Questions, questions . . .

So in the last Great Big Blog Party Post, Anne Hobbs from Caerleon Writers' Holiday, asked as her giveaway question :

If you could ask any writer just one question - which writer would you choose and what would you ask them?

And several of the questions in response were aimed at me. SO I thought I'd answer some of these here rather than on the comments section. (I really have to get used to going in and answering Comments - after months of leaving it to my guest posters, I'm out of practise.)

So to start with, Dena asked -

Well I would like to know Kate who and how did your husband get his nickname? it's adorable. Actually my question Kate is if there was another genre that you would be interested in writing a book in?

Dena, to answer your question about the Babe Magnet, I have to go back to 2002 and the RNA's Conference at St Aidan's College Durham. I was giving a Workshop there and so was my husband in his capacity (then) as Dr Wade, lecturer in Creative Writing. (He still does that a bit but he also is Writer in Residence in a prison and writes his own books on the Grim and Gruesome that I've mentioned) He was giving a talk opn Teaching Creative Writing and Marina Oliver who was organising the conference along with Roger Sanderson asked me to introduce him.

As part of the introduction, I said that I had never realised that my husband was a Babe Magnet until I brought him to RNA Conferences and saw him chatting to the delegates who are mostly female authors. The nickname stuck for that Conference and then for the RNA as a whole and eventually, when I first started writing a blog over on eHarlequin.com, and referred to my husband as 'affectionately known as the Babe Magnet' the name stuck. And to see the resulting threats of handbags of dawn etc that appeared amongst the comments when he posted for my Great Big Blog Party, it seems he still has the magnetism for so many of those Babes out there! Though there are some who find the abbreviation of BM less delightful!

And to answer the second part of your question, I've always wanted to write ghost stories. Really good ghost stories. I once met Barbara Erskine at a Readers' Day we both attended and I loved talking to her. I also love her books - ghost stories and romance - that's a wonderful blend and I'd love to be able to write it myself.

But as I have a deadline way too close and a new book that's way too far from the ending, for now I'll just concentrate on romance.

More answers to questions tomorrow.