FINDABOO - 12 Point Guide II

This weekend, Pink Heart Society columnist Kate Walker launches the brand new second edition of her award-winning 12 Point Guide to Writing Romance which she hopes will help more of you Findaboo (finish the damn book).

The story so far . . . Or how I got to this point.

First of all, I must say how thrilled I am that the Pink Hearters have let me launch the second edition of my how-to write book. Kate Walker’s 12 Point Guide to Writing Romance here on the blog for this month’s Findaboo! I’ve been friends with a couple of the of the editors – Trish and Natasha - since before either of them were published and I’ve watched and enjoyed their journey to publication and subsequent success .(Insert loud cheer here for Natasha’s RITA nomination! ) Both of them represent in person just what I’ve always loved to see, new writers with strong individual voices and oodles of talent coming through to add new strength, new blood to the line of writers who maintain the fabulous tradition of category romance books that is now being celebrated in the Mills & Boon Centenary year.

They’re also the perfect example of why I love to work with and help those new writers who are not yet published but are working, learning their craft, trying and submitting and picking themselves up, dusting themselves off and starting all over again when they encounter rejection . . .and hopefully one day too getting that magical Call that says ‘we want to buy your book.’ Category romance needs new authors – new writers are the lifeblood of the genre, the ones who will take it into the next decade, the next generation – to the next centenary. I can’t teach the new writers how to write, but I do hope that with my workshops, my talks, and above all else, with my how-to books, I can help them, avoid some of the most common mistakes and so hopefully get there a little bit faster.

On Tuesday April 8th, the second edition of my award-winning how to write book, the 12 Point Guide to Writing Romance will be published. As I write this, I’m eagerly waiting to get my hands on the first copies of the new edition, fresh from the printers. And I’m also planning to go to the London Book Fair where the publishers (Studymates) will be holding a special party to launch this new edition on Tuesday 15th. So it seemed like a good idea to take a quick look back and see how the 12 Point Guide ever came into being.

It was all Dee Tenorio’s fault. Some of you will know Dee – she is one of the hosties over on eHarlequin.com’s Community message boards. When (around 1999) I joined the message boards for the first time there was a special thread called the Teahouse of the Writer’s Moon – and from that grew the Writers’ Group the Gonnabeez. Not Wannabes – Gonnabeez. That determination was important. The Beez, led by Hostie Rae named me their Queen Bee (if you’ve wondered where the Queen Kate nickname came from that’s what started it) and I often worked with the group, offering advice, answers to Questions for Kate, joining in chats and occasionally running online classes. And that’s when the 12 Point Guide started.

I was chatting with Dee who was looking into writing for Presents. She had often done some ‘12 Step’ programmes on eHarl (like the ones for AA!) and I said, well, the twelve most important points about writing Presents are . . . And we were off. Later I realised that really those 12 points were the ones that mattered for any category line, not just Presents. And so the 12 Point Plan was born. That appeared as several on line classes and when my original how to write book, the Straightforward Guide to Writing Romantic Fiction appeared I used a transcript from one of these classes to illustrate those 12 Points. The 12 Point Section of the book was the one that got the most interest – people kept writing to me asking for more information, RWA groups asked me to run the 12 Point Workshop – and in the end I had a booklet made with all workshop in it. Those booklets were first on sale at the Romantic Novelists’ Association Conference in Guildford in 2003.

That was the booklet that the publishers Studymates saw when they were considering starting a set of Writers’ Guides. This could be made into a full book, they said. Could I expand the workshop, turn it into a 60,000 word book – basically 3 times the length it was. Yes, I can do that, I said. In the next couple of months? Errr - Well, that was hard work but I did it. I knew exactly the tone I wanted. I wanted the books to sound as if I was talking to the reader so that it was a print form of actually being at one of my courses (sadly, without the visual aids of Snoopy cartoons and - you guessed it – Hugh-in-a-towel). I think I succeeded – at least, lots of people tell me I did.

The first edition came out in June 2004. I was lucky enough to be able to launch it at the Romance Writers of Australia Conference at Coogee Beach in Sydney. And of course H-i-a-t came along as well. I’m not sure if I have to put the success of the 12 Point Guide down to that, but I never dare run a workshop now without THAT picture appearing somewhere in the event. (any excuse!)

