New Voices Workshop - part five

The Black Moment

OUTER STORY: should have escalating conflict – bigger obstacles, more vicious baddies – until there is a final showdown
INNER STORY: there should also be escalating conflict with a final test.

Often, before the climax of the story (when the hero and heroine finally get together) the conflict will escalate until things reach breaking point. Different craft writers call it different things : crisis, major setback, the black moment. Whatever name you prefer, this is where your character hits emotional rock bottom.

Basically, this is their ultimate test. They’ve been growing and changing, and they’re almost ready to earn that happy ending with the hero/heroine, but to convince readers they are ready to embark on that relationship without sabotaging it themselves we have to show them that the character has truly changed. This is one place where you really have to ‘show’ and not ‘tell’.

At the end of the story, readers will project into the future and guess what will happen after ‘THE END’. You want them to believe that divorce is not an inevitable part of that future, that the Happy Ever After is going to last.

So, how do you test them convincingly? You make them face their deepest fear! It’s the best ammunition at your disposal, and if you set your character up as being afraid of something, you have to pay it off. It’s like Indiana Jones telling everyone he’s afraid of snakes – if we didn’t see him dangling over a pit of the little monsters at some point in the film, we’d feel cheated!

Allegra's fear: not being free - but as the story develops, she starts to realise it's not her circumstances that are trapping her, but herself. She stuggles to break out of her self-imposed shell, but it's hard and she wonders if she'll ever make it. Rather than being a one-off moment for Allegra, it was an on-going situation that intensified.

Finn's fear: losing someone he cares about - but he's also scared of exploring that fenced-off area inside himself. Finn manages to engineer his own black moment rather nicely when, because he refuses to do that emotional exploring, his only other option is to walk away from Allegra. He looses her. It hurts. But it was his choice, so he thinks he's going to be okay. Stupid man.

When the pressure is at its greatest, your character will often return to that emotional armour that protected them for so long, and reverting to this behaviour will often be what triggers the Black Moment, either for themselves or the other character. And it’s often the fallout from this event that pushes them to make that final change, to pass that final test, because they realise they are not the person they used to be any more, and they see that self-defeating behaviour for what it really is.

Each character will have their own moment of crisis but, depending on the story, one may be more intense than another, and they may not happen at the same time. Your characters may grow and change at different rates and you will have to decide what works for your story. Sometimes one character will complete their arc before the other one.

For example, the hero might be ready to commit and start a life together, but the heroine’s inner demons are still chasing her hard and she may do something to seriously jeopardise the relationship and split them apart.

In Finn and Allegra’s story, Allegra finishes her character arc first. She faces her fears and learns to take charge of her own life, make her own decisions. She finally has that inner freedom she’s always yearned for, and she uses her new-found courage to do her bravest act yet – she tells Finn she loves him. Finn, however, hasn’t completed his arc, so this sends him running – both emotionally and physically. He rejects her.

I threw in a little extra test for Allegra – now that she felt empowered, I wondered if she would overcompensate, if she would try to control situations, impose her will on others, the same way others had imposed theirs on her. I gave her a moment of choice, where she could have chosen to go down that path, but ultimately she decides that she can’t curtail Finn’s freedom either. If he has chosen to walk away, she has to let him.

Finn takes a little longer to learn his lessons, but he works it out eventually, and then he comes back ready to explore that uncharted region of his emotions, ready to embark on his biggest adventure yet – love. Yay!


More on the Happy Ever After tomorrow!

New Voices Workshop - part four

Okay, so far we've looked at the individual characters, but how do you get the sparks to fly when you put hero and heroine together?

The Romantic Conflict
In a romance we have two protagonists – a hero and a heroine – but often no villain. So where is the conflict going to come from? Each other, of course! Neither of them is evil or bad; it's just that their differing goals are going to put them in conflict with each other.

However, this is a delicate balancing act:

On one hand they have to provide enough conflict to push the other character out of their comfort zone, so they start to see life/love/themselves in a new light, and so they begin to change their behaviour.

On the other hand, these people should also be the solution to the other one's inner conflict. They will ultimately fulfil that deeply-held longing the other has had (and that’s how we make readers believe they are right for each other).

I've got a little tip when it comes to romantic conflict (I stole it from the wonderful Michael Hauge - read his book, buy his DVDS!): Your hero and heroine often go to battle with each other wearing that emotional armour! It's often that self-defeating behaviour that causes the problems, those character flaws they just haven't ironed out yet. But when hero and heroine connect, it's because they see UNDERNEATH that emotional armour. There are moments as they start to get to know each other that they let that armour slip and give their true selves away. The other person falls in love with that person, not the one who's causing them all the trouble on the surface. And when readers know that your hero and heroine love each other for who they really are, they will buy into the love story wholeheartedly!

