LynneC’s review of A Dangerous Infatuation by Chantelle Shaw
Contemporary Romance published by Harlequin Presents Extra 3 Jan 12 (M&B Modern – 1 Nov 11)

This is an old-style Modern Romance and is very much a book you can sink into for an hour or two’s pleasure. It’s a woman struggling with her life and a billionaire. Don’t expect anything revolutionary, but sometimes you need a break from revolution, and this book provides it.

Emma is a district nurse in Northumberland, and it’s snowing. She’s driving to the house of the last patient on her round, an old lady who lives in a large manor house on her own. She comes across a man who has just crashed his unsuitable but dashing car in the snow, and she gives him a lift. He turns out to be the grandson of the old lady, Rocco, an Italian and the chief exec of the car company that makes his flashy car.

So far so usual. It carries on in the same vein. While this isn’t an earth-shattering book, with one proviso it’s written in a clear, smooth style that makes the story easy and pleasant to read. Let’s get the problem over with. And this could well be my preference. It might not bother you. There’s a lot of POV transitions. A lot. I won’t call it head-hopping because that’s when you don’t know which character’s head you’re in and Shaw is skilful enough not to do that, but the reader is constantly moved from one head to another and back again. That does bother me, quite a lot, because you can’t go really deep and I’d rather not know what both characters are feeling in a scene. If the kind of thing exemplified in the passage below doesn’t concern you, then you’re good to go.

“ ‘Thank you,’ he murmured, closing the door and feeling a welcome blast of warm air from the car’s heater. It was only now sinking in that he was lucky not to have been injured in the crash, and that he could have faced a long, cold walk to find civilisation. ‘I was fortunate you were driving this way.’
Emma released the handbrake and carefully pulled away, her hands tightening on the steering wheel when she felt the car slide. She rammed the stiff gear lever into second gear, and tensed when her hand brushed against the man’s thigh. In the confines of the vehicle she was even more aware of his size.”

His thoughts, then hers, in two adjacent sentences. Then the narrative could easily move back to him again.

Now to the characters. I like that Emma is competent and, although struggling, good at her job. Not in abject poverty. Her small daughter is three, but she’s a precocious, annoying three who seems to be fully potty trained and speaks in complete sentences (not impossible, I admit). The child seems to be a five-year-old transposed into a three-year-old. I could have done without the child, who could have stepped out of a 1930’s “cute kid” movie.

Rocco doesn’t let it faze him. He gets on with seducing the sexy nurse after their meet cute, when she’s wrapped up so much she resembles a bowling ball. “Good for her,” I thought. Snowy Northumberland isn’t to be messed with. But does she have a Geordie accent, I want to know? In the version in my head, she did. “Why aye, Rocco, you gan canny!” would have fit rather well into the story and might have made the heroine a bit different. Rocco is pretty much your standard hero. But I happen to like the tall, strong, wealthy Italian type, so that’s okay by me. And Rocco isn’t too arrogant. On the whole he’s a likeable character.

There is a big misunderstanding at the beginning, where Rocco thinks Emma is too bossy and managing and Emma thinks Rocco is heartless because he left his aged grandmother to live alone (he employed help, but his grandmother fired her after finding her stealing). Since that all happens in the first three chapters, I don’t feel that’s much of a spoiler, and that’s why I didn’t mind this particular misunderstanding. Emma and Rocco talk, and explain themselves, and, lo and behold, they come to a better understanding of each other.

There is a secret in Emma’s past, again revealed to the reader early, that her husband, while a hero, was also a cheater in his marriage. So she’s understandably wary of handsome bastards who go from woman to woman. While many Moderns use the trope of the character’s past life affecting their present beliefs, this time it worked for me because the past is recent for Emma – to some extent she’s still hurting. So her reticence to accept Rocco as a lover is understandable.
And that’s the way to use Mills and Boon tropes. They are part of the story, they reveal the character and they’re not stretched to unbelievable levels or tedious levels. They’re not strained. When one problem ends, another begins, or is bounced off the first one. Their past lives affect both characters, but they’re intelligent enough to reason with themselves and deal with their problems. When they come to a mutual understanding, they deserve it, although Rocco does get stuck with the precocious kid, and he even wants more. Let’s hope they find some great nannies.

Grade: C

Summary:

Rocco D’Angelo doesn’t do needy women—and he certainly doesn’t do commitment! But the spark notorious playboy Rocco feels with his beloved grandmother’s nurse, Emma Marchant, is more than the usual thrill-of-the-chase adrenaline!

Never in her wildest dreams did cautious Emma imagine she would be swept from a sleepy English village to the exotic climes of the Italian Riviera—especially by a man as disreputable as Rocco.

Emma could be the one to tame the untamable—unless her infatuation is more dangerous than she imagined….

Read an excerpt.

Welcome back to Duck Chat!You’re in for a treat today – Nicola Cornick is with us!

Nicola has a terrific backlist of books, but it’s her latest Brides of Fortune trilogy that has her excited nowadays, and she’d like to tell you about them, along with having some fun with all of you. The trilogy actually starts with a prequel, The Secrets of a Courtesan, which is in ebook only from eHarlequin. Then The Confessions of a Duchess, The Scandals of an Innocent, and finally The Undoing of a Lady round out the series. Nicola tells us all about them today.

Nicola started her writing career in 1998 when she was first published by Mills & Boon.  She’ has a passion for history, studied Medieval history, and her dissertation was on heroes, which she knows a little bit about! She is married, lives in the countryside of Oxfordshire, England with her husband and their many pets. Geneology is a favorite pasttime, and she works for the National Trust for the famed Ashdown House, which has been the inspiration for a couple of her books.

So if you love to read Regency romance, you need to talk to Nicola today. Be sure to leave that meaningful comment because she’s giving away one complete set of her Brides of Fortune trilogy. Now let’s chat!

DUCK CHAT: Nicola, let’s talk about your latest releases, your Brides of Fortune trilogy. Tell us first about the series as a whole, where the idea for it came from, did it evolve as you envisioned when you first started writing, and anything else you’d like to tell us about it.

NICOLA CORNICK: Even though I write historical fiction, I get a lot of my ideas from contemporary newspapers and magazines. A couple of years ago I read about a village in England where someone had bought the title of Lord of the Manor and then discovered that he could impose lots of ancient taxes on the villagers. He started to charge them for walking their dogs on the village green and for parking their cars when they went shopping. Naturally there was uproar with the villagers rebelling. I thought this would be great idea to explore in a Regency series and so the Brides of Fortune trilogy was born! Sir Montague Fortune imposes an ancient tax on the villagers that means that every lady has to marry or lose half of her dowry. Penniless gentlemen come flocking to the village and so Fortune’s Folly becomes the marriage mart of England!

The series didn’t really evolve as I had planned it because my books never do. Although I had ideas about the underlying murder mystery I had no notion who the murderer was going to be or how that sub-plot would develop. And although I had a rough outline for each story, they all surprised me with the way that they grew and changed in the writing.

DC: The first book in the trilogy is The Confessions of a Duchess and it’s about Laura, the Duchess of Cole, and Dexter Anstruther, both of whom we met in Unmasked. Please tell our readers about them and their story.