Any How To book has to earn a reputation. But I knew that , and I was thrilled to see how its reputation did spread by word of mouth. Along the way it picked up a couple of awards from CataRomance – the Reviewers’ Choice for Best Book For Writers and the Readers’ Choice Best Writers’ Guide. And then, last year, I learned that it was getting very close to being sold out.

That was when the publisher and I started to talk about a second edition. I could have just had the first edition reprinted, with a few updates. There were things that needed to be revised – names of lines that had changed, slight differences in what the editors wanted. But I wanted it to be bigger, better that the first edition - and I wanted to make it a celebration of some of the best in category romance.

So that’s the biggest change in the second edition. It’s not only revised and updated but it’s expanded. And most of the expansion comes in a great section called From The Writers’ Desks. This has tips and writing hints and information from 21 of the currently published authors writing category romances today. Names like Michelle Reid, Anne McAllister, Sandra Marton, Liz Fielding, Nicola Cornick – and some you’ll recognise from the Pink Heart Society – Trish Wylie, Natasha Oakley, Ally Blake. 21 fabulous writers who all took the time and trouble to answer my questions and pass on their advice and hints to would-be authors. I owe them all a very special debt of thanks.

So on Tuesday April 8th, the second edition of the 12 Point Guide to Writing Romance will be published. I’ll be honest and say that the first edition hasn’t made me a fortune. But that’s OK. It has made me rich in a much better way. Rich in friends who have bought the book, learned from it, ended up published (as a result of their own talent, but with a little boost from the advice I offered). There are other friends too – friends who are not yet published but will be one day soon I hope - friends that I’ve met because they attended one of my 12 Point Guide courses. I’m hoping that the second edition will increase the numbers of those friends and - fingers crossed – add to my tally of newly-published authors who have had The Call, with a little step-up from the book.

Next week I will be running a special Launch Party for the 2nd edition over on my blog. There will be a special Writers’ Q&A and messages – and prizes from many of the authors whose contributions have helped to make this new edition even more useful than the first. I hope you’ll come along and join in the party – and maybe win a prize or two. And to start off the celebration, I’m offering a signed copy of one of the very first new 12 Point Guides, hot off the press. All you have to do is to post a comment today and I’ll get Sid the Cat on the job of picking a winner on Sunday. And I’ll throw in a copy of my latest M&B Modern release Spanish Billionaire, Innocent Wife (the one that's out in June in Presents) as well.

And special thanks to the PHS for letting me launch this new edition here today.

You can find out more about the second edition of the 12 Point Guide, or the rest of my books by visiting my website here. And don't forget to come to the launch party on my blog next week.

We carry on with our FinDaBoo Saturday with a report from our special correspondent, the lovely Biddy!

So it is April already is it? That means that my partial has been in Richmond with M&B for three months now. I’ve done my time… Can I get an answer now? Please?

I suppose I should be telling you how I haven’t noticed the time because I have been so busy writing ‘The Artist and The Ugly Duckling’ but I can’t lie to you… since we last spoke I have only written 2000 words on it. That doesn’t look too bad except the 2000 words were written on my flight to Newark sometime at the very beginning of the last month. I would have written more, honest, but if you visit My Blog you will see that I had such an AWFUL trip home I have been in recovery ever since. So forgive me please? And if not… here is a picture of Lucas to distract you!

I haven’t been a complete slacker there have been things fermenting and bubbling in this vat I call a brain. As I trudged across St James Park on the way to work last week I was thinking through some old stories that have stalled which are in the back of my cyber drawer. One in particular I started mumble mumble ago which started life as a M&B called ‘The One Before The One’ which quickly morphed into a bizarre romantic suspense chicklitty book called ‘The Brazen Bridesmaid’ which included a hero in a kilt, a dead body, a cat and a drunk heroine.

Now I have learnt enough to know that the bizarre plot was completely insane and wouldn’t work but there were some parts of it I liked; the heroine’s job as an agony aunt, the wedding setting and the hero in a kilt.

And then these ideas collided with another and BAM! New idea. So I dodged the geese and the less than shy bully boy squirrels that victimise us innocent users of the park and raced to work where I could write the outline down.

