Saturday Surprise - The Check-Out Challenge

It's Saturday and that means it's surprise time at The Pink Heart Society...
This time out it's in the form of our first challenge for you!

Sshhhhhh!!!!! Step a little closer while I tell you a story…
Are we all here? Nobody else is listening, right???

When my first book was published I was on the road, touring each of the 32 counties of Ireland. Some friends and I popped into a large bookstore in the middle of Cork, so I could see my book advertised in the back of that months titles… and lo and behold. It was ON THE SHELF. Understandably I was thrilled. We jumped up and down and giggled like kids…. We, erm… moved it onto the shelves all over the place ( I was a top-seller for at least ten minutes in one store) and then we went to buy a copy and the lady behind the counter gave me one of those *down the nose* looks. Alright, so our earlier behavior maybe hadn’t endeared us… But I then gushed – ‘That’s *my* book’ to which the nice lady answered, ‘Yes, it will be in a minute.’ – to which I blushed and said ‘No, you see it’s *my* book. I *wrote* it!’… and nice lady at the till said (from down her nose) ‘Of *course* it is madam….*. Well… I left with my book in my hands. But she took the glow off me for about thirty seconds.

And I couldn’t help but wonder if she was that rude to everyone else who might buy my book…Mmmm…

The beauty of reading these days is we can pick up our favorite reading material pretty much anywhere. We can get it from the traditional bookstore, the library, airports, service stations, newsagents, we can order from the comfort of our homes, download from online onto a little piece of kit we can take anywhere on the planet and we can even get it from the local Supermarket! There’s really no excuse not to read these days, is there? And that’s fantastic!

Thing is, when we buy those fabulous ‘little romance books’ we all love so much, there can still sometimes be a tendency to have a little bit of embarrassment presenting it at the check-out… (Even if you haven’t just caused a mini-riot in the store first)

Maybe it harks back to those heady teenage days, when we were discovering boys and learning all about love by hiding our Mother’s romances under our beds to steal away a few hours when nobody could see us. There was an element of illicit treat to it – gorgeous hero’s, strong, beautiful women who could stand up to them – the kind of women who could have a career, or be single parents or Lady’s of old being whisked away from an arranged marriage they didn’t want - and always getting the guy in the end no matter what the odds… There were glamorous locations and exciting plots and always, always a happily ever after – which made us believe they really were possible as we had our hearts broken for the first time in teenager land. And we could then share them with our best friends and sigh at what a great read they had been and dream of the day we could write one too… Oh no, hang on, that last part was maybe just me???

So when we first start to actually go out and buy them, does some of that sense of the illicit stay with us? Or is it the fact there’s a gorgeous man behind us at the check out or even in front of it? Or maybe, just maybe, is it that we’ve listened to all those out-dated conceptions that people have of Category Romance and we’re just too embarrassed to be seen buying them in public??? Especially if they have the gorgeous naked-chested man on the front???

After all, we’re all highly intelligent women, we have careers and ambitions, we juggle family life and running a home and paying bills and can still find the TV Remote control when no-one else who lives in the house can… We read much more mentally stimulating books now; Thrillers and Sci-Fi’s, Biography’s and Self-Help’s, Classics and the best Chick-Lit’s available, and as wide a range of books as you can dream of. But just because we now have a wider range of reading pleasure and have read dozens of truly fantastic books, does that mean we should forget our ‘little romance books’, submit to a sense of what we should or shouldn’t be reading, and only go back to them years later when we have reached that part of our lives where we don’t give a stuff what others think of any of our choices? And that little book we can read in a few hours and get a guaranteed Happily Ever After from is suddenly back on our shopping lists again…

Statistically we are told that many readers tend to leave Category Romance behind during the years they are building their career, out having fun, meeting the man of their dreams and starting a family. And maybe the fact that they are appearing in Supermarkets is a sign of the book distributors trying to tap into that Market while we are all out doing what we do most frequently – buy food… Though that *could* just be me again…

But is there still a little embarrassment attached? Does the steamy picture on the cover make you shy away from presenting it at the local supermarket to some young spotty teenage boy who might give you *that look*, or a woman like the one in the store I was in who just looked down her nose? Is it easier to download the books from online so that no-one can see you buying them?