Since the romantic conflict is closely related to your hero and heroine's inner conflicts, you need to build your hero and heroine so everything about them feeds into that romantic conflict that's going to arise between them. Likewise, the plot, any subplots and secondary characters should only exist to advance the romantic storyline.

So how are your hero and heroine going to cause problems for each other? Well, we need to look at the hero first:

Finn McCloud is a sexy, survival skills expert, who likes nothing better than to jump out of planes, raft in white waters and hanging off mountains by his fingertips.

Finn's inner goal: What he needs is to connect with other people. Finn, meanwhile, is always looking for the next adventure, trying to find that ultimate destination that will give him a sense of peace and connection. He hasn't got a clue he's looking for a person, not a place.

Finn's motivation: he was an army brat who moved around a lot and learned quickly not to put roots down too deep, or to care to much about anyone. He's an outgoing, friendly guy, and people like him, but all his relationships are shallow. He won't get truly close to anyone.

Finn's greatest fear: losing one more person he cares about. So getting attached to anyone on a deeper level is going to scare him. Falling in love is going to freak him out big time!

Finn's coping mechanism: while he's brave and adventurous in his professional life, when it comes to Finn's relationships he's a coward. He steers well clear of anything resembling true love. He has the sense of freedom Allegra craves, but he's chosen not to explore areas of himself and his emotions, preffering to leave them fenced off and out of bounds.


So, how is Finn going to make life difficult for Allegra, and vice versa?

Allegra is struggling with her new-found freedom – she's not sure what to do with it now that she's got it – and Finn is pushing her to make choices, follow her instincts and generally do things she had very little experience of doing. Allegra is mortified that one of the reasons she left home is that she was disappointing everyone back there, and now she seems to be disappointing Finn too. And, despite the fact she is up close and personal on a desert island with her secret crush, she thinks he'd never be interested in an unadventurous mouse like her.

Also, Allegra has spent so long never being able to express her opinion or what she wants, but she doesn't even know how to tell him that she's attracted to him. In other words, meeting Finn and spending time with him is what makes Allegra realise her problems will not be solved by a change of location. He brings her internal conflict to the fore by making her realise she is part of her own problem. She feels just as trapped on a desert island as he did back in London!

Finn, meanwhile, is blissfully unaware of his survival skills protégé’s internal struggles. He's just doing what he always does – skimming along the surface of life, enjoying the moment, never getting too deep with anything. His troubles begin when Allegra starts to rise to the challenges he's giving her, when she starts to learn all those lessons she needs to learn (taking charge of her own life, making choices, finding her inner spirit). Suddenly he finds himself attracted to her and, rather than be the adventure hero everyone thinks he is, he runs scared. If he let's himself get close to Allegra he will be in really big trouble.

Can you see how putting these two personalities with their own individual emotional baggage is going to make sparks fly?

But once you've got the conflict going, what do you do next? More on that tomorrow!

New Voices Workshop - part three

Continuing from yestedays's post, where we talked about internal conflict...

Asking a few questions can help identify your character's internal conflict:

1. What is your character’s greatest fear?
This will often be the flipside of their goal and will be closely related to that pain in their past. (See yesterday's post for more on this).
Allegra fear’s being trapped for the rest of her life, of never feeling free.


2. What coping mechanisms has your character developed?
There are otfen two aspects to this: who they are and what they do.

We need to work out what emotional armour our characters are hiding behind. We all have it, don’t we? How do they hide their true selves to protect themselves from what they fear?
Your character may also behave in certain ways to protect themselves, but often these behaviour patterns are self-defeating. The character thinks this is what they need to do to get to their goal, but this is actually what’s holding them back.

Allegra has become the dutiful, obedient ballerina. There’s no point fighting against her life; that’s just the way it is. She’s told what steps to do and she does them, and because she entered the profession so young the dynamic of her professional relationships hasn’t really changed since she was sixteen. She’s still stuck in that same mindset.

Remember the car chase hero who was scared of driving? For the story to be gripping, readers will have to worry that your character could fail to achieve their goal, and it’s this internal conflict that will give readers most cause for concern, because when your characters are pushed way beyond their comfort zones that emotional armour is going to seem warm and inviting instead of suffocating, and they will want to revert to those unhelpful behaviour patterns, because this is how they have coped up until now!