This would be the end of it but that evening (once more braving the gangs of marauding squirrels)

I decided to open my Romance Matters, the RNA magazine and there on page three was an article about entering The Elizabeth Goudge Trophy. It is open to anyone going to the RNA Conference and the theme this year is ‘To Have And To Hold’. PA-CHING!! New idea meets competition… my competitive spirit is ignited and Wooo Hooo!! Of I go. 500 words of the entry is written… go me!

This did bring to mind the whole competition idea. I was talking with a friend who lives in the US where entering competitions with the RWA are a rite of passage for the wannabe writer. Now I don’t know much about them but all the decisions that you have to make to get the right competition are confusing. You must chose a competition for the right reasons, is the final judge an editor or agent you want to get your work in front of? Or does the judging criteria give you good feedback on your work? With all the different names like the Molly and the Tara I did start to think I was hanging outside some West London private school gate with the yummy mummys! So at the moment I’m not going for them. But I think I will enter the Golden Heart but that is at the end of the year.

I’m also very well aware that all this competition talk and starting new projects is a distraction from the whole WRITING THE NEXT BOOK. But the fact I am writing at all is a plus point at the moment. Work recently has been a barrage of papers being written and the thought of coming home and writing thousands more words fills me with horror. Instead I have been admiring the photos I took in Nashville… it is research surely?

And I have been indulging in reading. Lots of reading. Tonnes of reading. Well that is research as well isn’t it?

Friday Film Night

Medical and Desire author Olivia Gates makes her Pink Heart Society debut to share with us her love for the movie Enchanted.

It’s been so long since I came out of a movie theater so filled with good adrenaline that I wanted to pirouette my pleasure and sing out the snippets of song the movie has left lingering in my mind. In fact, I don’t remember a movie affecting me this way since The Sound of Music, which I saw for the first time when I was fourteen!

So, OK, a lot of movies leave me with a smile on my face. But no movie has left me feeling good with a capital G like that. And it had that same effect on the many, not to mention disparate, people I dragged to see the movie with me the four times I’ve seen it. Each and every one of them came out feeling they’d exited a sweet dream, smiling, lighter and humming the songs and repeating the memorable lines in the movie.

And the movie that did us all that huge favor? Enchanted. The ultimate romantic fairytale, as Disney have woven it into our collective minds, come to life. Literally.

In the 11 animated minutes of the movie, would-be Princess Giselle sits around singing with the woodland creatures, while waiting for her prince to come along. No sooner does she finish singing, than Prince Edward does come along, following the script dictated by the fairytale manifesto. After a fracas with a troll who wanted to have her for a snack, she literally falls into Edward’s lap, and they immediately ‘finish each other’s duet’, exchange ‘true love’s kiss’ and decide to get married the next day. But Prince Edward, of course, has a Wicked Stepmother. Said WSM will lose her crown if Eddie boy marries. Now, being wicked, she takes steps to prevent that. With the old wishing well trick and disguised as a hag, the WSM casts Giselle to a land in which happy endings do not exist: Earth.

Hurled from her make-believe world, Giselle literally comes to life and exits through a manhole into the all-too-real streets of Manhattan. This is when the fun begins.

She wanders NYC, totally confused and vulnerable, searching for a way back home. As she thinks she’s found a portal leading there, she again literally falls into the lap of McDreamy …uh…ahem…Robert, a divorced, single-father, divorce lawyer, who under the influence of his daughter’s beseeching and his own chivalry, ends up taking her home. When he doesn’t have the heart to send her on her way, what follows is one clash after another of opposites, of no-expectations realism versus fantasy-oriented optimism, as Giselle invades the lives of all the jaded people around her with her exuberance and innocence, while they in return temper her naïveté and help her grow up in ways Snow White and Aurora couldn't have even conceive.

During the unfolding of the fun, there is a fantastic sequence when Giselle decides to clean up Robert's apartment. She throws open a window and calls out to her usual domestic helpers. But since this is NYC, she ends up with an apartment full of rats, pigeons and cockroaches, who do an ingenious job of cleaning the mess. The happy working song is priceless from start to finish.

