Special price for Vintage Collection now!

I’m happy to announce that we’ve rolled out the Vintage Collection to all e-readers now, so whatever you read on, you can download these classic romances from the 90s … and at 90s prices!  Right now all five books are available at their original price: who says you can’t go back in time?

Check out the home page on my website, and you’ll find natty little icons for a whole selection of e-readers, which look so much nicer than long strings of complicated code (needless to say, I didn’t manage to do that myself!)

If you’d like to keep up to date with news and special offers for subscribers, why not sign up for my newsletter?  It only goes out three times a year, so you won’t be inundated with emails from me, I promise!  There’s a sign up form on my Facebook page, or of course you can email me directly saying that you’d like to subscribe jessica@jessicahart.co.uk - I'm always happy to hear from readers.

Happy reading!

Cover design by and copyright Debbie Lishman 2013

Image of couple copyright Yuri Arcurs 2013, used under licence from Shutterstock.com

A Sweeter Prejudice

Sweet, old fashioned Abby is horrified when movie star Nick comes roaring into the calm

Cotswolds village of Stynch Magna. Nick is ridiculously handsome, irresistibly charming …

and American … everything Abby has learnt through hard experience to distrust. But he’s

also not a man who gives up easily, and he’s not about to be beaten by Abby’s prejudice. Can

she resist the overwhelming excitement and passion he brings to her peaceful existence?

Cover design by and copyright Debbie Lishman

Image of couple copyright Yuri Arcurs 2013, used under licence from Shutterstock.com

The Trouble with Love

Scatty photographer Poppy joins Dr Keir Traherne’s expedition saving the West African rain

forest. He thinks she’ll be nothing but a distraction, and pretty soon she’s proving him right -

her luggage goes missing at the airport and things go downhill from there. But Poppy is warm

and funny, as well as accident-prone, and soon she’s distracting Keir and stirring his

emotions in more ways than one ...

Cover design by and copyright Debbie Lishman 2013

Image of couple copyright MJTH 2013, used under licence from Shutterstock.com

Woman at Willagong Creek

Cool, chic, city girl Olivia flies out to Australia to bring her best friend’s orphaned son,

David, home to London. Cattle rancher Guy, who’s been looking after David, wants to keep

the little boy with him at Willagong Creek - no place for a woman like Olivia. The only way

she can stay and care for David is a marriage of convenience to Guy. Against the wildness

and heat of the outback, Olivia’s feelings grow for her strong, masterful husband - but Guy

won’t lay a finger on her … until she asks. Will Olivia dare to seduce her own husband?

Cover design by and copyright Debbie Lishman 2013

Image of couple copyright Yuri Arcurs 2013, used under licence from Shutterstock.com

Defiant Love

Gussie cares passionately about the Northumberland countryside and clashes with developer

Hunter Scott over his construction plans. When Hunter offers her a job as an environmental

consultant on the project, Gussie is thrown. Can she make a difference working on the inside

of the development? What will it be like working side by side with Hunter? And can her

principles stand up to an even more powerful emotion - her growing feelings for Hunter?

Cover design by and copyright Debbie Lishman 2013

Image of couple copyright solominviktor 2013, used under licence from Shutterstock.com

Legally Binding

Ten years ago, Jane was far too sensible to run away with local rebel Lyall. But now he’s

back, and the bad boy is all grown up. Lyall is a successful businessman who holds the keys

to the future of her family business and this time he’s going to make sure he specifies the

terms … but has he really changed? And will Jane risk her heart again?

Jessica Hart Vintage Collection - available now!

Cover design by and copyright Debbie Lishman 2013

Ta DA!  Resurrecting this blog to announce the launch of the Jessica Hart Vintage Collection, now exclusively available on Amazon!

I wrote these five books in the early Nineties, and the collection includes my very first three books: A Sweeter Prejudice, The Trouble with Love and Woman at Willagong Creek. Rereading the proofs, I've been struck by what period pieces they all are.  The Nineties don't seem that long ago to me, but the books belong to a different world, one in which few people had a PC or a mobile phone, and whole plots could turn on whether or not a letter had been received.  (How on earth did we ever make arrangements to meet without texts?)

The collection will have an official 'launch' on 23rd May, with Woman at Willagong Creek available to download absolutely free, but we'll be rolling out to other e-readers later in the summer so keep in touch!  

If you'd like to sign up for my newsletter with details of upcoming offers and news, do drop me an email: jessica@jessicahart.co.uk.  Otherwise, you can always find me on Facebook or Twittering erratically as @JessicaHartXX - I'd love to hear from you any old how!  

