Glad to be back with romantic suspense

The new paperback

It was a big day last week - the paperback copies of What Happens at Christmas arrived - my second paperback release this year and in the shops in a few weeks time.

Nothing beats holding a book in your hand. It's still a bit unreal, to think 'I wrote this.' It's good to be back with romantic suspense too, as it's a genre I love to write, but that book got written sort of by accident. It arose out of a conversation with friends over how we would go about kidnapping someone - yes, writers do have that sort of conversation - and another discussion about how you would combine romantic suspense, which is not exactly warm and fuzzy, with the feel good things that are expected in a Christmas story.

Of course, once the ideas had been planted ...

What Happens at Christmas was the result. NOT your usual Christmas book. Kidnapping, secrets, attempted murder - all the usual stuff, with a freak snow storm in the Brecon Beacons thrown in, for good measure. Well it's Christmas - I had to have snow. And it was very useful to keep the hero and heroine cosy together on the big day itself. They have a chaperone, though, in the form of a very precocious four year old. And there's a cat.

Unlike some writers, I don't write with a theme in mind, but sometimes the book turns out to have one anyway, after it's been written. In this case, I think it might be being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Things happen and lives connect because people are not where they were expecting to be.  And it's not entirely a Christmas book - the first scene takes place in spring, and hero Drew is not exactly having a good time, (I've always wanted to write one of those fights on a train roof scenes). That's nothing to what I throw at him later though, and the action of the book then covers just over  twelve months, starting in November - so it actually has two Christmases. It was fun, and a challenge to write, and it has got some good reviews, so it looks as if at least some people think I managed to pull it off! 

I have a lot of ideas lined up for future romantic suspense novels. At the moment none of them are set at Christmas, but you never know, I might decide I want to do it again.