And to keep you busy, while I'm holding my heroine's hands as she says "I do" (she doesn't!), click here for a jigsaw of the cover of Christmas Angel for the Billionaire.

Just alittle bit of fun to keep you all out of mischief. :)

FOREIGN EDITIONS

It's always a thrill to get a foreign edition in the post, but I'm always especially thrilled to see a Dutch translation of my books.

Family ties take me to the Netherlands fairly regularly and I do feel a special affinity with the country, so it was a particular delight to spot this one on the Harlequin Netherlands website, a 3-in-1 containing reprints of The Bachelor's Bab, His Personal Agenda and The Bridesmaid's Rewards (the one with all the chocolate).



The French have been busy publishing "Liz Fielding" this summer, too. They've published 100 Arabian Nights (with Meredith Webber and Kim Lawrence), this gorgeous volume, containing The Ordinary Princess.

There are a couple of other stories available in France this month, including The Sheikh's Unsuitable Bride, in the Horizon series.







And in Italy they've just issued Secret Baby, Surprise Parents, and this lovely Christmas anthology is also available for the holidays.

Right now, I'm working hard on a book due this month, but I'll be back soon to introduce Annie and Lydia, the two heroines of my TRADING PLACES duet and -- obviously -- there'll be a competition, so watch out for that. :)

Inthe meantime, here's what Romantic Times has to say about Annie's book, available now online and retail next month, CHRISTMAS ANGEL FOR THE BILLIONAIRE:

A delicate blending of fantasy and reality, this story has everything, including a difficult but irresistible hero and a clever, gutsy heroine who's in every way his match. 4.5 stars

And today a reviewer at All About Romance said about my books --

There is a quality to her writing that pleases me – she lets dialogue stand for itself without cluttering it with speech tags and the sentences roll off each other in the best tradition of understated British prose; her stories are tasteful fairy tales with moderately stiff upper lips.

And of Christmas Angel --

A fairy tale with slick writing and gentle humour.

MILLS AND BOON AT CHELTENHAM

Remember the Butlers in the Buff?



Well here's a little more one of them (ahem!) on duty at the Cheltenham Festival this week, when Mills & Boon brought a little excitement to this somewhat sedate literary festival. I so wish I'd been there!

To see him, and the panel, in action, click here

And more about the "reader's choice" hero, Mr Rochester, here

BECOMING A HARLEQUIN AMBASSADOR...


If you love the Harlequin Romance novels this is a HOT opportunity to get some free books. You can sign up to be a Harlequin Ambassador!

If you qualify as a Harlequin Ambassador, you’ll be sent all the tools you need to spark great conversation about Harlequin books including:

* Free books
* Short Stories
* Chapter excerpts from upcoming books
* and much more!

In addition, you will be able to review and comment on the covers, new book ideas and exchange opinions with women just like you! Check it out here

Last weekend the dh and I took advantage of the lovely autumn weather to go for Sunday lunch and then visit the Red Kite feeding centre not too far from our home.

The Red Kite is a stunningly beautiful bird, but there were, until twenty years ago, as few as thirty breeding pairs in its stronghold in Carmarthenshire.



The Llanddeusant Red Kite Feeding Station was opened in the summer of 2002 by a local partnership with support from the Brecon Beacons National Park, the Welsh Red Kite Trust and various other notable wildlife organisations and individuals. The centre is designed to fit naturally into the landscape and to provide bird lovers the ideal opportunity to witness Red Kites, Buzzards and other birds feeding.



The birds were already wheeling round when we arrived an hour before feeding time. First half a dozen or so, then more and more began to arrive.

As the food arrived, not too much, these are wild birds, they swooped and one of the other watchers counted over sixty birds, wheeling and diving.

The views over the Black Mountains were stunning, too. I can't wait to go back.

It’s October. The kids are back at school, the nights are drawing in and the local supermarket have shifted the cereals and filled the shelf with seasonal goodies. Try as we might to bury our head in the sand and ignore it, it’s nearly Christmas. And that means it’s time for Christmas titles from Harlequin and Mills & Boon.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a Christmas title on sale. I’ve only done two others – All She Wants for Christmas and A Surprise Christmas Proposal. Both of those were accidental Christmas books.

This year, I’m making up for ignoring the season and you’ll be getting two books from me. In the “Trading Places” duet -- Christmas Angel for the Billionaire (November) and Her Desert Dream (December) – Lady Roseanne Napier and Lydia Young swap places for a week just before the holidays.

