BLOG PARTY DAY 3!

Are you keeping up? Maybe a little camomile tea to settle the nerves after all this stimulation.  A cucumber sandwich to keep your strength up. A little strawberry tart? A big fat prawn or two?

What's your favourite party food?  Just say the word and one of our lovely butlers will be at your elbow with a tray. :)

We've still got lots of partying to do, so call over one of the butlers to give you a little massage - Hugh anyone? - to ease out the wrinkles, and then we can party on because I have a very special guest today.

Leah Ashton, our newest author, signed after being mentored by Jessica Hart in the New Voices competition held by Mills and Boon last year. Her first book, Secrets and Speed Dating, will be published in a special pack in September this year in the UK.

Here's Leah to tell you a little bit about her extraordinary year.

Meet the very delicious Tom Harley, a man who looks remarkably like my hero in Secrets & Speed Dating, Dan Halliday :) Dan is just like Tom - tall, strong, a fabulous smile and incredible sky blue eyes that you could just fall into. Tom is an ex-Australian Football League premiership player (and captain), who is now a football commentator, which means I can show a photo of him looking very dapper in a suit, also.

Dan isn't a footballer, he gets his lovely muscles from swimming every morning at Cottesloe Beach in Perth, Western Australia. During the day he manages his two super successful - and super trendy - bars, and he thinks his life is trundling along absolutely perfectly - until he meets Sophie Morgan. Sophie's world is full of to-do lists and plans while Dan has learnt that life can't be micro managed. But then Dan finds himself part of Sophie's latest project.

You may have already met Dan last September, during the Mills & Boon New Voices competition, which I was fortunate enough to win. Dan has grown and changed just a bit since then, but he's still the hero I fell in love with when I first typed up my entry. New Voices was such an incredible experience, everything about it was just so new and so huge - from the number of entrants (over 800!) to the prize on offer (publication!). I ummed and ahhed over entering, but I am just so glad I took that deep breath and dived in - because now by the time that New Voices 2011 begins this September, Dan's story will be a real life, published book! I am just over the moon excited :)

It's been a whirlwind since I submitted my entry last year - from the shock of finding out I made the Top 10, to the next nerve-wracking month of the competition, the euphoria of winning - and then the really difficult bit - writing the rest of the book! While some of it was a lot of hard work, I wouldn't change a thing. My writing has improved a hundred-fold through the experience of working with my mentors, but also I had the amazing experience of having readers read my work and provide their feedback - and that support just blew me away.

Thanks to New Voices I now have my first book about to come out, and my deadline for my second book rapidly approaching. I'm just starting out on my writing career with Mills & Boon, but I sincerely hope that I will get to write lots and lots of books for them in the future. I am in awe of Liz and her achievement - 20 years and 60 books - WOW! Congratulations Liz, I loved your books well before I was published. Your books, and your career, are such an inspiration to me.

Thanks, Leah.  Many congratulations on your new career. May Dan be the first of many heroes in your life!


So, here's the question - who would you cast as the hero in your first romantic novel?

Next up is the lovely Sophie Page - better known to some of you as Sophie Weston.  She's written a basketful of books for Harlequin in the past, but this year she caught the zeitgeist with her latest book, To Marry a Prince, published just before the royal wedding.  This is a truly delightful book with a genuine Prince Charming who wins the kind of heroine we all hope a man in such a difficult position will find to share his life.

Here's what Sophie has to say about her inspiration and her book -

The Ordinary Girl and the Prince is the first fairytale I read. 

When the Royal Engagement was announced in 2010, it brought it all back - the anxiety, the excitement, the big happy (and yes, okay, slightly tearful) smile when Everygirl married her One True Love. Only this time, just for a moment, it felt sort of personal - a happy ending in our time, as it were.

To Marry a Prince is a story for every girl, of any age, who has ever dreamed of finding her Prince.  It’s set today (with a few variations, as you would expect). It’s Britain, Jim, but not quite as we know it. The wondrous Terry Pratchett would say we have gone down the other trouser leg of Time and taken a slightly different turn in history.

A long time fan, I pre-ordered this book for my Kindle and devoured it in great big romantic chunks. My favourite bit is probably the nightmarish New Year's Eve party - wild Scottish country dancing, knocking HM's tiara off; lots of fun and very romantic.

Okay - you're at the New Year's Eve party at Balmoral and you've just knocked the tiara off the monarch's head. What would you say!

Okay, time topause for a little refreshment, I think! (I hope you spotted the Thai Coconut Prawns back there!

