said they were separated when the only thing keeping them apart from their significant other was temporary geographical distance.
     She was so tired of that.  Tired of the game-playing.
     Daniel bent down and pulled open the bottom drawer of his desk.  “I’ve got the key to the inner office here.  I’ll show you where everything is and then I’ve got to drive out to the Penry-James farm.”
     “I’m not -”
     He stood straight.  “Which part didn’t you get?”
     “I understood you perfectly, but I’m not from any agency.”
     “You’re not?”
     “Merely a potential customer.”
     His hand raked through his dark hair.  “Hell, I’m so sorry!  I thought -”   
     “I was someone else.”  It didn’t take the mental agility of Einstein to figure that one out.  It was vaguely reassuring to know he didn’t actively intend to run his business in such a haphazard way.
     Sudden laughter lit his eyes, and she fought against the curl of attraction deep in her abdomen. 
     “So you’re not the cavalry after all?  Perhaps we’d better start over?” 
     “Perhaps,” she murmured, feeling unaccountably strange as his hand wrapped round hers for the second time.  He had nice hands, she registered.  Strong, with neatly cut nails.  And a voice that made her feel as though she’d stepped into a vat of chocolate.
     But taken, the logical part of her brain reminded her.  And, apparently, the kind of man who, if he wasn’t actually preying on her grandmother, was certainly making the most of an opportunity. 

 Thanks, Natasha!

Don't forget to visit the Harlequin Romance Authors blog to see who else has books out this month.