NC: After Unmasked came out I had so many emails from readers asking for Laura’s story that I couldn’t resist. Confessions of a Duchess is set four years after Unmasked and Laura has retired to live quietly in the country with her young daughter Hattie. Then her former lover, Dexter Anstruther, comes back into Laura’s life and turns everything upside down. Dexter and Laura parted on bad terms and now he has to marry a rich heiress to save his family but despite knowing that he has to marry for duty, Dexter finds it hard to resist his attraction to Laura. There are so many secrets keeping them apart and so many reasons why they cannot be together, not least that Laura is eight years Dexter’s senior and she thinks that to have a toy boy lover is totally scandalous!

Excerpt from Confessions of a Duchess:

He heard a knock and a step in the doorway and turned to find Laura there, her arms full of clothes. She was staring at his naked torso and a deep pink colour stained her cheeks. There was confusion and shock in her eyes. The clothes slipped from her hands and she made a grab for

them even whilst her gaze was still riveted on him.

“I’ve brought… Um… Did you…”

Dexter was surprised that she was acting like a startled virgin when she was an experienced woman, a widow with a child. Surely there was no need for any pretence between them after all that had happened? And surely she did not possess an ounce of modesty? In bed with him four years previously she had been open and generous, warm and wanton. Her sweet, seductive shamelessness had been one of the reasons that he had fallen so disastrously in love with her. It had seemed so honest and unguarded at the time.

But she had put him right quickly enough on that score. She had no use for him and his devotion, so she had said. And when she had had him in her bed once it seemed that she had no further use for him in that respect either.

“It would be best for you to leave now,” she had said in the morning, with a cool, aristocratic disdain that had made him feel utterly insignificant. “I would not wish the servants to find you here…”

Yet now it seemed that she had forgotten her indifference to him, since she was staring like a woman who had never seen a half-naked man before and looking flustered and more than a little intrigued. Her glance stirred something sensual in Dexter, reviving the fire he had only just managed to damp down.

Somewhere at the back of his mind a voice was cautioning him that to take this any further would be dangerous and irresponsible. He ignored it. He wanted to know if what he had experienced before with Laura had been no more than vivid imagining. He needed to know. Once he had exorcised the power she had over him, once he had proved that there was nothing special about Laura at all, he would be free of the past and this curious hold she seemed to have over him. And this time he could control his feelings. This was not like the time four years before when he had been an inexperienced youth. He was at no risk of falling in love with Laura Cole all over again.

Very deliberately he bent down and eased off his boots. When he straightened up Laura was still staring. With calculated intent he started to unfasten his trousers.

“Did you want me to take these off as well?” His voice had a rough edge to it.

Laura’s eyes met his and there was a confused and heated expression in them that made the lust slam through him, tightening its grip on him even as he cautioned himself not to lose control.

“Stop! No!” Laura seemed to wake from a trance. She thrust the pile of clothes down on the table and glared at him. “What are you doing?”

“I am removing my wet clothes,” Dexter said. He allowed his gaze to drift over her appraisingly. “You should do the same, your grace. You look,” his voice dropped, “most dishevelled.”

He saw Laura swallow hard. Her hazel eyes darkened further and the unconscious desire in them sent another jolt of lust through him. The warmth of the room, the intimacy of the small space, the heady scent of lavender and his semi-nakedness were a powerful blend. Dexter took a step towards her.

He had not intended this when first they had met. He had certainly not meant to provoke Laura or tease her or make love to her. Such a course of action was completely irrational. But she was standing there with her hair tumbled about her shoulders and the damned gown still clinging to every curve and he wanted her. He wanted her with all the raw longing he had known four years before. And he wanted to prove that he could master that longing and take one kiss and that it would mean absolutely nothing.

He took another step towards Laura. She took a step back so that she was trapped between his body and the warming room door. She was clutching the pile of garments to her breast now like armour.

“Mr Anstruther,” Laura’s voice was a thread of sound, “this is most improper.”

“You were swift enough to help me out of my clothes the last time we met,” Dexter said, “and you know that your concessions to propriety are only for outward show.”

DC: If you could retire any question and never, ever have it asked again, what would it be? Feel free to answer it.

NC: “When are you going to write a proper book?”
I prefer writing the improper ones.

DC: The Scandals of an Innocent is the next book where we meet Alice and Miles. Can you give us a look inside their book?

NC: Alice is a former housemaid who inherited her late employer’s money so she is struggling with the snobbish attitudes of some members of society towards her – they look down on her socially, even though they’d quite like to have her fortune! One of Fortune Folly’s penniless adventurers, Miles Vickery, decides to blackmail Alice into marriage and sets out to seduce her. Miles is an out and out rake, a real scoundrel, but Alice is determined to reform him so it is a battle of hearts. I have to confess that Miles is probably my favorite of the trilogy heroes! Although I love heroes who have integrity and a strong code of honor, I am a total sucker for rake heroes and Miles is a very, very bad boy indeed. He totally does not want to reform and fights really hard against it but Alice is no pampered society miss, she’s got a tough background, and she’s not going to just let Miles walk in and take what he wants.

Excerpt from The Scandals of an Innocent:

The Village of Fortune’s Folly Yorkshire, February 1810

Alice Lister was not cut out for a life of crime.

She had not even committed the robbery yet and already her palms were damp with anxiety and her heart was beating light and fast.

This, Alice thought, as she tried to calm her breath, is a very big mistake.

There was no going back. That was the coward’s way. Bravely she raised her lantern to illuminate the interior of the darkened gown shop. She had broken into the workroom at the back of the premises. There was a long table with piles of fabric heaped up on one end. A half-finished gown was draped across a stool, the pale silk glimmering in the light. Paper patterns rustled and fluttered in the draft from the open window. Ribbons uncurled on the floor. Sprays of artificial flowers wilted in a corner. Lace trimmings wafted their ghostly fingers against Alice’s cheek, making her jump. The whole place with its unnatural silence and its darkness made her think of a sinister fairy story in which the gowns would come to life and dance in front of her—and she would run screaming from the shop straight into the arms of the night watch. Yes indeed, burgling Madame Claudine’s gown shop was not for the fainthearted.

Not that this was theft, precisely. Alice reminded herself that the wedding gown she was hunting had been bought and paid for. It would have been delivered in the normal manner had Madame Claudine not gone out of business so abruptly and shut up her shop in the face of all inquiries from her anxious clientele. The modiste had disappeared one night, leaving nothing but a pile of debts and bitter words for those of her aristocratic customers who lived on credit. The contents of Madame Claudine’s gown shop had been declared the property of the moneylenders, and all the stock impounded. This was particularly unfair to Alice’s friend Mary Wheeler, for Mary’s father had paid the bill already with the same promptness he had paid a gentleman to marry Mary. Sir James Wheeler had been one of many to take advantage of the Dames’ Tax, the wholly outrageous edict leveled the previous year by the squire of Fortune’s Folly, Sir Montague Fortune. Sir Monty had discovered an ancient tax that had entitled him to half the dowry of every unmarried woman who lived in the village of Fortune’s Folly— unless they wed within a twelvemonth. Sir James Wheeler had been only one of many fathers who had seen this as an opportunity to get his daughter off the shelf and off his hands, parceled away to the first fortune hunter who asked.

