Losing My Podcast Virginity

Me, Abby & Chantelle Shaw

So two fortuitous things happened recently:

Firstly, I was asked by the lovely peeps at the Professional Writing Academy if I would be interested in doing a podcast to help promo my new online writing course with them An Introduction to Writing Hot Romance - the course launches on October 4th so if you want to sign up and treat yourself to 7 weeks of intensive but I hope completely fabulous sessions on romance writing you still have time.

The other thing that happened was I went to an author lunch in Central London (an annual event which is always a top date in my writing calendar) with some of my favorite romance authors – which of course made me think, if I'm gonna lose my podcast virginity, I'm going to rope them in too!!

First thing to figure out was how to work my iPhone's Voice Memo app. Yup, this took a while, because it turns out my smart phone is a lot smarter than I am... But once Abby Green and I had done numerous tests, and then actually managed to find the recordings on the phone without accidentally deleting them (not as easy as it sounds), I was ready to roll.

Showing off my latest cover at the party

Next up was cornering some of my mates. First up was of course Abby, who had foolishly helped me with the app and was therefore a sitting duck for my first soundbite.

The question was a simple one, though, for someone who writes searingly sexy romances: Why do you love writing hot romance?

Then I turned to Fiona Harper - I asked her why she loved writing romance, as her books are less hot but still wonderfully fresh, funny, heartwarming romance novels for HQ.

My fellow Fairy Tales of New York author Lucy King, who had made the mistake of camping out with us after the lunch and who writes wonderfully sexy, sassy feel-good romances got hooked in next...

After the author lunch each year Mills and Boon invite all their current authors to a glamorous drinks party in the News Building - right next to the Shard with wonderful views over London – and there I managed to waylay the legendary Sharon Kendrick – author of a staggering 102 books for M&B all of them scorchingly hot and deeply emotional reads – for a quick chat.

The fabulous Ms Kendrick

The next day I made a trip to Sheffield to talk on a panel with Sue Stephens (darn it, I should have whipped out my phone out and interviewed her too!) and M&B editor Flo Nicholl about why Mills and Boon books are so cool hosted by academic Val Derbyshire during the University's Festival of the Mind event.

So it wasn't until Sunday that I had the delight of figuring out how to use Garageband to edit the sound recordings and add my own thoughts (and yes, there was sarcasm in that statement!). After a long day spent fumbling my way through the highly intuitive (but not that intuitive to me) application, I had my podcast. And I have to say, I am mighty pleased with the eventual result. The people at PWA prettied it up with some photos and stuck it on YouTube, so I need to say a big thanks to them, and to my mates, who each had insightful and interesting reasons as to why they love writing romance (hot or not).

I'd love to know what you think? So here it is...

Now I am no longer a podcast virgin, I may be doing more podcasts - I love to talk about romance, so why not share the joy, right? In fact, the PWA may have created a monster...

Getting the RITA finalist call for Tempting the Knight (there will be exclamation marks)

So I was busy eating my lunch on Friday afternoon, contemplating whether to drive to our local multiplex in the Angel Islington to see Zootopia with my sons and my husband or be a good girl and walk when the phone rang.

'Hi, is that Heidi Rice?' Said a voice in a warm American accent.

'Yes, speaking,' I replied round a mouthful of cheese sandwich, thinking is this what I think it is? No it can't be? Surely they're not doing RITA calls on Good Friday? What's the date again? And anyway I got a RITA call last year I can't possibly have gotten another one!

'Hi Heidi, this is Alyssa Day...' At that point it all becomes a little fuzzy, because I was screaming OMG OMG OMG ALYSSA DAY!! inside my head while trying to swallow down my cheese sandwich and also remember to breathe ...

She mentioned my book Tempting the Knight, part of the Fairy Tales of New York quartet I wrote with Kelly Hunter, Amy Andrews and Lucy King, and said RITA finalist and Contemporary Romance Short at some point too, I'm almost certain... But I was hyperventilating far too hard to actually hear anything , except my babbling about how excited I was (as if she couldn't tell that from the hyperventilating) and how I was eating my lunch (like she needed to know that *facepalms*)... We then proceeded to have a half-way coherent chat (coherent on her end, anyway) about the conference in San Diego, would I be coming, how excited I was (again, sooo not necessary)... And then I put down the phone, and just stood in my kitchen waiting for the news to actually sink in – and hoping I'd remembered to thank her (still not sure about that).

