DIABETES AUCTION

I doubt there are many families who haven't been touched by diabetes, one of the fastest growing health problems in the developed world, especially among children.

Each year, author Brenda Novak, organises a charity auction from her website to raise funds for research into this disease. It runs during May and this year Brenda has some truly outstanding donations to auction. Bid for the chance to take eight of your friends to tea with Debbie Macomber, jewellery, for a signed baseball, all kinds of stuff from your favourite authors. My donation, a silver Welsh Love Spoon pendant and a signed book, is item # 57.

There are also fabulous prizes for the most active bidders, so take a look at what's on offer, treat yourself to something that money can't buy.

You can take a look at all the what's on offer here at
the auction list.

PROGRESS

Colleagues keep tempting me to have one of those little bars that show the progress of the wip. They tell me there’s nothing like seeing it up there, the very public nature of it, the competition, to stimulate progress. It might work. But what if the progress is nil? While everyone else’s percentage of book written grows day by day, how bad will I feel during those weeks (more of them than I care to admit) when nothing much happens at all? Or when, like today, I thought I was on page 113, only to discover I’d somehow got in a muddle with page numbering (cutting and pasting from one chapter to another) and was, in actual fact, on page 106?

And I don’t write huge chunks every day like some people I could mention. A thousand words is a very good day. I’ll think about it some more, but as a demonstration of progress, I’m posting pictures of my hero and heroine. He was easy to find. Ben Faulkner is an academic and when I saw this guy in a magazine (he’s not a model, but I’ve no idea who he is), he just fit the bill perfectly.

Ellie was much more difficult. She’s a bit of a free-spirit and while this dark-eyed lovely is close, she’s a bit slender for my heroine, who is a delicious armful. More Nigella… The rabbit, the guinea pig and the cat, I’ll have to leave to your imagination. In the meantime, here’s another picture of Nigel, who has taken to the life of “celebrity” cat with the laid-back nonchalance of the true feline.

RNA ROMANCE PRIZE

I’m totally thrilled to announce that yesterday, at the annual awards lunch of the Romantic Novelists’ Association held at the Savoy Hotel in London, the Betty Neels Rosebowl was handed on to author JESSICA HART for her Mills & Boon “Tender” Romance (Harlequin Romance), CONTRACTED: CORPORATE WIFE. The award, for short romance, is judged by readers, which makes it doubly special.

This is the second year running that the Award has been won by a “Tender” romance, an eloquent demonstration of just how appealing and readable the series is to the modern reader.

I AM "SHE"...

That's not "she" who must be obeyed, but "she", the cat's grandmother!

Meet Nigel, who has just found a home with my darling daughter and her dh. They found him here, the Croydon branch of Cats' Protection who have been rescuing, finding new homes for cats, reunited them with their owners for 75 years.

Nigel, bless his ears and whiskers, is a "flat" cat. That does not mean he comes "flat-packed" from MFI, or even that he's appeared in a Tom & Jerry cartoon.

Sadly, he suffers from immune problems and cannot go outside, but since the dd lives in an upstairs flat, that suits everyone very well.

We all think he's gorgeous.

A GREAT REVIEW AND CHOCOLATE

THE REVIEW

Reviews are something of a double-edge sword. The great ones are cheering, uplifting, wonderful and obviously written by highly intelligent people of great discernment. Then you get the ones that aren’t, that kind that leave you feeling lower than a doormat.

But this week I had one of the good kind. It begins: --
“THE FIVE YEAR BABY SECRET is a spellbinding romance of forbidden love and family secrets which will captivate you from the very first page...“ (Did I say discerning? This is the Pulitzer Prize contender of reviews!)

It concludes:

“In THE FIVE YEAR BABY SECRET, multi award-winning author Liz Fielding takes her readers to the gorgeous country village of Upper Haughton. and will make them fall in love with the irresistible Matt and the gutsy Fleur.” (Old Cottage works its magic once again and this is how it looks in my head.) “Liz Fielding spins a marvelous story teeming with heart stopping romance, intense emotions and absorbing family secrets which will keep the reader up all night turning the pages of this fabulous romantic novel.”

