Now it's getting closer.

It's September. In three weeks time my fifth book, A Wedding on the Riviera, will be out in the world. In the run up to publication day there is a lot of writing of guest blog posts and interviews, all ready to go once the book is out. I'm knee deep in them now - they are particularly important to me, as it has been a longish gap since I last had a new book, so people have had plenty of time to forget me!

Writing romantic suspense, I get to approach things from two sides - love and crime. I'm doing posts for blogs that specialise  in romance and those that concentrate on crime. A romantic suspense novel has to be in balance. Perhaps that's why the genre appeals to me, as it is a balancing act, and I like things that are a bit of a challenge. I always say that I plot the crime and let the love story sort itself out, which is mostly true.  You know what your protagonists problems, strengths and weaknesses are, and the direction in which they need to go, but the way they reach their happy ending works out through their interactions with each other. And twined around it is the crime plot. That gives another layer - a peril, often life threatening, that adds a kick to the love affair.

Both sides have to dovetail and complement each other and be equally matched with time on the page, although it's always the love story that ends the book - the happy ever after. It's one of the things that I most enjoy, Real life can be messy and complicated, but in the pages of a book everything can be brought to a resolution.

One of the challenges of A Wedding on the Riviera was mixing a joyous celebration like a wedding with a very nasty con trick, another was that for stretches of the novel Nadine and Ryan are not physically together. I had to find ways of maintaining the emotional connection between them. The working out of the sting operation they are part of, has to match the development and unfolding of their attraction for each other. Have I managed all this? I hope so.