Then I rushed out the door to tell my husband, who was busy cutting  the front hedge with his strimmer. He said something like 'Oh that's cool, maybe it'll be third time lucky... ' And then carried on cutting the hedge. So then I had to shout at him the full import of what had just happened over the sound of the strimmer to the whole  neighbourhood. For goodness sake this was a SUPER BIG DEAL. I'd just been nominated for an Oscar. He nodded, looking a bit puzzled, congratulated me again, said something about Leo DiCaprio and if it was his year, maybe it would be mine and carried on strimming....

I then ran into the front room to tell my two sons - who congratulated me without looking up from the TV then asked if we could take the car to the Angel!!

So far so NOT NEARLY EXCITED ENOUGH... Bloody men! They just didn't GET IT... So then I did what I should have done to start with and texted my best writing mate Abby Green - I cannot repeat the text here as it was a little profane (I swear when I'm excited, a lot, I'm a Londoner, this is how we roll). She congratulated me (properly) and then promised to break my legs if I ever moaned about my writing career again (fair enough). Then I hit Twitter and Facebook, as you do... In the middle of lots of lovely congrats from so many of my writing mates and readers, I got a call from my good mate Scarlet Wilson who sounded as flummoxed as me but more so, because she had just found out she had finaled TWICE in the same category!! .... Go Scarlet!!

By the time I'd calmed down enough to think coherently, we had to make a mad dash to the Angel, and nearly missed the start of the movie. (Zootopia's rather good btw, or at least I think it is, I wasn't exactly capable of being objective, I would probably have been entertained by having the phone book recited to me).

Needless to say, four days later, I am still on a high. And don't plan to come down any time soon. I'm all signed up for the conference in San Diego, I have my flights booked and I am quite simply thrilled to bits to be able to go to RWA16 sporting my RITA FINALIST ribbon and pin.

I have a huge debt of thanks to give romance-writing goddess Jane Porter and the fabulous team at Tule Publishing for letting us write these stories the way we wanted to (and giving me my best cover ever), but most of all I want to thank Kelly, Amy and Lucy.

Amy came up with the original idea of doing sexy modern makeovers of classic Fairy Tales (and then explained to me in words of one syllable what oblique meant when I instantly pooh-poohed the idea! Duh!),  Kelly edited my book brilliantly and Lucy helped me come up with a great family history for my heroine (who was the sister of her Beast of a hero)... But more than that, we wrote The Fairy Tales of New York together, after spending months and two thousand plus emails brain-storming the plots, the characters, their connections, their hopes and dreams and conflicts and their backstories, and liaising on everything from the floor plan of the Irish American pub in Brooklyn where our heroines connect to the design of the uniform they wore at the convent school in Upstate New York where they all met as teenagers... The standard of their stories was so high, they challenged me to make my story the best it could be, they let me use their remarkable characters in my book, and they gave my story added depth and complexity by helping to build a whole wonderful world around all four of our heroines and their heroes. But best of all, they made the whole process an absolute hoot! I wrote all about it on The Pink Heart Society if you want to know more...

TBH it almost feels a little bit greedy to get the pleasure of a RITA nod on top of all that Fairy Tale goodness... But hey, I'm all for being the princess in my own modern day fairy tale, especially if it means I can now go shop for a new posh frock to wear at the Awards do!

FREE Book Alert for Tempting the Knight

Tempting the Knight, my book in the fabulous Fairy Tales of New York series – which I wrote for Tule Publishing with Kelly Hunter, Amy Andrews and Lucy King – is currently totally FREE!! Yup you heard that right. I'm sticking the Amazon link here:

http://www.amazon.com/Tempting-Knight-Fairy-Tales-York-ebook/dp/B00ZYJV12I/

But it should be free across all ebook platforms in the next few days. It's only free for a short time, so don't forget to download asap!

And check out the other books in the series. 

#1: Pursued by the Rogue by Kelly Hunter

#2: Tempting the Knight by Moi

#3: Taming the Beast by Lucy King

#4: Seduced by the Baron by Amy Andrews

Right back to trying to whip my latest Presents into shape... Wish me luck.