Mary Wheeler had been distraught to hear of the gown shop’s closure. In the months of her betrothal she had managed to persuade herself that hers was a love match despite the fact that her ghastly fiancé, Lord Armitage, had returned to London and was carousing in much the same way as he had before their betrothal. With the wedding date only a matter of weeks away, Mary had taken the whole thing as a bad omen. And to be fair, Alice thought, marrying Lord Armitage was a poor enough proposition without getting off on the wrong foot….

“Alice? Have you found it yet?” The urgent whisper brought Alice back to the present and she raised the lantern again, scanning the piles of clothing hopelessly, for there were so many gowns and they were as tumbled as though a wintry gale had blown through the shop.

“Not yet, Lizzie.” Alice tiptoed across to the open window where her coconspirator, Lady Elizabeth Scarlet, was keeping watch in the passage at the side of the shop. This whole venture had been Elizabeth’s idea, of course. It was she who had thought it the most marvelous scheme to go to Madame Claudine’s shop and simply take Mary’s wedding gown. After all, Lizzie had reasoned, the gown belonged to Mary and she had set her heart on wearing it at the wedding, and even if they had to break in to take it, no one would know and right was on their side.

It had been another of Lady Elizabeth’s astound-ingly bad ideas. Alice shook her head to have been so easily led. Naturally, once they had reached the shop it became apparent that Lizzie was too tall to squeeze through the window and it was Alice who was the one who had to break in.

“What is keeping you?” Lizzie sounded decidedly testy, and Alice felt her temper prick in response.

“I’m doing my best,” she whispered crossly. “There is a mountain of gowns in here.”

“You are looking for one in white silk with silver lace and silver ribbons,” Lizzie reminded her. “Surely it cannot be so hard to find? How many gowns are there, anyway?”

“Only about two hundred. This is a gown shop, Lizzie. The clue is in the name….”

Sighing, Alice grabbed the next pile of dresses and hurriedly sorted through them. Silver with pink trimmings. White with green embroidery…golden gauze…that was pretty…white and silver with silver ribbons— Alice snatched up the wedding gown even as Lizzie’s agonized whisper floated up to her.

“Alice! Quick! Someone is coming!”

With a muttered and very unladylike curse, Alice ran for the window, squeezed through the gap at the bottom of the sash and struggled to climb out and down into the street. It was only a drop of about four feet, and she was wearing boy’s britches, borrowed from the wardrobe of her brother, Lowell, which made movement a great deal freer and easier. But as she tried to ease her leg over the sill the britches caught on something and stuck fast.

“Alice!” Lizzie’s hissing held a note of panic now. “Come on! Someone is almost upon us!” She caught Alice’s arms and tugged hard. Alice heard the material of the britches rip. She wriggled free for a few painful inches and then stuck fast again. She was not a slender girl and every one of her curves currently felt as though it was squashed into too small a space. The edge of the windowsill dug painfully into her hip. She dangled there helplessly, one leg out of the window, the other on the sill. She could hear footsteps coming ever closer, their measured tread loud on the cobbles of the road.

“He will see us,” Lizzie groaned.

“He will certainly hear you,” Alice said crossly. Lizzie’s idea of being quiet seemed to equate to behaving like a bull in a china shop. “If you will cease that pulling and pushing and keep still and quiet for a moment, he will pass by the end of the alley. And put the lantern out!” she added fiercely.

It was too late.

She heard the footsteps stop. There was quiet for a moment; quiet in which Alice’s breathing seemed loud in her own ears and the window ledge creaked in protest beneath her weight. She lay still like a hunted animal. Instinct told her that the man, too, was watching and waiting….

“Run, Lizzie!” Alice gasped. “I am right behind you!” She gave her friend a shove that sent Lady Elizabeth stumbling off down the passage even as everything seemed to explode into noise and movement around her. A man came running out of the darkness, and Alice wrenched herself free of the ledge and tumbled headlong on top of him, wrapping them both in the silky, voluminous folds of the wedding gown as they fell to the ground. As an ambush it could scarcely have been more effective had she tried.

Alice scrambled up, lost her footing on the slippery folds of material and fell to her knees. The man was quicker. His arms went about her, scooping her up and then holding her fast against him, so that all her kicking and pummeling was quite in vain. His grip was too tight to break, as taut as steel bands about her waist and back. Her struggles were embarrassingly puny against such quiet, almost casual, strength.

“Hold still, urchin,” he said. His voice was mellow and deep, and he sounded carelessly amused, but there was nothing careless in the way that he held her. Alice could tell she was not going to be able to break his grip. She also sensed by instinct that this was no drunken lord returning home after a night’s entertainment at the Morris Clown Inn. There was something too powerful and purposeful about him—something too dangerous to dismiss easily.

She was in deep trouble.

Fear clawed at her chest as she frantically tried to think of a way to escape him. Her whole body was shaking with fear and panic and a desperate need to flee. She stopped struggling and went limp in his arms in an attempt to trick him into loosening his grip, but he was evidently too old a hand to fall for the ruse, for he simply laughed.

“So docile all of a sudden? Listen, boy—” He stopped.

Held so close to him, Alice could feel the hard muscles of his body tense against her own and she recognized the precise moment that he realized, despite the evidence of her attire, that she was not a boy at all.

“Well, well…” The amusement was still in his voice, but it had a different quality to it now. He shifted, his chest unyielding against the betraying softness of her breasts, his hand moving intimately over the curve of her bottom where the rip in her britches exposed rather more bare skin than she would have wanted. His grip on her slackened, not much, but enough for Alice to wrench herself from his arms and turn to run.

It was the treacherous wedding dress that foiled her again. Wrapping itself about her ankles, it tripped her so that she staggered and almost fell. The man caught her arm in a savage grip, spinning her around so that her back was against the rough brick wall of the alley. Alice gasped as the pain jolted through her, and gasped again as he deliberately brought his body into closer contact with hers, holding her pinned against the wall with his hips, his hands braced on either side of her head. She was trapped, caged. A long shiver went down her spine that was neither fear nor cold.

The man took her chin in his hand and turned her toward the pale light of the lantern. His face was only inches away from hers, the harsh lines and planes shadowed in the darkness. She could feel the beat of his heart against her breast, feel his breath against her skin and the press of his lower body, lean and…

DC: I’ve heard writers often say their stories take them in surprising directions, or dialogue flows from some unknown place. Is it the same with you? Do your characters surprise you sometimes?

NC: One of the joys of writing is when your story takes off in a direction you haven’t foreseen or dialogue pops into your head and you can’t pin down the source but you like it! My characters constantly surprise me. It’s one of the reasons that I love them. As I get to know them better and they become real to me they start to act very independently.

DC: Lastly is The Undoing of a Lady to complete the series. Lizzie is a bit of an unconventional heroine for her time, but she complements Nat quite nicely. Would you tell us about them?

NC: I love Lizzie because she is truly outrageous and unconventional. In part this springs from the fact that she is unhappy but also because she has the wealth and freedom to behave as she pleases so in that she is spoilt. She has a lot of growing up to do. Lizzie and Nat are childhood friends and she has always taken his presence and support for granted until he tells her he is about to marry. Her possessiveness can’t take it – she’s always seen Nat as her property – and so she kidnaps him on the night before his wedding to prevent him from going through with it.

