Better late than never . . .

I could have sworn that when I last looked it was - well, my blog tells me that I last posted on Wednesday, but really I thought I'd only just come back from Guildford. And I'm not quite sure what I did since then . . . Accountants, bank manager, cats to the vet, washing, cleaning, shoppping. . . you know - the glamorous life of a writer!

I never really talked much about Guildford - though if you checked out my post on workshops on the Pink Heart Society blog you'll have an idea of what the workshop on Friday afternoon was like. I know I enjoyed the event and I hope everyone else in the group did. I've had lots of emails from people who were there so I think they did. Thank you to everyone who joined in and helped to make the afternoon the fun, productive event it was. I even had one member of the group who came to me at the half time break and said that she had to go home because her mind was so buzzing with ideas she couldn't wait to write them all down!

As you'll see from this photo, the age of the group ranged from mid twenties to 79! Which just goes to show that you never stop learning - and a wide range like that makes for a fantastic mix and lots of differnt points of view in the discussions.

Oh yes, and for anyone from the workshop group - or just anyone who is interested in the workshops/course on writing that I do - just a reminder that I'm not running any more workshops for a while but I will be teaching Writing the Novel at Fishguard in February or the five session course on the 12 Point Guide to Writing Romance at the wonderful Writers' Holidays at Caerleon in July. Details can be found here. If I do get asked to run any more workshops in the future, I will of course announce them here or you can check out my Events page to see what's coming up.

Unfortunately I didn't have a chance to get any photos of the evening event in Guildford. But I had a lot of fun there too - and I think the audience enjoyed the first part of Girls' Night. But then, being on a panel with wonderful Katie Fforde (her web site describes her books as 'witty and generous romance' - they could be talking about Katie herself) and Matt Dunn (who is much more smiley and friendly than his picture makes him appear) can't really go wrong. And of course there was a great contribution from the other M&B author - Gill (aka Roger) Sanderson and a sparkling performance as compere by Jane Wenham-Jones. A combination that really couldn't fail. I came home with both Katie and Matt's latest books - just need a little free time to sit down and read them!

The Saturday in Guildford was spent in the delightful company of my dear friend Julie Cohen and her gorgeous not-quite-two-year-old son. (He and the Babe Magnet got on particularly well!) The October weather was unexpectedly kind to us - it was warmer than many days in August! - and we had a fabulous time wandering around the city, exploring the castle grounds and discovering the connectionsto Lewis Carroll in Guildford . Including the Alice Garden which is close to the Castle and which has this intriguing stature of Alice Through the Looking Glass on display there.

I could quite happily have spent more time finding out a lot more but time was something we didn't have. Maybe there will be a next time.

Since I came home I've had some more foreign editions arrive - a Japanese and an Afrikaans edition of The Greek Tycoon's Unwilling Wife - and I've been thrilled to see Bedded By The Greek Billionaire featuring highly in the ebook sales charts on eHarlequin.

Oh - and if you're into ebooks, the Mills & Boon UK website now features sales of ebooks of many of the recent publications there.

I heard back from my editor about Ricardo. She likes the book - she really loves Ricardo himself - but as always there are tweaks she wants me to look at so guess what I'll be doing over the next couple of days.

But next week, Bedded By The Greek Billionaire will be published in Harlequin Presents and as I'm already thrilled by the reaction and the reviews this book has been getting - the thought of that RT Top Pick still makes me want to do the Snoopy Dance - I think I'll be running a small celebratory contest to mark the event. So watch out for that.

And don;t forget that the Presents Month blog focus is still going on over on We Write Romance. There have been lots of great blogs already, with more still to come this week.