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"Only Mills and Boon can rival British intelligence," says MI5's official historian. This fascinating quotation was in The Guardian newspaper today, as related by Charlotte Higgins from the Hay Festival. She goes on to write that Christopher Andrew, who spent years as a member of of the service whilst he undertook the research for his book Defence of the Realm, claimed that the human resources consultants employed to discover the levels of job satisfaction at the British domestic intelligence service had found that there was "only one organisation they had investigated that had a higher morale: Mills & Boon." A Spooks/M&B collaboration must surely be in the offing. Of course this confirms for those of us in the know what we already knew: romance books make you happy. And so does spying. Allegedly. http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2010/jun/02/christopher-andrew-mi5

Yawn! That's the sound of the Sad Puppy waking up from a few month's happy snoozing in the sun to discover that as at least six months have passed it must be time for the UK broadsheets to have another go at romantic fiction. A few months ago The Guardian newspaper made a slight tactical error when they asked Julie Bindell to comment on Mills & Boon romances and it became clear in the course of her remarks that she hadn't read one for thirty years. So this time the Guardian had a Cunning Plan - get Tanya Gold to claim that she was a M&B junkie and that way the paper wouldn't be caught short fielding someone who hadn't picked up a romance book in decades. Why should we doubt Tanya's romance-reading credentials? Only because there were some odd discrepancies in the article. Oh, and also because most romance readers are very proud to support the genre whereas it seemed to make Tanya feel quite nauseous. It also seemed that every M&B book Tanya had rece...

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...