Are we really more comfortable showing what brand of tampon we use or what our choice of contraceptive is (yes, we all know you can get nearly *anything* in a supermarket these days…) than we are showing that we love those little category books??? And yet at the same time we don’t shy away from showing we eat a ton of junk food while still carrying a few extra pounds, we buy Bridget Jones type pants to hide those extra pounds and we’re suckers for any new brand of anything that had a convincing ad campaign on the television? Okay, the last one could be me again…

So, where do you buy your Category Romances? Do you have a most embarrassing moment at the check out?

And the first challenge for you Pink Heart’ers out there is to face those *look down the noses* types at the check-out! Come tell us what you said or might say to show you don’t care what they thought of your reading choices!!!! Did you set the book on top of the pile with a sweet smile and a ready come-back on your lips? Did you tap the book , smile, wink and say – ‘Great read, you should try one of these’???

Come on gang! Say it loud, say it proud!!

H's & K's

Trish

Trish's latest book is her first Modern Extra: White-Hot!

Her Blog

Her Website

Publishers Website

Friday Film Night - Dirty Dancing

This week’s addition to the Pink Heart Hall of Fame for Movies and TV is:

Dirty Dancing

Made for a measly $2 million, Dirty Dancing was the sleeper hit of 1987. Spawning a soundtrack to die for and a generation of girls who wanted to learn to samba – only to end up disappointed when they discovered their teacher was going to be a seventy year old woman in a bun and hot pink lipstick.

I wanted to be Jennifer Grey when I was growing up. For a few years people even said I looked like her – the curly auburn bob probably helped more than anything else.

I'm mortified to admit that when the movie came out I was I was young enough I thought getting "knocked up" meant that Penny was on drugs. It wasn’t until watching the movie a few years later that it hit me she had been pregnant! Innocent moi? And when I found this piccie I only just remember that I had this very black and white poster on my bedroom wall. What were my parents thinking?

I even bought a Dirty Dancing t-shirt which for a teenager in 1987 cost the bulk of my pocket money. It was black with white writing and in built in shoulder pads and I wore it the last three times I saw it at the movies which shows what a fan I was!

And as for romance? This movie is a doozy. Rich daddy’s girl and poor downtrodden boy meet in 1963, just before Kennedy was shot and America lost her innocence. He needed love. She needed to stand up for herself. Throw in a pregnant ex-girlfriend, an unsupportive family, and just about the best reconciliation scene in a movie ever, this story is classic romance.

Think of all the memorable moments scattered throughout the story – the sparkly unforgettable bits in which the sensual attraction rose and rose. Their first dance. Getting wet together in the lake. Her getting changed in the back of his car and him trying to pretend not to watch. Him punching out the bad guy for making a nasty comment about her. Her seduction of him in his beautiful cabin in the woods to the soulful strains of classic 1960s R&B.

And these are just the first handful that comes to my mind. What was your favourite scene?

HERO: Johnny Castle. Sensitive bad boy.

Patrick Swayze and those muscles. A guy who can dance. A guy who stands up to her father! A guy who looks out for his friends when they get knocked up and have quickie abortions that don’t go well. A total stud. A guy who looks like he can kiss with the best of them - and didn't the rumours circulate at the time that he was the best kisser in Hollywood? I’ve never been a Patrick Swayze tragic, but oh my was he lovely in this role.

HEROINE: Frances ‘Baby’ Houseman. Earnest daddy’s girl.

Talk about your feisty chickadee! She was determined, intrigued, empathetic and for the first time in her life rebellious. She was also only 16 mind you, which is a little creepy when you come to think of it for Mr Swayze looked to be somewhere in his 30s at the time. But I think the key to going on that ride with them was that in the end she seduced him in that gorgeous, gutsy “Dance with me” scene in his cabin.

So why did we love them so when so much suspension of disbelief was in order? What made us love the leather wearing hood and the girl who was almost too decent to be true? I think it comes down to the humanity of the characters. The “I carried a watermelon” scene. Baby trying on lipstick for the first time. The soft, secret, loaded conversations with her sister at bedtime. The way Johnny stood up to her father even if it was the greatest risk he would ever take in his whole life. These little things, these extra details, the funny endearing moments build this story from a classic romance into something unique, and funny, and endearing as all get out, something that made an audience go back and back and back for more.

As to the happily ever after? Jennifer Grey has had a nose job which has made her all but unrecognisable and Patrick Swayze is getting just too craggy to pull of the romantic hero thing. And I don’t know that I really want to know what happened after the big dance. Did he quit the big show and move into her family mansion in Connecticut? Did she give up on her Peace Corps dreams to follow him to the next hotel taking on a job as a waitress?