Superficially Lizzie and Nat don’t seem to be well suited because they are so different but she needs the stability and reliability that he brings to her life. Nat is honorable and steady as a rock and everyone else has always let Lizzie down. Nat is the only one she feels she can trust.

Lizzie and I are very, very different characters but I drew on a lot of personal experience for this book. Like Lizzie I had a very unstable childhood, I was an only child and I “lived in my head” a lot and felt I could only rely on myself. I think all of that went into the book in one way or another.

Excerpt from The Undoing of a Lady:

The Folly, Fortune Hall, Yorkshire—June 1810 A little before midnight

It was a beautiful night for an abduction.

The moon sailed high and bright in a starlit sky. The warm breeze sighed in the treetops, stirring the scents of pine and hot grass. Deep in the heart of the wood an owl called, a long, throaty hoot that hung on the night air.

Lady Elizabeth Scarlet sat by the window, watching for the shadow, waiting to hear the step on the path outside. She knew Nat Waterhouse would come. He always came when she called. He would be annoyed of course—what man would not be irritated to be called away from his carousing on the night before his wedding—but he would still be there. He was so responsible; he would not ignore her cry for help. She knew exactly how he would respond. She knew him so well.

Her fingertips beat an impatient tattoo on the stone window ledge. She checked the watch she had purloined earlier from her brother. It felt as though she had been waiting for hours but she was surprised to see that it was only eight minutes since she had last looked. She felt nervous, which surprised her. She knew Nat would be angry but she was acting for his own good. The wedding had to be stopped. He would thank her for it one day.

From across the fields came the faint chime of the church bell. Midnight. There was the crunch of footsteps on the path. He was precisely on time. Of course he would be.

She sat still as a mouse as he opened the door of the folly. She had left the hallway in darkness but there was a candle burning in the room above. If she had calculated correctly he would go up the spiral stair and into the chamber, giving her time to lock the outer door behind him and hide the key. There was no other way out. Her half brother, Sir Montague Fortune, had had the folly built to the design of a miniature fort with arrow slits and windows too small to allow a man to pass. He had thought it a great joke to build a folly in a village called Fortune’s Folly. That, Lizzie thought, was Monty’s idea of amusement, that and dreaming up new taxes with which to torment the populace.

“Lizzie!”

She jumped. Nat was right outside the door of the guardroom. He sounded impatient. She held her breath.

“Lizzie? Where are you?”

He took the spiral stair two steps at a time and she slid like a wraith out of the tiny guardroom to turn the key in the heavy oaken door. Her fingers were shaking and slipped on the cold iron. She knew what her friend Alice Vickery would say if she were here now:

“Not another of your harebrained schemes, Lizzie! Stop now, before it is too late!”

But it was already too late. She could not allow herself time to think about this or she would lose her nerve. She ran back into the guardroom and stole a hand through one of the arrow slits. There was a nail on the wall outside. The key clinked softly against the stone. There. Nat could not escape until she willed it. She smiled to herself, well pleased. She had known there was no need to involve anyone else in the plan. She could handle an abduction unaided. It was easy.

She went out into the hall. Nat was standing at the top of the stairs, the candle in his hand. The flickering light threw a tall shadow. He looked huge, menacing and angry.

Actually, Lizzie thought, he was huge, menacing and angry, but he would never hurt her. Nat would never, ever hurt her. She knew exactly how he would behave. She knew him like a brother.

“Lizzie? What the hell’s going on?”

He was drunk as well, Lizzie thought. Not drunk enough to be even remotely incapacitated but enough to swear in front of a lady, which was something that Nat would normally never do. But then, if she were marrying Miss Flora Minchin the next morning, she would be swearing, too. And she would have drunk herself into a stupor. Which brought her back to the point. For Nat would not be marrying Miss Minchin. Not in the morning. Not ever. She was here to make sure of it. She was here to save him.

“Good evening, Nat,” Lizzie said brightly, and saw him scowl. “I trust you have had an enjoyable time on your last night of freedom?”

“Cut the pleasantries, Lizzie,” Nat said. “I’m not in the mood.” He held the candle a little higher so that the light fell on her face. His eyes were black, narrowed and hard. “What could possibly be so urgent that you had to talk to me in secret on the night before my wedding?”

Lizzie did not answer immediately. She caught the hem of her gown up in one hand and made her careful way up the stone stair. She felt Nat’s gaze on her face every moment even though she did not look at him. He stood aside to allow her to enter the chamber at the top. It was tiny, furnished only with a table, a chair and a couch. Monty Fortune, having created his miniature fort, had not really known what to do with it.

When she was standing on the rug in the center of the little round turret room Lizzie turned to face Nat. Now that she could see him properly she could see that his black hair was tousled and his elegant clothes looked slightly less than pristine. His jacket hung open and his cravat was undone. Stubble darkened his lean cheek and the hard line of his jaw. There was a smoky air of the alehouse about him. His eyes glittered with impatience and irritation.

“I’m waiting,” he said.

Lizzie spread her hands wide in an innocent gesture. “I asked you here to try to persuade you not to go through with the wedding,” she said. She looked at him in appeal. “You know she will bore you within five minutes, Nat. No,” she corrected herself. “You are already bored with her, aren’t you, and you are not even wed yet. And you don’t give a rush for her, either. You are making a terrible mistake.”

Nat’s mouth set in a thin line. He raked a hand through his hair. “Lizzie, we’ve spoken about this—”

“I know,” Lizzie said. Her heart hammered in her throat. “Which is why I had to do this, Nat. It’s for your own good.”

Fury was fast replacing the irritation in his eyes. “Do what?” he said. Then, as she did not reply: “Do what, Lizzie?”

“I’ve locked you in,” Lizzie said rapidly. “I promise that I will release you tomorrow—when the hour of the wedding is past. I doubt that Flora or her parents will forgive you the slight of standing her up at the altar.”

She had never previously thought the Earl of Wa-terhouse a man who made a display of his emotions. She had always thought he had a good face for games of chance, showing no feeling, giving nothing away. Now, though, it was all too easy to read him. His first reaction was stupefaction. His second was grim certainty. He did not even stop to question the truth of what she had said. If she knew him well, then the reverse was also the case.

“Lizzie,” he said, “you little hellcat.”

He turned and crashed angrily down the spiral stair, taking the candle, leaving her in darkness but for the faint moonlight that slid through the arrow slits in the wall. Lizzie let her breath out in a long, shaky sigh. She had only a moment to compose herself, for once he realized that there really was no escape he would be back. And this time he would be beyond mere fury.

She heard him try the thick oak door—and swear when it would not even give an inch. She saw the candle flame dance across the walls as he checked the guardroom and the passageway for potential exits. The swearing became more colorful as he acknowledged what she already knew—there was no way out. The tiny water closet opened onto the equally miniature moat and was far too small for a six foot man to squeeze through. The room in which she stood had a trapdoor that led up to the pretend battlements but she had locked it earlier and hidden the key in a hollow tree outside. She had wanted to make no mistakes.

He was back and she had been correct—he looked enraged. A muscle pulsed in his lean cheek. Every line of his body was rigid with fury.

When he spoke, however, his voice was deceptively gentle. Lizzie found it more disconcerting than if he had shouted at her.