“Emotional, dramatic and engrossing, THE FIVE YEAR BABY SECRET is an outstanding romance written by one of the finest writers of contemporary romantic fiction. “
You can read the whole thing at Cataromance

THE DIET

Those of you who’ve been with me for the last few weeks will remember that I’m on a diet and I’m reporting in to tell you all that I’ve cracked my first challenge and the scales have dipped below one of those magic milestones. I am now not “disgusting” stones and 6 lbs, but a “slightly less disgusting” stones and 13 lbs (for those of you who don’t understand English English, a “stone” is 14lbs and that’s a loss of 7lbs!)

I am energised, enthused, encouraged by this success. (And, btw, I ran upstairs today without the knees creaking.)

The only downside to this new me is that Easter is going to come and go without a sniff of chocolate. It’s okay. I can handle that, but just for you, I’m posting a picture of the eggs I would have eaten if I hadn’t been on a diet. A non-fattening cyber treat for the eyes from Hotel Chocolat

Enjoy!

THE SHEIKH’S GUARDED HEART (or Where Do You Get Your Ideas?)

I was given a copy of The Most Beautiful Gardens in the World by Alain Le Toquin, a couple of Christmases ago. It’s one of those large, coffee table books with stunning fold out pictures of gardens in locations as diverse as Italy, the United States, China and New Zealand. But the ones that drew me back were Bagh-e Shahadet and Bagh-e Fin in Iran. These were ancient gardens, dating back to Cyrus the Great who conquered this region 2,500 years ago, and incorporating architecture, planting, water-rills and shade-giving pavilions into their design – a reflection of heaven on earth.

The following May, Penelope Hobhouse, the celebrated gardener and traveller, came to Aberglasney, a garden very near my home, to give an illustrated talk based on her book, The Gardens of Persia.

From Penelope I learned that Xenophon translated the Persian pairidaeza (a combination of pairi, meaning “around” and daeza meaning “wall”) into the Greek paradeisos, a term used for the Garden of Eden in Greek translation of the Bible. In modern Persian (Farsi) the word ferdous means both paradise and garden.

Life, it seemed was conspiring to point me in one direction. I had my setting; all I needed now, was a story.

Obligingly, Lucy Forrester, distraught, angry, appeared over the horizon, heading for the mountains that provide a natural boundary between the states of Ras al Hajar (HIS DESERT ROSE,) and Ramal Hamrah, in search of the man she’d married. She never gets there, instead losing her way and her heart to Sheikh Hanif al-Khatib, a man who has exiled himself from his family, his country, his life.

THE SHEIKH’S GUARDED HEART will be published in September in both the UK and the US, and in Australia in October. Email me for a “taster” first chapter at liz@lizfielding.com

REVISIONS, FETTUCINI AND THE DRIVING PASSION

I’ve just spent a week buried in a nightmare of revisions. I’ve barely had a chance to celebrate my RITA nomination, barely had a moment to spare for anything but polishing THE VALENTINE BRIDE February 2007) until the pips squeaked.

Then, on Friday I joined Weight Watchers. I am now, officially, my mother (bless her).

I put all that behind me on Sunday and went out to lunch with friends who live a couple of villages away, right on the top of the hill. Giovanni, whose name I borrowed for a luxuriously swanky restaurant that turns up from time to time in my books, did us proud. The delicious antipasta, followed by the most amazing fettucini (yes, he makes his own!) with wild mushrooms that I’m dribbling just thinking about. Then came the fish. And the cheese with Anna’s homemade bread. And the little cakes. And the tiny almond biscuits. And the coffee. And the Amaretti...

Clearly, while I joined WW on Saturday, I did not officially start the diet until this morning.

Today also brought the editorial nod on my revisions – hooray! -- and settling back to work on the wip, I caught a glimpse of something, the merest whisper of the driving passion that will set Ellie’s story alight.