Lady Roseanne, orphaned just before Christmas when she was six years old, has become the “people’s angel”. At sixteen she stepped into her parents’ shoes to become the face of the charity they founded. Ten years on, she’s a young woman cut off from real life, confined within the protective bubble of bodyguards and protocol.

Here she is –

Annie smothered a yawn. The room was hot, the lingering scent of food nauseating and all she wanted to do was lay her head on the table in front of her, close her eyes and switch off.

If only.

There was a visit to a hospital, then three hours of Wagner at a charity gala to endure before she could even think about sleep. And even then, no matter how tired she was, thinking about it was as close as she would get.

She’d tried it all. Soothing baths, a lavender pillow, every kind of relaxation technique without success. But calming her mind wasn’t the problem.

It wasn’t the fact that it was swirling with all the things she needed to remember that was keeping her awake. She had an efficient personal assistant to take care of every single detail of her life and ensure that she was in the right place, at the right time. A speech writer to put carefully chosen words into her mouth when she got there. A style consultant whose job it was to ensure that whenever she appeared in public she made the front page.

That was the problem.


There was absolutely nothing in her mind to swirl around. It was empty. Like her life.
In just under a minute she was going to have to stand up and talk to these amazing people who had put themselves on the line to alleviate suffering in the world.

They had come to see her, listen to her inspire them to even greater efforts. And her presence ensured that the press was here, too, which meant that the work they did would be noticed, reported.

Maybe.

Her hat, a rich green velvet and feather folly perched at a saucy angle over her right eye would probably garner more column inches than the charity she was here to support.
She was doing more for magazine and newspaper circulation than she was for the medical teams, the search units, pilots, drivers, communications people who dropped everything at a moment’s notice, risking their lives to help victims of war, famine, disaster, a point she’d made to her grandfather more than once.

A pragmatist, he had dismissed her concerns, reminding her that it was a symbiotic relationship and everyone would benefit from her appearance, including the British fashion industry.

It didn’t help that he was right.

She wanted to do more, be more than a cover girl, a fashion icon. Her parents had been out there, on the front line, picking up the pieces of ruined lives and she had planned to follow in their footsteps.

She stopped the thought. Publicity was the only gift she had and she had better do it right but as she took her place at the lectern and a wave of applause hit her, a long silent scream invaded the emptiness inside her head.

Noooooo…

A chance encounter with her “look-alike”, Lydia Young, gives her the opportunity to escape, to grab a week of freedom, be invisible. Be herself. It took planning, careful timing and a lot of nerve on Lydia’s part, but now she was off, free, the open road in front of her and no one but herself to please. But life isn’t ever that easy. All it takes to throw a spanner in the works is a missed turning, a car that isn’t quite what it seems and George Saxon.

Here’s George –


George Saxon, bare feet propped on the deck rail of his California beach house, laptop on his knees, gave up on the problem that had been eluding him for weeks and surfed idly through the headlines of the London newspapers.

His eyes were caught by the picture of a couple leaving some gala. She was one of those tall, patrician women, pale blonde hair swept up off her neck, her fabulously expensive gown cut low to reveal hollows in her shoulders even deeper than those in her cheeks.

But it wasn’t her dress or the fact that she’d so obviously starved herself to get into it that had caught and held his attention. It was her eyes.

Her mouth was smiling for the camera, but her eyes, large, blue seemed to be looking straight at him, sending him a silent appeal for help.
He clicked swiftly back to the program he’d been working on. Sometimes switching in and out of a problem cleared the blockage but this one was stubborn, which was why he’d left his Chicago office, his lakeside apartment. Escaping the frantic pre-Christmas party atmosphere for the peace of the beach.

Behind him, inside the house, the phone began to ring. It would be his accountant, or his lawyer, or his office but success had insulated him from the need to jump when the phone rang and he left it for the machine to pick up. There was nothing, no one --

‘George? It’s your dad…’

But then again there were exceptions to every rule.

And here’s what Romantic Times had to say –

CHRISTMAS ANGEL FOR THE BILLIONAIRE (4.5) A delicate blending of fantasy and reality, this story has everything, including a difficult but irresistible hero and a clever, gutsy heroine who's in every way his match.

Christmas Angel for the Billionaire is on sale as a 2-in-1 with Jessica Hart’s fabulous story, Under the Boss’s Mistletoe in the UK, or on it’s own from eHarlequin, in both paper and eBook formats.

There’s a chance to win signed copies of both “Trading Places” books on the Harlequin Romance Authors blog at eHarlequin from Friday this week – you just have to leave a comment to enter the draw.

