LIZ FIELDING

SINGING A DUET…

Or rather writing one, since even the people who love me beg me not to sing. :)

It was nearly two years ago – another November – when I had a breakfast meeting with my editors at the plush Churchill Hotel in the west end of London to discuss what I’d write in the year ahead.

I had all kind of ideas floating around in my head but the eds had only one. A duet. They wanted a duet for November/December and please, please, please could one of them be a Christmas book.


I resisted. My worst experience with a book was a Christmas title. It had a gorgeous cover, one of my prettiest, but the truth of the matter is that you can’t sell a Christmas title when the hero and heroine are standing under a palm tree wearing nothing but swimsuits – even if the palm tree is strung with tiny Christmas lights. And, let’s face it, when it comes to scheduling, not just for its first outing, but for those important foreign sales, there are only two months of the year when a Christmas title will fit the bill.

But the last time I did a Christmas duet – unintentionally, I wrote consecutive books about friends – it was, apparently, a big hit and RomanceHQ wanted a repeat.

The really big problem about writing a duet is that it’s really hard work. They have to be delivered promptly, close enough together to be scheduled in consecutive months. And Christmas won’t wait. But what can a starving writer, caught in a pincer movement between her editor and the series editor, say? With her crispy bacon and scrambled eggs rapidly cooling in front of her there is only one answer. "If I say “yes”, can I eat?"

At which point we come to the second problem with writing a duet. They have to be linked in some way. One story twisted around the other. You have to think of two books at the same time and they have to overlap in some way. Which leads to other problems. Set up a scene in one book and you have to deliver it in the next. Easier said than done!

But the books were written, the duet was given a name “Trading Places” and the strap line written –

Annie wanted anonymity -
Lydia wanted the spotlight -
They both found love.

So here we are. It’s November and first up is Annie’s story, Christmas Angel for the Billionaire. Having been in the media spotlight all her life, she’s desperate for the chance to just walk down a street, stop at Starbucks for a coffee, check out the latest High St fashions without being pursued by the paparazzi. What she needs is a place holder, someone for the media – and her over-protective grandfather’s bodyguards -- to watch while she disappears for a while. And then she comes face to face with her “look alike”, Lydia Young. The open road beckons and things are going swimmingly until she misses her turning and ends up in the Saxon’s kitchen being played off in a battle of wills by George Saxon and his teenage daughter.

As for Lydia, she’s having a ball until she discovers that she, too, is caught in the middle of a struggle between a divided family. More about that next month. For now I have a 2-in-1 UK edition of CHRISTMAS ANGEL FOR THE BILLIONAIRE, twinned with Jessica Hart’s sparkling, funny and emotional Under the Boss’s Mistletoe to give away.

For a chance to win, tell me who you’d like to trade places with and why. I’ll pick the winner on Friday.

In the meantime, here's the first chapter...

And there is another excerpt on my website

(I'm also running this competition on the Harlequin Romance Authors blog at eHarlequin here if you want to have two goes -- with two different "Trading Places" stories!)