“Why are you doing this, Lizzie?” he said.

Lizzie wiped the palms of her hands surreptitiously down the side of her gown. She wished she could stop shaking. She knew she was doing the right thing. She simply had not anticipated that it would be quite so frightening.

“I told you,” she said, tilting her chin up defiantly. “I’m saving you from yourself.”

Nat gave a harsh laugh. “No. You are denying me the chance to gain the fifty thousand pounds I so desperately need. You know how important this is to me, Lizzie.”

“It isn’t worth it for a lifetime of boredom.”

“That is my choice.”

“You’ve made the wrong choice. I’m here to save you from it.” Lizzie kept her voice absolutely level despite the pounding of her blood. “You have always cared for me and tried to protect me. Now it is my turn. I’m doing this because you are my friend and I care for you.”

She saw the contemptuous flicker in his eyes that said he did not believe her. Lizzie’s temper smoldered. She had always been hot-blooded, or perhaps just plain belligerent depending upon whose opinion one sought. It seemed damnably unfair of Nat to judge her when she had his best interests at heart. He should be thanking her for saving him from this ghastly match.

Nat put the candle down on the little wooden table beside the door and took a very deliberate step toward her. He was tall—over six-foot—broad and muscular. Lizzie tried not to feel intimidated and failed.

“Give me the key, Lizzie,” he said gently.

“No.” Lizzie swallowed hard. He was very close now, his physical presence powerful, threatening, in direct contradiction to the softness of his tone. But she was not afraid of Nat. In the nine years of their acquaintance he had never given her any reason to fear him.

“Where is it?”

“Hidden somewhere you won’t find it.”

Nat gave an exasperated sigh. He flung out an arm. “This isn’t a game, Lizzie,” he said. She could tell he was trying to suppress his anger, trying to be reasonable. Nat Waterhouse was, above all, a reasonable man, a rational man, and a responsible…

DC: Do you ever argue with your characters while you’re writing? Who usually wins?

NC: Yes, I do. My characters always win because it’s their story. I’m a very instinctive author, a pantser not a planner, and so if my characters go off in a particular direction and it feels right then my instinct is to follow that rather than try to change it. I think this just goes to prove there’s no right or wrong way of writing!

DC: What is sure to distract you from sitting down and working/writing?

NC: My Labrador, Monty, who will bring me toys because he wants to play!

DC: You took a trip to Scotland last year. What was your favorite part of the trip? Favorite part of Scotland that you saw? Will you be writing a book with a Scottish backdrop inspired by your trip?

NC: I’m lucky enough to visit Scotland every year because my husband’s family is Scots and we go to stay with them. We usually have a week in a cottage in the West Highlands and then choose a different place to visit for a second week. Last year we went to Cromarty, which is a wonderful little town on the East Coast. It was definitely my favorite part of the trip. We stayed in an ancient hotel with creaking floors and four-poster beds – it felt like being part of an Agatha Christie mystery! The town of Cromarty itself is fascinating because so many of the Georgian streets and buildings are intact. It was like stepping back in time.

I’ve written one book with a Scottish backdrop – Kidnapped: His Innocent Mistress – and I would definitely like to set more books against that background.

DC: What has been your favorite book cover from all of your releases and why?

NC: I was blown away when I saw the covers for The Brides of Fortune. I love Laura’s gown on the cover of book 1 and the rich green and purple covers of books 2 and 3 are really lush. The cover goddess was definitely smiling on me when HQN went for those!

DC: How about your least favorite? Why?

NC: That’s an easy one! I had the most appalling cover for the UK edition of Lord Greville’s Captive. Even my editor admitted that it looked as though it had been stuck in a cupboard since the 1970s! The hero is carrying the heroine and she is wearing what looks like a see-through nightgown and her legs are in a strange scissor position and his hands appear to be in a very intimate place… It was simply dreadful.

DC: How do you feel your male or female characters have evolved over your career? Do you think you write them differently now than you did when you started?

NC: What an interesting question! I haven’t consciously changed my approach because I have always enjoyed writing strong female characters and my readers seem to enjoy them too. I think it’s true to say for both my heroes and heroines that I explore their emotions, motivations and conflicts in greater depth now than when I started writing. My books used to be lighter in tone. Now they are a lot darker and more emotional, though still witty and humorous, I hope.

DC: I’m so curious about the different covers for some of your books between America and the UK. Deceived, Lord of Scandal and Unmasked are great examples you show on your web site. The UK covers depict more of a Regency feel than their American counterparts. I’m assuming that’s because it’s what UK readers like and look for; they sell better for the publisher? Or is it something else?

NC: They are very different, aren’t they? The UK team is using contemporary Georgian paintings for my covers at the moment. Although I think that reader taste in Regency historicals has come closer together in the UK and the US over the past decade, the covers remain very different with more of an emphasis on the Georgette Heyer Regency style in the UK. Apparently market research suggests that this is what appeals to readers here. That said, I LOVE my US covers and I always have done.

DC: Is there a genre you haven’t tackled but would like to try?

NC: I’m itching to try historical fiction and also time slip and “gentle” paranormal.

DC: What advice would you give to your younger self?

NC: Writing wise, I would tell myself to apply myself more. It took me 15 years to get my first book published because I kept stopping and starting, re-writing the beginning and not finishing it, and going off and doing other things for months on end. And I would advise myself to join a writing organization like RWA or RNA for all the marvelous help and support that they can give.

DC: If you were a book, what would your blurb be?

NC: Ooh, great question! Tea-addicted UK author with a double life as historian and romance writer struggles to balance pets, family, writing, chocolate éclairs and a passion for history.

DC: What would be your “voice’s” tagline?

NC: Wittily historical and wickedly sensual.

DC: You have an upcoming book set in London and the Arctic. How’s that coming along? Can you give us a little sneak peek?

NC: It’s coming on very well, thank you! It doesn’t have a title yet, but I’m just finishing the revisions and the book will be the first in a new series due out next summer. It was fascinating setting a book in the Arctic, but it did require a great deal more research than usual. The hero is an explorer and adventurer and the heroine is the widow of his best friend, a frivolous society butterfly who thinks that all explorers are vain, arrogant and only interested in their own glory.

DC: If you had never become an author, what do you think you would be doing right now?

NC: I think I would be pursuing one of my other passions and would work in the heritage industry running a stately home for the National Trust. Or perhaps I would have opened a bookstore.

DC: Who’s your favorite author?

NC: There are lots of authors whose books I love, but Mary Stewart probably tops my list.

DC: What’s on the horizon for Nicola Cornick?

NC: I have a novella a month out for the next few months! In September there is The Elopement, a brand new short story in the anthology Love Me, Loves Me Not, which is being published by MIRA to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. Then in October I am thrilled to have a reprint of The Season for Suitors in a book with exciting new HQN author Courtney Milan and the wonderful Mary Balogh. Finally in December there is the first print publication of my e-book The Unmasking of Lady Loveless, which is a very hot, sexy and sweet Regency short story.

Lightning Round:

- dark or milk chocolate?    – Dark
- smooth or chunky peanut butter?     – Chunky
- heels or flats?    – Heels
- coffee or tea?    – Always tea
- summer or winter?    – Winter, but only just!
- mountains or beach?    – Both!
- mustard or mayonnaise?   – Mayonnaise
- flowers or candy?   – Flowers
- pockets or purse?    – Purse
- Pepsi or Coke?    – Neither
- ebook or print?     – Print. I love holding a book in my hand.