There will also be an interview with me on Friday here so do drop by and say hello if you have a moment.

And you can let me know what you think of the book on Twitter, too.

You'll find more about the book on my website, or you can Browse the Book --

THE PICTURES...

As promised here are the dh's prize winning photographs. The first was taken when the mist filled the Towy Valley leaving Dryslwyn Castle spotlit by the sun on its "island". The picture was taken from Paxton's Tower, a local landmark. This was the one that won 1st prize.

This is the mill at Cenarth Falls, taken when the water was low. On a recent visit the entire foreground was filled with rushing water. This is a great place to watch salmon leaping, and is also where you'll find the coracle museum.

...AND OTHER STUFF

Last week I went to London for the annual Mills & Boon author lunch. Fabulous food and great craic. Here I am with Lucy Gordon. We share a 2-in-1 in December -- more about that later.







Here's the very lovely Fiona Harper with her "Clippy" bag.












And here are the Kates -- Walker and Hardy -- just having fun.









AND FINALLY

To celebrate their first year of eBooks, Mills & Boon are following Harlequin in their eBook giveaway and offering ten books to download absolutely free. You'll find them here There are also links on the sidebar to Harlequin Celebrates and Everyone's Reading. Between them there are 26 free books up for grabs, across all genres.

Enjoy!

THE BIG VILLAGE SHOW -- PART II

We spent this afternoon at the Big Village Show, touring the exhibits and seeing who won what.

It was a totally gorgeous day and we walked up through the National Botanic Gardens, revisiting the Japanese Garden which began it's life as an exhibit in Chelsea. The trees and plants had grown a lot since I last saw them.

The last time I was there, I had to stand on a scaffold to look over the wall into the walled garden. Today it was filled with fruit, vegetables, fig trees and plants and from one of the paths I took this photograph of the great glass dome, which is where they filmed a recent episode of Dr Who.

David Tennant so close...



The big day was yesterday, with the choir and the TV, but people were beginning to gather for the presentations and as we approached the marquees, the heart was pounding a little hoping that the dh wouldn't be disappointed.

The prize winning leeks. The prize winning carrots. The children's miniature garden. The prize winning flower arrangement.

Only when we'd admired everything else did we go into the marquee where the photographs were on display. And major excitement.

The dh had won first prize, second prize and also the blue ribbon for the best photograph in show! He absolutely refused to stand and be photographed wearing the ribbon (I would have, too!) but here it is.

THE BIG VILLAGE SHOW

There was a time when all the little villages in our area would hold their own "show" of garden produce, crafts, baking, etc. This year, they have all combined to hold the Big Village Show at the National Botanic Gardens which is just down the road from us at Llanarthne, near Carmarthen.

Along with loads of other exhibitors we arrived last night and, having found our way to the tradesman's entrance -- which gave us a behind the scenes view of the gardens, which was fun -- to set up the photographs which the dh has entered (in the spirit of community, which is what these shows are all about).

There are four big marquees and the flowers were already arriving -- I'll take some photographs when I go back on Sunday to have a really good look around.

One of our friends, Les Bryan, is entering his hand carved love spoons and spinning wheels -- and his granddaughter will be entering in the miniature gardens category (she won last year!)

Everyone was so friendly and having such a great time. I hope the crowds turn out to enjoy the spectacle -- and the gardens of course, which are now taking on their autumn colours. It's worth the walk to the top of the hill just to see the stunning views.

Oh, and for the Dr Who fans amongst you, the Garden's great Glass House will feature in Dr Who and the Waters of Mars, to be on UK screens "Novemberish" -- there's a clip on the Garden's website (I can't figure out how to put it here).

News of my trip to London later in the week!

A LITTLE TREAT…

Toys. We all need them.

I tend not to indulge myself in jewellery (that’s the dh’s job) or fancy clothes. Since I spend most of time in office “comfort” clothes, or in the kids’ abandoned t-shirts messing about in the garden, one new classic a year tends to fulfil my need for designer chic (although it has been a year since I last splurged so I need to think about that).

But I have been yearning for a net book. One of those tiny little computers that weighs next to nothing and has a battery that lasts more than twice as long as any laptop I’ve ever owned. Actually, Freddie, my laptop has a battery that beeped its last a couple of years ago and now sits permanently attached to an electric point, never to venture out again, but perfect for the internet.