During the story they will struggle to learn a better way, but when the going gets tough the safety of doing what they’ve always done to protect themselves is going to get more and more appealing. The greater the conflict, the greater they will be tempted to use their emotional security blankets!

So, when Allegra finally does escape, and ends up on a desert island with a hunky survival expert (What can I say? When she snapped, she snapped!), she feels totally upside down, and instead of taking advantage of all that freedom she relies on doing what she’s always done – following instructions and doing what she’s told. At least, to start off with…

But…in order for your character to get what they want (internal goal) they are going to have to stop being that kind of person, they are going to have to find a new way of dealing with life. The thing they long for is going to be forever out of their reach until that happens.


3.What lessons does your character need to learn?
It's easy to work out how they need to grow and change once you know:

• The painful secrets in your characters past
• What they are afraid of
• What emotional armour they are hiding behind

They are going to have to take off those masks and learn to deal with life in a different way.
What has been working for them up until now is no longer getting them by. It’s time to change.

You now have a roadmap for their inner journey (also called their character arc or emotional journey).
Starting point: character stuck inside the shell of that false self, engaging in in self-defeating behaviour.
Finishing point: character has faced their fears, let go of self-defeating behaviour and have embraced life more fully as their true self.

Allegra needs to learn to speak up for herself and make her own choices. She’s also going to have to learn to manage the freedom she yearns for when she gets it, and that having to make choices will be more difficult than she imagined.

Now, that's just thinking about one half of the equation - the heroine, in this case. What's going to happen when we throw the hero into the mix? And how is he going to be part of the heroine's conflict? More tomorrow...

New Voices Workshop - part two

Okay, yesterday we looked at external conflict, now we're going to take a peek under the surface and talk about internal conflict.

What is internal conflict?

Let's go back to our car-racing hero from yesterday:
We have a hero who wants to win a race so he can get his hands on a cash prize so he can use it to pay a ransom for his son, who has been kidnapped. Unfortunately, he had an unscrupulous opponant will do anything to get to the finishing line first...

What if our hero had a terrible accident a few years back? (Possibly injuring someone he cared about?) He hasn't driven since, and he's petrified! He'd rather be going 10 miles an hour in a car park than 100 miles an hour down a crowded city street.

Now our hero has another obstacle, and this one is not from outside himself. It's not traffic lights and speed limits or an opponent in a faster car. This obstacle comes from INSIDE HIMSELF.

To achieve his goal he has to conquer his fear of driving to win the money and save his son.
Now we’re much more engaged in the outcome - If the stakes get too high, if the speed gets too fast, the stunts too dangerous, will our hero crumble? And how will he feel if his son his hurt because of his own weakness?

This inner conflict has added an extra layer of complexity to the story. Our protagonist will have to grow and change to reach his goal (happy ending) or he can refuse to grow (tragic ending).


An Internal story also needs internal goals
The hero often has to face some internal conflict to achieve his extra goal. However, external goals (plot goals) are not the only goals in a story.

EXTERNAL GOALS have a tangible, visible finish line: Win the race, get the job, find something they’ve lost…
INTERNAL GOALS are intangible, less easy to measure: Success, freedom, security…

Finding your characters' internal conflict
Pick one of your protagonist's (hero or heroine) and ask them a few revealing questions to get to the heart of their internal conflict:

1. What is your character’s internal goal?
We need to know what our character both wants and needs – and sometimes these are not the same thing!

What do they want, deep down? What do they long for? Sometime a character knows what is missing from their life, what is out of balance – they just don’t know how to go about finding that missing element or restoring that balance. And, in these cases, the character only has and inkling of what is wrong, and if they understood the scale of the problem it would probably scared them witless!

But sometimes a character is too afraid to even admit anything is wrong and they ignore the problem; they tell themselves that something else is the solution to all their ills and go after that instead. The problems is that if we were to give our character what they want it would probably destroy them. However, as a writer we should understand what that character really needs, even if they don’t.

I'm going to use the heroine of my upcoming book 'Dancing with Danger' (UK title)/'The Ballerina Bride' (US title) as an example.
Allegra's internal goal - freedom. But it's good to be specific about what that means to your character. Freedom will mean different things to different people. For Allegra, freedom means escape and the chance to make her own choices.


2. What is your character’s internal motivation?
We will find or explain our character’s internal motivation by looking into their history (backstory). Our experiences also shape our thoughts, behaviour and perception of how the world works. Those events can bring out the best in us or they can cause us to show our negative sides. Unfortunately, it seems that the painful experiences are much easier to carry forwards into our futures than the positive ones.

