It takes two to . . .

Remember Abby Green? Well, I'm sure you do - my hostess at the best book launch party in Dublin, the lady who introduced me to two of my all time 'I would love to meet' authors and actors - Maeve Binchy and James Nesbitt - and of course she's a brand new Presents author.

Well Abby has been guest blogging over on Anne McAllister's blog and she's written a wonderful piece about dancing the tango and the way that this sensual, passionate and intense form of dancing is a perfect metaphor for the sensual, passionate and intense books she - and all the other Presents authors - write.

I once wrote a book in which the tango formed a part of a very important scene in one of my earlier books - The Hostage Bride - where the Argentinian hero took the heroine to his home near Buenos Aires and there in one scene he taught her to dance the tango. To write that scene I watched the tango scene from Scent of a Woman over and over again.

If I was writing it now, there are plenty of videos on youtube to choose from to help me try to find the words to describe the dance scene - and of course personal memories of watching Abby dance herself. Or I would have the wonderful tango scenes from Take the Lead or Moulin Rouge - or ask Abby herself to repeat the wonderful description she's written on Anne's blog.

But there's one of those 'you can't quite credit it' coincidences connected with this book, the tango, and Abby - one of those slightly spooky connections that make me almost think that some things are definitely meant. You see, it was reading that book and the tango scene that pushed Abby into learning the dance herself - a dance that I then saw her perform at her book launch in January.

Just the thought that in 2001, when The Hostage Bride first came out someone I didn't yet know but who was destined to become a special person in my life read it and made the decision to learn the dance that I was to watch her perform five years later sends a slightly shivery it was meant to be sensation running down my spine. It's one of those connections that my writing has brought into my life that would never have happened if I hadn't been published.

Oh - and if reading that amazing description of the tango makes you want to read more of Abby's work - don't forget that her very first Presents title is coming out in America next month - so look out for Chosen as The Frenchman's Bride in April.