SHEIKS & SULTANS & MARGARET MITCHELL

I'm still on a bit of a high after this year's RWA conference which was held in Atlanta.
This southern city provided some amazing memories: fried cheesecake, the biggest aquarium in the world, unbelievably friendly people and some magnificent storms.  

Oh, and the discovery that the legendary Margaret Mitchell also wrote about Sheiks - so I feel I'm in very exalted company!

Here's an article she did for The Atlanta Journal (which still exists today as ajc.com)
Don't you just love the illustrations?

Today I'm back at work, creating the story of Catrin and Murat.
Catrin is - or rather, was - an innocent from the beautiful region of northern Wales - before she fell in love with Murat The Magnificent.
And Murat?  
Sigh.  Where do I begin?
He's a Sultan.  Actually, he's first Sultan I've ever written.  He's ruthless, hard and utterly magnificent and no woman can resist him - Catrin included.  
Many women have brought pleasure into this autocratic royal's life, but no woman has ever managed to tame him...

Like the sound of him?

SWEET TEA AND CREPE MYRTLE

Just back from Atlanta - a totally rocking city of futuristic skyscrapers, whose streets are lined with beautiful flowering trees called Crepe Myrtles.  
Their latin name is Lagerstoemia (which sounds like a small, fictional country) and they bring the place alive with colours of rose, cream, peach and purple.  I loved them.

The city has the most amazing houses in the mid-town area.
Like this one:

Doesn't that look peaceful?  Who wouldn't like to be sitting out on the veranda, drinking sweet tea?

MAKING WAVES

Today, in an attempt to actually leave the conference hotel and to see a little of Atlanta which didn't involve adding yet more carbohydrate to my plate, I took a little trip to the local aquarium.  
It is actually the largest  aquarium in the world, with 6.3 million gallons of water and a lot of freaked-out looking fish.

Here's a piranha, which wasn't a bit how I've always imagined this particular fish to be (writhing around in swirling red water, crazed with blood lust as those razor-sharp teeth tear off  flesh).  But no, at least - not here in Georgia.  The piranha are docile; they looked stoned.

And here are some unidentified fish in a photo you can just tell is destined one day to be used as a screen-saver over on Facebook.

Last of all, here's me - by a flowering tree, close to the Coca-Cola factory.  It was a very American day.

In other news, I attended a breakfast meeting with two high-powered academics and some other writers of Sheikh romance.  We were discussing the appeal of the desert warrior hero.  
I know why I like Sheikhs.  
Do you?

CALLING ROMANCE LOVERS IN ATLANTA!

Kicking off my book signing shortly at the Marquis Marriott hotel at 5.30 today (Atlanta time!), when I'll have copies of A SCANDAL, A SECRET, A BABY in my hot little hands.

Come on by and say hello (and eat a Cadbury's chocolate while you're there!)

NARNIAN-LIKE WOOD

Here I am, larking/goofing/mucking around amid the bluebells of Buckinghamshire in a wood where I kept expecting to see a fawn and a lamp-post.  

Past their best here, the flowers are pale and ghostly and very beautiful I think.

Have had a gorgeous bank holiday weekend, with lots of sunshine and good food (chocolate, strawberry cheesecake ice-cream & vegetarian lasagne; though not all at the same time - obv).  The only dark cloud on the horizon has been my latest book which has been playing up, big time.  

Gabe Steel is proving a delicious but very stubborn hero.

So....

If you could inspire me in any way, it just might earn you a dedication....

DIMENSIONS & BLUEBELLS

It's that time of year.  When woodlands are filled with hazy purple-blue and the air is soft and scented. 
The bluebells are out.
So for those of you who don't have these wild and fragrant flowers growing... here are a couple of photos I took on a recent walk.  
This first includes the creamy-white addition of wild garlic (great for adding to home-made pesto)

And in the second is a very HOBBIT-LIKE TREE!  (Which looks exactly like an elephant's trunk)

In other news - apart from battling with my latest hero, Gabe Steel - I'm haunted by the memory of part of a tantalising poem called Dimensions, by Laura Riding.  She was American and apparently, had a very complicated relationship with Robert Graves.  This excerpt was put on her gravestone but if anyone has the complete, amazing poem (Megan Crane, are you out there?) - then I'd love to read it.

Measure me by myself

And not by time or love or space

Or beauty. Give me this last grace:

That I may be on my low stone

A gage unto myself alone.

I would not have these old faiths fall

To prove that I was nothing at all.

DONKEYS AND MOUNTAINS AND CENTRAL CASTING

JUST BACK from a week teaching romantic fiction in Italy where I was staying in a glorious place called Posara, which is  tucked away in the mountains of northern Tuscany.

There are donkeys....

And villages which have obviously been plucked straight from the files at Central Casting....

And delicious things to eat....

And even the odd (very odd) writer who is so busy googling something, that she's completely oblivious to the brooding and beautiful hills behind.

I'm running another course from 22-29th June this year and there are two places left.  So do contact the Watermill if you'd like one.