Rain

It would be nice to wake up one morning without the sound of the rain lashing against the window panes.

I grew up in a house on the side of a hill in West Yorkshire and so I got used to wet, fierce and often cold weather. And the Babe Magnet is a Yorkshireman through and through so he's not a sunworshipper by any stretch of the imagination. But even he is tired of the seemingly endless rain.

The cats hate it. I open the door in the morning and Flora looks at me as if I've ordered the rain as a personal insult to her. 'I'm not going out in that!' The trouble is that with her long fur, if she does go out in it then she comes back soaked through and dripping all over the floor.

And Sid is convinced that there is better weather somewhere - if he can just find it. If it's pouring down at the back door, then perhaps the front one might have a better climate . . . I'm sure he thinks that each door in the house opens on to some other world where the weather is different and the temperatures better.

So it's a relief to escape to my book and to the sunny Italian island where Ricardo and Lucy are dealing with their problems and I (hopefuly) am dealing with the concerns my editor had. It's been slow progress delayed by the migraine but now I hope it's getting there.

But it's no wonder that the fantasy element of the Modern/Presents line so often deals with the Mediterranean or some desert kingdom where the sun always shines. Right now with the rain thudding down on the roof of my office, I know that the temptation to curl up by the fire with a good book is almost irresistible. And I'd have to admit that if I was having a huge row with the love of my life and he walked out of the house in a fury then - even if he was Richard Armitage disgused as an Italian billionaire - I'd take one look at the torrents coming down from the sky and have serious doubts about going after him. I'd be far more likely to leave him to get soaked.

Which reminds me of the book that's just been reprinted in the Latin Lovers duo in Australia. Her Secret Bridegroom. I remember that when that first came out, a friend who lives in Cumbria wrote to me in great delight and commented that'They went to the Lake District - and it rained!" Like me, she has much experience of just how wet it can be there - why do you think they have so many lakes?

So while it's been fun - and warmer - to imagine my characters in the sunshine of the Italian Lakes, I have to admit that there's an itch at the back of my storytellers mind that's making me think of the extra little pressures, the heavy feeling - and the floods tat non stop rain for days can create.

And I think of some Sicilian or Greek used to the sun and the warmth and wonder how he'd cope . . .

Wherever you are I hope you're keeping dry. And if you've bought a copy of Bedded By The Greek Billionaire - or any other of my books - that they bring a little sunshiune into your life whatever the weather.