Talking about driving passions, I just discovered that our very small nearest town has a branch of TOAST. I have a catalogue. In the catalogue are a pair of shoes of such unbelievable desirability that I can hardly bear it. Now temptation is a mere five miles away. Can I resist?

And for those of you demanding garden pictures, they will follow. Once I've worked out how to get a three-page spread photograph into my scanner...

INSPIRATION? YOU WANT INSPIRATION?

Two things inspired me to write the THE SHEIKH'S GUARDED HEART, being published in the UK and the US in September -- with fabulous new covers in both countries (about which more anon).

First, those of you who read me will know that I have a bit of a thing about gardens. So when a fabulous picture book -- The World's Most Beautiful Gardens -- appeared in my Christmas stocking fifteen months ago, and one of thsoe gardens was an ancient Persian garden, you'll understand when I say I that little prickles of excitement ran up my spine.

Then I saw this photograph in a magazine. It was a toss up which picture I posted, the garden, or the "Sheikh Hanif".

I may be wrong, but I figured you'd prefer a sneak peak of the sheikh!

DARN IT! Shot my bolt with the last post.

Oh well...

And the book short-listed for a Short Contemporary RITA is





I used the US cover this time, so that you'd have something different to look at. And because it is soooo much better!

and

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

I know, in the UK we're out of step with Hallmark, but here we celebrate Mother's Day or what, when I was a little girl, was called Mothering Sunday, on the 4th Sunday in Lent (which means it's not on the same day each year, either!)

Mothering Sunday is based on an old tradition when girls "in service" were allowed to go home to visit their mothers. They baked a cake and took it home with them and on the way picked wild flowers -- traditionally primroses. .

These are flowering in my garden.

AND THE WINNER IS...


I'm absolutely thrilled to announce that THE MARRIAGE MIRACLE has been award Best Mills & Boon "Tender" Romance by CataRomance. Matty is trying not to look smug but there is a distinct look of "I told you so..." about her grin!

Also winning awards were Jessica Hart, Kate Walker and Kate Hardy.

Huge congratulations to everyone!

AND NOW FOR A LITTLE TASTE OF MY NEXT BOOK...


‘…to the outsider it must seem a bit like a cross between the plot of a Catherine Cookson saga and a James Bond movie…’

So, Fleur Gilbert, a young mother responsible for a family business in trouble and with an ailing father to care for, describes the feud that has divided her family and the Hanovers for more than a 175 years.

In 1829, Bartholomew Gilbert and James Hanover had formed a partnership to buy land, build the glass houses and make their fortunes breeding Fuchsias, the exciting new plants introduced to Europe by Leonard Fuchs.

It was a very short-lived alliance. When James caught his pretty young wife in flagrante with Bart in one of the hot houses, the land and the plant stock were divided, high fences erected and battle lines were drawn. Thus began 175 years of intense rivalry, industrial espionage and sabotage. Then, one day, a red-haired pixie – the five year old Fleur Gilbert -- stuck her tongue out at the eight year old Matt Hanover through a gap in the fence.

The feud should have been finally buried on the day Fleur Gilbert secretly married Matt Hanover, but life has a habit of getting in the way of happy endings. Within a week of the wedding, Matt had left the village of Longbourne and Fleur has not seen or heard from him since.

Until today.

Someone has sent him a photograph of Fleur’s little boy, Tom, and now he’s home to claim his son. And to make the boy’s mother pay for five lost years of fatherhood.

Here's an excerpt...

'You’ve asked me to wait for my son. I want something in return.’

‘Anything,’ Fleur said, eager to demonstrate that she appreciated what he was doing. The sacrifice he was making.

Matt reached out, touched her lips with his fingertips. ‘Anything?’ he repeated, so softly that she might almost have imagined it. But his eyes darkened, the very air stilled.

His touch was still magic, sending intense, luscious waves of desire swirling out from the point of contact until every centimetre of her skin was tingling, alive, responsive to an irresistible, siren call.

His mouth followed his fingers, tracing the outline of her lips, then his tongue stole the bones from her limbs and she was limp in his arms, beyond thought as his breath, soft and warm, brushed against her cheek and his hands cradled her head as if she were rare porcelain.

