Monday Minx: Suzanne

This isn’t going to be personal, I already give out way too much information on my own blog so, if you’re after salacious gossip, you should stop reading now.

Still here? Good, then pull up a chair and I’ll begin...

Today, I’m going to talk about the compulsion that drives me to commit words to paper, the burning ambition that urges me to write romance manuscript after romance manuscript even while the world cares not one jot.

To start at the beginning of this sorry tale, we must travel back in time, to when I was fourteen. This is when I first fell in love with Mills and Boon romances and, somehow, I never quite managed to fall out of love again.

In the tradition of the best stories, this love is unrequited – despite my utter devotion, Mills and Boon have never loved me back. From the age of 16, I’ve submitted a number of manuscripts to Paradise Road, only to have them hurtling back with such speed, I sometimes found them waiting for me when I arrived home from the post office. Of course, these days with that newfangled e-mail thingy, things are not quite so bad – at least I’m able to enjoy a cup of tea before they ping back.

So, why do I do it? Why do I keep going and persistently subject myself to heartache that would fell a less stubborn writer?

Everyone who reads romance novels will be aware these books are entertainment with bells on. Between the pages of a romance novel, you’re guaranteed the read of your life – gorgeous heroes to fall in love with, feisty heroines to live vicariously through, locations so far removed from school runs and supermarket shopping they might as well be on another planet. In other words, these books transport the reader from everyday drudgery to the kind of elegant living only enjoyed by the mega rich in the real world. What’s more, the type of love that most people will only experience once in a lifetime – and that’s if they’re lucky – can be experienced time after time, just by delving between the covers of these books.

That’s why I want to write romance, I want to be able to create the kind of magic that makes a reader identify with my heroine and fall in love with my hero, just as my favourite authors do every time they write a book. Can you even begin to imagine how wonderful that would be?

Besides, now I’m a Minx, I’m having far too much fun to stop.

Anything Goes Friday – Movie Classic - The Philadelphia Story and a new competition

The Philadelphia Story is my favourite movie. In its original form it’s a total classic. It was made in 1940 and remade in 1956 as High Society. But don’t let that put you off. The original is fantastic and here’s why.

First the cast. It’s a huge ensemble cast of Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, James Stewart, Ruth Hussey, and John Howard. The director is legendary George Cukor, and the scriptwriter was Donald Ogden Stewart. The acting is brilliant. And the script? The script is to die for.

Here's a dialogue run featuring CK Dexter Haven (Grant) and his ex wife Tracey Lord (Hepburn):
C. K. Dexter Haven: Sometimes, for your own sake, Red, I think you should've stuck to me longer.
Tracy Lord: I thought it was for life, but the nice judge gave me a full pardon.
C. K. Dexter Haven: Aaah, that's the old redhead. No bitterness, no recrimination, just a good swift left to the jaw.

The story begins just before the wedding of Tracey Lord (Hepburn) to George Kitterage (Howard). But she’s been married before, to C K Dexter Haven (Grant), who turns up with a gift, just when everything is going badly wrong for the Lord family.

There’s a complicated side plot, featuring Tracey’s father and uncle, and a couple who move in to do a ‘social segment’ for a newspaper, played by Stewart and Hussey.

James Stewart’s character, the disillusioned reporter Macauley Connor is prepared to hate the rich, entitled heiress Tracey, but falls for her instead. His photographer, Elizabeth Imbrie is in love with Macauley, and accepts his infatuation with Tracey stoically. He’ll come back to her in the end. She knows it, we know it. But getting there, that’s where the fun begins.

Cary Grant is suave, charming, and totally irresistible (IMO) and must have been delighted to be given such a wonderful script to play with. Tracey Lord is hailed as a goddess by most of the men in the film, but CK Dexter Haven knows better. He knows her faults and loves her despite them.

Also, the opening sequence is the funniest thing I’ve seen. Ever. I’m totally incapable of watching it once, I have to rewind and watch it at least twice before continuing the film. And, as this is a classic film, it can be picked up for buttons most everywhere. Try it, it’s a delight.


Now hot news just off the presses about a great new competition!

The National Trust, Mills & Boon and The Lady short-story competition. Readers are encouraged to submit a romance based on or in a National Trust property – be it about a proposal on a coastline, a wedding in a castle, a love affair between butler and housekeeper. The winner will see their story published in a late summer issue of The Lady. The story should be 1,500 to 2,000 words.
For rules and more details see The Lady, or The National Trust competition link.
For those living in the UK, there are also two hour writing workshops at National Trust Properties with our favorite Mills and Boon authors and one Mills and Boon editor, for £15. This competiton is closing on 31 July, so if you're interested, get writing!

Finally, the winner of Wednesday's Heidi Rice competition is Joanne Pibworth. Please drop the minxes an email with your address, Joanne and Heidi's book will be winging its way to you.

Author Spotlight: Heidi Rice

This week we have the lovely Heidi Rice answering our questions and telling us all about her latest release,'Unfinished Business with the Duke'. It's her seventh Mills and Boon Modern Heat no less! Leave a comment and you're in with the chance to win a copy. If you're not lucky enough to win then you can get your copy from Amazon or as an ebook from the Mills and Boon website.

Heidi's picture is © Anne Mortensen.

1. Where were you in your writing career 5 years ago?

Five years ago I was unpubbed and had yet to finish a manuscript… I’d written lots of great scenes for the one I finally completed and submitted to Silhouette, but hadn’t actually got round to stringing them into a coherent book. I did finally do that, but I still had a fair bit of faffing to do before that happened.

