I’ve been so busy writing, I’ve only just had time to repot the lovely new lemon tree my daughter bought me to replace the one I lost during the big freeze last winter. Now I can’t wait to make lemon curd - when we get enough eggs!

…is my July release for Harlequin Presents Extra. 

I’ll be blogging about it on Sunday,  10th July at: http://www.authorsoundrelations.blogspot.com You can see more details of The Count’s Challenge on my website, http://www.christinahollis.com where I’m currently running a themed competition, and here -  http://bit.ly/kSYcBQ where you can also buy online as well as on Amazon.com.

Happy reading!

…lemon curd around Christmas time. It pays to plan ahead when you’re multitasking! My daughter bought me a beautiful lemon tree for Mother’s Day, to replace the venerable old plant I lost during our recent devastating winter. That’s growing well and has some embryo fruit on it. They won’t be ripe in time to make lemonade this summer, but they should be ready to make lemon tart or lemon curd to brighten up winter.

So- my latest work in progress has a shipping magnate hero in Leo, a comfort eating heroine in Alexa - what better place to throw them together than on a ferry across the Thames? Luckily, they meet before Alexa gets her hands on the steak, fries and chocolate pudding Leo’s behaviour drives her to consume.

This is the view from the balcony of Leo’s suite at the Dockland’s Hilton. He very kindly lent it to me and my tribe for a holiday last year. The suite that is, and not just the balcony ;)

…and it survived against all the odds. I sowed six seeds, nurtured them carefully and - nothing. After a year had gone by, I gave up and emptied the pot of ‘dud’ seeds and soil onto the greenhouse border. The following spring a single tuft of leaves appeared and this year, this single survivor flowered. 

And the moral of this story is - when it comes to plants, never give up!

My Mills and Boon Modern Romance, The French Aristocrat’s Baby, has been released in the US as a Harlequin Presents Extra with the new title,The Count’s Challenge. Here’s the cover, and you can get more details from: http://www.eharlequin.com/storeitem.html?iid=23974

Last time I wrote about my new WIP, I told you how I found my hero.  It’ll take a strong woman to iron out Leo Cassini’s flaws. So step forward, Alexa Crane!

That’s her, hiding behind this comforting pile of pancakes.

On the outside, Alexa is a hard bitten business woman - but that’s only because she has become an expert at hiding her problems. Unknown to Leo, Alexa is leading a bizarre double life. Whenever things become too much to bear, she eats.

So it’s a good job Leo’s ex-wife has left him with a deep suspicion of scale-jockeys…

This is my grandmother, with my aunt and uncle. I don’t know the date of the photograph, but as my aunt is in her early eighties now it must have been taken in the late nineteen-twenties. It was sent to my grandfather, who was serving in the British Army in India at the time and had never seen his new little daughter. In those days air travel was an unimagined luxury. The journey from Delhi took weeks over land and sea, so Grampy only came back every few years. Living in the country, Gran had to do everything for herself, and that made her very resourceful. She had to abandon a very successful career as a cook when she married, but taught her children and grandchildren all she knew. I may not have inherited her organisational skills or her love of housework, but at least she made sure I can feed a family! 

…in several different ways! For my birthday the other day my husband gave me the latest book on the Hubble space telescope, which helped with my new work in progress in an unexpected way. 

I’ve been inventing a background for my new hero. I like to get the name first, then build up the character from there and as I was reading my new book, the word Cassini jumped out at me. The Cassini division is a gap in the rings of Saturn, named after the guy who discovered it. My new hero is Italian, but the idea of calling him ‘Galileo’ didn’t really appeal. So he’s Leo, which is actually short for Leonardo. That’s pretty fitting, given what the biographer Vasari said of Leonardo da Vinci being  “marvellously endowed with beauty, grace and talent in abundance”  although given the line that I write for, of course Leo Cassini going to be totally and absolutely heroine-centred!

Incidentally, the picture accompanying this blog is an image of the Tarantula Nebula, and it’s part of the GRIN (Great Images In Nasa) collection. It was taken by the Hubble telescope, and it’s been the wallpaper image on my computer since it was released. Isn’t it breathtaking?