Last week, abandoning a trip to the coast because it was raining – again – we went to Borders in Swansea to stock up on the latest titles. I was rather shocked to see yards of empty shelves in the romance section which has now lost its position near the magazines and has been pushed to the back of the store, leaving crime and paranormals with the prime space.

We all know that the bricks and mortar stores have been suffering badly in competition with online book sellers who can cut prices and wield their muscle by removing books from publishers who won’t play their discount game. My fear is that hundreds of books have simply been returned to publishers to improve Borders cash flow situation. Bad for publishers, bad for authors. Not great for book buyers either, in the long term. Browsing on the 'net is nowhere near as pleasurable as touching the books -- and you don't get that "leap out at you" love at first sight thing, either. Fingers crossed those shelves will soon be filled with Christmas titles and the gaps will be there for all the right reasons.

Anyway the dh, having picked up books 2 and 3 in Simon Scarrow’s Wellington/Bonaparte quartet and the latest Sebastian Faulk, remembered he had an urgent need for a magenta ink cartridge (he’s entering some photographs in the The Big Village Show being held at the Millennium Gardens later this month) and we crossed the road to the electrical store across the road. Which is when, having restrained myself admirably in Borders – just a BBC Italian Cookery magazine and some envelopes for me -- I saw the tiniest Acer Net Book and lost control of my credit card.

I have to admit the price was the clincher. It was on “special” for the Bank Holiday, the price cut by a £100, which is not chicken feed.

Slender, sexy in her little black dress I was going to call her Audrey. But she’s a Welsh Net Book, from Swansea, Dylan Thomas’s “sea town” and as I charged her up she whispered to me in the soft lilting accent of Mae-Rose Cottage in Under Milk Wood, “…call me Delores, like they do in the stories…”

So here she is, the latest member of the Liz Fielding writing team. Delores. You'll be hearing a lot from her. Her first assignment, the Amba lunch next week in London.

SHOPPING EARLY FOR CHRISTMAS...

I don't actually believe in shopping early for Christmas.

I try to ignore it altogether until the week before but some things, if you don't grab them when they appear, you're going to miss. I just noticed this book here at the Mills & Boon website (it'll be retail next month).

It's a collection of stories by authors such as Lucy Monroe, Heidi Rice and there's one of mine in there, too. A nice little stocking filler -- I didn't want you to miss it.

...OR JUST GOING TO THE LIBRARY

The first of my "Trading Places" duet books, Christmas Angel for the Billionaire, will be available in UK libraries this month.

Here's a tiny taster from the inside cover:

"Annie."

She looked up.

"I love you."

She opened her mouth, took a breath, shook her head. "You don't know me."

"I know what makes you laugh," George said, lifting a hand to her face, wiping his fingers across the tears that were running unchecked down her cheek. "I know what makes you cry."

She didn't deny it, just shivered as he put his arms around her, drew her close, resting his own cheek against her pale hair.

"I know how your skin feels beneath my hands," he continued. "The taste of your mouth. The way your eyes look when I touch you. I know that you're kind, generous, caring, intuitive, smart." He looked down at her. "I know that no matter what I say you'll go home. What I'm asking is, will you come back?"

Something else to look out for -- and the great thing about this one, is that it's absolutely free!

PUTTING MY FEET UP...

... and having the best fun. My author copy of LOVES ME, LOVES ME NOT -- the anthology from the Romantic Novelists' Association written by its members to celebrate 50 glorious years of romance -- was delivered while I was away and in those little moments of peace and quiet I've been dipping into it.

That's the joy of short stories. They are like those gorgeous little miniature cakes I became addicted to in Italy. Exactly like the big ones, but just a mouthful.

These are stories by favourite authors, a roll call of some of the great names -- Joanna Trollope, Katie Fforde, Carole Matthews, Jill Mansell, Christina Jones, Anna Jacobs. Their voice, but in a bite-sized chunk.

I shed a tear at a story by Sue Moorcroft, shrieked with delight when Victoria Connelly introduced "Ginger" (a favourite and very ancient inhabitant of the British Museum) in her story and just drooled with pleasure at Sophie Weston's wonderful Cinderella Revisited.

Published by Mira, this is a book you'll want in your own Christmas stocking and will want to tuck under the tree of every romance reader you love. It's not cheap, but honestly when you see what you get it's a real bargain -- 40 stories, nearly 600 pages. You'll find a direct link to Amazon, UK on my sidebar. It's also on sale in the US or you can buy it from The Book Depository (also on the sidebar) for the same price as Amazon UK, but they won't charge you postage no matter where you are in the world.

