Saturday, August 30, 2014

Pretty shoes, gorgeous socks...

I'm going to have a little ranty rant...

It's about what happens to you if you're not a standard fit. Nothing major. Just having feet that, over the years, have spread a little and are now wider than standard.

I used to buy shoes from a company famous for providing well made, comfortable shoes for the wide fitting. Pretty shoes. I'm fairly light wearing with shoes (that just means I don't walk anywhere) and they last me a long time. But not forever. But now, when I go to this same manufacturer, I find that all the prettiest styles, all the prettiest colours, are restricted to those with "standard" fitting.

There's this one for instance. It comes in a colour range including black, purple, navy, a very lovely dark green, grey and this very desirable dark red.

I lust after the red. I yearn for it but wait; if you want the "wide" fitting you can only have purple or black. And the black isn't this lush suede, but shiny leather.

Why?  This company built its name on wide fittings. And is there really a bigger demand for this shoe in purple than red? Honestly?

I've written to them and they wrote back suggesting that I look at their other shoes. The decreasingly small selection that they now offer in wider fittings. Which isn't helpful. At all.

And it's not just me. When I go hunting for luscious comfy socks for the dh - who has big feet - I can only get them in the dull colours. Beige, grey, black. If you want the fun red and yellow ones that he loves, tough luck unless you've a standard 8-11
 




Saturday, August 23, 2014

A bride, a baby and the wrong man...?

This is cover on iBooks marking the place where, for the first time, an ebook version of  The Bride, the Baby and the Best Man is available for pre-order.

The rights were reverted to me earlier this year and I've "refreshed" it a little, it's been to a copy editor whose spotted the things that need a new eye to spot and I'm working with a designer on the new cover.

Meanwhile you can pre-order your copy - for an early bird price of 99c - at iBooks, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords.

Here's the blurb -

What do you when, three weeks from your wedding, a blackmailing aunt leaves you holding the baby?

Faith Bridges should be wedding dress shopping with her bridesmaids, finalising the menu for the reception, house hunting. Instead she's up close and personal with Harry March - the last man on earth she’d trust with her heart - a fractious baby and a four year old diva.

She and Julian may not have had the most conventional of courtships but he’s wise, responsible and utterly dependable.  He’s the exact opposite of Harry, who thinks that all he has to do to get her to stay and take care of his baby nephew and 4-year old niece is to tease her, charm her and, when that doesn’t work, make love to her.

Faith isn't about to fall for that; she knows that love is like meringue  — all sugar and air, and about as substantial. And she has made a promise that she isn’t about to break. So why is it so hard to walk away.

Friday, August 15, 2014

Classic Office Romance

It's publication day for the ebook version of a classic office romance I wrote a while back. I loved this book -  in which a very down to earth, very ordinary girl, captures the heart of the very broken Max Fleming.




Max made a brief appearance in Amanda's story - his sister - The Baby Plan,  when she fell in love with Dan a year later.

And because some characters just live on, when I wrote The Sheikh's Unsuitable Bride, Dan and his daughter Sadie were on hand to prime the romance pump!

I just love it when that happens!

Saturday, August 09, 2014

Playing on Google...

There's a new place to buy my backlist books, the ones I've given a bit of spit and polish since they were first published. It's Google Play

You'll find all my latest books there, too, but this boxset is on special offer until the end of August - four fun classic romances in one neat package for £1.10 if you're in the UK and whatever that equates to in the US; well under  $2. And it's available all over the world on this platform.

Meanwhile, I'm putting together another of my backlist books - The Bride, the Baby & the Best Man. Here's what it looked like back in the day when Harlequin Mills and Boon first published it.

I've revised it a little, updated it just enough and we're working on a gorgeous new cover. Hopefully it will be ready to go in September.  When the kids have gone back to school.

If you want to keep up to date with the launch - and a chance to win a copy of TBTB&TBM - you can sign up for my monthly newsletter here or "Like" me on Facebook here

Have a good weekend and happoy reading.

Saturday, August 02, 2014

August is Read a Romance month...

I can never understand why anyone would sneer at romantic fiction. I love a crime novel, or a good thriller, or even something a bit highbrow and literary, but there is nothing, absolutely nothing half so uplifting as losing yourself in a great romance.

I discovered the joy of this when I was in my very early twenties and, stuck in bed with a horrible stomach bug, one of room mates gave me a copy of The Quiet Gentleman by Georgette Heyer. It did far more for me than whatever potion the doc had dished out.= and made me a lifelong fan of Miss Heyer.

Obviously that wasn't the first "romance" I'd read. I'd fallen in love with Mr Knightly and Darcy, although I wasn't entirely convinced by Rochester or Heathcliffe. And fellow readers will always share a great read. The same friend who bought me my first Susanna Kearsley - she now an auto buy and I was so thrilled that The Firebird was recognised last week with a Rita - just last week recommended  The Wedding Cake Tree by Melanie Hudson. So emotional.

Another favourite author, a writer I've watched from her first fabulous romance for Mills & Boon Modern Tempted to her latest bestselling maindtream, Dear Thing, is Julie Cohen. All her books are romances, but they cover a huge range from the fabulous fun of Girl From Mars, to the kind of bookshelf keeper that stays with you long after you've closed the last page.

If you had to entice a skeptic to read a romance, which author, which book would you give her?

Leave a comment and I'll put you in the draw for a copy of my latest romance, For His Eyes Only - in paper or ebook. :)

August is Read-a-Romance month. 

Every day three great romance authors will write an essay on what romance fiction means to them, recommend writers they love and give away copies of their books. We're talking writers like Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Susanna Kearsley, Jane Ann Krentz, Kristan Higgins, Susan Mallery and Nicola Cornick.  How great is that?

Here's a link where you can see the entire list of participating authors.