So, to understand why our character wants something we need to know what that emotional baggage is. And don’t be satisfied with the superficial things - keep digging until you find the root!

Allegra's motivation: she's a ballet prodigy who's been working hard since she was sixteen. Ballet has been the focus of her very rigid, very structured life. However, the strain of all this hard work is starting to show, and Allegra isn't sure ballet was ever her choice - she's followed in the footsteps of her famous mother because it pleased everyone she did so. Even worse, the sense of suffocation that is threatening to overwhelm her is affecting her dancing. The critics are saying she's burned out at the age of twenty-three. Ballet has been her life, and if things don't improve she might not even have that...

3. What is your character’s internal conflict?
Hopefully your plot will your character in a situation where both their inner and outer goals are under threat. Be careful you don’t concentrate so much on the outer goals that you forget about that inner conflict - know how your character’s internal issues are going to help them sabotage their own attempts to achieve their goal.

Allegra's external conflict: her external goal is literally to escape, to run away. She wants new experiences, to travel. Up until now she's not had that opportunity - her career demands a huge amount of her time and her domineering father has kept her on a very tight leash. What's stopping her? She's just about to star in a brand new production, and the workload is tougher than ever. No chance of escape for now. Apart from the new steps (which she's rehearsed a thousand times) it's the same old same old.

But identifying the internal conflict can be a bit trickier than sorting out external conflict, so tomorrow I’ll have a few hints to help with the discovery process…

New Voices Workshop - part one

I thought it might be useful to post the main points of the New Voices workshop I gave at Brixton library on 14th September, but since there is quite a lot to get though, I thought I'd seperate it into a few posts and put them up on consecutive days. Here's part one:


THE STORY INSIDE THE STORY
Using internal conflict to create a gripping romance


There are two levels to every gripping story:

Outer: the plot – the things that happen to the protagonist, the action of the story.
Inner: character - about the people: what happens to them on the inside, how the action of the story changes the protagonist, either for better or worse.

• E.g. Titanic: the outside story concerns the unsinkable boat hitting an iceberg and killing hundreds. The inside story belongs to Rose, how being on the Titanic, meeting Jack, and ultimately surviving, changes the course of her life.

The External Story

The plot is the external action of the story, the physical events that push the story forward. However, action alone has no intrinsic meaning.

• Think of watching a piece of video footage where cars are racing each other, driving fast, is mildly entertaining but we don't get very emotionally involved. We could increase the tension by making the cars race faster, putting them in city instead of a race track, adding extra obstacles for them to deal with, but we probably wouldn't watch this for long.

PLOT needs to be centred around a CHARACTER.
Readers want someone to identify with, to root for.

• So, if we identify one of the drivers as our hero and another as the villain, suddenly we are more interested in the outcome, we could do better…

GOAL, MOTIVATION and CONFLICT

A character needs a goal to create dramatic tension (and that dramatic tension is what gets readers hooked into a story and keeps them turning pages):

GOAL: what your hero (protagonist) wants.
MOTIVATION: why they want what they want.
CONFLICT: what is stopping them getting what they want.

Back to our car chase hero - let’s make this a race…

Goal: to beat the villain to the finish line. (All of a sudden, this is much more interesting!)
Motivation: why? Maybe because he wants to win the big-money prize?
Conflict: he has a skilled opponant who wants the same thing he does, and possibly won't play fair to get it.

Adding the motivation of a monetary prize certainly raises the stakes, but we need to keep asking why - motivation is often multi-layered and multi-faceted. It would be nice for our hero to win the money, but I don’t really care that much about it. How can we raise the stakes further?

(Okay, this is a bit corny, but it's simple and understandable, so let's work with it.)
What if his son had been kidnapped and he needed the prize money to pay the ransom? Now we are invested in the story, because the meaning behind the action just got personal. We don't just think it will be nice if the hero wins the race, now we really want him to win! Strong, personal motivation engages readers.

Look out for part two The Inner Story tomorrow!

New Voices is almost here!

Last year Mills & Boon ran a hugely successful X-Factor-style romance writing competition, and this year it's back - bigger and better than ever!

New Voices 2011 launches on Tuesday 13th September!

Round 1: aspiring romance novelists can upload their first chapters to the New Voices site. The M&B team will whittle down the entries to 20 finalists.

Round 2: The finalists will then write the second chapter of their book, and the public and judges will vote on who goes on to....

Round 3: finalists write a 'pivotal moment' from their story.
Then the judges and public decide the winner!