Cover design by and copyright Debbie Lishman 2013

Image of couple copyright Yuri Arcurs 2013, used under licence from Shutterstock.com

A Sweeter Prejudice

Sweet, old fashioned Abby is horrified when movie star Nick comes roaring into the calm

Cotswolds village of Stynch Magna. Nick is ridiculously handsome, irresistibly charming …

and American … everything Abby has learnt through hard experience to distrust. But he’s

also not a man who gives up easily, and he’s not about to be beaten by Abby’s prejudice. Can

she resist the overwhelming excitement and passion he brings to her peaceful existence?

Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CF136Y4

Amazon.co.uk http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CF136Y4

Cover design by and copyright Debbie Lishman

Image of couple copyright Yuri Arcurs 2013, used under licence from Shutterstock.com

The Trouble with Love

Scatty photographer Poppy joins Dr Keir Traherne’s expedition saving the West African rain

forest. He thinks she’ll be nothing but a distraction, and pretty soon she’s proving him right -

her luggage goes missing at the airport and things go downhill from there. But Poppy is warm

and funny, as well as accident-prone, and soon she’s distracting Keir and stirring his

emotions in more ways than one ...

Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CF13E9G

Amazon.co.uk http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CF13E9G

Cover design by and copyright Debbie Lishman 2013

Image of couple copyright MJTH 2013, used under licence from Shutterstock.com

Woman at Willagong Creek

Cool, chic, city girl Olivia flies out to Australia to bring her best friend’s orphaned son,

David, home to London. Cattle rancher Guy, who’s been looking after David, wants to keep

the little boy with him at Willagong Creek - no place for a woman like Olivia. The only way

she can stay and care for David is a marriage of convenience to Guy. Against the wildness

and heat of the outback, Olivia’s feelings grow for her strong, masterful husband - but Guy

won’t lay a finger on her … until she asks. Will Olivia dare to seduce her own husband?

Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CF13III

Amazon.co.uk http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CF13III

Cover design by and copyright Debbie Lishman 2013

Image of couple copyright Yuri Arcurs 2013, used under licence from Shutterstock.com

Defiant Love

Gussie cares passionately about the Northumberland countryside and clashes with developer

Hunter Scott over his construction plans. When Hunter offers her a job as an environmental

consultant on the project, Gussie is thrown. Can she make a difference working on the inside

of the development? What will it be like working side by side with Hunter? And can her

principles stand up to an even more powerful emotion - her growing feelings for Hunter?

Amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CF134IW

Amazon.co.uk http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CF134IW

Cover design by and copyright Debbie Lishman 2013

Image of couple copyright solominviktor 2013, used under licence from Shutterstock.com

Legally Binding

Ten years ago, Jane was far too sensible to run away with local rebel Lyall. But now he’s

back, and the bad boy is all grown up. Lyall is a successful businessman who holds the keys

to the future of her family business and this time he’s going to make sure he specifies the

terms … but has he really changed? And will Jane risk her heart again?

Amazon.com  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CF0T5OU

Amazon.co.uk http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00CF0T5OU

All good things come to an end …

I spent last night drinking pink fizz with fellow York writers Jessica Thompson and Donna Douglas, and what a great evening we had.  I can’t remember the last time I had to be kicked out of a bar!

I don’t know if it’s the cava talking, or words of wisdom from Jessica and Donna, both of whom are much more clued up on the social media front, but I think it’s time to face some realities.  I am scrabbling to keep up with two blogs and two Facebook pages and not doing any of them properly. 

So it’s time for a new social media strategy (sounds impressive, doesn’t it?)  I think this blog has run its course, so I’m calling it a day here.  I’ll be keeping my Jessica Hart hat on for Facebook, where I have a lovely time posting photos and wittering on about my day, and I do hope you’ll come and find me there.  

And of course, news about new releases will be on my website, www.jessicahart.co.uk

I’ll be putting on a less frivolous hat for my Pamela Hartshorne blog, newly moved from Wordpress to Blogger (don't get me started on what a business that was!)  My plan is to focus future blogs on my historical research rather than on my gold medals in procrastination and if you’re interested in history, I’d love to see you there too.  Come on over in September, when I’ll be back from my holiday and find snippets of background research, excerpts from Time’s Echo and a chance to win a signed copy. 

Until then, many thanks to those of you who have read and commented on this blog in the past.  It’s been wonderful to feel connected to you all and please keep in touch. 

Jessica Hart on Facebook: 

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Jessica-Hart/197786216977996

Jessica Hart website: www.jessicahart.co.uk

Pamela Hartshorne blog: 

http://pamelahartshorne.blogspot.co.uk/

Pamela Hartshorne website:

www.pamelahartshorne.com

And finally, I’m on Twitter @PamHartshorne

Confused?  I know I am!

Oh, and finally, don't forget to look out for the RIVA relaunch in October, including a re-release of We'll Always Have Paris with a new cover. There'll be more about this on Facebook!  