As the movie flows, the two opposites move gradually to a meeting point. Giselle finds herself being drawn away from the indoctrination of the fantasy and to the highly imperfect and cynical Robert, and discovers how complicated, demanding and even frightening love really is. And as he falls in love with the pure-hearted, life-embracing Giselle, Robert begins to dare to loosen up, to trust and even to dream again. In the backdrop of all those lighthearted if poignant developments, Prince Edward is charging to Giselle’s rescue. And despite all of Nathaniel's, the WSM's henchman, elaborate attempts to throw him off her trail, and blessed by the luck and coincidence only a fairy prince can have, he eventually finds her. And the final detour from the fantasy formula occurs.

Giselle realizes she’d rather gamble on a love that is based, not on magical and unsubstantiated compatibility, but on the precarious criteria of appreciation and acceptance, of shared experiences and sense of humor, of unstoppable chemistry and realistic expectations, and discovers this is all that it takes to create a love that’s willing to sacrifice everything for the other. So she embraces it even with no guarantees of ever after, or anything else for that matter.

And this is where the movie so much resembles our own books.

Our own romances, no matter the degree of the fantasy element they contain, all have that leap of faith, that willingness to go the distance, to discover and give the best of oneself. And they always give the hope that if we follow the prodding of our heart when our mind has so much to approve of, (and the body is certainly willing, too! :-D) and go all out to meet the other halfway, a personalized happily ever after is indeed attainable.

In Enchanted, Disney made a movie that both upholds the standards that made Disney a worldwide icon, while making fun of those very traditions, big time. And it works, spectacularly. Everything managed to weave a magical web of vivacity and joy. I can’t imagine anyone with a pulse or a heart who wouldn’t enjoy Enchanted.

I can’t end this without specifying what, for me, made Enchanted so magical. Simply, it’s the masterful casting, from the smallest, non-speaking roles to the stars. The cast is amazing and I can't imagine anyone else filling these roles.

Amy Adams brings the naïve Disney Princess to full life, without a flicker of tongue-in-cheek, and infuses the character with a level of loveliness and spunk that keeps her from being predictable. And she holds her own with the best voices that sang Disney’s memorable Princesses’ songs.

Patrick Dempsey is convincing and sympathetic as well as delicious as the resigned, jaded single-father who gradually regains his joie de vivre and his inner dreamer.

James Marsden is an absolute hoot as the obliviously haughty and overconfident prince, a delightful doofus as two-dimensional as the realm that spawned him. Who would have thought the most boring X-Man would end up being so much fun? And such a musical talent, too? His voice and singing skills simply stunned me.

Susan Sarandon is, as usual, incredible, the eternal female, and perfectly, delightfully evil. Timothy Spall is wonderfully pitiful and despicable as the evil queen’s thrall and wannabe lover.

And most of all, Pip! A CGI chipmunk who is the ultimate in cuteness and spunk and loyalty and resourcefulness, who gave the theatre many laugh out loud moments. We still imitate the parts when, robbed of his speech ability in the real world, he kept trying to mime the plot Nathaniel was hatching to get rid of Giselle to the zealously uncomprehending Edward. Hilarious.

So now I have a question, and a contest, for you.

What movie left you wishing to see it again, and again, to revel in any detail you might have not fully appreciated the first time(s), and in that feel-good vibe?

Post your answers in the comments and you'll be entered to win a copy of "The Desert Lord’s Baby", my debut book in Silhouette Desire. I'll announce the winner here in the comments.


Olivia is thrilled to have THREE books out in April. What a month!

The first book is The Sheikh Surgeon’s Proposal. It was her first Sheikh book, the one that heralded FIVE more, and it sold out on the Mills & Boon site when it came out in February, but is now available on eHarlequin. Visit her website to read an excerpt and the fabulous reviews it has garnered! The second book is Desert Prince, Expectant Mother, and it’s on the shelves in the UK in April. The third book is her Silhouette Desire debut, and Book One in her THRONE of JUDAR mini-series. The Desert Lord’s Baby is a TOP PICK from Romantic Times, and an eHarelquin eBook Bestseller! It’s out now on eHarelquin in both paperback and eBook format, but will be on the shelves in May. You can read an excerpt on Olivia’s revamped website.