This year West-End star Jodie Prenger, a long time M&B fan, will be our celebrity guest judge. Check it out: she's reading my book, Swept Off Her Stilettos, on the M&B website!

How chuffed am I?

Anyway, there are a whole host of New Voices writing workshops going on around the country, hosted by Mills & Boon authors, and I am leading one at Brixton Library this Wednesday - 14th September!

Here's a link to the full list of workshops and further details.

Swept Off Her Stilettos - hero and heroine casting

Coreen had "bit parts" into other books before she got a story of her own. That meant she was pretty fully formed in my head before I started writing Swept Off Her Stilettos. Initially, she appeared in my head like one of Alberto Vargas's pin-up girls come to life: sexy, cheeky and totally gorgeous.

Apart from the photograph I posted the other day, other good matches the Coreen would be:

Holly Willoughby, British TV presenter who caused a storm wearing a not-particularly revealing dress on Saturday evening TV. It was the body she'd put inside it that caused all the fuss. Now, I've seen women on television wearing a lot less and hardly generates any column inches at all. That was what I wanted for Coreen – an eye-popping figure. If Holly had dark hair instead of blonde, she'd be a pretty good match for Coreen Fraser.

Throw in a dash of Martine McCutcheon, who played opposite Hugh Grant in Love Actually, and we'd be almost there. Martine has a cheeky glint in her eye that would make her perfect for the part of Coreen, should some Hollywood executive ever decide to make my little book into a movie. (Well, a girl can dream, can't she?)

And what about Adam? How did I see him? Well, the picture of Matthew Fox below on the left was my earliest match, but the other day I stumbled across a photo of Bradley Cooper (centre) that also made me stop and think, "Adam". In fact, if I put those two pictures together in a line-up with the guy on the cover of the UK edition of Swept Off Her Stilettos, he's a pretty good match!

Book of the week!

Have just discovered that Swept Off Her Stilettos is Now magazine's book of the week, with a four star review!

Here's what they say:

Dita Von Teese's retro-luxe glamour would fade quickly into the background if vintage vixen Coreen Fraser stood beside her. Now that she's got fashion firmly wrapped around her finger, can she convince her crush Nicholas to put a ring on it? But when her best friend Adam reveals his own feelings for her, Coreen must decide where her affections truly lie.

Adventures in New York - part 2

On Sunday morning I met up with Love Inspired authors Camy Tang and Danica Favorite for a trip to church. We set off from our hotel in Times Square for Greenwich Village. As is always the way on the first day in a new city, we got lost. Thank goodness for Google Maps, Camy's iPhone and Danica's sense of direction!

However, one of the plus points of getting lost is all the wandering you do trying to find your way. We walked past the tea shop called Tea & Sympathy on Greenwich Avenue. Being British, I'm always in need of a good cup of tea, and it seemed I was in the company of two fellow tea-aholics who couldn't resist going back there after the service.

Now, I should have remembered the subtle culture shock a Brit gets from visiting America. We think, because we see American locations on the television all the time that it somewhere familiar, somewhere like home. In some ways it is, but in other ways it is totally different. It's a bit like arriving somewhere and not knowing the rules. For example, for the first couple of days I had a hard time finding the road signs. They weren't were expected them to be. And don't get me started on toilet stalls... Anyway, I'd forgotten that lots of these minor differences (plus the jet lag) add up and give me a vague sense of disorientation for the first day or so that I'm Stateside. However, the moment I stepped into Tea & Sympathy the world turned itself right way up again.

We'd stumbled onto an English teashop, full of union Jack bunting, floral teapots and pictures of the Queen. I could knowledgeably inform my fellow tourists what "bangers" and "clotted cream" were. And I could get a good cup of tea. Heaven. (I am also now busting to write a story set in New York with an English teashop-owning heroine.) Unfortunately, my stomach was to jet lagged to want anything more than a cup of tea, but we had a great time chatting over a very late breakfast.

Then it was time to get back to the hotel and meet my roomie, Donna Alward, who was flying in from Canada that afternoon!

Swept Off Her Stilettos - Inspiration

Sometimes I have to root around in my memory to remember where the idea for a book came from, but not with this one. There was one big polka-dotted inspiration for this book: my heroine, Coreen.

She first appeared in Invitation To The Boss's Ball as the heroine's best friend, and immediately began to steal the show. Alice was a skinny redhead, not confident in her own sexuality, and I decided she needed a best friend and business partner who was her complete opposite, so up popped Coreen.