And because we never seem to get tired of them:

1. What is your favorite word?    – So difficult to choose… Malfeasance
2. What is your least favorite word?    – Death
3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?    – Music and nature
4. What turns you off creatively, spiritually or emotionally?     – Bad news
5. What sound or noise do you love?    – My dog snoring and the wind and rain outside when I’m tucked up in bed.
6. What sound or noise do you hate?    – Fingernails on a blackboard
7. What is your favorite curse word?    – Can I really say this? Fuck.
8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?   – Air traffic controller
9. What profession would you not like to do?    – North Sea Fisherman
10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?     – “You did your best. Well done.”

DC: Nicola, we’re so glad you spent the day with us. Thank you!

 I’ve been involved in the epublishing market since close to its inception as a potentially profitable fiction market, ie around the late ‘90’s, early 2000’s. I slipped into it by accident – I write unabashed romance and I live in the UK, where if you write romance, it’s Mills and Boon or nothing. Sagas, which until recently filled the market, are more about a woman’s life than they are about romance and an American reader wouldn’t class them as romance.

Anyway, once M and B rejected my historical, because it’s in the first person, (“Yorkshire,”) I had nowhere to go, so someone suggested the USA. The big publishers seemed impossible, so I tried epublishing, figuring it would be a good stepping-stone. I’m still there.

But boy, has it changed! It’s no longer a stepping-stone, but an end in itself. Now what I have to say concerns certain comments I’ve seen recently by people who ought to know better, but maybe it’s because they can’t see the numbers. Any more than I can give them.

However, any study of any market will tell you that the top 20% of companies makes 80% of the profit. It’s called the Pareto rule, and although the numbers are obviously not exact, it’s true for almost every market you can think of. It’s true for New York publishing, it’s true for epublishing, too.

In New York, the big five (six?) make far more than all the other small publishers, and that’s not even thinking about the self-publishing outfits. It works the same way in epublishing, although detailed figures aren’t available and authors are constrained by their non-disclosure agreements with the publishers so they can’t give them, which is why I can’t tell you my sales and earnings in any detail. There must be a large audience of people who don’t participate on the message boards, the blogs or the loops who just buy books, because sales are now very healthy indeed.

I write for three of the biggest epublishers – Ellora’s Cave, Samhain and Loose-Id, and my income is – well it’s in five figures, which is what a midlist New York author can expect. This is not unusual for an author for the largest epub houses, and it’s no longer confined to the erotic only. My Samhain historicals are highly sensual, not erotic, and I’ve featured in the Samhain list of top ten sellers several times, as have other non-erotic authors.

I am fairly prolific, but a lot of that is reissues. My editors are as exacting as you’ll find anywhere, sometimes more so, and I have at least two for each book, and extra editing for print releases. I’m not showing off, I’m just tired of people saying that epubbed authors earn miniscule amounts, and then quoting someone from one of the smaller epubs. The majority of sales don’t lie there. Authors write for them for various reasons – to get into the market, because they’re friends with the owners, because they’re happy with the editing and cover art the house offers or because they expect the house to grow and want to grow with it.

It’s now very difficult to get a book accepted by the bigger epublishing houses. The bigger epublishers spend a great deal on cover art, the website and other incidentals, so it’s not true that it’s cheap to produce an ebook. And the author gets a bigger cut, too, than they can expect in New York. And barriers to entry are rising – art is more expensive, editors demand a proper salary, and promotion and website costs are rising, too.

However, asking a hardback price for an ebook is a marketing decision, not one of economics, and I’d be unhappy if anyone was asked to pay $12 or more for one of my ebooks, unless I’d written a book the length of “Lord of the Rings.”

Concentrate on where the majority of sales are and you’ll find an expanding, dynamic market which is changing to reflect the nature of the changing market. Ellora’s Cave now has a new website, Jasmine Jade, which encompasses all its imprints. Samhain has just acquired Linden Bay Romance, to increase its scope and its roster of authors. Harlequin has made major investments in putting its books out as ebooks, and the marketing team there is one of the sharpest you’ll find anywhere. They have good reason for doing so. I’m not even touching on the new readers like the Kindle and Sony. Suffice it to say that they’ve helped to boost sales, too.

While I’d love to write for New York or London, or both, it’s no longer my sole career path. Epublishing has been good to me, even considering the Wild West days, and I sincerely believe it’s the way of the future. Not least because last year I made the decision to get my new books in e-format whenever possible (I just ran out of space). And I no longer feel I have to defend the industry. I can afford to shrug and walk away. Just trying to put a few misconceptions right, that’s all.

Is everything hunky-dory in the epublishing world? Of course not. But it’s no longer something that can be swept under the carpet, although its position as the red-headed stepchild of the fiction market will probably stick with it for a while.

by Michelle Styles
The end of September and beginning of October has been taken up with doing workshops for the National Year of Reading, writing and helping my eldest navigate the shoals of applying to universities. Why oh why was it so much easier when I was a student? And why did I think going on holiday at this time of year was a good one — Sorrento, Italy in case anyone is interested.

The BIG news is that November sees that launch of Harlequin Historical Undone. This is a short ebook line and is HH’s most sensual series yet. I was able to catch up with the four launch authors and find out more. Libertine Lord, Pickpocket Miss author Bronwyn Scott said:

The Undone e-book series is a great opportunity to take Harlequin Historical into the electronic age and reach a new population of reader. It’s also a great chance to show readers how much historical romance has changed over the past two decades.

Nicola Cornick added:

I’m very excited about the whole concept of the Harlequin Historical Undone e-books because I love reading and writing hot historical short stories! My launch title, The Unmasking of Lady Loveless, is a humorous and very sexy Regency tale and I’m really looking forward to reading the other launch stories too–they sound fabulous!

Michelle Willingham (whose entry, The Viking’s Forbidden Love-Slave, is connected to her full length novel Her Warrior Slave) explained:

I am absolutely thrilled to be a part of the Harlequin Historical Undone launch. The new line is meant to be short, very sexy historical stories that sweep you away, and when I wrote my story, I intended it to be pure fantasy. I have three children, all under the age of seven, and there are times in my life, when I desperately need an escape!

And finally, Amanda McCabe said:

I’m so excited to be part of the launch of the Undone line of ebooks for Harlequin! There are always stories I have a hard time letting go of when I reach “The End,” and my full length Harlequin Historical January 09 book High Seas Stowaway was one. I loved the setting (the Caribbean in the 1530s) and the characters–and I wondered what Carlos de Alameda’s story was. He seemed so mysterious and dangerous! In my Undone Shipwrecked and Seduced, I got to find out what that story was, and revisit Santo Domingo with the heroine Maria (a maidservant masquerading as a contessa). It was great fun to create a fantasy for her–and myself. I hope to get to do more of these stories in the future, and that readers enjoy them, too!

Across the pond, Mills & Boon is now releasing all of its front list as ebooks. You may purchase them through the Mills & Boon website.

