40 for 40 - Nell Dixon

Today's special guest post comes from lovely Nell Dixon. Nell is another of those  friends I've made through the RNA - and in particular  through my 'RNA Virgins' scheme.

I'm so thrilled and delighted that like so many in that group Nell went on to be published - multi-published - and not only that she has  won the RNA's RONA Rose award twice.   That's a great achievement.

I missed seeing Nell at RNA this year as she was unable to attend - so I'm specially  pleased to have her as my guest here  on  the blog.

Welcome Nell!



Many congratulations Kate and the Babe Magnet on your special anniversary!

You both look far too young to have been married for 40 years.

 Mr Nell and I have some catching up to do! We've been married28 years now and we met at school so I've known Mr Nell since I was 11. That's actually a bit scary when I think about it.

This is a rare snap of us both together when Animal Instincts won a Rona Rose award a couple of years ago. Usually Mr Nell takes the pictures and I attempt to avoid being photographed at all.

  Anniversaries are always special times. Time to remember the wedding, everyone who was there. The things that went wrong! In our case, a stand in organist with no sense of musical timing.  The really lovely parts, for us it was signing the register in church in front of everyone and then the photographs outside. These were memorable as Mr Nell has a large family and our vicar had to stand on top of one of the large flat topped tombstones to wave everyone into position so the photographer could get his snapshot.  That picture in our album still makes us smile!


Anniversaries should bring happy memories so I hope Kate, that you and Steve will go on to have many more wonderful memories and happy years together. Love Nell xx
Nell Dixon's website
 Nell's facebook page

To help the celebrations I'd like to offer a pdf copy of The New Bay box set. This is up for a random drawing from the answers to this question:

When Mr Nell and I married, it was May and we filled the church with Daffodils, my favourite flower. My bridesmaids wore yellow Edwardian style dresses with white picture hats and fingerless lace gloves.

Our best man was a close friend who had to coach it down from Cardiff where he was at university. There was a strike and he almost missed the wedding.

If you could choose a celebrity to be your best man or chief bridesmaid as a stand-in, who would you pick and why?


Welcome to New Bay where the waves are perfect and the town is quaint. Delve into Nell Dixon's complete New Bay series and meet the people that have made a place in everyone's heart. Includes: Making Waves, September Song, A Cornish Christmas, Easter Holiday and New Bay Wedding – 5 Fantastic stories.

  Available at Amazon.com or Amazon Uk and also on Nook, Sony, Smashwords etc.

At last - the RNA!

I'm not at all sure what happened to the last week. There was the journey back from Chichester in some appalling road conditions, there was the interview with Jen, there was catching up to do . . .lots of catching up. There were proofs to correct . . .

And then there was in internet lock out. I just could not get into my email or my web browser - so frustrating!

So now I'm back at last and it's a week since I was in Chichester and lots of other people have posted blog reports on the RNA Conference - check out Kate Hardy and Liz Fenwick for some great reports - and I'm running fast to go nowhere - so I'm just going to post a sort of mini photo-diary of the event so you can see people and get some flavour of it all from the pictures >

So here goes . . .


Starting with the wonderful, unflappable, lovely Jan Jones who organised the whole thing and always does such a brilliant job. Here she is starting off the conference with the notices and the 'Celebrations' announcements.

Next the conference proper started with the panel discussing 'What is Romantic Ficiton anyway?' In this picture are, from the left in white is Nicola Cornick, next to her is Kate Harrison, the Sara Craven, Kate Hardy and Anna Jacobs.

Later that evening, in the bar. Here I am with my friend Kate Hardy. Thanks to Mary who tok the picture and actually managed to get one of me with my eyes open - I always seem to have them shut in photos.

Firsts talk Saturday morning - the interesting and wonderfully helpful Shelf Secrets or how to get your books onto the bookshop shelves by thinking like a bookshop owner by Mark Thornton who also ran a fabulous bookstall through the conference with titles by every author there - including the 12 Point Guide 2 which sold out early on.

Mark's bookshop, Mostly Books in Abingdon won the New Bookshop of the Year 2008 award and you can find out more about that - including his blog on the conference here.

Fabulous Katie Fforde introduces An

Audience with the equally lovely and witty Jill Mansell -->

The bar where most of the - um - networking took plpace. In the centre Katie Ff is chatting with the Sunday morning speaker, Jane Wenham-Jones.

The Chapel where most of the talks were held with the beautiful huge windows.

Brand new M&B author Sabrina Philips whose first book Valenti's One-Month Mistress will be out in February 09. Sabrina has also just got married and brought some of her beautiful wedding photos with her. Congratulations on both counts Sabrina!

The Saturday night dinner and Imogen Howson received the Elizabeth Goudge trophy as the author of the best first chapter of
less than 2,000 words - on the theme 'To Have and To Hold'.

Imogen's own blog can be found here.

Anna Louise Lucia looking glamourous at her first conference as a published author. Her first book Run Among Thorns (which I have read and thoroughly enjoyed) was on sale at the conference - and I also managed to persuade her to sign a couple of copies for the Tote Bag of Books contest which is coming up soon. (I also managed to grab copies of Jan Jones' Stage by Stage for that too- and a couplpe of other books from other authors - more soon)




Nell Dixon (in white) and beyond her Fiona Harper who writes for Mills & Boon Romance. Nell's new book for Little Black Dress Blue Remembered Heels was on sale at the conference too and was the first book to sell out. I took this photograph while she was deep in conversation with the babe Magnet - so you can see why he has this nickname at the RNA!