Coreen accused Alice of being a doormat where men were concerned:

'I do not invite men to walk all over me,’ Alice said in a quiet, but surprisingly defiant tone, well aware that Coreen would have no trouble kicking just about any man into line with her pillar-box red, patent, peep-toes wedges. Vintage, of course.

And with that line, I pretty much had an idea who Coreen was - a vintage drama queen who expected every man she met to fall down and worship at her feet. Of course, when I decided to give her her own story, it was obvious she should run into a man who refused to do just that. I had a rich, alpha hero all picked out for her, and then, somehow, that idea got flipped on its head too. Enter Adam. That's when the fun really began!

I spotted this lovely photo while looking at vintage fashion blogs when I was doing the research that this book. The dark hair, the red lips, the slightly cheeky glint in the model's eye, all reminded me of Coreen.

Many thanks to Rodelle from Adore Vintage for the use of this photo.

Back from my travels: RWA - part one

Well, I've been a busy little bunny, travelling here and there for the last few weeks, and then I got home to find a family that needed some of my time and proofs for the next book to be checked, and a million and one other things on my to-do list. Anyway, I thought I'd belatedly blog about my travels and intersperse those blogs with the 'behind the scenes' info for Swept Off Her Stilettos'.

So here we go - RWA part one:

Heading into New York city for the first time was a surreal experience. I must see a shot of it nearly every day on the television on some show or advert, but I'd never been there in person before. As I sat in the airport shuttle on the way to my hotel, I was feeling a little punch-drunk from the flight, and it was really my bedtime, even though the sun was hours away from setting. Suddenly, the van rose up over a ridge and there was Manhattan in front of me. I could only see the outlines of the buildings in the pollution haze. No details, just layer upon layer of slightly magnified shapes in varying shades of beige. It looked slightly unreal, yet familiar at the same time. There was the Empire State Building - and over there the Chrysler Building. I wish I'd taken a photo.

Had a rather jet-lagged dinner (think I had a burger?) with fellow Brit Kate Johnson and her friend, and then fell into bed, leaving my luggage unpacked and in the bathroom, cos I was having a moment of paranoia about bed bugs.

The next morning I got up and explored Times Sqaure. It was the emptiest I saw it all week, because by mid-morning it's packed and it stays that way until late into the night. And then I found somehwere to have breakfast. Ended up at Junior's, which was right across from the hotel, with a great menu.

It's become a tradition of mine to eat proper American pancakes for my first breakfast when I visit the States (after the 'whipped butter' incident of 07). Junior's didn't disappoint me, with the softest fluffiest pancakes I've ever had, served with a delicious little bowl of stewed apples and raisins with cinnamon. Heaven.

Two conferences and a total collapse

After doing the RWA conference in New York and then heading off to the RNA conference in Wales within a few days, I am officially wilting. And I've got two weeks worth of admin to catch up on too!

Will hopefully get around to posting about both of these events shortly, but in the meantime I have uploaded my photos to my Facebook page:

RWA pics here.

RNA pics here.

News round-up

Well, so much for posting from RWA! I got so busy I hardly had time to turn my computer on! I'm going to post an update on my adventures in New York in the next couple of days, but first I've got a few bits of news to share:

First off (and I'm really excited by this!) my latest book, Swept Off Her Stilettos, is available now at Mills and Boon! It'll be on the shelves next month in the UK, and also available online at Harlequin too. You can read a bit if you click on the 'browse' widget in the sidebar. (Yes, I know the cover is different, but it's the same book, I promise!)

If you enjoyed either Alice's story (Invitation To The Boss's Ball) or Jennie's story (Three Weddings And A Baby/Millionaire's Baby Bombshell), then you'll have met the heroine, Coreen, before. She's an irrespressible flirt, a vintage-fashion queen and a danger to anything with a Y chromosome. Of course, her no-prisoners approach to romance is going to end her up in trouble eventually....

Second bit of good news is that the middle book in these three linked books, Three Weddings And A Baby is only £1.49 at Amazon.co.uk at the moment - a total bargain! And it's also reduced to $2.38 at Amazon.com.

And lastly, my books are now available on iTunes - including the audio book version of Invitation To The Boss's Ball. Just search for "fiona harper" and up my books pop!

I Heart New York

Well, after months of planning and anticpation, I've finally arrived in New York. Woke up this morning feeling a little less jet lagged and went for a wee walk before breakfast:


And then I ate a hearty New York breakfast. (Not sure the waistline could take this every day, though!)



Anyway, I'm going to be posting my photos on my Facebook Page as often as I can this week, so pop by and have a look!

