How I came to write that book

As you will have noticed from the gorgeous cover, designed by Berni, my latest book from  Choc-lit is a bit different – so first, a word of reassurance – I have not given up writing the romantic suspense. I enjoy indulging my dark side too much for that, but this is my more frivolous side coming to the surface. And I get to have a pretty, glamorous, sunshiny cover, which I am totally in love with, so it’s all good.

Summer in San Remo has got some stolen money and a mysterious stranger, so there is a little bit of a mystery about it, but it also has food, fabulous clothes, parties, swimming pools, luxury villas – and sunshine.

The book began life as a novella, which was then called A Hand Picked Husband, and which I wrote one year as my submission for the Romantic Novelists’ Association New Writers’ Scheme, after a marvellous Riviera holiday in – San Remo. I had a lot of fun writing it, and the feedback was good, but no one was able to suggest where a book mixing romantic comedy and light crime might find a home, so it was added to the (very large) pile of manuscripts in the bottom drawer.

Fast forward a decade or so – yes, it was that long – and the call went out to the authors of Choc-lit for any novellas we might have stashed under the bed. I dusted off ‘Husband’, and put my hand up. It went through the Choc-lit tasting panel as it was, they liked it enough to give it the thumbs up, and I signed the contract.

And that was when the fun really began. I still loved the book – the chemistry between Cassie and Jake was still strong and the sparks still flew between them, but the book needed a lot of tweaking, not least because of the changes in technology. And then life threw me one of those curves when everything that can happen does. Work on the manuscript simply ground to a halt, and there it stayed for a long time.

But now I’ve finally got back on track, Summer in San Remo is up to date, and longer, but the sparks are still flying between Jake and Cassie and I still love the book. And in the meantime, I’ve had time to think about, and enjoy, writing light as well as dark, and to hope that I will have the chance to do more of both.  I’m hoping that this book will be the first of a series – called The Riviera Rogues. The first draft of book two is already written, with a brand new heroine and a hero from Summer in San Remo that you might not expect – I certainly didn’t.  It still needs a lot of work, and the panel hasn’t seen it yet. Fingers crossed that when they do they will like it and we might have a date again on the Riviera again sometime next year.