How often had she lived this moment, dreamed of it, yearned for just this touch as he tormented her, made her wait, reducing her to begging mush?

She did not know how she’d had the strength to resist him, do her duty, when he’d demanded that she leave with him the day after his father’s funeral. Maybe if he hadn’t been so angry. If he’d been prepared to listen, to take his time, to talk to her instead of just insisting she choose. Maybe if he’d touched her then, as he was touching her now…

A guttural sound escaped her lips. Need, desire…

‘Anything?’ he murmured again.

‘Yes, yes…’ And then she realised that he’d eased back an inch, that he wasn’t making love to her, that the only contact between them were his hands cradling her head, his thumbs tormenting the line of her jaw, brushing against an ear.

This wasn’t some precious memory she was conjuring up out of the past, but a callous proposition and Matt was waiting for an answer to the question he’d just posed with his mouth, his body, his hands.

‘Are you suggesting that I sleep with you in return for your patience?’ she asked, wanting to be absolutely sure what he was asking, her voice even, low – she’d had years, after all, to practise keeping her feelings under wraps.

‘Sleep?’ he returned, soft as a baby’s breath. ‘Could you actually spare the time to sleep with me?’

‘You just want sex, then?’

‘You’re my wife, Fleur.’

He wanted to punish her, she thought. He wanted to punish her for not loving him enough to leave her dying mother, her poor broken father, a business falling apart.
If he still had any feelings for her, the tiniest remembrance of how they had once loved one another, he wouldn’t be able to do that.

And with that realisation something inside her shattered. It couldn’t be her heart. She knew it couldn’t be that because her heart had been dismantled bit by bit. The day she’d told her father she was pregnant – and wouldn’t, couldn’t tell him who Tom’s father was. The day her baby was born and Matt wasn’t there to hold her hand or to lift his son high as a proud father should. The day she’d registered his birth, leaving a blank space where Matt’s name should have been. Each day since, watching her son grow, knowing that Matt was missing his first step, first word, first day at school. Each day that he didn’t come home.

This was different. All through those years she’d lived with the belief that one day he’d walk up to the front door. No apology, no explanations – she wouldn’t have asked for either – just be there.

What had shattered, she realised, was hope.

--

As Matt and Fleur battle with feelings too strong to bury, try to come to some kind of peace for the sake of their little boy, events overtake them and they discover that they are not the only ones with long buried secrets.


The Five Year Baby Secret, UK, April 2006

The Five Year Baby Secret, US, May 2006

GRUMBLING, LONG LISTED BOOKS, CRAFT BOOKS AND MORE BOOKS

A pile of mail was dumped on my doormat today, not much of it the kind of stuff worth the creak in the back as I bent to pick it up. Catalogues for wine, shoes, half price clothes. Not exactly junk mail. I’ve bought stuff from all of these companies in the past and they are just keeping me up to date. I just wish they didn’t feel the need to do it so frequently.

It’s one of those irritations that have become part of modern life. That we just live with. That we can’t do anything about. Even when we complain.

Consider the fact that advertisements on the television are always twice as loud as the programme they interrupt. This has become so blatant, so intrusive and there have been so many complaints about it that some worthy body recently investigated the problem. The findings prove that the public, us, sitting at home having our eardrums assaulted, have got it all wrong. The advertisements aren’t really louder. It’s just that the sound is compressed in some complicated way and we think it’s louder.

Excuse me?

If my first reaction is to grab the remote and hit the mute button because it’s hurting my ears, something has happened. It hasn’t got quieter, that’s for sure. And it’s not at the same sound level because if it was I wouldn’t have noticed the difference. That only leaves one option.

There is of course an answer to this problem -- one I urge everyone to use. Take care of your precious hearing. Switch off the television (well, the minute Coronation Street is over, anyway) and read a book.


