Wanna see Guy Pearce's bum??

Then check out my post on The Pink Heart Society about the new HBO mini-series Mildred Pierce. Which has Kate Winslet brilliantly cast as the successful 1940s restaurateur but not so successful mother, Guy as her feckless but handsome lover Monty, lashings of beautifully observed period detail and some very sexy scenes involving.... Well, need I say more. Check out the darn post!

Also don't forget I'm still running my comp to win a copy of One Amazing Night Baby. To enter the prize draw answer these two questions by the close of play today (that's Friday 12th August) about my book Pleasure, Pregnancy and a Proposition.


1) The name of the Hero and Heroine from PPP
2) Why the Hero all but kidnaps the Heroine at the start of the story... 

And email the answers to heidi@heidi-rice.com and I'll announce the winner tomorrow.
 

One Amazing Night, Baby! Competition

 

And one amazing day for me when I got a little package in the post today containing two copies of my first every By Request title: One Amazing Night Baby!

Which not only features my fourth Modern Heat story Pleasure, Pregnancy and a Proposition (that's the book that topped the Waldies for two weeks in a row - sorry have I mentioned that already??) but also two super cool stories by my fellow Riva gals Robyn Grady and Anne Oliver.

So to celebrate this glorious event I'm gonna give away one copy to anyone who can answer the following two questions correctly:

1) The name of the Hero and Heroine from PPP
2) Why the Hero all but kidnaps the Heroine at the start of the story... 

For some clues, check out the sneak peek Here

To enter just email the answers to heidi@heidi-rice.com by Friday 12th August and I'll announce the winner on Saturday.

And just in case you were wondering I'm only giving away one copy cos I'm keeping the other one for myself so I can read Robbie and Anne's Amazing Baby stories!

In other news, I have just enlisted the help of a proper website designer to give me a brand spanking new website.... Not least because my current one seems to have disappeared off my desktop and is consequently going to be stuck in a Spring 2011 time warp forever more. So watch that space!

Also, just wanted to remind all you aspiring writers out there that New Voices is back this September.

It was a phenomenal success last year and they're making some interesting changes which I think will make it an even more positive experience for everyone who enters.

For starters I'm going to be doing two London workshops in Fulham and Mayfair. Will give you more deets about those when I have them. But there will be lots of other authors doing workshops round the country (I know the fabulous Fiona Harper will also be doing one in London), so hopefully they'll be one near you (if you live in the UK). but even if you don't live in the UK you can enter the comp. For details of how just check out the website and don't forget to join M&B's New Voices Facebook page.

Nick and Eva's Story has a title!

Woohoo! Nick and Eva's story is now called.... Wait for it:

The Good, The Bad and the Wild

I let you guess who's the good and who's the bad. It's gonna be out in the UK as a Riva in March 2012 (I hope!). Will be posting a sneak peek on my website once I have some cover art... But to get you in the mood, here's a lovely istock photo of The Golden Gate Bridge where Nick and Eva take their first wild ride to be followed by one heck of a wild night!

Heidi's Adventures in Romancelandia... NYC 2011

So okay, I'm posting this two weeks after I got back from NYC... Which is pretty pathetic I know, but quite apart from the recovery time needed after spending six days with Ms Abby Green in the city that (as it turns out literally) never sleeps, I also had a little book project to finish...

So with Nick and Eva's story finally SOLD on Friday!!! After frantic typing of epilogue on Hampstead Heath while watching Son Two play football. (As soon as I have a title I shall bore you all rigid with details of how wonderful this story is so you shall all want to rush out and buy it in March next year! Hint -hint) I am now free to tell you all about the phenomenal par-tay in the Big Apple!

Here are a few of the high spots, with pictorial accompaniment (unfortunately crap pictorial accompaniment for the most part, as I still haven't quite figured out how my camera's auto-focus works...)

The gorgeous Ms Abby Green, my amazing roomie (she made me to say that, btw), did a fabo job getting us a room with a great view of Times Square, so when I got in jet-lagged and exhausted after a 10-hour flight (which should have been six - thank you so much Virgin Atlantic and the nice peeps at JFK airport! Grrr) the par-tay was on. That said, sharing the flight agony with Sharon Kendrick, Sue Stephens and Carole Mortimer made it a lot less of a trial.

