Heidi and Kim talk Wedding Season Awesomeness!!

So every year around this time the Mills and Boon authors have a swanky lunch in Central London and this year we went the full swanky and had it at The Royal Horseguards Hotel in their Reading and Writing Room - which was very appropriate (not least because of the very romantic murals all round the room).

Note gorgeous nekkid male in mural

As the lovely Kimberly Lang had come all the way over from Alabama for the lunch we decided to put together a little video while we were in those gorgeous surroundings of us talking about why our new mini-series of books The Wedding Season - also featuring stories by the gorgeous Amy Andrews and Aimee Carson - was such a hoot to write.  Here's the video for y'all to enjoy (take note I now know the proper use of that phrase!).

We had almost as much fun doing the video as writing the books - the only thing that would have made it more fun would have been to have the two Amys there too.... Maybe next year, eh ladies??

NB: I should add that the fabulous camerawork was courtesy of Miss Abby Green, who has been harassing me to add a credit. (Sheesh, film peeps, so picky)

The Romance Minxes and Moi!

Am over at the ab fab Romance Minxes blog today doing an Author Spotlight and waffling away about everything from procrastination to being a pantser, not to mention my new book On the First Night of Christmas (any shameless plugs are purely coincidental, honest!)

So come and join me and leave a comment.

Have illustrated this post with a picture of me and Abby Green pretending to look very authorly after the AMBA lunch. Thanks for the great camera skills go to wonderful new Medical author Scarlet Wilson.

PHS.... Inception

Having handed over Cal and Ruby's story to my ed (yes!!), I'm off to central London today, to a very swanky hotel, to schmooze with my fellow M&B authors at the AMBA lunch. Can't wait...

But while I'm gone, why don't y'all check out what I had to say about Inception - the Leo DiCaprio sci-fi thrill fest - on the Pink Heart Society today? And let me know what you thought of it too.

Will report back on any interesting developments or gossip soon.

Schmoozing at AMBA

Had a fab time at the AMBA lunch on Thursday at a bijou location in London's Covent Garden. As usual I forgot to bring my camera (actually I don't even have a camera!!) so the wonderful Kate Hardy was sweet enough to take a few snaps for me. From left to right there's me with Fiona Harper, the Modern Heat posse of Kate and new author Lucy King and the inimitable Sharon Kendrick. What a laugh, a great time was had by all. The great women who write for Mills and Boon is one of the big benefits of writing for them IMHO.
Okay, enough schmoozing... Also yesterday, the article about my book club experience came out in The Telegraph and it was really good. Casilda Grigg, the journalist who wrote the piece had some excellent things to say about the event and made some interesting observations about how it's not actually possible to just knock off a Mills and Boon in your lunchbreak. Anyone who reads this blog of course will know what a flipping struggle it is to write these books (or anyone who's ever tried to write one) but it's nice to have that little myth popped in a major British newspaper.

Casilda also managed to mention that Pierce Brosnan is my muse (probably because I mentioned it about 100 times) so I'll be expecting a call from him shortly. And even better in the article's main photo of me I only have one chin! I'm so proud...

Party Time...

Oh, alright, it was a week ago and all those other super-efficient romance writers have had their photos up on their blogs for over a week. But hey, at least I remembered my camera this time, and not only that I actually got it out of my bag and took a grand total of three pictures! 

So here they are, from my wild and wonderful afternoon and evening at the AMBA lunch and the Mills and Boon Authors toast afterward. Held at Browns restaurant in St Martin's Lane right next to Trafalgar Square, it's our annual opportunity to swan around and pretend that romance authors really do have uber-glamourous lives. 

Fabulous to meet Natalie Anderson for the first time, who had come all the way from New Zealand... Plus me old mates Kate Hardy and Julie Cohen. So here's a photo of the Mod Hot Posse, looking all glam of course. (The reason I'm not smiling is because when I do I always look like I have rigor mortis, it's not because I wasn't enjoying myself, honest).

Here's another pic from the lunch itself. I got sat next to the big chief at M&B Karen Stoecker so I was trying very hard not to sound like a complete ninny. Jennie Lucas who was sat on the other side rather unfortunately lost her voice that morning, so had to spend the whole lunch using a pad to jot down her responses! But luckily she's a writer...

And last, but by no means least, here's Abby Green and Natasha Oakley (my fellow RITA nominee this year) trying to figure out all the info about widgets from the nice man from the technology department. What the heck's a widget? seemed to be the main topic of conversation as I recall.

So on to more nuts and bolts stuff. Emailed the final version of my ms this morning, all the revisions have been okayed and it's just got to be line-edited now. Then I should get the official word that Book Five is a goer! Yippee. Will keep you posted about the next title.