Entering Harlequin Presents Instant Seduction writing contest proved a winner for Lynn Raye Harris. After being awarded an editor for a year, working hard on revisions, she received the Call in October. Her book, Spanish Magnate, Red Hot Revenge, will be released in North America next summer.

The winner of the Feel the Heat competition was Lucy Roberts and she will now work with an editor. Fingers crossed that she is able to emulate Lynn.

November also sees the re-release of Ida Cook’s (aka Mary Burchill) autobiography Safe Passages (previously published as We Followed Our Stars). For those who are not familiar with her life story. Ida Cook and her sister used the proceeds from Ida’s romance writing to help rescue Jewish people from Nazi Germany. There is a new foreword as well as some previously unpublished photographs. Besides writing well beloved romances for Mills and Boon, Ida Cook was a true heroine in her own right.

The Christmas season at Harlequin/Silhouette always starts in October/November. I love Christmas themed books. Harlequin Historical has two anthologies out this season: The Magic of Christmas by Carolyn Davidson, Victoria Bylin and Cheryl St John and One Candlelit Christmas with stories by Julia Justiss, Annie Burrows and Terri Brisbin.

Until next month, when hopefully there will be news about Harlequin’s upcoming 60^th anniversary celebration as well as more on the holiday season, Happy Reading!

Michelle Styles shares some interesting tidbits of information floating around. Note the awesome sale, and a new writing contest!

***The current BIG news is that www.eharlequin.com is having a Buy One, Get One Free sale (across all lines and books on 12,13, 14 August.***



As there is a TGTBTU spotlight on Blaze, Kira Sinclair is Blaze’s debut author this month with Whispers In the Dark. When asked, Kira explained about her books:

When a reader picks up one of my books, she can expect a sinfully sensual romance that isn’t afraid to tackle tough, true life issues in order to find the healing power of love.

Mills and Boon has revamped its website. It now has a “browse the book” feature as well as widgets for its covers. The site is far easier to navigate, but still no sign of the promised ebooks…

Harlequin won 7 out of the 12 Ritas. Many congratulations to all the winners.

Apparently the Harlequin party was wonderful but very crowded. Next year’s party should be huge as Harlequin will be celebrating its 60th anniversary. All sorts of exciting things are planned including special mini series.

Longtime Presents author Carole Mortimer announced that in addition to her Presents novels, she has sold her first historical to Mills & Boon Historical — to be published in the UK in April 2009. It is the start of Regency series. Carole is a longtime Regency fan and said that it felt like she had sold her first book all over again.

Following on from the success of the “Instant Seduction” contest, there is a “Feel the Heat” contest that is aimed solely at would-be Modern Heat writers. The top prize is an editor for a year. Deadline for entry is 15 September 2008. Full details about the contest are on I Heart Presents. Modern Heat novels are released as both Presents and Presents Extra in the US, but they are flirtier than the more traditional Presents. Read about them here.

Lynne Connolly does Manchester and you don’t even have to wait for the film

100 years… and they are just getting started. Shocking isn’t it? Read on for a taste of Mills and Boon, you know if you are like me and can’t get to Manchester.

I went into Manchester yesterday. Manchester has always been, and will always be, one of the cities of my heart. You know, from the minute you get off the plane or the train and set foot in it you feel it, it calls to you and you know you can call it home.

So far, New York, Manchester, Paris and Florence have given me that particular kick in the gut so it was a huge pleasure to be able to go to Manchester for a reason.

This time it was the “And Then He Kissed Her” exhibition, celebrating 100 years of Mills and Boon. Since it’s also the RNA’s (Romantic Novelists’ Association – the UK version of the RWA) 50th, they’ve been having some great joint celebrations, but this one is for Mills and Boon.

Manchester Public Library is one of those huge public buildings erected in what was then the richest city in the world. It has a domed central area bigger than the British Museum Reading Room and several other libraries – the language library, the Jewish library, the Language and Literary library, the Music Library – you get the idea.

The exhibition is situated outside the Social Science Library, usually called the Dome by residents, in a prime area.
Outside the library, I got my first delightful surprise. A huge banner, and I mean huge, with this cover on it, proclaiming the exhibition. (That’s the picture on the left). Isn’t that nice? Not often you see something like that in a Place of Learning. So I soaked it up and went in.

After the opening party the night before, the exhibition was nicely deserted. A few people lingered, and since it’s in the promenade before The Dome, it’s not going to be overlooked.

The first thing you see is a sculpted corset, made of Mills and Boon covers. Interesting, but not really relevant and the best bits are yet to come. If you work down the left hand side, then go back up the right, the exhibition is at its best, but I kept going back to make sure I hadn’t missed anything.

After a history of the company, which started as a general publisher, but in the 1920′s realised where its real future lay and concentrated on the romance genre. At first, it had writers like Jack London and John Buchan, but that gave way to Mary Burchall, the first superstar of Mills and Boon, and her cohorts. A book, set between the cases, gives the company biographies of some of these women. All nice ladies of a certain class, if they are to be believed, which helps to explain the relentless middle-class approach until after World War II. These books provided the factory girls and office grunts with their dreams, together with the weekly trip to the local cinema. So they drooled over Cary Grant and Douglas Fairbanks at weekends and filled in the week with doctors, executives and secret agents from the Mills and Boon stable.

These books were affordable and, with their brightly colored, well designed covers, attractive. And fashionable. Not scarily fashionable, showing the extremes of the high life, but aspirationally fashionable. Harrods rather than Chanel, Broadstairs rather than Cannes.
Fashion is more than clothes, though, and the trends of the eras are easily seen here.

“Romance Goes Tenting” reflected the passion for rambling and camping in the 1030′s (Dorothy L Sayers also picked up on this one), and gave me a good chuckle. But then, fashion is often funny when it’s not fashionable any more. Then we get to “WAAF to wife” (the WAAFs were the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force in WWII), with both protagonists in smart uniform, but the title indicating where the little woman belonged. And a medical romance, with a nurse in white, looking to our eyes more like a nun, and a doctor, called (hold your breath for this one), “The Man In Authority.” After the war, a little spice creeps in, with nightclub hostesses and a touch of sophistication, but only a touch. Sex was still for marrieds only, and only described in euphemisms that gave rise to the “waves against the seashore” analogy. (In British films from the era, when sexual heat threatened, the camera used to pan up and go for the outdoor view where waves battered the beach).

But if we just laughed at these conventions we’d be doing our mothers and grandmothers a great disservice. These books reflected manners and mores like nothing “meant to last” could ever do. The obsession with camping, the war effort, the liberation that eventually broke through can all be traced in these books.

The constant is the Alpha male. Tall, short dark hair brushed back and Brylcreemed into glossy, (greasy) waves, always in control, always powerful. The difference is the kind of women they confront, from the frail victim (currently unpopular) to the kick-butt only slightly less powerful warrior princess.

What’s more, in the main Library, under the Dome, there’s another exhibition, one you have to see with the Mills and Boon one, because they work so well together. It’s called Treasures and it contains some of the letters and accounts of the suffragettes. The Pankhursts lived in Manchester and their house is open to the public, so Manchester was important to the movement.

The children of the suffragettes were the office workers who bought Mills and Boon books to while away the hours. Recreational reading. The feminists who say that Mills and Boon/Harlequin books perpetuate a paternalistic vision are missing the point. We go out, we fight for our rights and then we come back and read a fantasy about a man and a woman and a desert island, or whatever. That’s as much our right as equal pay should be. And most of us know the difference between fantasy and reality.

