AND NOW FOR A HISTORY LESSON...

My guest this week is HQN author Nicola Cornick who lit up Times Square earlier this year with UNMASKED.

Nicola talks about our first meeting below, but I remember it vividly. It was the second international "Author Day" held by Harlequin and Mills and Boon in London. there were authors from all over the world attending and having met my editor I was looking around for a friendly face and saw Nicola standing on her own. I introduced myself and asked her what she wrote and that's when she told me she'd just sold her first book. Now she's a star and I'm delighted to welcome her here to tell you about a new eBook project just launched by Harlequin.

Over to you, Nicola!

Thank you so much for inviting me to blog today, Liz, and many congratulations on your fabulous fifty books! I’ve just been re-reading your short story The Temp and the Tycoon, re-issued as part of the Mills & Boon Centenary celebrations, and I’ve been loving it as much this time round as when it was first in print!

I’ve never forgotten when I first met Liz – it was at an author lunch and I hadn’t even been published at that point. Mills & Boon had just signed me up as a brand new author and I was totally over-awed to be meeting in person so many writers whose books I had on my keeper shelves at home! Actually I was terrified – and Liz took me under her wing and I have never forgotten her kindness.

Since that moment eleven years ago I’ve written 25 books for Mills & Boon and this month sees the publication of my latest Regency novella The Unmasking of Lady Loveless, a historical short story that is very hot, sweet and sexy! The Unmasking of Lady Loveless is one of the launch titles for Harlequin Historicals new e-book programme. It is set in the same fictional Yorkshire village, Peacock Oak, that I used for the background for my July HQN release Unmasked and also features some of the same characters. I wanted to write a Christmas story and the idea of the beautiful Yorkshire countryside under the snow seemed the perfect setting!

Here is the beginning of the story, slightly censored because this is a very sexy book indeed:

When Lord Alexander Beaumont entered Whites that night the entire room fell silent. No man would meet his eyes; their gazes slid away to study the pattern on the carpet or the brandy in their glasses. Throats were cleared, cuffs inspected with startling intensity.

“Gentlemen?” He raised one quizzical dark brow. “Would anyone care to enlighten me as to what is wrong?”

There was silence.

“Charles?” He prompted.

“Devil take it, Alex,” his friend Charles Wheeler complained, “I knew you would ask me.”

“That’s what friends are for, Charles,” Alex smoothly. “Well?”

Charles stood up. He loosened his neck cloth, palpably ill at ease. “Don’t know where to start, old fellow.”

“Try the beginning,” Alex advised.

“Good luck, Charlie,” someone said, sotto voce.

“It’s Lady Melicent,” Wheeler blurted out. “Your wife.”

His wife.

No one ever spoke to Lord Alexander Robert Jon Beaumont about his wife.

“Thank you, Charles,” Alex said. “We may have been apart for a couple of years now, but I am still aware of whom Melicent is.”

Wheeler winced. Several men drew in their breath in sympathy.

“She’s… She’s written a book,” Wheeler said. “Several books. This is the most recent.” He grabbed a slim tome from the hands of a man at a nearby table.

"Steady on, Charlie,” the man protested. “I was enjoying that!”

“Bentley…” Wheeler said in a warning tone. The man’s eyes flickered to Alex’s hard face and he fell silent.

“The Adventures of a Woman of Pleasure by Lady Loveless,” Alex read aloud the gold lettering aloud. He flicked open the book:

“Being naked kindled so great a rapture in her that she lay in wanton pleasure waiting for him to-”

A great harrumphing and clearing of throats followed. Alex closed the book softly and looked at his friend. “You are claiming that Melicent, my wife, is this Lady … Loveless?”

“Yes! Don’t call me out,” Wheeler added, as Alex took a purposeful step towards him, murder in his eyes. “Bentley bribed the publisher and found out that the manuscripts are sent from someone called Mrs Durham, from Peacock Oak in Yorkshire…” He made a pleading gesture. “You know that was Lady Melicent’s maiden name and that she resides there now.” He shook his head. “She has to be stopped, Alex. She bases the characters in her books on members of the Ton and they are too accurately portrayed for comfort.” He gestured to the Bentley again. “Will’s betrothal to Miss Flynn was ruined because there is a scene in the book where a character called Bill Gentley ravishes an actress in a box at the theatre during a performance!”

“We all know that happened,” Alex said dryly.

“That isn’t the point!” Bentley piped up.

“Bentley lost an heiress worth sixty thousand,” Wheeler said. “Lady Loveless’s sources are impeccable. Which is why she has to be stopped.”

Alex tapped the book thoughtfully against the palm of his hand. “She will be.”

“What are you going to do?” Wheeler asked.

“I am going to Yorkshire,” Alex said. He smiled at the look of horror on his friend’s face. “No need to fear, Charles, it is the North of England, not the North Pole.”

“Yorkshire in winter,” Wheeler spluttered.

“Yes,” Alex said, “and I will take this with me.” He raised the book and the candlelight gleamed on the golden lettered name, Lady Loveless, on the cover. “It will prove useful… for research purposes.”

“Devil take it, Alex,” Bentley called, “I was reading that!” But he spoke to thin air.