The dining hall for the Saturday evening Conference dinner - you can practically hear the buzz of conversations!

Julie Cohen at the Saturday dinner looking bright and beautiful - the next morning the image was slightly less so after a glass or two of champagne too many as she celebrated the publication of Anna Louise Lucia's first book.





Biddy Coady who won 3rd prize in the Elizabeth Goudge contest - with only a point or so between the top three. Yes Biddy - you can write - now finish that submission for M&B!

Sunday morning - RNA CHairman Catherine Jones (who writes as Kate Lace for Little Black Dress) leads the session on publicity and plans for the RNAs 50th birthday coming up in 2010.

Jane Wenham-Jones entertains the conference on Sunday morning. Regular readers of this blog will remember that Jane is a friend and regular tutor at the wonderful Caerleon Writers' Holiday which I shall have to miss this year (sob!) because I will be in San Francisco.

Julie Cohen showing the chart of themes and events that she used to plot out her lastest Little Black Dress Girl From Mars during her workshop on Pacing. I found this fascinating as Julie's approach was so very different from the way I work - hers is far more analytical in contrast to my more instinctive approach. Which just goes to prove that there is no one 'right' way of working - and we can all learn from looking at different ways of doing things.

The last night of the weekend - most of the delegates had already gone home but some of us stayed over in order to have an early start in the morning. We all crammed into Jan Jones' flat for a drink (or two) before dinner. And I really meant to join them back there after wards too for the quiz but I made the mistake of going to my room for a moment, sat down on the bed - and fell fast asleep. Conferences are like that! Talking and learning and talking some more . . . and som e more . . . and some more - wears you out! In this photo, I'm afraid I don;t know who the lady on the left is but next to her, with the grey hair is Liz Bailey, then Joanna Maitland, Sara Craven and Amanda Grange.

Great Big Blog Party 17 - Winner

Nell Dixon has picked her winner

So today congratulations go to -

Maureen

who recommends as a romance worthy of an award The Preacher's Daughter by Cheryl St. John.

Must look that one up Maureen.

Please email me your details as usual and Nell and I will sort the prize out.

Great Big Blog Party 17 - Nell Dixon

I'm extra proud to introduce the next Guest Blogger because not only is Nell Dixon one of my 'ex virgins' and a very dear friend, she's also the winner of this years' RNA Romance Prize. One of my favourite memories of this year so far will be the completely stunned and disbelieving look on Nell's face when the result of the contest was announced and her book Marrying Max was declared the winner. I'm wondering if she's recovered yet.



As Nell tells in her blog, she and I met at the RNA Conference in Guildford when she was one of my original group of 'Virgins' - ahem Conference First Timers. They were a great bunch those Guildford Virgins and I've just about lost count of how many of them have gone on to be published - Nell being one of them. And now Nell has won the Romance Prize Award, beating off some stiff competition - including yours truly! But I won't hold that against her.

Nell with me just after her win at the Savoy ->



One of my favourite memories of last year's Conference in Penrith was the long late night talk that several of us - Nell included - shared in one of the kitchens after the Saturday night dinner. it's at times like that the I really appreciate the way that writing - and writing Romance in particular - has brought so many friends into my life. Amongst whom, I'm delighted to include Nell.(Who is another one who seems determined to make me blush)



So here is the current holder of the Betty Neels Rose Bowl trophy - Nell Dixon

Hi, I’m Nell Dixon and Kate has kindly invited me to be one of her guest bloggers for her celebratory party. For those who don’t know me I write contemporary women’s fiction for a number of publishers and I recently won the RNA’s Romance Prize for my book, Marrying Max.

Wow! It’s so exciting that Kate is celebrating her 50th book. I had been reading Kate’s books for a number of years before I first got to ‘know’ her. I joined a site called eharlequin and discovered to my huge delight that there were real authors on there, like Kate. Not only were there real authors, but they would talk to you and answer your questions. I always seemed to have lots of questions.

One of the authors who always took the time to answer those questions was of course, Kate. She also held a very helpful workshop for another on line group I belonged to called Gonna-beez. The workshop and Kate’s advice made a huge difference to my writing. Not to mention her twelve point guide to writing romance which for a while when we chatted had the moniker, the twelve pint guide due to a typo!

I went on to join the Romantic Novelist’s Association and subsequently met Kate for the first time in person when I went to their conference. I was in a lovely group of people nicknamed the virgins. Many of Kate’s ‘virgins’ have subsequently gone on to great success and I’m sure her advice and most importantly, her encouragement, has helped many of us.
Kate is as lovely in real life as she is in cyber space and I know I’m making her blush by writing this (he he) but what else are parties for if not a little embarrassment for the hostess? Ever since I’ve met Kate I’ve felt very privileged to count her as a friend.

A Kate Walker book is always a treat for readers, sexy heroes, interesting heroines and a great plot that draws you into another world. She has a huge following and deservedly so. I’m looking forward to the next fifty books from Kate.

More info about Nell and her books can be found on her website or her blog

GIVEAWAY:

Nell's prize is a signed copy of her book Things to Do

QUESTION:

Which romance that you've read in the last year would you give a prize to?

As always, answers in the comments section please and Nell will pick a winner soon