New titles, new books!

Very excited to discover the titles and release dates for the runaway ballerina story I've just had accepted. Yay!

Basic plot: ballerina escapes from her suffocating life by running away to a desert island with a hunky survival expert for a week.

It's going to be released in January 2012 in North America as a Harlequin Romance and will be called The Ballerina Bride.

And in Feb 2012 it'll be available in the UK as a Mills & Boon RIVA, with the title Dancing With Danger.

Gorgeous titles, or what?

Neither of them are mine. Which is just as well, because my title-creating skills are practically zero. Asking me to keep to 50,000 words is a struggle. How on earth was I ever going to manage something worthwhile in under five?

Help! Wardrobe dilemma.

Normally my life as an author involves clothing choices. Will I wear the black jogging bottoms today or the grey? Split-second decision and move on.

However, I now have a wardrobe-related quandry and I need some help. (Husband is no help. He thinks I look nice in everything.) For this kind of thing you need girl advice.
Anyway, here’s the skinny…

I had my outfit all planned out for Harlequin’s party in New York during the RWA conference in a couple of weeks, and then when the invite arrived I discovered it was a black and white ball. Very swish. But then I realised I might need something a little more dressy than I’d been planning.

Here are the options, 1-4:
(Click the picture if you want to see it larger)

I’d been planning to wear no.1. Black, yes, but also cream animal print. Could I get away with it, and is animal print too much?

My other option was no.2. Black and white, certainly, but maybe not dressy enough? (It's not a full ball-gown affair, more cocktail dresses etc.)

Option no.3 is black, looks fairly elegant, but it’s actually a bargain buy in cotton jersey. Can be dressed up with nice accessories, though. But don't want to feel downmarket...

Option no.4: something I found in the wardrobe when I was looking for something else and forgot I'd had (hence the sandals that don't work - I shoved it on and did another photo right before I left the house to go shopping). Fits the bill, but I wore it to the HQ party in 07.

Any ideas, anyone? Anyone? Bueller…?

More cover love!

Oh, my goodness! I have just seen the North American cover for Swept Off Her Stilettos (UK version to the left), and I squealed with excitement! Now I have two very different, but totally gorgeous covers for the same book. Don't know which I like best!


Here's the North American cover:


Unlike some covers I've had (cough...mentioning no names, Millionaire's Baby Bombshell), this one is actually straight from a scene in the book. Check it out:


Everything about dancing with Nicholas was perfect. His hand was warm and sure on my back as he guided me round our impromptu dance floor. He talked easily to me, all the while looking effortlessly drool-worthy and smiling into my eyes.

It was perfect. It was.

Only…

I was reminded of those cakes in the coffee shop display case that I always yearned for but never seemed to fit the bill. Finally I’d found one that matched what my taste buds craved. It had all the right ingredients, looked divine, but now I’d taken a bite I’d discovered that it tasted all…wrong.

Dancing with Nicholas wasn’t a dream come true, it was an effort. What surprised me most was that I wasn’t bitterly disappointed. Instead I had that horrible, warm scratchy feeling you get when you know there’s somewhere else you need to be, something else you need to be doing. I was almost grateful to Louisa when the track on the gramophone changed and she nabbed the opportunity to cut in.

When I stepped out of Nicholas’s hold I knew Adam was standing behind me, waiting for me to turn around and glide into his arms. And I couldn’t stop myself.

‘I didn’t know you could sing like that,’ he whispered into my ear and a whole series of teeny-tiny fireworks detonated up the back of my neck.

I controlled the resulting quiver well enough to answer him. ‘You’re not the only one to have secrets, Conrad.’

But I couldn’t keep the banter up. The air around us seemed too heavy for our usual frivolity.

Adam didn’t smile at me as we danced. He didn’t even talk. If he had, I might not have heard him. All I was aware of was his strong, capable fingers holding mine, of his broad palm at the small of my back. I couldn’t hold his gaze. It was too intense, too full of things I was too scared to label, so when the needle on the gramophone scratched its way onto a slower song, I rested my temple against his cheek and closed my eyes.

I have no idea how long we swayed and turned like that. Eventually, though, I noticed the air on my bare arms had become cooler, that the light behind my closed eyelids had dimmed to almost nothing. I flickered my lashes apart and opened my eyes.

We were on the terrace. In the moonlight. The warm yellow glow of the drawing room was only feet away, but it felt as if we were in a different world. The sheer curtains over the doors fluttered and curled in the light breeze, beckoning us back. Silently, by mutual agreement and the meeting of eyes, we ignored their call.