Is that a step forward to liberation? I think so.

Don’t miss this exhibition. It’s going on tour around the country at the end of July, so catch it if you can.

This just in…

Mills & Boon is celebrating their 100th year in the busines of publishing and in Britain a documentary is in the works to herald this milestone and to answer the perennial question “What do women want?”

~ Julie Moggan of Landmark Films is putting out a call for UK-based fans to find out what it is about M & B they love so much and how that passion relates to their lives.

~ “It’s important to me that the film should convey the way in which Mills & Boon’s have evolved over time as society has changed. I want to show that, contrary to popular myths and assumptions, Mills & Boons are read by women of all ages and that there are different kinds of M & B’s catering to different kinds of women!” Julie told readers at I Heart Harlequin Presents.

~ Julie also stated, “I want to make a warm, intelligent documentary that will take us into the private worlds of Mills & Boon’s readers.”

~ Contact Julie at juliemoggan@yahoo.com if you live in the UK and are interested in participating in this momentous occasion!

Consider yourself flashed.

by Michelle Styles

Lots of things always seem to be happening in June. I was a June bride 20 years ago, and this is why I never forget that the anniversary of Waterloo is 18 June. Lots of jokes about meeting Waterloos and it being a close run thing punctuated the speeches. And my advice to any June bride is not to lock your knees as fainting just after you say ‘I do’ – tends to get remembered.

June also marks the 10^th anniversary of Nicola Cornick becoming a Harlequin Historical author, as well as the release of her 25^th book: The Last Rake in London. It features Jack Kestrel, whose ancestors were in the Regency Bluestocking Brides trilogy. Nicola says:

“It was a huge thrill and an honour for me to be asked by Mills & Boon to write a book set in 1908 as part of the centenary celebrations. That book, The Last Rake in London, is also my 25th for Mills & Boon, so it is even more of a celebration for me! I had never written an Edwardian era book before and found the research challenging but was soon swept up in the fascinating history of the period. It had a very personal resonance for me because my beloved grandmother, to whom the book is dedicated, was born in 1908 and died this year, a month short of her 100th birthday. She was a true Edwardian lady and a great inspiration to me.”

It was out last month in the UK, and is a great read. It is tremendously exciting to see what she has done with the Edwardian era. Also her next HQN book Unmasked is out in July.

Seduction Summer begins for Silhouette Romantic Suspense, starting with Nina Bruhns’ Killer Temptation in June. Other titles are: Killer Passion by Sheri Whitefeather (July) and Killer Affair by Cindy Dees (August). Nina explained why she is so excited about the launch.

If you’re looking for pure page-turning sizzle for those lazy days reading on the beach, this series is for you! For Killer Temptation, I loved working with the Fiji setting…spent hours on the Internet just drooling over the gorgeous scenery. And I so fell in love with these characters, Zoe and Breeze. This book was so much fun, it practically wrote itself. One of my personal faves! And working with Sheri and Cindy on the series was a blast. Such talented writers and great ladies.

Jill Sorenson makes her debut with Romantic Suspense this month. Jill said,

Dangerous to Touch is special to me for many reasons. It’s my debut and I couldn’t be more excited about seeing my first book in print. I absolutely love the cover. But most of all, the book is important to me because I thought it might be my last. I wrote it during my second pregnancy and was afraid that with two little ones underfoot, I’d never find the time to write again. It wasn’t easy, but I managed to complete another manuscript. That book, Dark Canyon, and my single-title debut, Crash Into Me, will be released by Bantam Dell in 2009.

Julie Miller’s first book in her latest miniseries for Intrigue, The Precinct: Brotherhood of the Badge, is Protective Instincts and features Sawyer Kincaid and Melissa Teague from Up Against the Wall.

The details of the Desire pitch contest are now up on the eharlequin.com site. It is a wonderful opportunity for anyone interested in writing for the series. Certainly, the editors are keen to find a new author before the RWA National. Deadlines for entires is 30 June.

Kate Walker’s latest, Spanish Billionaire, Innocent Wife, will be available as a free download with DailyLit starting on 1 June. The offer continues until 31 August. The book will be sent in short email/rss segments.

“We have had a wonderful response from Harlequin fans using DailyLit to receive these novels, and we wanted to give them something back in return,” said Susan Danziger, President and Publisher of DailyLit. “We thought what better way than to offer them a brand new title by one of their most popular authors.”

Over 200 Harlequin titles are currently available for purchase from DailyLit.com.

The long awaited exhibition to celebrate Mills & Boon’s centenary opens this month in Manchester. Nicola Cornick is giving a workshop on “Regency Pleasures and Pastimes” 14 June at the Manchester Library in connection with the exhibition. Mills & Boon editors have been busy visiting literary festivals. To see the full list of where they will be, plus see some great early covers, visit the M & B Facebook fansite.

On the website, Mills & Boon has a signup for those of you interested in getting M & B ebooks. I am not sure when this is starting, but it is a great development. You can sign up to get more news about the launch date.

One of my favourite things about June is that it marks the start of summer holiday reading, and a chance to indulge. Happy reading, and I will be back with more news in July.

2008 is the National Year of Reading in the UK.

It is about celebrating reading in all its forms and highlighting the importance of libraries. It is about encouraging parents to read to their children, and people in general just to read.

It is about challenging employers to turn their old smoking rooms into quiet reading rooms, and encouraging workers to read. Natasha Oakley whose Wanted: White Wedding is out this month explained further ‘Setting aside the fact I earn my living writing books,as a mum of five this is something I really want to be involved in. The hope is that the campaign will reach people who don’t consider themselves ‘readers’. The slogan is ‘Reading – Anytime, Anything, Anywhere’. I’m all for taking the snobbishness out of books. It should be fun!’

Authors from literary authors to series romance authors are involved in a wide number of events. As part of the NYR nine Mills & Boon authors have been asked to be ‘Writers in Residence’ in nine of England’s library authorities. The timing and the match could not be more perfect, as Mills & Boon celebrates its 100^th birthday, there is no one who knows a good book like a Mills & Boon author – or reader! It’s a fantastic accolade and tribute to the importance of Mills & Boon to libraries and all the hard work done by so many of our authors in them.

The Mills & Boon ‘Writers in Residence‘ for the NYR are

Louise Allen – Peterborough

Susan Stephens – Kirklees

Kate Hardy – Norfolk

Nicola Cornick – Wiltshire

Sharon Kendrick – Hampshire

Caroline Anderson – Suffolk

Michelle Styles – Northumberland

India Grey – Cheshire

Natasha Oakley – Bedfordshire

A spokesperson for Mills & Boon said : ‘Mills & Boon is extremely proud to support the National Year of Reading, a government-backed initiative which aims to get more readers reading more! It will be supported by a TV advertising campaign featuring Geri Halliwell, Lenny Henry, Bill Bailey, Jon Culshaw and Jo Brand amongst others. The NYR will see a nationwide campaign reminding reluctant readers, hesitant readers and even prolific readers of the joy of reading. It’s a wonderful opportunity for Mills & Boon to be part of this fantastic year celebrating reading!’

You can see the launch video