On the subject of books, amongst the bin fodder was a letter from the Arts Council of Wales, enclosing the long list for the Welsh Book of the Year. Ten books in Welsh and ten in English by writers living in Wales with a £10,000 prize for each category. Some interesting looking titles are included, but I’m rooting for Christopher Meredith’s book of poetry, The Meaning of Flight, for no better reason than that he taught my children English at High School.

And, since it’s Friday, I also received my copy of Publishing News". Today they’re featuring "home and crafts" books. Apparently crochet and dressmaking is back. The early seventies was the last time this kind of stuff was a big seller. Anyone else remember “Golden Hands”, with Lady Victoria (aged six) learning to knit? This time the publishers have gone for a slightly funkier image with titles such as "Stitch ‘n’ Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker" (apparently it’s not your Gran’s crochet book) and "Yeah! I Made it Myself", although the blurb for "Greetings from Knit Café" suggests that the actual projects haven’t changed much, promoting a “range of up to minute patterns from hiking socks to a bikini”. I remember that bikini from way back in GH days. It was a bad idea then and thirty years on, it’s still a bad idea.

Checking the best-seller lists, I see that Sarah Waters new book, The Night Watch, is riding high. She’s a terrific writer and I’ve had a proof copy by my bed for weeks, reproaching me for ignoring it while I sweated over my own latest effort. I’ve also got the latest by the Kates -- Walker and Hardy -- a Lindsey Davies and an Anne Tyler. Sorry Sarah. I’ll get to you. But not this month.

Finally, I’ve only just discovered that you can buy Mills & Boon titles a month early online at Mills & Boon. And Harlequin/Silhouette titles at the Harlequin website. For those of you who can’t wait for your favourite authors, the April titles can be yours in a couple of days with the click of your mouse.

SHAKER JUGS

I'm blogging at eHarlequin this month (see the previous post for a link) and everyone wanted to see the Shaker Jug I'm buying as treat for myself this week. Since I can't post a photograph there, I'm posting it here.

I haven't made up mind which one, yet!

This month I'm blogging at eHarlequin. Talking about my March Harlequin Romance, The Marriage Miracle, writing, great books, anything else visitors are interested in. If you want to come over and party, click here

If, on the other hand, you just want to buy the book, click on the cover opposite!

In Wales we celebrate St David's Day by wearing a daffodil -- or if you're a member of the Welsh Guards, a leek. I thought you'd prefer a picture of a Tenby Daffodil!

CURRENT PLEASURES -- OR NOT...

I was tagged by Michelle Styles to list my current stuff. Here goes: --

• current clothing: t-shirt, jog pants – comfortable writing clothes
• current hair: newly cut and unusually tidy!
• current mood: happy; I’ve delivered The Valentine Bride a whole day early, I’m already into the current book and I’ve finally got around to ordering a stationery cupboard for the Snap & Scribble. (And some “mud” mats!)
• current refreshment: water
• current annoyance: a dodgy knee that keeps giving out on me
• current avoidance: the garden; lots of clearing up to do and a heap of stuff to go through the shredder to make compost. A north wind is keeping me inside.
• current smell: roses – the entrance hall is full of the scent of Valentine’s Day flowers
• current thing you ought to be doing: working on the book instead of doing this!

• current thing or things on your wall: framed picture of my first cover, a white board covered with photographs and details of the wip, a corkboard with the US cover of THE FIVE YEAR BABY SECRET, a photograph of me with Jane Porter at Brown’s Hotel in Denver, a photograph of Bath Abbey, a much loved card sent by the dh with a picture by Rebeccsa Lardner of a couple of “oldies” dancing the tango, a picture of me – young and thin – in our garden in Kenya, TV licence, RNA membership card, dentist appointment, the RT review of THE MARRIAGE MIRACLE, an aerial view of Stourhead Gardens.
• current jewelry: wedding ring, a ring given to my mother on their ruby wedding anniversary by my father. Earrings given to me by the dh.
• current worry: the book after the one I’m writing – it’s going to be a toughie!
• current obsession: my little wood. Will the trees I planted last autumn actually have leaves on them?
• current love: the dh, my new handbag,
• current longing: for a pair of pink, flower-bedecked wellington bookts
• current disappointment: the wallflowers I planted last autumn; they are not performing to specification!
• current lyric in your head: I don’t listen to pop music much; the music in my head at the moment is a Corelli Adagio
• current favorite book: Sophie’s Bakery for the Broken-Hearted by Lolly Winston
• current favourite movie: not easy – there are precious few movies that I’d sit through twice and I think that’s the test; I recently watched The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (the last time was when it was new and I went to the cinema to see it with my Mum & Dad!) and it was still great. Looking forward to seeing The Constant Gardener, Brokeback Mountain
• current wish: that I could write faster; so many plots, so little time…
• current desktop picture: the lilies blooming in my garden last summer
• current plans for weekend: celebrate my daughter’s birthday