I for one am perfectly happy to simply imagine that beautiful night simply never ended.

Warm and Fuzzy rating: 8 1/2

Ally

http://www.allyblake.com

http://allyblake.blogspot.com

Ally once wrote a book about a heroine who so loved romantic movies she all but lived by them. Before the beginning of each chapter she would recite a quote from a movie that changed her life. Needless to say Dirty Dancing proudly headed up chapter five!

Ally's latest book, WANTED: OUTBACK WIFE, is available now online and is in stores this October!

Thursday Talk-time with Cheryl St John

Today, Pink Heart Society member, and Harlequin Historicals Author Cheryl St John talks about the recent spate of beeeeautiful covers of category books.

Cheryl says:

Call me prejudiced, but I think category covers are absolutely gorgeous, and they just keep getting better.

I get a lot of questions about how the covers are created. In years past Harlequin and Silhouette authors had to fill out ten pages of Art Fact Sheets, known among us as the AFS. Since all my writing is done on the computer, I bought a typewriter just for the Art Fact Sheets. Then we would mail the completed forms, along with artwork, to the editorial staff. More recently, technology has allowed us to fill out these forms at a special author website developed just for this purpose. Doing so involves scrolling through a lot of pull down bars and finding something close to the description needed. We suggest specific scenes as well as a couple of generic ones that portray the theme and feel of the book.

You can teach some of us old dogs new tricks, and I love the ease and simplicity of the new method. I now scan and send my artwork as attached files. I always send pictures of my hero and heroine, and usually a shot or two of scenery for the location, as well as description and accurate photos of clothing, horses and other items that play an important part in the story.

The editor who is working on my cover, adds her own thoughts and suggestions to the package, and then they have a meeting where the art department and editors plan covers for the coming months. They look at the author's past covers and consider her specific "branding" or the look that says this is a particular author's book by sight, often using the same font and similar style. They also look at the covers from the previous months so they don't duplicate, and they consider all the books in the line that will be coming out that particular month, so that each cover is unique.

Sometimes the resulting cover is exactly a scene, a couple, or a theme I suggested; other times it's nothing like I imagined. I always defer to the strategy of the marketing and art departments who are in the business of packaging for greatest impact and who want an appealing item to sell as much as I do.

I don't see the finished product until I get a .jpg file from my publisher or receive an envelope full of cover flats in the mail. It's always exciting to see that new cover for the first time. Some covers I love it at first sight, others grow on me.

The next cover I will see is for my February '07 Harlequin Historical, THE LAWMAN'S BRIDE. Here is the picture of City Marshal Clay Conner that I included with the AFS. Now it's just a waiting game to see if my hero looks the way I imagined him the whole time I was writing his story. I don't know who the model is. I found him in a magazine ad and knew he was my marshal. I keep pictures of my hero and heroine above my PC as I work on the story and it helps me visualize.

What do you especially like about category covers?

Cheryl St.John :-)

ALMOST A BRIDE, Wed Under Western Skies Anthology, Harlequin, 5/06

THE LAWMAN'S BRIDE, Harlequin Historicals, 2/07
www.tlt.com/authors/cstjohn.htm

Writers' Wednesday with Donna Alward

Brand New Harlequin Romance author...

ABOUT DONNA

Donna says:

After high school I got my B.A. with a Major in English and a minor in Psychology. I ended up working for the provincial government in the Treasury department of all places. Why they put someone who'd nearly flunked math in charge of millions of dollars daily I'll never understand, but admittedly it WAS a great job, and I surprised myself by being good at it (at least I think).

Less than a year after I got married, we moved to Alberta, and a little more than a year after that had our first child. Together we decided I'd be a stay at home mom, and another daughter followed. And here's where the story of Donna Alward, Author, really begins...

MY CALL STORY AND A BIT ABOUT HIRED BY THE COWBOY!

It was surreal, it was fantastic, and it was about bloody time.

On July 21, I got the call from my editor at HM&B. They were buying my story, now known as Hired By The Cowboy.

This story has lots of history behind it, and it was special for me from the get-go. It all started in 2004…when I wrote an ms called "The Reluctant Husband". My hero was a shipping magnate in Southampton and my heroine a pregnant Canadian stuck in London. He needed her to claim his inheritance and save his shipping business. She needed him because she was flat broke, pregnant and had nowhere to turn. I sent it to the Romance line (then Tender) and the full was rejected. One scene though – a kiss – I entered in Harlequin's Ultimate Kiss contest – and I won!