And onto our next guest, the truly lovely Ally Blake, who has supplied so many gorgeous pictures for us to drool over.

I'm particularly fond of this one, an oldie but totally gorgeous hottie who is an example to all those foolish men who think they need a face lift when they reach the age of the bus pass.  Guys, we love that lived in look. Truly. Think Cary Grant, think ... well, think Paul Newman!

Ally's latest book confusing, has two titles, depending where in the world you are.  This is the UK cover - THE WEDDING DATE, which is part of the new RIVA series.  In the US it's released as a Presents Extra with the title THE ROGUE WEDDING GUEST, but wherever in the world you are it has Ally's witty, emotional voice.

And has this gorgeous guy as its hero.

All work and no play means that Hannah’s crush on her gorgeous boss - blockbuster adventure TV show producer Bradley Knight – has no chance of fading gracefully away.   So the opportunity to go home to Tasmania for her sister’s wedding for a long weekend is just the break from work - and Bradley – she so badly needs.

One problem - Bradley has a gut feeling that if his most able assistant goes back to her beautiful island home, she might find more reasons to stay than to come back.  Thankfully, the stunning, raw, rugged scenery of Tasmania is just the kind of place he could set his next TV show.  It only makes sense that he tag along!

This book is set in the wilds of Tasmania.  Where in the world would you go to go for a romantic escape!

Three great guests, three fabulous books up for grabs. And tomorrow there'll be three more friends dropping by.  See you then!

WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT GRAMMAR

Everybody hates this stuff, don't they?

We all buy great books about "how to" write - I have a huge collection - but we're not interested in the nuts and bolts of the craft, the stuff that makes what we do intelligible to the reader. We all rush to the chapters that show us how to create a plot, a to-die-for hero, a heroine with the strengths, empathy, spirit that we all yearn to possess.

It's inevitable. It's the exciting stuff. Who wants to read the boring stuff about apostrophes, or where to use a comma, and when to use a full stop? Dull, dull, dull.

But grammar is the basic tool in the writer's craft box and I'm bringing this up now because I've been reading entries to Mills & Boon's New Voices competition. I can't comment because it won't let me for some reason - but I'm not here to talk about computer glitches.

I read a lot of really great stuff, but all the time I was being thrown out of the story by bad grammar. Apostrophes in the wrong place. Sentences that were miles too long. Writers who seemed unfamiliar with the purpose of the comma or the full stop.

I'll tell you right now that I'm not a great grammarian. I use language in ways that serve my story. If I want single word sentences, I'll use them. If I want a sentence without a verb, I'll do that, too - but not too often.

I don't know about your computer, but mine is always throwing up wiggly lines and sometimes I'm not sure why, so I click on the mouse and find out. Mostly it's "fragments"; the sentence without the verb. I think about it, and decide if maybe I'm overdoing it and occasionally I'll combine two sentences. Sometimes I'm surprised to discover that I can't spell a word when I thought I could and I'm grateful for the help. Sometimes it's just querying my use of an apostrophe. (It's asking me to think about it, not telling me I've got it wrong - it just sees an apostrophe and thinks uh-oh...)

Do you know the difference between "its" and "it's"?

The thing is it matters. And in a world where editors and agents struggle for every minute in their day, they no longer have the time to cope with someone who hasn't taken the trouble to master the basic skills of writing a sentence. Read your work out loud and you'll soon realise how important this is.

The good news is that anyone can learn this stuff. I did. Point proved. Not the strange words - gerunds and past participles - but the reason for using an apostrophe and how commas help make sense of a sentence.

For those of you who are a little hazy on the basics, I can heartly recommend GETTING THE POINT by Elizabeth Hawksley and Jenny Haddon (former chairwoman of the Romantic Novelists' Association). It's a light-hearted and simple guide to grammar.

I'd also recommend noticing this stuff while reading. I know, we all race through a rattling good yarn without noticing the punctuation - that's the point. It enables the reader to instantly make sense of the words on the paper. But once you've enjoyed the book, you might usefully go back and read it again to look at sentence structure. The simple grammar. The skeleton that supported the story while you were concentrating on what was happening to the hero and heroine.

And good luck if you've entered NEW VOICES.

A WINNER!

Lilian Darcy has now picked the winner of last week's competition, Carol from New Jersey, and her prize is whizzing on it's way across the Pacific even as I write. Many thanks to everyone who made her so welcome last week and a huge thanks to Lilian for being such a star!