Had we stopped dancing? I wasn’t sure.

The way Adam looked at me…it brought tears to the backs of my eyes. Such gentleness. Such openness. Such acceptance. I couldn’t breathe with the intensity of it. Something deep down inside of me turned over. It felt like a door being opened.

Adam brought his hand up to the side of my face and his fingertips traced the line of my cheekbone then threaded up past my temple into the soft waves of my hair. I knew what was coming, and yet I didn’t know. Couldn’t quite get myself to believe it was true, that it was Adam and I standing here in the moonlight like this. I stayed completely still.

He dipped his head forward and our lips touched, just for a moment, and then he pulled back slightly so he was only millimetres away. I closed my eyes and let the weight of my head rest in his hand, and then I waited, a well of longing rising up within me. I didn’t tease or taunt or dare. I surrendered. Maybe for the first time in my life.

And, as a reward, I got what I’d truly been longing for, because Adam really knew how to kiss. His lips brushed over mine slowly, teasing me, and then he deepened the kiss so swiftly I hardly knew what to do with myself. I felt as if I was falling and being caught all at the same time.

I lost myself. Along with the sense of time and gravity and reason.

And that’s why I had to put an end to it.

That’s why I had to push him away gently, my palms flattened on his chest.

Even so, it was my lips that clung as he drew away, my hands that bunched his shirt up into wrinkles before the cotton slipped through my fingers.

I blinked and looked at him. ‘What was that for?’

Eyes of warm espresso with caramel running through them. I didn’t have to look at his mouth to know he was smiling ever so faintly.

‘You know why.’

My heart hiccupped. Did I? Did I know why? Certainly not in my conscious brain. That part was freaking out. But somewhere else, somewhere instinctual and primal, I knew that I knew. I also knew I had to make sure those two parts of my brain never touched, because if they did…well, I sensed there’d be trouble. And a whole heap of hurt.

Copyright © 2011 by Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Cover Art used by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises Limited
® and ‘ are trademarks owned by Harlequin Enterprises Limited or its affiliated companies, used under license.

Copyright © 2011 by Fiona Harper
Permission to reproduce text granted by Harlequin Books SA.

Special Offers!

I've just discovered that Invitation To The Boss's Ball (in a 2-in-1 with Nicola Marsh's A Trip With The Tycoon) is on sale at Mills & Boon. Only £1.99 for two books - either ebook or print! Not bad.

This is a very timely offer too, as Invitation To The Boss's Ball introduced the three heroines in what I refer to as my Vintage Fashion trilogy. Book two was Three Weddings And A Baby, my most recent release, and book three, Swept Off Her Stilettos, will be available very, very soon!


Invitation To The Boss's Ball won the Romantic Times reviewer's choice award last year, and was shortlisted for the HOLT medallion, the Bookseller's Best Awards and the Golden Quill Awards!

Not only that, but I've just noticed that Housekeeper's Happy-Ever-After is also on sale at M&B, paired with the fabulous Oh-So-Sensible Secretary by Jessica Hart. I's buy the book just for Jessica's story. Summer and Phin's story was one of my top romance reads last year and I was thrilled to be in such illustrious company.

Swept Off Her Stilettos - cover and blurb!

Really excited to finally see the cover (and back blurb) for my favourite book yet! Here it is:


A little finger isn't properly dressed without a man wrapped around it...

Clothing connoisseur Coreen Fraser's film-star style never leaves her wanting for male attention! But sourcing for a 1930s murder-mystery weekend stops being fun when she discovers she has to wear a tweed suit and sensible shoes!

Meanwhile Coreen's best friend Adam Conrad has his own plans for the weekend... And one moonlit kiss later Coreen's blinkers fall from her eyes. Adam is the only man who knows the girl underneath the skyscraper heels and scarlet lipstick. But is she brave enough to invite him to kiss it off any time he likes...?

Yay!

According to my progress meter, I am 111% done! Whoops. Will definitely need to trim as I'm waaay above my word limit.

But the changes I made removing the added external conflict in the second half of the book really worked and I am much, much happier with the result. I had stopped writing halfway through the final scene because it was so dull, but this time round I romped through it, writing 4000 words today alone (hence, the overshot word count).

Now just have to tidy it up and hand it in to my editor on Tuesday morning. Phew!

In the meantime I am enjoying the uplifting funkiness that is Nerina Pallot's new single, Lift Your Hands Up. (You can see the fab video below). Her track, Learning To Breathe, was on the soundtrack for the current book, by the way.