It also got me a critique from my wonderful critique partner, Michelle Styles. At first I cried and thought about quitting. But she'd told me what I needed to hear, so I put on my big girl panties and got on with writing another, better story. Still, the idea, the magic I believed was in that story stayed with me. Michelle is still one of my cp's and probably the most steadying, resourceful influence on my writing.

Last year, Trish Wylie saw a chapter from The Girl Most Likely (Samhain Publishing, September 06) on Romance Junkie's contest, and asked if I wanted a whole critique. I sure wasn't going to turn down a crit from an author of the line I was targeting! From then another cp relationship was born, and with the help of these two fabulous authors, things really started moving. I'd written a partial of Almost a Family (Samhain Publishing, January 07) which was rejected but with feedback. I'd subbed TGML and again, got rejected but with great feedback from my now editor. Good news…the problems with TGML were things I was already working on improving, and during my wait time I wrote the new incarnation of The Reluctant Husband, but with a new hero – a ranch owner – and a new setting – the foothills of the Rockies. Not only that but my writing had improved scads over the last 2 years, so when I started writing it felt like magic. Heck, I even fell in love with them and cried as I was writing it! The crying was a first.

I subbed the partial in March, settled in to wait and worked on something else.

This past June, Maddie Rowe e-mailed me to ask for the full, and I polished it up and sent it, basking in the lovely things she said about the partial. And I settled in to wait – thinking it'd be
September before I heard anything.

Less than a week later I had a request for revisions, which were actually FUN to do and lovely to see the manuscript go to another level. I especially latched on to the last ½ page or so of comments… which were all about how wonderful the story was, LOL. If nothing else I had achieved something great…I made editors cry. And so I did the revisions, obsessed as to whether I'd done them right…and I settled in to wait – thinking it'd really be September now.

A week later, I got an e-mail saying she'd passed it up to the senior for a final decision, and did I have anything else I was working on???? I may have had the precursors to a heart attack at this point. I was still reeling from the fact that she'd said that the ms had made her cry! I sent her the partial from the Modern Extra I'd been working on.

Two weeks later I was on holidays and checked my e-mail, to find she'd e-mailed twice asking me to call her. I did, from my in-laws, and she called me back, giving me the great news! I may have whooped a bit and jumped around and our first stop doing errands was the liquor store for champagne! I got absolutely knackered and played cards that night and had a blast.

I'm thrilled that this story is going to be published by the new Romance line in May and also terrified at how desperately I want everyone to like it! And what a rollercoaster ride. I really wsn't prepared for all the information that was going to hit me straight away. The day I got back I had to do up my bio, dear reader letter and dedication. There were contracts, legal forms, author loops; I did up three proposals so I'd know what she wanted me to write next. And it finally hit me. The day that my line edits arrived in the mail, I was just…gobsmacked. This was my book, with a harlequin cover page, typed up and edited, waiting for me to go through it line by line. At that moment I really was an HMB author!

Now I'm working on my second book, which happens to be a sequel to the first. And it's very strange actually. I'm terrified of not making the cut this time. I feel a pressure to deliver that I've never really felt before. And yes, it's all brought on by myself. I KNOW that my first few chapters don't suck…but that's a long way from the end. And the stakes are so much higher for me now. Before you sell, your dream is to accomplish that. You make statements like "If I could just sell to Harlequin, I'd be happy." And don't get me wrong…its FABULOUS. But it's kind of like after you submit an ms. You then say things like, "It's all about the next book."

And for me it is. Now it's about making that second sale, and getting a career off the ground. Trading in an old dream for a new one. And that's not about never being satisfied…it's about motivation, and not settling, and not resting on your laurels. About being able to do what you love for the rest of your life.

Wish me luck!

Donna's first book is The Girl Most Likely which will be released on September 12th. Her second category length ebook, Almost a Family will be released in January. Check out her page at Samhain Publishing for more info.

Her first Harlequin Romance, Hired by the Cowboy, will be released next in May 2007, and she is hard at work on her second.

Congratulations Donna!!!

Travelling Tuesday ... Arundel, West Sussex

Arundel, Sussex

As anyone who’s read my personal blog knows, I’ve just come back from holiday in Arundel. So that's my choice for this inaugral 'Travelling Tuesday'.