Here's an arty shot of my spot at the mega-literacy signing the next day (Tuesday I think, but don't quote me on that, I'd already had too much prosecco and not enough sleep)...

A total romance-arama with about a billion eager readers buying books (unfortunately not all of them mine!). But, hey, I got to sit within two seats of Susan Elizabeth Phillips who is one of my auto-buy authors! So it was quite a thrill.... To watch everyone charge past me to get to her...!

Now, to the great regret of my thighs, there happened to be a wonderful retro Noo Yawk diner across the road from the Marriott Marquis hotel called Juniors... This is fellow Riva Divas Fiona Harper and Lucy King who I enjoyed the first of many slap-up breakfasts with on Tuesday morning.

Unfortunately, I ended up eating my way thru most of Juniors breakfast menu by the end of the week (well, apart from the fruit plate)... So the less said about that the better.

Here is a picture that I will be putting in 'Heidi's Hall of Fame' because... Yes!! That's me sitting next to LINDA HOWARD... I may have mentioned this a few times already, but thanks to our Alabama heroine Kimberly Lang, the Mod Hot posse got to have lunch (at Juniors of course) with this great lady. Not surprisingly she turned out to be gracious, gorgeous, classy and a whole lot of fun... And I'd just like to add that those other women in the photo didn't actually sit with us, they insisted on muscling in on the photo, it was actually just me and Linda.... Honest!

Have to admit that during the four days of the Conference proper, which as always was organised with military precision by the RWA, I was so busy sightseeing and socialising (and generally trying to pretend what a proper author I am!) that I didn't attend nearly as many workshops as I would have liked (although Jennie Cruisie's Wonder Woman talk was an inspirational exception)... So here's Abby and me (with the lovely Lucy King on camera duty - hence the focussing) going AWOL on the High Line.. Which if you ever go to NYC I would highly recommend (no pun intended!)

And here are some more AWOL moments....

Which include me and Fi Harper in Central Park and Riva Divas Sue Stephens, Fi Harper, Lucy King and Amy Carson supping margaritas at a down-town bar... 

Among other events I attended there was the Presents lunch in a bijoux restaurant off Fifth Avenue, Sandra Marton's legendary Pizza Party (where I had a good old chinwag with Maisey Yates, Jennie Lucas, Lynne Raye Harris, Jane Porter, Sue Stephens, Sharon Kendrick and ... well, all the usual suspects) and then there was the Harlequin Black and White Ball at the Waldorf Astoria, where we all got glammed up and danced till dawn and I met lovely New Voices winner Leah Ashton (and her hunky new hubby).

I did take the camera to those events but was concentrating way to hard on being gorgeous and erudite (and that takes a lot of concentration these days btw) to take any picures....

Anyone jealous, yet?? Good, my work is done.

On the last night of conference, I had the great honour of being Rita-nominee Ms Abby Green's date for the super-plush RITA and Golden Heart Awards ceremony. Now sadly, Abby didn't nab the prize for her spectacular book Breaking the Sheik's Rules, or the lovely Kelly Hunter or Sarah Morgan, but Karen Templeton who did win gave a wonderfully empowering speech and then Hall of Fame honouree Sharon Sala had us all blubbing like, well, a room full of romance writers, with her speech... And the emcee Meg Cabot was a dead ringer for Tina Fey. Plus we all looked absolutely fabulous, of course. So it was really all right on the night....

Have borrowed this photo of me and Abby from Fiona Harper (because I thought you might want more than one in focus) as proof to sign off with.

Roll on RWA 2012!

Hottie alert!!

Am over at the Pink Heart Society today doing my monthly Must-Watch Friday slot talking about the uber sexy Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway in the funny, smart and also surprisingly deep Love and Other Drugs... So come on down!

Are you kidding me???