Tempting the Knight Release Day and Important Blog Roll!!

YAY!! Doing little snoopy dance today with the release of Tempting the Knight.

Here's the blurb:

Once upon a time, poor little rich girl Zelda Madison wanted someone to love her, until she discovered being a badass was much more fun.

Ten years after getting kicked out of convent school and torn away from her three best friends, Zelda has worked hard to clean up her act, but after a midnight swim on Manhattan Beach, she’s suddenly in urgent need of a knight in shining armor…

Hard-working legal aid attorney Tyrone Sullivan is the last guy she should call. Not only does he hold a grudge when it comes to Zelda leading his little sister astray all those years ago, he’s also supremely pissed about having to rescue a runaway supermodel from a Brooklyn police station at two am. But when Ty reluctantly agrees to bust Zel out of her ivory tower and let her hide out on his house barge for a few days, she shows him the wild side he didn’t know he had.

Zel discovers there’s nothing hotter than tarnishing a good guy’s armor… Until he starts to steal her bad girl’s battered heart…

This is the second in our fabulous Fairy Tales of New York series, also featuring books by Kelly Hunter, Lucy King and Amy Andrews....

Four BFFs, four hot dudes and four badass new makeovers of classic fables.

This is the order in which the stories run, so I strongly recommend you reading them in sequence.

Book 1: Pursued by the Rogue by Kelly Hunter - Out on 19th June
Book 2: Tempting the Knight by Yours Truly - Out on 22nd June
Book 3: Taming the Beast by Lucy King - Out on 26th June
Book 4: Seduced by the Baron by Amy Andrews- Out on 29th June

Anyway, if you want to know all about how we brain-stormed this series read this Pink Heart Society blog.

If you want to know all about my inspiration for the books... Or rather how Jamie Dornan, Kiera Knightly and a housebarge in Brooklyn fired my imagination... Then check out my Pinterest page. There are hot pics of Jamie and sexy gifs galore on there... Just sayin'

Tempting the Knight... One hot picture at at time...

If you want  updates, comps, release info, etc for all the books, like our Facebook page.

And if you want to read some cracking excerpts from Tempting the Knight check out the book's page on my website, or Tule Publishing's excerpt... But be prepared they're HAWT!

If you're a reviewer and would like to request a free copy to review you can do so on Netgalley.

Or if you actually want to BUY a copy already.... It's currently available on Kindle only in the US and the UK... And will be out on all ebook platforms in October.

And here's a sexy little meme to get you in the mood...

How do you say "yum" in Italian!!

After a tip off from fellow Modern Heat author Nicola Marsh I discovered this gorgeous Italian cover for my book Public Affair, Secretly Expecting... It's in a two-in-one this July with Lucy King but I'm claiming dibs on that hunk on the cover, Lucy!!

Story is apparently called "Guide to Passion" or something like that according to my terrible Italian. You can check out the whole story here. But wow, that cover is seriously Yummy!

Schmoozing at AMBA

Had a fab time at the AMBA lunch on Thursday at a bijou location in London's Covent Garden. As usual I forgot to bring my camera (actually I don't even have a camera!!) so the wonderful Kate Hardy was sweet enough to take a few snaps for me. From left to right there's me with Fiona Harper, the Modern Heat posse of Kate and new author Lucy King and the inimitable Sharon Kendrick. What a laugh, a great time was had by all. The great women who write for Mills and Boon is one of the big benefits of writing for them IMHO.
Okay, enough schmoozing... Also yesterday, the article about my book club experience came out in The Telegraph and it was really good. Casilda Grigg, the journalist who wrote the piece had some excellent things to say about the event and made some interesting observations about how it's not actually possible to just knock off a Mills and Boon in your lunchbreak. Anyone who reads this blog of course will know what a flipping struggle it is to write these books (or anyone who's ever tried to write one) but it's nice to have that little myth popped in a major British newspaper.

Casilda also managed to mention that Pierce Brosnan is my muse (probably because I mentioned it about 100 times) so I'll be expecting a call from him shortly. And even better in the article's main photo of me I only have one chin! I'm so proud...