In actual fact, we stayed in a little village called Coldwaltham which is about 4 miles outside – and, if you’ve read ‘Ordinary Girl, Society Groom’ you’ll recognise that as the name of my fictional Abbey.

Sussex is a county, stretched long and thin, right at the bottom of Great Britain and is just about commutable distance from London. Within its boundaries there are marshes, meadows, single-track roads, the rolling South Downs and old, old houses every way you turn.

In amongst it all is Arundel - a very beautiful and very English place. It’s situated at the head of navigation of the River Arun, apparently one of our fastest flowing rivers. In the nineteenth century large sailing ships were towed upriver by a steam tug and Arundel was an important port and, although the ships are long gone, it still has that kind of feel.

Beautiful houses scramble for position around Arundel Castle – any one of which would make a suitable home for a romance hero or heroine. Parking outside their house would be a little difficult but they’d be compensated by an excellent butchers, grocers, bakers, not to mention a very good bookshop and the all-important tea room.

A history ‘boff’ hero or heroine would also be well served. Maltravers Street (once nicknamed White Waistcoat Lane because of the posh gents who lived in it) is full of stunning regency houses. And King Street has flint cottages which are supposed to have been built by French prisoners during the Napoleonic Wars.

A historically informed hero/heroine might also like to point out the blocked up windows which came about when the owner of the house was not able, or didn’t wish, to pay the tax on windows that was introduced by Pitt the Younger in the eighteenth century.

In the High Street he/she might like to notice the gables of the shops and remark that the chequerwork was the sign of a gunsmith.

Dominating everything is Arundel Castle. The eleventh Duke of Norfolk adopted the castle as his ducal seat in 1787 and set about improving it to his taste. The fifteenth Duke then changed a whole lot more and the end result is something that’s very ‘useful’ to a Mills & Boon author looking for a ‘High Society’ setting.

My one caveat is that you cannot write a heroine who’s particularly attached to three inch stilettos. At least, you could but you must make her uncomfortable in them. It’s very hilly.

Also don’t let her push a double buggy anywhere without swearing softly under her breath.

by Natasha Oakley
http://www.natashaoakley.com
http://natashaoakley.blogspot.com

Natasha's latest release is: Accepting The Boss's Proposal a Harlequin Romance.

Check out more about this book at her website!

Male on Monday - Rodrigo Santaro

Welcome to the PHS inaugural Male on Monday, and what a fine male we have first-up!

Introducing Rodrigo Santaro (born 22.8.75), a delicious Italian/Brazilian combo who captured our attention on the screen in Love Actually, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and Lost.
Or if you're like me, he captured my attention for the following reasons: dreamy dark eyes, chiselled cheekbones and that all-round hero quality we search for and try to capture through words in our books.

Rodrigo is the inspiration behind my upcoming hero, Samman(Sam) al Wali, a sexy sheikh in search of a wife. I needed a commanding hero, someone who would stand up and be noticed immediately in any crowd anywhere and the instant I saw this pic, I knew I'd found Sam. I'm really looking forward to starting this book, for the sheer number of times I'll have to look at the hero pics for inspiration!!

Now, a few other interesting facts about this enigmatic man before I start drooling:
-he lives in Rio.
-he practices transcendental meditation
-he's a fan of The Doors
-he likes to read William Shakespeare
-his favourite actors are Robert De Niro and Al Pacino.
-he's shy and reserved (aww...)
-a searching website announced the most searched subjects in the year. One of them was "fotos del actor Rodrigo Santoro" (Rodrigo Santoro pics). (Why am I not surprised?)
-he's also a model, starring in a Chanel commercial with Nicole Kidman.
-he enjoys painting
-the scar on his forehead came from a surfing accident when he was 12.
-he also likes horses.

Had enough yet?
As you can see, I've researched my hero thoroughly and I hope you find as much inspiration from him as I have.

Enjoy.
Nicola
My blog
My website

Sunday Spotlight - Liz Fielding

Our spotlight has been shone on award winning Harlequin Romance author, Liz Fielding. In the past month she has won both the RITA for Best Short Contemporary and the Cataromance Reviewers' Choice Award for Best Mills and Boon Tender Romance.