I post this picture as an awful warning about what happens to your figure when you stop having to run for the bus to work and instead stay at home and write! (The grey hair is hereditary, however, although old age might have something to do with it!)

THE CRUCIBLE

A colleague responded to my use of the word “crucible” in my previous blog, saying that she’d never heard the expression. This sent me to one of my early notebooks where I knew I had made a note on the subject. Sadly, I didn’t make a note of the source, although I must have read it in one of the first how-to-write books I bought. I’ve loaned (and never got back) or given away a lot of these and I’m unable to check exactly where it came from, but this was the somewhat cryptic note I made –

Keep them in the "crucible".

Right...

The dictionary definition of a crucible is: "a vessel, usually of earthenware, made to endure great heat used for fusing metals, etc…"

In writing it is the situation which holds the H/h together, such as duty, marriage, prison, a journey, an institution, which is the crucible; a situation which neither of them wants but which, hopefully, through endurance -- and no doubt considerable heat! -- will, in time, forge an enduring bond.

Alongside that, and written at the same time so presumably from the same source:

Character: The Ruling Passion. Determined, well-motivated, wilful. What could the character do that is more ingenious, dramatic, surprising or funny?

I also found the following useful comments, which I wrote down after my first meeting with Charlotte Lamb:

Keep it simple.
Make certain that the cause of conflict is clear.

And after my first editor commented that a book I’d delivered was a bit “episodic”, I added this quote from Aristotle’s Poetics:

“Of simple plots and actions the episodic are the worst. I call a plot episodic when there is neither probability nor necessity in the sequence of its episodes.” I added my own note to ram home the lesson: cause and effect. (The book, btw, was my second, A POINT OF PRIDE, if you want to judge for yourself .)

The notebook drew me in, reminding me of that first year as an “author”. There was the time-line I used for INSTANT FIRE, (book number three and reprinted last year) and notes of changes to the plot I made as I was writing. Window measurements (I only had one notebook!). Notes for a story that was eventually rejected as too plot heavy but which I later developed into a longer book, WILD JUSTICE, and sold as the first book of a trilogy. Phone numbers of the local newspapers and radio stations for publicity purposes; I was writing my fifth book before the first made it to the book shops.

There were revision notes for early books. Ideas for stories – some of them never written; ideas for titles; lists of possible names. A “to do” list which included changing addresses for things such as house insurance, driving licences (we were also building a house – where did all that energy go?) Notes of the teachers I had to speak to at my daughter’s school open evening in that important pre-GCSE year (she’s now working on her MA while holding down a responsible job). There is no date in the book, but it was a momentous year, so I’m not likely to ever forget that it was 1992.

WHERE DO YOU START?

I’m at that interesting beginning process of a new book and the big question is always … where do I start? I have my characters – well almost. I have a plot – or as much as I need for now. I know it will evolve and grow as I write, as the characters take me by surprise and I find myself asking myself – now why did he or she do that? With solid characters, there is always a reason; my job as a writer is to find it.

