March – December 2008

Oops.  Sorry to keep you waiting… The rest of the year galloped by and I’ve only just caught my breath.  I assure you I wasn’t so much neglecting my website…as simply prioritizing my 10th novel, which I finally finished in late August.  Now that my website-wizard (James Beechinor Collins Esq.) has taught me how to do my own updates, my intention is to do precisely that!  I hope you’ve been enjoying the new-look website and my blog but I intend to keep the Journal section going too because it gives me the opportunity to blether on at length.  JBC is very strict about keeping blogs pithy and short – but I’m having the final say on Journal length!  So…here am I, in cold-snap January, thinking back on the last twelve months.  Over the months, the Romantic Novel of the Year Award followed me like a dancing butterfly – with so many people continuing to congratulate me, even now!  Each time someone says ‘well done’, I re-live the thrill all over again!

The Spring and Summer I devoted to Secrets.  Do you like the title?  I know it doesn’t have my usual quirkiness, but I think it’ll be a hard-working title.  And it does what it says on the packet…because both hero (Joe the bridge-builder) and heroine (Tess the runaway) have more than a few secrets between them and the book charts their journey on whether to conceal…or reveal…!  I hasten to add, it all ends happily ever after.  Would you ever speak to me again if it didn’t?

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Pillow Talk wins Romantic Novel of the Year Award 2008

On Monday 4th February, Pillow Talk won the coveted Romantic Novel of the Year Award 2008. What a day! It was also Georgia’s 5th birthday so after a lengthy breakfast of present-opening followed by the ever-frantic school-run, I had to rush home, scrub up and head for a swanky hotel in Kensington. The shortlist was announced in January – and I shared it with 5 wonderful and esteemed authors. Read all about it in my updated Journal. (more…)

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February 2008

Well, the last thing I won was probably a gymkhana when I was eight – so to be awarded the Romantic Novel of the Year 2008 for Pillow Talk was an awesome moment in my life. It was going to be a lovely day, whatever the outcome, as it was Georgia’s 5 th birthday and also publication day for the paperback edition of Pillow Talk. I was still in my slummy-mummy uniform of old jeans and jumper half an hour before the taxi arrived but as my lovely friend Jeanette always says: “you do scrub up well, love.”! It was such a thrill being short-listed in January – the first time it has happened for me. I shared the short-list with fellow authors Jojo Moyes, Adele Parks, Catrin Collier, Catherine King and Maureen Lee.

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