Ok, am now back from the glorious RWA conference in NYC and will be doing a long and anecdotal post shortly all about my marvellous adventures once I've finished the revs on my current book and figured out how to download the pictures from my new camera...

But until then, I just had to post my response to this article in The Telegraph today which (surprise, surprise) quotes a recent article in the British Medical Journal blaming romantic fiction for relationship breakdowns, unplanned pregnancies, the rise in abortions, the spread of STDS, the black death and... Okay, I'm exaggerating slightly, but come on... Seriously? Are you kidding me?

Read the article, read the comments (some of them great, some of them assinine) and here's my response, which I posted in the comments thread too.

It never ceases to amaze me when reading articles such as this that criticise romantic fiction and the subsequent comments attached to it, the number of people who feel justified in saying 'I've never read one of these books myself, but...' And then go on to give a detailed analysis of something they know nothing about.  

Condescending? Much?

And I'd hazard a guess that Ms Quilliam may well be one of those people, because anyone who has ever read Pride & Prejudice (or any Regency romance) would know that if Elizabeth Bennett had spent her time gazing lovingly across the ballroom at Mr Darcy there wouldn't have been much of a story to tell...

So as an avid reader of romantic fiction, and someone who is currently in the process of writing her 11th book for M&B I'd like to give you all a little head's up about this genre and why women (and - shock, horror - some men) find it so compelling to read. 

First and foremost these are books about relationships, in all their variety and complexity and emotional intensity. And yes, they have a happy ending, but that's the pay-off for the reader, just as the detective discovering 'whodunnit' is the pay-off for a lover of crime fiction. But it's the journey, the way in which the couple grow and change as people and resolve the conflicts between them that's really at the heart of their story. So the suggestion that these books are somehow bad for relationships defeats me.

As to their impact on Sexual Health & Family Planning, I can safely say that my couples almost always use condoms and on the rare occassions they don't they will have discussed 'safe sex' issues, because funnily enough there's nothing very heroic or romantic about a hero (or heroine) who spreads STDs at will.. A number of my couples have had unplanned pregnancies but in the context of a romance novel (just as in real life) an unplanned pregnancy will increase the conflict between the couple, not diminish it, so I would hazard a guess that any woman thinking the opposite is the case certainly doesn't read the novels I'm reading (or writing!).

And yes, some elements of these books are hyper-real, and depending on the level of fantasy in the books there are some which don't address the condom issue. But are we seriously suggesting that escapism and fantasy doesn't have a place in modern life? Or that women can't tell the difference between fantasy and reality? After all if a plumber in Peckham can read a James Bond novel without becoming convinced that he's actually licensed to kill in Monte Carlo, why can't a housewife in Hounslow read a M&B without wanting to have unprotected sex with a Greek Shipping billionaire? I'm just saying!

And for all those people who would suggest that romantic fiction is the equivalent of female porn, can you really not tell the difference between real sex performed on camera between two (or more) people who quite possibly don't know each other and are most likely doing it to pay the rent and a fictional sexual encounter described within the context of a developing relationship? I mean, seriously? 

And last but not least. I'm a tad surprised that a family planning professional would evaluate the choices their clients make about their sexual health and their relationships based on the genre of fiction they choose to read, but maybe that's just me!

Feel free to join the debate! After all that's just my humble opinion. Right, back to work on another story that's going to destroy civilisation as we know it.

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The King of Cool.. And Drool

Ever wondered why Steve McQueen is called the King of Cool? You may want to check out my Must-Watch Friday post today on Pink Heart Society, where I am considering this important question in quite considerable depth as regards The Thomas Crown Affair circa 1968. NB: let's face it what other macho man could wear a day-glo orange shirt and blue hotpants and still look straight? (check out pictorial proof above)

In other news am still trying to work out the kinks on my latest ms... Had a light bulb moment on a flight to Dublin this weekend when I was visiting Abby Green (and avoiding my problem child ms). My heroine and my hero may have a tad too much emotional baggage... Think it might have come about as a result of being on a Ryanair flight. Nuf said.

Would put up pics of my trip but was having far too much fun helping Abby put together her outfit for the RITAs to take photos!