I can't believe so many fabulous writers have taken time out of their busy lives, suspending the rush towards tight deadlines, to help me have so much fun this year. Already the line up has been stellar, but I cannot tell you what pleasure it gives me to welcome my next guest.

Jenny Haddon -- who has also written more than forty wonderful romances for Harlequin Mills & Boon as Sophie Weston -- knows more about books, authors, writing, than just about anyone I know. Add to that her generosity, her hospitality, her organisational ability (she was Chairperson of the Romantic Novelists' Association) and the sheer fun of being in her company (just think of impetuous trips to the Ritz for tea) and you begin to get a flavour of this extraordinary woman.

Welcome, Jenny!

Happy Golden Anniversary, dear, dear Liz, and thank you so much for inviting me to celebrate your half century. Imagine me jumping about and clapping the flippers here. Here’s to the next 50.

I’ve always gobbled up books and I enjoy a lot of skilful and stimulating writers - in category romance and other genres too. But finding a writer you really love is rare. Actually, I think it’s chemistry. You need all the left brain stuff to be satisfied but it’s that right brain instinctive non-analytical stuff that says, ‘This one’s for me’. So it’s rather like a coup de foudre or knowing when you’ve come home. And that’s exactly what I felt when I read my first Liz Fielding.

Her books are total joy for me – except for one single, teeny tiny hiccup. Recently I was writing a book whose heroine was Gabriella. Yes, that’s right, Gabriella. As in The Secret life of Lady Gabriella. (Great minds, and all that . . . ) I bought Liz’s book – and laughed and sighed and beamed my way through it. And thought, ‘No problem. Lots of people have the same names. My book will come out ages after Liz’s. Everyone will have forgotten.’ Except – I didn’t forget. I had a Gabriella in my head now. I knew her. I loved her. And she wasn’t my heroine. It would be like trying to call one of my own heroes Hamlet.

Actually, Hamlet might be easier, come to think of it. Hamlet Twistleton Twerp would surely be a guy with his Life Issues all bright and shining before the novel began, justified resentment of his parents among them. As another of my favourite authors would say, ‘By Jove, Jeeves, rum work done at the font.’

So there followed a short hiatus for rechristening of my heroine. Of course, that meant that I had to think again about the overall landscape of names in the wip. All I can say is, thank God for Search and Replace.

Anyway, my Not Gabriella has now recovered and is just dancing her way through to the end of her book. It is a new venture for me, longer than category, and bulging with minor characters, including a ramshackle stately home. Can’t wait to see what other people think of NG and her mates.

Another new venture for me has been writing GETTING THE POINT, a guide to punctuation, with fellow novelist Elizabeth Hawksley. We set out to help people who regularly asked us for help – authors, readers, colleagues, godchildren, the man who came to read the meter, saw my laptop on the dining room table and sat down for a chat on the apostrophe . . . But we ended up giggling like lunatics over the exploits of the characters in our examples. Casanova gives advice on curing spots; aspiring writer, Belinda Bubblewit tries her hand at Diana in the Dessert; the dragon authoress of Egg-Laying is a Feminist Issue goes head to head with the patriarchy. The book was fascinating to research and a blast to write – and now that it’s done, I can use it to check my own punctuation. A real bonus, that!

But, as we say in GETTING THE POINT, the best way of learning to write good style is reading good writers. Which is yet another great reason for hoping that Liz Fielding will spit on her hands and get writing the next 50.

Many congratulations, Liz. Party on!

Jenny

Oh, Jenny, I’m so sorry about your Gabriella’s forced name change, but I can’t wait to read her, whatever you’ve called her. It’s been too long since the last Sophie Weston. And I’m sure I’m not going to be alone in rushing to Amazon to buy Getting the Point just for the joy of reading all about Bubblewit’s trouble with spelling and getting to know the dragon authoress of Egg-Laying is a Feminist Issue. Punctuation as fun. Brilliant.

But before I do that I have to tell everyone about the very generous prize you’ve offered. A set of the Sophie Weston cousins trilogy: The Independent Bride/ The Accidental Mistress/The Duke's Proposal.


Here's the bit where you have to do the work if you want a chance to win. Here's Jenny's challenge:

Which hero or heroine has the most unforgettable name for you? (Lady Gabriella doesn't count because, as you will know, it's more of a nom de plume!)

I think we’ll do this one on the comments page, Jenny, so that we can all enjoy the answers. Tell us your unforgettables and Jenny will pick a winner after the weekend and, in the meantime if, like me, you can't wait to check out Belinda Bubblewit, you'll find her here at Amazon, UK