FIRST UP, ABOUT LIZ

Liz says:

I've been reading since I was knee-high to a gnat. My mother taught me, the way she taught me all the good things in life. She read to me when I was little and then she bought me books of my own. Little Women, What Katy Did and Anne of Green Gables. I read them all until the covers fell off.

The only thing that is better than reading, is writing. Bringing to life characters that you love so much that finishing the book, leaving them to get on with their lives without you, is the hardest thing.

I started writing when my children were small and my engineer husband, John, was working abroad. We'd met working in Africa and had travelled the world together before settling down to raise our family.

My first romance, An Image of You, HR # 141, was set in Kenya, in a place I knew well, and was plucked from the slush pile because the feisty feminist heroine made my editor laugh. Emotion touched with humor has been the hallmark of my books ever since.

Now we live in the house that John built for us in Wales. The landscape is magical, with soft, misty hills, sudden rocky outcrops and crumbling castles. This is Carmarthenshire, the land of Merlin and, according to legend, half a mile from our home King Arthur and his knights are sleeping in a cave, waiting for a bell to be rung to summon them to action. It's nice to know that help is so close at hand should we ever need it!

SPOTLIGHT!

Where do you get the inspiration for your books from?

I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked this question and the reason it never gets any easier is, I suspect, because I don’t really know. Oh, I say all the usual things. Snatches of overheard conversation. A glimpse of a house through the trees. That …who lives there, what bolt from the blue is about to shake their lives to the foundations … moment. All of that is true. But where the story comes from is, mostly, a total mystery. Only once can I actually pinpoint an exact event when an incident – a busker being brought in from the street to play “Happy Birthday” to the manager of a shop – actually inspired a book, DANGEROUS FLIRTATION, which opens with a busker serenading the heroine. I have to tell you now, that an incident is not a plot!

Occasionally minor characters are so special that they beg for a story. After reading GENTLEMEN PREFER … BRUNETTES, my editor casually remarked of one of the minor characters that a “…woman that cool deserves a book, don’t you think?”. I didn’t need telling twice and the result was A SUITABLE GROOM. And the hero’s sister in DATING THE BOSS made her own bow in THE BABY PLAN. These stories already have a setting, a character with traits that drive their story – something of a blessing and a curse. If I’d known WILD JUSTICE was going to grow into a trilogy, I’d have made Claudia, the older sister – WILD LADY -- much nicer; probably just as well in retrospect. She was a challenge that brought out that little extra in me!

But to return to the question, I suspect that writers’ brains are wired slightly differently -- they see the same things as everyone else, but they do something different with it. Take a walk in someone else’s shoes. Ask the magic questions – Who? Why? What if…

What makes you mad?

Cruelty to children. Cruelty to animals. Cruelty. War. Rudeness. Litter.

Those large format paperbacks that look impressive but weigh a ton and are impossible to read in bed.

What’s the most romantic thing that has ever happened to you?

I suspect you don’t want me to be obvious here! Will you accept the dh cooking the dinner and doing the washing up while I battled with a deadline – my idea of a true hero, btw!

What in a hero makes you drool?

Well, I’m as shallow as the next woman; I like something good to look at -- tall enough, honed enough (but please no waxed chests or oiled muscles) and not too pretty. Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Liam Neeson, Paul Bettany, Michael Wood …

But that’s just the skin deep stuff. What’s going on inside is more important. I like a man who can talk. Who lives who he is. A man who can change a nappy, amuse a child, feed himself and me. Brains turn me on, but I need integrity, a sense of humour to light me up.

If you weren’t a writer what would you be?

Retired.

What do you do to relax and wind down?

We’ve been having amazing weather, so lately it’s been a glass of wine in the garden with the dh while dusk gathers and the pipistrelles come out to play. Driving down to the nearby coast is a great way to blow the cobwebs away, too. I confess however that, like most people, I tend to veg out in front of the television when I’ve had a long, hard day slaving over a hot computer.

How do you get out of a writing rut?

I scare myself. I write a book that doesn’t fit into any mould. Take a risk. I accept challenges that, um, challenge me. Say “yes” first, think “what have I done” afterwards. A trilogy, a continuity, a short story (I find short stories a really, really difficult form).

And when it gets really difficult, when the rut is so deep that I can’t see over the top, I start writing opening scenes – allowing myself just one paragraph – until my brain catches fire.

If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be?

I have little fantasies about where I’d like to live. I’d love a small town house in Chelsea for the times when I feel like a City Girl and need the shops, the theatres, the museums.