Oh, and there's a little taster from my own contribution on my website.

HOLIDAY PICS...

I've been on my holidays. Well, just a little break to be honest -- something I promised myself the minute the last book was finished. For just a few days, we packed a lot in. Since we were taking the Eurostar to Brussels, we stayed overnight with the darling daughter whose wedding was such a delight last year. She and her best beloved are expecting their first baby in January and so there was a lot to talk about and celebrate.

A taxi picked us up at 6 the next morning and sped us towards St Pancras where we snatched a cup of coffee, before we were being whisked away at high speed towards the continent. I love the Eurostar and would never catch a plane if I had a choice.

Connections were all perfectly timed and we were met at our destination, Dordrecht in Holland, by the first born. He hates having his picture taken (don't we all!) but here is Bob, # 3 in the dog hierarchy. (The other are Kaes, Flynn and Milo but Bob is the poser -- appearing in a dog food advertisement went to his head!)

Dordrecht is the oldest city in Holland, is surrounded by water and has wonderfully picturesque old harbours, streets and buildings. The old State House actually has a canal running beneath it. We came across this quiet little street and I would just love to live in one of those houses. The big building on the left is a school.

This is the Grand Kerk which has a lovely carillion of bells that plays every quarter. We sat in an open air cafe by the harbour on our first evening, watching yachts coming and going through a lift bridge and felt utterly European in a way you never can in the UK.

And what about this for a chimney?

On Saturday we went to the market, which is amazing. Not as crazy as the ones in Italy but all beautifully ordered in that totally Dutch way.

Fruit, flowers, vegetables and fish to make a woman drool, but since we were in Holland I thought you'd want to see the cheese.

(And yes, of course we bought some -- a very old, smokey Gouda if you must know!)

We took the waterbus into Rotterdam, a high speed trip along the Maas, and then, because honestly the feet were worn out, we took another boat trip around the port, which is huge. There was a warehouse just for orange concentrate from Brazil. (It was orange...) and there were some of the amazing buildings for which Rotterdam is famed.

I'll gloss over the return journey. European trains tend to be in a class of their own, but a fire in a tunnel involved going backwards to go forwards and no one seemed to have a clue what was happening. We made our check in at Schipol but then missed our early boarding call. But we made it.

If you haven't checked the comments on the last blog, my thanks to everyone who offered "hero" names for the book I've just started. I did settle on Adam Gilchrist, then the dh reminded me that he's a Australian cricketer, which explains why is sounded so absolutely perfect. He's now Adam Wavell (his heroine is Emily -- Millie -- Coleridge), but I now have a lovely file full of names to call on for the future. Michele L and Robyn1 won books from the backlist (who could resist Horatio!) and I'll be getting them into the post asap.

Chapter Six of Wild Justice is now online here Fizz thinks she's found a way to avoid Luke Devlin's financial hold over her. Oh, dear...

Last, but not least, don't forget that Harlequin Romance authors now have their own blog here at eHarlequin, where series writers will be sharing their writing lives with readers two or three times a week. You should not miss Fiona Harper as "Barbara Cartland"!

SORRY...

... that I've been missing in action for the last couple of weeks. It's not that nothing has been happening, it's that I've been too busy to write about it.

Busy? What does a writer do all day?

I love the romantic novelist skit in Little Britain where Matt Lucas, as the terminally "blocked" Dame Sally Markham lies back on a sofa eating chocolates dictating a word at a time to her secretary. It's an image indelibly imprinted on the brain of most journalists. If only it were so.

Instead I sit on chair that has changed the shape of my derriere over the years and pound away at the keyboard. The last time my laptop was in the shop they replaced the keyboard out of kindness -- there wasn't a letter left. (Well, obvioiusly the numbers, but I have no use for them!) It wasn't that long ago, but they're look pretty bare again. If I actually have to look to check where the n and m are, I haven't a clue. If I didn't touch-type I'd be in real trouble!

Anyway... That's what I’ve been doing non-stop for the last two weeks. Keyboard pounding. Finishing the book. I haven’t read a book, seen more than half an hour of television, or had anything that could be described as a life.

My hero and heroine, Josie and Gideon, have had every last moment of it. Their story has consumed my own.

I’ve been getting up at 5 am to write when the world is quiet. No distant murmurings from a radio. No “I’m not going to disturb you but…” No sudden realisation that it’s Tuesday and I haven’t put the rubbish out.