On her website you can also ogle…uh, read about the hunky Sheikhs that populate the six sheikh books she has out in 2008! You can also join her mailing list, or enter a contest to win free books.

Thursday Talk Time: Why I Love Harlequin Romance

Today Fiona Harper tells us why she loves Harlequin Romance - little books with a big heart!

I read a smattering of Harlequin Romances in my teens (under the UK name of Mills & Boon). There were young, innocent heroines, brooding heroes and surprisingly intricate descriptions of what everyone was wearing. I loved them. I loved the escapism, the romance, the simmering sexual tension that culminated in a few crushing kisses.

Fast-forward a few years… I picked up some more of those little books, not knowing that now there was more than just one flavour, different lines with different promises. And I read about sheikhs and tycoons and Mediterranean men that made me go weak at the knees. The heroines were feistier, and the action didn’t stop at a few chaste kisses – oh, no!

And then I decided I wanted to write a romance, and I started researching the different lines that were available. I ordered my first batch of Harlequin Romances and tore the box open when it came through the letterbox. The first one I read was Jodi Dawson’s Assignment: Marriage. The hero and heroine meet when she whacks him over the head with an iron skillet after finding him snooping in her garden.

Hang on a minute! I thought. Where was the innocent heroine in her yellow sundress with cap sleeves and a scalloped hem? Surely romance heroines weren’t supposed to be this sassy, sexy and – most surprising of all – funny? I devoured the rest of the book in a couple of hours. And then got on the internet to order some more.

Then I read A Family of His Own by Liz Fielding. The gardening-mad heroine was generous-hearted, a little bit clumsy and swore using the botanical names for plants. The hero was dark and brooding, but he wasn’t as invincible as some of the heroes I had met before; he was wounded... sigh. The bath water went from hot to cool to icy as I read it. I laughed out loud, I cried, my heart broke and got mended again. And when I finally closed the covers, I knew one thing – these were the kinds of books I wanted not only to read, but to write.

Harlequin Romances are big stories in little books. Chocolate for the soul. And any chocolate connoisseur worth her salt knows: there are different types of chocolate for different types of mood. Want the 70% cocoa solids, dark stuff – almost too rich and dense to bear? Then choose a weepie and make sure you have a box of tissues standing by as your heart slowly splinters like cracking chocolate.

How about creamy milk chocolate, sweet and crumbly and impossible to leave alone until the foil is empty? Pick up a heart-warming tale in the same vein as films like ‘You’ve Got Mail’ or ‘Sweet Home Alabama’. Smile and sigh and pout just a little when it’s all gone.

Or my favourite – white chocolate truffles with a cappuccino centre. Light, luscious mousse with a kick of caffeine to give you a zing, and a surprising depth once you get through the light and fluffy outer coating. These are the deceptively light stories that hook you in with great dialogue, a snappy plot, then, just when you’re lulled into a false sense of security – ZAP – suddenly the tears are streaming down your face and you’ve got the ‘warm and fuzzy’ feeling so bad your toes are tingling.

But, the absolutely best thing we all love about Harlequin Romances is the down-to-earth characters and the identifiable situations they face, letting us believe that, given the blessing of fate and a following wind, maybe it could happen us too…. Sigh.

Look out for Fiona's next release, Saying Yes To The Millionaire, part of the Bride for All Seasons trilogy. Out June 2008.

When cautious Fern Chambers is challenged by a friend to say yes to every question she is asked, she never expects to spend four days with dreamy Josh Adams in a charity treasure hunt...

Writer's Wednesday - THE CALL with Anna Cleary!

We love call stories, and this one is a doozy! Please give a big PINK HEART welcome to new author Anna Cleary, who joins us today with her call story!

Welcome Anna!

Hello there,

I’m Anna Cleary, and I write for the Mills&Boon Modern Heat line, which currently markets in North America as Harlequin Presents Extra. I am thrilled—no, more than thrilled—I am over the moon to announce that my first published book, My Tall Dark Greek Boss, which has already been out in the UK, Aus and N.Z, is this month blazing from bookshelves across America.

If only I were there to see it. Sigh.

