Losing My Podcast Virginity

Me, Abby & Chantelle Shaw

So two fortuitous things happened recently:

Firstly, I was asked by the lovely peeps at the Professional Writing Academy if I would be interested in doing a podcast to help promo my new online writing course with them An Introduction to Writing Hot Romance - the course launches on October 4th so if you want to sign up and treat yourself to 7 weeks of intensive but I hope completely fabulous sessions on romance writing you still have time.

The other thing that happened was I went to an author lunch in Central London (an annual event which is always a top date in my writing calendar) with some of my favorite romance authors – which of course made me think, if I'm gonna lose my podcast virginity, I'm going to rope them in too!!

First thing to figure out was how to work my iPhone's Voice Memo app. Yup, this took a while, because it turns out my smart phone is a lot smarter than I am... But once Abby Green and I had done numerous tests, and then actually managed to find the recordings on the phone without accidentally deleting them (not as easy as it sounds), I was ready to roll.

Showing off my latest cover at the party

Next up was cornering some of my mates. First up was of course Abby, who had foolishly helped me with the app and was therefore a sitting duck for my first soundbite.

The question was a simple one, though, for someone who writes searingly sexy romances: Why do you love writing hot romance?

Then I turned to Fiona Harper - I asked her why she loved writing romance, as her books are less hot but still wonderfully fresh, funny, heartwarming romance novels for HQ.

My fellow Fairy Tales of New York author Lucy King, who had made the mistake of camping out with us after the lunch and who writes wonderfully sexy, sassy feel-good romances got hooked in next...

After the author lunch each year Mills and Boon invite all their current authors to a glamorous drinks party in the News Building - right next to the Shard with wonderful views over London – and there I managed to waylay the legendary Sharon Kendrick – author of a staggering 102 books for M&B all of them scorchingly hot and deeply emotional reads – for a quick chat.

The fabulous Ms Kendrick

The next day I made a trip to Sheffield to talk on a panel with Sue Stephens (darn it, I should have whipped out my phone out and interviewed her too!) and M&B editor Flo Nicholl about why Mills and Boon books are so cool hosted by academic Val Derbyshire during the University's Festival of the Mind event.

So it wasn't until Sunday that I had the delight of figuring out how to use Garageband to edit the sound recordings and add my own thoughts (and yes, there was sarcasm in that statement!). After a long day spent fumbling my way through the highly intuitive (but not that intuitive to me) application, I had my podcast. And I have to say, I am mighty pleased with the eventual result. The people at PWA prettied it up with some photos and stuck it on YouTube, so I need to say a big thanks to them, and to my mates, who each had insightful and interesting reasons as to why they love writing romance (hot or not).

I'd love to know what you think? So here it is...

Now I am no longer a podcast virgin, I may be doing more podcasts - I love to talk about romance, so why not share the joy, right? In fact, the PWA may have created a monster...