Starting at 5 am, finishing at 5 pm when the brain is too numb to function, then falling asleep in front of the television day after day until the tiny pin prick of light at the end of the tunnel became brilliant sunshine. It happened on Wednesday, just around lunchtime. I wrote the last line – rather a good one I thought – and that it. Hero and heroine waved off into the sunset. Another great Harlequin Romance story told. Or very nearly.

My lovely ed is about to go on holiday so there was no time for a last read through. I just hit the send key and off it went, winging its way to Romance HQ. Then I sat there with a big smile of my face thinking, whew -- or something very much like it – before I emerged blinking into the daylight to discover that after weeks of incessant rain, the sun was shining. I stood there for a moment, not quite knowing what to do with myself. It’s like that when the story is done and you’ve been left behind by your characters. It takes a little while to come round, remember what it was I did before I started the book.

I started by reacquainting myself with the garden. Walking across the squelchy lawn to check what the beans are doing. Whether the hostas survived the slugs. Vowing that next year I'll only put daisies in my pots -- they don't care what the weather does, just sit there, shiny and fresh and gorgeous, whereas those poor petunias are fit for nothing but compost. Decided what I was going to do with the rest of the day. Or rather what I had to do -- all the things I'd left hanging for weeks. Pay the bills, pick up the tablecloth from the laundry, take back the overdue library books that I hadn't even read. Getting better, I love going to the library. Buy a birthday present for a treasured aunt. Maybe even a little chocolate. Yes!

I grabbed my bag and the car keys full of joy – mostly about the chocolate -- I had just reached the door when I remembered the leopard cubs.

Introduced in chapter one and supposed to make an appearance in chapter eleven. I'd forgotten all about them.

Oops, I said. Or something very like it, went back to the computer, opened my book document, typed “leopard cubs” at the top of the page, as a reminder for when I get edits. I nearly escaped before it occurred to me that something that might make more sense if Cryssie (she’s a minor character, but important) thinks that Josie and Gideon are already a couple. I made another note. And did Josie really get closure? Suppose I just…? And Gideon needs to say something else just there...
And… And… And… That’s the thing with a story, it’s never quite finished. Writing the book isn’t the hardest part. It’s letting go…

I finally got to the library yesterday, bought the chocolate, went for a drive in the country with the dh. Snatched a whole day for myself. Tomorrow it will belong to two other people. They don’t have names yet, but they have a story. And I'm the only one who can tell it.

Life. Writers do it vicariously.

Except ... just one thing. The lovely Donna Alward, ably abetted by Myrna Mackenzie has set up a Harlequin Romance Group Author Blog at eharlequin. From now on you'll find us there four or five times a week talking about the things that are important to us. Don't miss Susan Meier's post on branding. You'll find it here

I'm now back to the drawing board looking for a name for my hero. Bearing in mind that I already done this nearly sixty times before, I'm appealin for suggestions! My favourite will get a signed book from the backlist.

PROUD MOTHER POST

You all know I blog about books.

The books I read, books written by friends and colleagues and books I've fallen in love with. The books I write, too. The characters who populate them, the clothes they wear, the problems they cause me.

Well this blog is about a book, too. No change there, then.

But everything else about it is different because this book isn't a romance, or even a thriller. It's non fiction, hard cold fact; UNAUTHORISED ACCESS is published by John Wiley & Sons, will be on sale in the first week of August in the UK -- October in the United States -- and has been written by my son.

We now have two generations of authors in this family and I am soooooo proud.

Here's the cover --




The son and heir has always loved computers. He was given a calculator as a present by a friend of ours when he was two years old. He took his father's Hewlett Packard calculator (hundreds of pounds worth, folks) to bits when he was two and a half and his first actual computer was a Sinclair Spectrum.

Then he saw the film Sneakers and decided that he wanted to be the Robert Redford character when he grew up. That's the movie where a bunch of computer savvy guys are paid to break into banks and steal their money (they give it back!) to test their security systems.

These days that has a name -- it's called Physical Penetration Testing (and is one step on from online computer penetration testing) and my son, who is these days an international security consultant based in Europe, has written the first handbook for IT security teams on how to do it for themselves. (They don't steal anything, btw, they leave something behind to prove they were there.)

So, just to make this writerly, anyone thinking of writing a thriller or a crime novel might want to check out the chapters on lock picking, planting bugs, or even dealing with guards.

The foreword to the book has been written by the world's most celebrated ex-hacker, Kevin Mitnick, and for those of you who haven't heard of him this would be like Susan Elizabeth Phillips telling romance fans that they should read my book.

Did I mention that I was proud? You should see his Dad.