Kate’s 25th party, guest blogger #11 – India Grey

My next guest is a relatively new friend – and she’s also a brand new M&B author who just happens to be my shelfmate this month. (The Italian’s Defiant Mistress is a superb debut. I have a copy which I’ve been secretly reading under my desk when people think I’m working. I lurrrve Italian men, and Raphael is particularly gorgeous. The word ‘exquisite’ comes to mind.) And I owe Kate Walker a big thank you otherwise it would’ve been a lot longer until we’d met. (And I would have been terrified of said guest because, as you’ll see in her photograph, she also happens to be stunningly beautiful. I think she must have a picture in her attic. I mean, look at her surname. And even her first name is almost an anagram of… Well. Teasing apart, unlike her almost-namesake, she isn’t just beautiful, she has a really lovely personality and it’s impossible not to like her.) Anyway, without further ado, I’m delighted to introduce you to India Grey.

Hi... My name’s India Grey and I’m a chocolate addict.

Chocolate has to be one of the greatest inventions of all time. Chocolate is what you reach for when you’re tired, when you’re sad, when you want to comfort, celebrate or seduce, and I like to think I’m something of an expert on it (chocolate that is, not seduction, at which I’m hopeless.) After all, get this – I have emerged with full marks every time in a blind taste test between Dairy Milk, Galaxy, Green & Black’s, and a supermarket own-brand!*

*(Am I making this sound like it was some kind of official thing? Oh dear me, no. This was just something I persuaded my husband to conduct, to prove once and for all that although I may be a dismal failure in many areas of life—like checking bank statements and remembering to put the bins out—when it comes to chocolate expertise I reign supreme.)

Anyway, the point is, I’m tireless in my quest to sample and explore, and I thought I’d tried it all...

And then I met Kate.

Well, I say I met her, but at this stage that isn’t strictly true. I got to know her via the wonderful medium of email as she took on the task of organising a joint present for the lovely Kate Walker’s 50th book party, and we quickly discovered we shared many passions. Music being one, dark, brooding men another, and... oh yes... chocolate.

So, how excited was I the day that I received in the post a signed copy of In the Gardener’s Bed (containing dark, lovely Will Daines) and, along with it some small gold foil-wrapped squares? They looked deceptively ordinary, and I absent-mindedly unwrapped one as I devoured the first few pages of Kate’s book...

Heaven.

Total sensory overload.

(And the chocolate was pretty sensational too...)

This was my first introduction to Kate Hardy’s famous ‘better-than-sex’ gianduja from Hotel Chocolat, as featured in the London City General trilogy and mentioned fairly regularly in her blog. Tasting is believing, and from the first bite I was hooked. I’m quite sure it’s blessing in disguise that there isn’t a branch of Hotel Chocolat near me (if it is, it’s a very, very good disguise; so good in fact that most of the time I mistake this blessing for a complete tragedy) or I would be maybe the first newly signed Mills & Boon author to spend an advance cheque entirely on calories.

A few weeks of enforced abstinence later my birthday came around, and brought with it a package bearing Kate’s now-familiar handwriting. Inside was the most gorgeous box of Hotel Chocolat handmade chocolates – an assortment of ganaches and pralines and Florentines – all of them surprising, different, delicious. And just as wonderful as the chocolates themselves was the fact that they’d been sent by this lovely person whom I’d never even met, but whose kindness and warmth stretched all the way across the country and made my day. (She does that a lot, in fact!)

I’d been a fan of Kate’s for a long time before I became a friend, and reluctantly finishing the last of those chocolates (at lunchtime, at my computer, alone in the house just to make sure there would be no unpleasant issues about having to share it....) I concluded that you get the same qualities in a Kate Hardy book as you do in a good box of chocolates. (I think Forrest Gump said something along the same lines, although since he hadn’t been lucky enough to discover Kate Hardy’s books the comment was more general.) They’re both life-enhancing, mood-lifting, stress-soothing and utterly addictive. Both take the same basic ingredients (be it cocoa beans and cream, or a man and a woman with a sizzling attraction to each other) and manage to combine them in ways that are endlessly varied and unexpected, always delicious. But there are a couple of ways in which Kate’s books have the edge over the dark stuff....

1. They’re calorie-free



2. They’re great to share with friends!

GIVEAWAY: As a tribute to Kate’s own generosity, I’m offering some genuine Hotel Chocolat gorgeousness, along with a signed copy of my first book, to a randomly selected poster. (Oh yes... I discovered Hotel Chocolat have an online shop! Hurrah!!)

GIVEAWAY QUESTION: What’s your favourite chocolate, or your best chocolate-related memory?