2. Where did you get the idea from for this particular book?

Unfinished Business with the Duke came together from two initial ideas. I wanted to do an architect hero – because I think there’s something really attractive about men who are passionate about what they do (and in my experience architects usually are). Also about two years ago I went to a romance writers do at a gentlemen’s club in Mayfair. One of the members gave us a little tour and I had this spark of inspiration… Wouldn’t it be fun to stick a half-naked woman into this all-male, very posh and proper environment? Then I had to figure out how to do that without her being a prostitute!

3. Where do you hope to be in 5 years time?

Still writing and still getting published… Fingers crossed.

4. Which was the last book you read that you wish you'd written?

Just about every book I read I wish I could have written. But most recently I’ve had severe writer’s envy of Susan Wiggs’s Fireside (and all her Lakeshore Chronicles actually), Nora Roberts’s Savour the Moment (read that in one sitting as a reward for getting my last book accepted) and Audrey Niffenegger’s Time-Traveler’s Wife (even though the ending left me emotionally drained!)

5. Was there any particular author or book that made you want to be a writer?

Queen Nora, obviously, Linda Howard, Jennie Cruisie, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, all the greats really.

6. Do you find writing love scenes giggle-worthy or cringe-worthy?

Neither. I adore writing love scenes. Which probably has something to do with the fact that I believe in living vicariously through my heroines – who are of course me (but with better hair and trimmer thighs).

7. What's the most romantic moment of your life so far?

Gosh, I’ve had quite a few… And I have to admit not all of them with my husband. But the best was going to New York for the World Cup finals in 1994. We’re both big football fans and it was Ireland vs Italy. My dad was Irish and my husband’s from Italian American stock, but he took it with remarkably good grace when Ireland won, to the extent that he suggested we go down to Manhattan City Hall the next day and get hitched! We bought a couple of rings on Eighth Avenue, had a two-minute ceremony, I got my picture taken with some plastic flowers on the steps outside, we went to the Rockefeller Centre for brunch and then rang our mums and our one-year-old son to let them know. No drama, no fuss, just romance and football, two flabbergasted grannies and one very confused toddler! The perfect wedding.

8. What do you wish you'd known about being an author before you were pubbed?

How to read royalty statements… Actually I still wish I knew how to do that.

9. What's the best writing advice you've ever been given?

Well, I’ve always liked Nora Roberts’s ‘you can’t edit a blank page’, which comes in mighty handy when I’m staring at a page full of crap. But the other one is ‘don’t give up’. In the end it’s only the people who can keep going through all the rejections and set-backs that get published and once published can make a career out of it. I sincerely believe that being a successful writer is 10% talent, 10% luck and 80% perseverance.

10. Tell us about your latest release.

Unfinished Business with the Duke is about a feisty pub-theatre manager called Isadora Helligan who has been reduced to doing singing
telegrams to save her ailing theatre in Islington. Unfortunately for her, she has to be rescued from a group of plastered Hooray Henries in a
Mayfair Gentlemen’s Club who mistake her singing telegram for a striptease. And even more unfortunately, her knight in shining armour
happens to be the man who took her virginity at 17 and who she has vowed to hate for the rest of her natural life after he promptly broke her
heart. Issy’s nemesis is a drop-dead gorgeous Florentine architect called Giovanni Hamilton - the son of a British duke and an Italian socialite.
And after Gio rescues Issy, it’s obvious that even after ten years apart, the sexual chemistry between them is easily as incendiary as their past.

11. What's next for you?

My next book after Unfinished Business is Surf, Sea and a Sexy Stranger which is due out in December in the UK – about an ex-surfer and a
female lifeguard (cue a great opening scene where the heroine pulls the injured hero out of the surf) and some very hot nights in a Cornish
cottage on a cliff path. And I’m currently working on my ninth book for Modern Heat, which at the moment is about a voluptuous, free-spirited
and somewhat reckless cupcake entrepeneur who loves to flirt and meets her match when she has a fender bender in a Hampstead street one
sunny August afternoon with a devastatingly handsome barrister who always plays to win.

Many thanks to Heidi for answering our questions. Don't forget to leave a comment if you want a chance to win your copy of 'Unfinished Business with the Duke'

Minx Monday - Covers

A picture post this Monday, featuring covers from three minxes.

First: Maya's book.

Hostage to Love, By Maya Blake
available now from Wild Rose.

Next up, Romy's book, Let's Misbehave, (writing as Rae Summers) which is available 7th July from Wild Rose (there'll be a later post closer to release about this one)

Read more about Romy/Rae's book here.

And finally, Sally's  book, Catch Me A Catch by Sally Clements, available from Wild Rose later in the summer.

Anything Goes Friday - Eye Candy

Just because yesterday was my birthday (and because I can!) today's blog post is chock full of celebratory eye candy.

Tired of McDreamy and McSteamy? Then I'd like to introduce you to the latest addition to the Grey's Anatomy cast ... Dr Jackson Avery / aka. Jesse Williams.

As a recent addition to Hollywood too, Jesse's filmography is still quite short, though I fully expect to see some great things from this young actor. Why? Because the man not only has the most gorgeous eyes known to mankind, but he's also intelligent. And don't tell me that doesn't matter, ladies, because we all know that an intelligent man is way sexier than any other hunk.

Jesse was born in Chicago in 1981. He attended Temple University, where he modelled to fund his tuition, before becoming a teacher in Philadelphia. He started acting in 2006, first Off-Broadway, then playing the part of Leo in Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants 2. Since then he's also appeared in the TV series Greek, in a horror movie, and of course in Grey's.

At the tender age of 28, Jesse still has a great future ahead of him, and I for one will definitely be keeping an eye out for him.

PS: Jo - he's also an avid football player.