Jessica

xx

To update or not to update? That is the question.

Always one to wait until a bandwagon has trundled past and I’m left coughing and spluttering in the dust before I start to run after it, I am about to venture into self-publishing. 

Copyright ©1992 by Harlequin Enterprises Ltd

Rather to my own surprise, I have recovered the rights to five of my earliest books, including my very first, A Sweeter Prejudice and one that remains a favourite after all these years, Woman at Willagong Creek.  As you have no doubt gathered, this was before I discovered that books sold better with Wedding or Baby or Billionaire in the title.

The technological challenge of the whole business has me daunted, but fortunately that’s being taken care of for me, so all I really need to do now is to decide how much editing I need to do before we publish these books again.  Opinion seems to be divided about whether you should update the stories so that the characters use cell phones and the internet, or whether you leave them as ‘vintage’ pieces. 

I’m inclining towards the latter, mainly because I’m afraid that if I start playing around with books written so long ago, I’ll end up feeling that I have to rewrite the entire book, which would defeat the whole object.

There’s no way stories twenty years old aren’t going to seem dated.  You can tell that even reading re-releases of early books by successful authors like Mary Balogh, Tess Gerritsen or Harlan Coben.  It seems to me that it’s not so much the details as the writing itself that is dated.

What do you think?  Do you like your contemporary romances bristling with up-to-date references, or are you prepared to make allowances for a vintage story?

Success vs failure: It's all in the mind

I’m a great one for goals.  In the middle of June, I set myself a target of a 100,000 word draft of The Memory of Midnight to be completed by today, and on one level, I have to admit failure.  I don’t know if you’ll be able to see in the photo, but as of last night I had only done 93,620 words – although I have notes for the final two scenes which should take me to 96-97,000 tonight, I reckon.  

As so often with success and failure, it’s all in the interpretation, though, and I am choosing to see this as success in spite of those missing words.  The hard part for me is squaring up to the blank screen, and I have been slowly but steadily accumulating words until I have ended up with 326 pages with the story blocked out. That’s plenty for me to work with.

And work there is still to do. At the moment I have plot and not much else.  I’ve been banging out the words without stopping too long to research, and now I need to layer in texture and emotion and pace and character and tone and historical detail and new dialogue ….  Re-write the entire book in fact.  It’ll mean going back to the beginning and starting all over again, but for me the hardest slog has been done.

Next Tuesday I’ll be sitting down to read through the draft I’m so smug about right now. I predict much tearing of hair and wringing of hands and omigod-this-is-a-disaster because that’s what I do when I read through.  It’s all part of the process, not that it’s much comfort at the time.  But then I’ll start the real business of writing as rewriting and that’s the point – I hope! – when it will all start to come together. 

In the meantime, I’m thinking of my draft as complete (what’s 4-5000 words and a bit of missing punctuation in the last two scenes between friends, after all?) and rewarding myself with a weekend away, walking along the south coast, before knuckling down again next week.  

Enjoy your weekend too, wherever you are and whatever you're doing!

A Sensible Wife

It’s always fun when translations drop through the door, especially when they’re in exciting languages you can’t understand. This is a Japanese version of A Sensible Wife, as I had to discover by looking on the inside page where it always gives the copyright information in English.

I might have been able to guess from the cover, which is not often the case, even in the original English versions!  My working title for this story was The Frangipani Tree, and the eventual cover, as you can see, did indeed show a frangipani bush. 

In fact, The Frangipani Tree was my title for my very first attempt at writing a romance. Somewhere in the depths of my cupboard, the manuscript still moulders.  It received, quite rightly, a very prompt rejection but at least writing it proved that I could fill the requisite number of pages.  I was house-sitting in Scotland one November and I banged out the story without it ever occurring to me that I had no idea how to write a book or structure a romance.  I just sat down and wrote, which in retrospect wasn't a bad thing.  If I'd done any research and discovered how hard it was to write a romance and how long it takes to make any money from the whole business, I would have given up before I started.

I’d had six books accepted before I dug out that first manuscript and thought about rewriting it.  I was duly appalled when I read it again and in the end used only the Indonesian setting.  

I’m reluctant now to reread A Sensible Wife in case I feel the same again now.  I suspect the story will be as dated as the cover, which would be a shame because I remember it as one of my very favourite books.  The plot was deeply contrived, but this was the first story I had really had fun with.  Deborah was the first of what I think of as my ‘ordinary’ heroines: not particularly beautiful or slim or clever or good, but with an infectious zest for life that is just what the buttoned-up heroes they encounter need most. 

For anyone interested, A Sensible Wife is still available as an e-book from Barnes & Noble and Harlequin – or in paperback if you read Japanese! – but if you give it a go, do remember that it’s nearly  20 years old and don’t hold that against it!