The fact is, I am here in my study in Australia, shackled to my computer, (though not by diamonds), struggling to bring another pair of lovers to a passionate and romantic conclusion of their quest for true love.

But, gentle reader, I hear you ask, why do you want to do something so essentially psychotic?

I can only give a wry grimace and admit that all my life I’ve wanted to do this very psychotic thing. Dream up people—Yes, yes, all right—heroes, and create other people, heroines, in fact, into whose skins I can crawl so I can truly get the buzz out of the heroes. Does that make sense?

And yes, it’s painful, it’s terrifying, it’s hard labour, but it’s also fantastic fun, and at times even thrilling. In fact, even if I hadn’t received that fateful phone call on that Maundy Thursday eleven months ago, I’d still be here, tearing my hair out and sobbing with my heroine and suffering with my wounded, brooding hero (with very dark eyes and a stern, while at the same time extremely sensuous, mouth.)

It all started like this. I had a friend, who had a friend who wrote for Mills &Boon. And indeed she does write the most emotionally satisfying and romantic medical romances. You know her too—Meredith Webber. So when I confessed my lifelong passion to my friend, she suggested I talk to her friend, and Meredith suggested I have a shot at writing a Mills &Boon romance.

And then another friend made a pact with me. Let’s each write a first chapter in our winter holidays.

So I had a shot. I had several shots. As green behind the gills as I was, I submitted each and every finished manuscript to the editorial department at M&B. And thank goodness, the first five—or was it six? surely not seven? No, no, that was the one I wrote twice, and submitted again—were firmly rejected by those brilliant and discerning editors.

Funny thing, isn’t it? With each book you write, you think—This is as good as it gets. Baby, I’m so crash hot now with this one, I couldn’t possibly get any better. And then you write the next one and the next one, and see how ghastly those old ones were. Lucky for me I was in a writers group, and I had—still have—the most wonderful, warm, thoughtful, honest and talented bunch of other writers with whom I can exchange ideas.

At last I sent a story in—one with, perhaps, just a little extra soupcon of personal emotional truth—and I received an email. Then another email, and some suggestions re some changes. Change this, and this, and we might have a chat on Thursday.

What! Changes to my work of art?

It was a struggle to swallow my artistic ego, but I did it, though it left a lump. I sent the revised manscript, then waited. A chat on Thursday, I thought excitedly, sounds like a phone call.

Be professional, friends warned. Have a notebook handy to write things down. Think of it as a job interview. Be cool.

On Thursday I trawled the house all day long for a pen that worked, fearful of leaving the phone. By evening I was a nervous wreck. ‘I’ll just have to go and lie down,’ I told my daughter.
Then as soon as I dropped into a fitful doze, the phone rang. I heard my daughter answer it and say, ‘Yes. Yes, she’s here...’ then bawl, ‘MUM! I think its Mills and Boon.’

Well! I leaped from my bed and catapulted myself down the hall, crashing from wall to wall, glancing off every sharp corner of furniture along the way, eventually halting when my toe stubbed itself against the phone desk.

Black, blue and wincing, I quavered, ‘Yes?’

A light and lovely voice answered, a voice I’d dreamed of hearing all my life, one with the most delightful London accent. ‘Ms Cleary? We really love your book. We wondered if you would be interested in a contract?’

Interested! Words still fail me when I think of the miracle of that call.

And was I cool? No, I was not. The truth is I babbled. I was so excited, I hardly knew what I said. But a big Yes please! was in there somewhere. I was thrilled to bits, and have been ever since. And now I have a book doing the world rounds, and another coming out in July and August. It’s called Taken by the Maverick Millionaire—a Modern Heat in the UK, Sexy Sensation in Oz and NZ, and in America it will be branded Harlequin Presents.

And the most marvellous thing of all is that I’ve met a fabulous bunch of other authors. Wonderful, warm, witty, creative people from all over, with one fantastic thing in common with me. They love to read romance, and they love to write it.

Truly, the world needs to ask itself. What is it about romance writers that make them such special, lovely people?

Thanks Anna for the lovely, and INSPIRING call story! We certainly agree that romance writers - and readers - are the best people ever!

You can visit her Harlequin profile HERE! Don't forget to pick up MY TALL DARK GREEK BOSS, out in North America!

