Step Into The Story

Today I am blogging with the fabulous Word Wenches at: http://wordwenches.typepad.com/ Amongst other things we will be discussing manipulative pets, Scandinavian melancholy and the wonderful diversity of the Harlequin Historical line! Please join us! There are also prizes, including an advance copy of my NEW HQN Regency historical, The Confessions of a Duchess!

This is the book cover for my new HQN e-book, The Secrets of a Courtesan, which is coming out next month from e-harlequin. It's the short story prequel to my new Brides of Fortune series and introduces the village of Fortune's Folly and some of the characters. And once again I think the cover goddess has been smiling on me because I think it's beautiful! I've been lucky in more ways than one because this is the short story that seemed destined to crash and burn. I love writing short stories and particularly enjoyed my recent one for Harlequin Historical Undone, The Unmasking of Lady Loveless. So I set out on this one with the same cheerful intent to create something that was fun, witty and sexy (of course!). I wrote the story at the start of the year. I had a tight deadline of my own making because I was going on holiday and it simply had to be finished before I left so that I could press on with a new book on my return. And I had what I thought was a good story idea, ...

Here is the first cover for my new HQN Regency series, The Brides of Fortune, which will be coming to a bookstore or internet bookseller near you in June! I am SO excited to see the covers for my new series, which are all in this beautiful style. Over the next few weeks I'll be posting all the covers and some juicy details about the series! I've noticed that the "headless bodice" cover seems to be increasingly popular with publishers and has featured on historicals by Phillipa Gregory, Elizabeth Chadwick and Mary Balogh, amongst others. In this case of course the heroine isn't totally headless, just cut off somewhere around the nose. And whilst this may not sound very attractive, I think the cover looks gorgeous. But what do YOU think? Do you like covers where there's a little bit of mystery about the appearance of the hero or heroine, or do you prefer a full face version or even a full body version of hero and heroine together? Let me know!

The best laid plans... I sat down to write this blog and after a few moments became aware of a strange scratching noise. Now given that this house definitely isn't haunted (that was the last one) and that as far as I know we don't have mice, this had to be a bad sign. One of the cats had shut herself in the Forgotten Room again. We call it the Forgotten Room because it is down the end of a corridor and it's the place we use to store things. For some reason it has a fatal attraction to the cats who will sneak in there whenever the door is open. Looking round I saw Petra sitting neatly behind me by the radiator, looking smug. Not her then. Which meant it was neurotic Bob who would be even more demented after a night spent in solitary. Sure enough, when I went to the rescue, Bob had dug up the carpet so I couldn't get the door open. However, the Forgotten Room has french doors - if only I could find the key. Rummaging through my cupboards I finally found the spare set of k...

Welcome to my new blog and very best wishes for 2009! 2008 was a wonderful year for me writing-wise and I am very excited about the opportunities that this new year will bring. Last year was a double celebration for me work-wise: It was Harlequin Mills & Boon's centenary and I wrote a special Edwardian set historical for the occasion, The Last Rake in London. Last Rake was also my 25th book in 10 years. (Mind you, it took me 12 years to get published in the first place!) Unmasked, my third Regency single title historical for HQN books was published in the US. It was so exciting to learn that Unmasked had been chosen to launch Harlequin's Enriched Editons, a new interactive e-book programme. Seeing the book cover on a billboard in Times Square was a career highlight! I also had a video made for Unmasked by the wonderful people at Book Candy Studios, which was intriguing and very sexy! I spoke at the Oxford Literary Festival in the distinguished company of Daisy Goodwin, Mat...