But then I’d love a little cottage in north Devon or Cornwall, overlooking the sea. I’d like a clapboard house in Cape Cod, too (just for the summer) and a beach house somewhere along the Californian coast.

A smart flat in Melbourne would be good, so that I could hang out with all those great Aussie writers who live in and around the city – no garden in Australia, I have a spider “problem”!

Then again I sometimes dream of a little place in Tuscany, or the south of France, with my own olive grove and lemon trees.

And sometimes I think it would be just fabulous to load the bare necessities into one of those camper vans and set myself free.

But even if I had every one of them, I’d never give up the house that “Jack” built in a little Welsh village in Carmarthenshire.

Who would you most like to give a hug to for a fabulous book you’ve read?

Susan Elizabeth Phillips for This Heart of Mine. I’ve just read her latest, Match Me If You Can and I’d give her a hug for that one, too. She’s funny, she’s emotional, she never lets you down.

What music do you listen to when writing?

Nothing with lyrics. Classical -- Mozart, Vivaldi are best. I know the music is working for me when I don’t notice that it’s stopped.

Tell us a secret nobody knows about you?

If I told you, it wouldn’t be a secret, now would it? A woman has to have a little mystery about her!

What was your most embarrassing moment?

Oh, good lord. I do my best to forget them. Yes … it’s worked. :D

What have you had to celebrate in the last year?

Thirty-four years married to the most patient, tolerant and supportive of men.

One of my offspring getting engaged.

The Marriage Miracle being voted Best “Tender” Romance at Cataromance.

Finishing two new books and a short story (so far!).

The Marriage Miracle being nominated for a RITA by Romance Writers’ of America.

The Marriage Miracle winning a RITA.

And it’s still only September!

What’s beside your computer when you’re writing?

A bottle of water. The file with all my notes, pictures, for the wip. A flower pot filled with pens and pencils. A nail file. Post-it notes. At least one spare pair of specs – I put them down and they just disappear. My cell phone. Music cds.

A cork board with covers, cards, receipts, photographs, phone numbers as well as a list of all the cities, towns, villages I’ve created over the years and the books that are set in them (so that I don’t have to waste time looking them up). A white board with pictures relating to the wip.

A pile of reference books. (The Shorter Oxford Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, Rodale’s Synonym Finder, Roget’s Thesaurus, Baby Names. Research books and magazines

– at present Hello, OK, Homes & Antiques, as well an some Italian magazines for the next book. A bookshelf full of writerly books.

If you could kiss anyone in the world who would it be?

That would be telling!

What are you working on now?

I’m working on a trilogy set in the UK, America and Australia with Barbara Hannay and Jackie Braun. Three women reach a moment of crisis in their lives. The stories are

their journeys back into the past to confront something that happened to them, to put something right.

Remember I told you that I scare myself? My heroine in this book is a blonde “bombshell” weather-girl (not your average Romance heroine), a trophy wife; the book begins with her leaving her millionaire husband, a man she married for the security he offered. It was falling in love with him that was the mistake. Her hidden past that makes it impossible to stay.

I tried to duck Belle Davenport. I even hated her name – Belinda -- but the moment it lodged in my head I knew neither of them were going to disappear. To say it’s easier to just get on with it would be an exaggeration. Nothing about this book is easy. But sometimes you just have to grin and bear it.

Tell us about your latest book.

THE SHEIKH’S GUARDED HEART is published in September. “Romance” has fabulous new covers in both the UK and the US as you can see and I’m really looking forward to getting reader reaction to them.

There is a real fantasy element to the “sheikh” book; the whole whisking the heroine away to the harem thing which, even today, seventy-odd years after E M Hull’s The Sheikh, taps into something slightly dark in the female psyche, relieving the heroine – and the reader by implication – of guilt in indulging the forbidden. But while Lucy Forrester is in danger, it is not from Sheikh Hanif. He is her knight, a man of honour but an exile from life, trapped by grief and guilt. Han rescues Lucy from certain death, but she takes on the greater challenge, to rescue him from a living hell…

Liz's current book is THE SHEIKH'S GUARDED HEART. For anexcerpt, check out her website.

Liz would love for you to come have a chat at her blog and for more about the book, check out her publisher's website.

And watch this space over the next month as Liz is giving away a signed copy of THE SHEIKH'S GUARDED HEART, a purse calendar and a Liz Fielding Screen Saver.

Thanks Liz!