To win a copy of The Unmasking of Lady Loveless Undone e-book, email me at ncornick@madasafish.com (including your full name and address) to tell me the answer to the following question:

What is the name of the book that Lady Loveless has written?

I’ll put the answers in a hat and pick out a winner next week!

* * *

Whew! Thanks, Nicola!

If, like me, you can't wait to read on, you can download the eBook here

And for those of us who love to hold a book in the hand, you can buy Regency Christmas Weddings here or from your favourite UK bookstore in November.

THE BATTLE WITH BLOGGER...

... appears to have been won. I finally downloaded Firefox and now I have everything back in place, although cutting and pasting is a bit of a hit and miss affair . Badly handled update, Blogger... Could do better.

Anyway, the good news is that I can now introduce you to LOUISE ALLEN, this week's guest in the great 50th book party. I first met Louise several years ago at a Mills & Boon Author lunch and it's a real pleasure to invite her along to share a glass of cyber bubbly and tell us about her great new Regency romp, The Shocking Lord Standon
Louise...

Thank you so much for the invitation Liz! I’ll be celebrating my 25th book at Christmas and I’m totally in awe of your fantastic record of 50 titles, all packing so much emotional punch and delivering such consistent entertainment.

I’ve just finished writing the sixth and final book in my series for Harlequin Mills & Boon about a group of cousins - Those Scandalous Ravenhursts. (My dear husband refers to it as the Sexology). I thought a trio of linked family books might be fun – but I reckoned without the Ravenhursts and it grew to six before I knew what was happening.

I first met them when Lord Sebastian Ravenhurst invited himself into No Place For a Lady and made a spirited attempt to take over, the way heroes do. Unfortunately it wasn’t his book, so he had to be reined in with the promise of a love story of his own. (The Dangerous Mr Ryder and The Outrageous Lady Felsham came out earlier this year.)

Number three – The Shocking Lord Standon - is out in September. Gareth Morant, Lord Standon, is a respectable and highly eligible bachelor, who finds himself almost trapped into marriage with childhood friend Lady Maude Templeton (heroine of number 5, due out next year). Neither of them want the match, so Gareth sets about becoming considerably less respectable – every father’s nightmare match for his daughter in fact. He needs a mistress to conduct a scandalous and very public liaison with, a woman who will vanish discreetly the moment he and Maude are safe. But where to find one?

In this extract governess Jessica Gifford has been abducted and imprisoned in a brothel. Luckily she has read any number of romantic adventure stories and knows just what to do -

In sensation novels, the sort governesses are supposed never to read and in fact devour by the shelf full, the beleaguered yet valiant heroine can pick a dungeon lock in seconds as she escapes from the wicked duke’s evil clutches. Her hands shaking, cold sweat standing out all over her, Jessica could only conclude that either wicked dukes employed inferior locksmiths to brothel keepers or the authors of the Minerva Press were sadly misinformed.

After five minutes she stood up in an attempt to relieve her cramped knees. ‘Open, you beastly thing,’ she said, almost weeping with frustration, and fetched the lock a thump with her clenched fist. With a click it did just that.

Jessica was out into the corridor before she could think. Opposite her a shadowy figure moved. She gave a yelp of fear and realised that it was her own reflection in a full length mirror. And she was stark naked.

Behind her the door swung to, the catch snicked closed. She could not go back, that was where they would come for her. Clothes. That was the priority.

She opened the first door that she came to and peered round the edge. Inside was a big bed and on it a welter of naked flesh. Gasping, Jessica made out six legs, two pairs of buttocks, a glimpse of hairy chest… How many people? Doing what? She shut the door, flattening herself instinctively into the recess. The participants in the orgy had appeared totally preoccupied, but even so, she did not think she had the courage to sneak in and steal clothing while that was going on.

Jessica drew in a deep breath and forced herself to plan. To assume the worst was a self-fulfilling prophesy. Her fate was sealed if she panicked. Steadier, she surveyed the corridor in which she found herself. Opposite was the door she had just escaped through, behind her the room with the orgy in progress. On either side were two more doors and then in both directions, the passage turned.

Which way to go? Her sense of direction had quite deserted her in the hectic few minutes when she had been bundled out of the carriage and up the stairs. Then, as she hesitated, her arms wrapped around her chilly ribs, the decision was made for her by the sound of a door opening and loud voices from out of sight to her right. Without hesitation Jessica fled around the other corner.

It might have been better, she realised in the second she thudded into a solid wall of male muscle, if she had been looking where she was going and not wildly back over her shoulder.

Her nose was buried in a shirt front, the crisp upper edge of a tailored waistcoat stuck into her chin and her shivering body was pressed against warm superfine and knitted silk. The immovable object stood quite still as the voices behind her grew louder.

Jessica tilted back her head and found she was squinting up past a chin that was already shadowed by an evening beard into amused grey eyes. One dark eyebrow rose. ‘Help,’ she whispered, her voice fled along with her hope. ‘Please help me.’

The Shocking Lord Standon is out in September on both the UK (Mills & Boon Historical) and in North America (Harlequin Historical), with two different covers. The North American one has the blue border, the UK one the pink dress. To win a signed copy of The Shocking Lord Standon, just tell me which cover you prefer and why. Good luck!

To find out more about the Ravenhursts, visit my website