This time is a little different. I started this book in February last year. The first couple of chapters went off like a rocket, but there came a point when I ralised I was just having fun. Indulging myself. The heroine was terrific, as was the "mad old bag" neighbour who took pot-shots as the heroine’s cat with her spud-gun. The hero, however, having made an impact in the opening, had disappeared off the face of the earth. It might have been a great book, but it wasn’t a romance and HMB expected a romance. When I’d written thirty pages without the hero even putting in an appearance I knew I was in trouble and at that point I put it aside and got on with THE FIVE YEAR BABY SECRET. Then, inspired by a book of the world’s most beautiful gardens and a talk by Penelope Hobhouse on the Gardens of Persia, I wrote THE SHEIKH’S GUARDED HEART. After that I was asked to write the last book in a series to be called THE VALENTINE BRIDE – and who could resist writing a book with that title?

It stayed with me, though. Nagged at me. I loved the idea, I loved the characters, I just had to get them together on the page, interacting, falling over each other, falling in love. And I had to cut down all the complicated back story to bring them to the start of book. Prologues are useful for this, so I wrote a prologue. It was fun but at nine pages it was far too long. AND WHERE WAS THE HERO!

Then I had a brainwave and moved the heroine from her own little attic flat (overlooking the garden of the mad old bat) and put her into the hero’s house. (This is known in as a “crucible” technique. You stick them together in one place and give them no choice but to stay there. Cruel, but fun!) That worked. I no longer had to find ways to bring them together. But there was still too much exposition in that first chapter. Too much tell, not enough action. Too much heroine walking away from the hero – and the hero glad to see her go. (He may want her to leave, but you have to make it so that he’s begging her to stay – through gritted teeth if need be!)

And then I moved the time line around. One of the major story elements now doesn’t happen until after the story has begun. I ditched the prologue and dealt with the set-up in a series of brief, snappy emails that gives just enough information about the heroine, just enough about the hero to let the reader know who these people are. I can now use a bit of the prologue in a later scene. I can even make a scene of a brief reported flashback that I cut, using it in face-to-face interaction.

Some stories start at the right place and you just go from there. Some of them just need more work.

Just 46,000 more words to go…

I'm having an odd day. Fabulous roses arrived by messenger, a card made by the dh's very own hands was waiting for me when I staggered downstairs at some unearthly hour this morning for tea and the US cover of my May book, which is blissfully pretty, arrived in this morning's post. All wonderful. The strange thing is having nothing that I have to do except put my feet up and be fussed over and I'm not terribly good at that, to be honest.

The yawning gap has appeared because I finally I finished the book I've been working on since -- well it feels like forever -- last night. THE VALENTINE BRIDE has been a bit of a marathon, but I finally hit warp speed last week and despatched the finished book just before collapsing in front of the telly with a large glass of chianti yesterday evening. (Is anyone else addicted to Life On Mars?)

So today I'm wandering around, tidying up the office, catching up with the accounts, making an appointment to have my hair cut but not quite able to settle to anything.

Loads of excitement for the announcement of the Romantic Novelists' Association Romance Prize shortlist today. The nominations are:

Lucy Gordon - A Family for Keeps
[Harlequin Mills & Boon Tender Romance]

A man, a deserted Venetian palace and a heartbroken woman obsessed by her lost child - this one is something special

Kate Hardy - Where the Heart Is
[Harlequin Mills & Boon Medical Romance]

Two doctors at the end of the world - in every sense. A three handkerchief weepy that makes even hard boiled editors cry.

Jessica Hart - Contracted: Corporate Wife
[Harlequin Mills &Boon Tender Romance]

Sensible woman marries for financial stability for her family and companionship for herself - and then loses her head.

Sharon Kendrick - The Future King's Bride
[Harlequin Mills &Boon Modern Romance]

Protocol versus passion: two people beneath the masks and the trapping, struggling to make sense of their feelings.

Valerie Loh - Hannah of Harpham Hall
[My Weekly Story Collection]

Historical set in Yorkshire - a rejected stepdaughter and a mill owner with secrets. Can they ever trust each other?

Elizabeth Power - Tamed by Her Husband
[Harlequin Mills &Boon Modern Romance]

Alone at sea together - he is a man with standards and she is a selfish socialite. Or is she?

I'd better go polish up the Rose Bowl!