Temptation on Tuesday :: Digital Cameras

Last month our own PHS ed Ally Blake spoke to us of eBay as a perfect time waster for those looking for one. This month she admits to another problem which takes time away from her writing. The scourge of the digital camera.

Do you remember the days when you'd go to the shops to buy a roll of 24 film? You'd be careful to load it just so, and if you were lucky you might get a couple of free shots in at the end.

Every photo taken was carefully set up, carefully constructed. If somebody thought maybe they closed their eyes as the flash went off, well tough. You only ever took a second shot of the same thing if it was reeaaaaally important.

And then as the camera whirred to the end of the film, you took the film out in the dark under your bed covers. You saved up to get the thing developed. Then there was that special moment a few days later when you got the pack and hid in a corner of the shop to flick through the whole lot as you couldn't wait until you got home. The thrill, the disappointment, the 'oh my god I'd forgotten about that one' excitement.

Can you believe that nowadays, with the invention of the digital camera, that same process – from the click to knowing how it turned out - takes about three seconds? If there is a chance to have that same excited thrill when a happy memory is captured, over and over again no wonder we are click happy.

Then add to that fact that I have a new baby. Can you imagine how many hours are spent hovering over her with the camera?

Click click click. Hang on I don't like the flash so we'll try again without. Click click click. Oh hang on that pink outfit would look so cute if she was lying on the dark pink rug. Click click click. Oh look did you see that face she pulled? She's never done that exact face before. Click click click.

Seriously, the minutes of my life that are spent reliving these moments over and over again. I once burnt a frying pan full of pikelets because she suddenly discovered her right hand. Not five minutes later she discovered it yet again so I had to take more photos and guess what? Another batch of pikelets burnt.

But without a digital camera, I wouldn't have any hope of catching so many pictures of the many different faces and moves and habits of my little wonder. See left? Click click click.

So how is a girl to sit at a computer and write when there is a going gahing bundle of gorgeousness rolling about on the floor beside her and a digital camera within reach? Will I ever be able to finish a book again? Panic…rising. Breaths…coming…harder.

Hello, my name is Ally Blake and I have a problem…

Ally's latest Harlequin Romance, FALLING FOR THE REBEL HEIR is out now in Australia and New Zealand as part of the bestselling Mothers Day Gift Selection and in North America as well!

And next month her third, and sexiest yet, Modern Heat novel THE MAGNATE'S INDECENT PROPOSAL is out in the UK. Or if you simply can't wait it's available online now through Amazon and Mills and Boon UK.

Check out more about the books at her website...

Male On Monday : Carpenters

I have a new vice. The carpenters on TLC's home improvement shows. OK, so maybe it's not so new, but I do think it was brilliant of the channel to cast gorgeous and capable men on shows we can watch and learn something at the same time.

For me it started with Ty Pennington and Trading Places. He was cute, funny, and the man could build a bookshelf in an hour. My husband is an accountant. My checkbook is immaculate, but he needs instructions to install a doorstop. No wonder I dreamed about him Trading Places with Ty for an afternoon. Sadly, I'd probably put him to work on the house.

Ty moved on to my boys favorite show, Extreme Makeover Home Edition, and so Trading Places has come up with a steady stream of men who make me sigh. Carter Oosterhouse. Brandon Russell... this show seems to be a great launch point for these guys. Not only has Ty moved up, Carter has his own show on HGTV, Carter Can.

While You Were Out is a show about fixing up a room while your loved one is out and returns home for the big surprise. It's no surprise TLC found more gorgeous men to get things done quickly. Andrew Dan Jumbo is my favorite, but Jason Cameron is fabulous too. My favorite episode has them both...I wonder why... Andrew now has his own show, Take Home Handyman. Does it get any better than that?

I think it is the idea that they are smart, funny, gorgeous, and capable of fixing my baseboards without nagging. Of course that is part of the fantasy. On TV they get the job done quickly and well. At home...I'm holding onto the idea they keep up the good work!

Who are your favorite blue collar guys?

Jenna is hard at work on her next title for Mills & Boon Modern Extra. In the meantime, check out her website, blog, or reading group, We Call It Research.