This month’s new releases

Current work: Med duo
Listening to: Diana Krall
Reading: Louise Allen, A Most Unconventional Courtship (this is a cracking read – excellent characterisation, hero and heroine both very likeable and there are a couple of secondaries that I think deserve a book of their own)
Steps yesterday: 5,426 - not so good due to biting east wind, and I don’t expect it to be much better today… unless I move my boxes and guitar from the area of the treadmill. Must be brave about this…

This year’s a very special year for M&B because it’s the company’s centenary. I feel very, very proud to be published by the world’s largest publisher of women’s fiction, especially in such a special year.

My first two releases in 2008 are both in the US. (Though I still have a couple available from last month’s releases in the US, Australia and the UK, as well as a new one in February from Australia – check out the links on the side bar if you want to get hold of them.)

The first is The Pregnancy Ultimatum, which is a Presents Collection in the ‘Pregnant Mistresses’ miniseries. You can buy it in shops across the US – although for obvious reasons I won’t get to see it myself, I’d be really happy to see pics of it. If any readers would like to send me pics of themselves reading it or in the bookshop with it (telling me where you are), I’ll post the pics here (and also send you something to say thank you!).

You can also buy The Pregnancy Ultimatum at E-harlequin, and it’s available as an e-book.

I loved writing it, because I really enjoy writing books about complete opposites who fall in love. And you can’t get much more opposite than Will (my very clever, posh garden designer who turned down a place at Oxford University and is a fantastic cook) and Amanda (a city girl who’s driven because she doesn’t want to turn into her mother). It’s set partly in Cambridge (yes, of course they go punting) and partly in London (which Will loathes). Various friends have asked me if the house really exists, because they want to buy it; sadly, it was my imagination. I’d love that house, too.

My other release in the US is in e-book format and is part of the Best of Makeovers Bundle. My book (and I am sooo pleased that it’s been chosen as the lead title) is The Cinderella Project – where Cyn, my nerdy computer programmer, gets to go to the ball with Max Taylor, a gorgeous architect. This one caused a bit of a fuss in the UK and Australia because of a certain scene set beside the Thames involving the lamp standards. (In fact, that scene caused the book to be retitled in France – ‘Un Printemps sur la Tamise’.) This was my first Modern Extra (aka Modern Heat as from this month), written in response to my editor telling me that the line was starting in the UK and she thought I’d be perfect as a launch author and asking, would I like to write her a book…? You bet! I wasn’t sure whether to be more thrilled, flattered, or just plain excited. Anyway, I had a lot of fun with this one, and I think it shows. If you’ve ever gone to a reunion or some kind of party where you know people are going to be judging you fairly critically, and you’ve wished that the quiet, plain girl could come out ahead of the nasty but pretty and ‘popular’ girl… then Cinders is for you.