Way back when I wrote a book about Nick and Edie and I sent it in.

It is my Santa Barbara book.  It began at Demetrios and Anny’s wedding, at the end of The Virgin’s Proposition, with a single night that changed my hero’s and heroine’s world — and it moved from the tiny European almost fairy-tale kingdom of Mont Chamion to real life Santa Barbara, California. 

The heroine is actress Mona Tremayne’s daughter Edie, the hero, Demetrios’s cousin, Nicolas.  I knew pretty much exactly what was going to happen in their story right from the start.  And it did, though admittedly, given the chaos of life last year, it took a while to do so.  But it finally got written. And eventually I sent it off.

A couple of weeks later, my editor sent it back with some suggestions, things for me to think about and incorporate.  Or not.

I thought about them. And I started to revise the book.

And the more I read of the book over, the more I thought, this could be a lot better if only . . . and then I tore more apart and wrote new stuff.

Not essentially different stuff, but tighter stuff, stronger stuff, better stuff. Because now, among other things, I knew my characters better.  And they trusted me.

Edie, in fact, trusted me enough to finally tell me something that, if I were a less magnanimous kind benevolent sort of person, I’d have happily strangled her for not telling me before!  It did not amuse me to discover she hadn’t bothered to mention her first marriage and her dead husband. 

It is not, I told her, the sort of thing you don’t mention to the writer who is trying to get your story in print.

She apologized. She said she did not want to depress me.

said, thank you very much. But having to rewrite your book is quite depressing enough. If you had bothered to mention it, perhaps I would not be spending Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years and, for heaven’s sake, even Groundhog Day, writing what is essentially a whole new book.

Oops, she said.  And then she brought me a cup of tea and offered to type it for me.

So Friday I sent it in, and Monday my editor said she loved it. Whew.  They are going in the schedule, and they will be out in UK in October as a Mills & Boon Modern – Nick and Edie and Edie’s dead first husband.  I’ll post the title as soon as it’s firm.  They don’t have a pub date that I know of in the US, yet. But when they do, you’ll be the second to know.

Now, on to Yiannis.

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