February Fill-Dyke by Kate Walker

As I write this the skies are dark and heavy and the first flakes of snow are whirling around , tumbling to the ground. There is the promise – or do I mean the threat of much more of to come later in the day and tomorrow. This being England, where we don’t deal well with snow and ice, there will probably be major disruption on the roads and things will grind to a halt or be heavily delayed until it all clears again. I could think how horrible it is. How much I hate winter and how dark and cold – and usually wet a month February is, the month that my mother always used to call February fill-dyke or fill-ditch because of the way that, as the nursery rhyme goes, February brings the rain,Thaws the frozen lake again.

But just watching it from here, safe and snug inside my office, with the cats curled up before a real fire, I’ve not been thinking any such thing. Instead I’ve been feeling happy and excited that February has dawned – and I have a new book that’s released and on the shelves.

This is an unexpected gift that my career as a writer has given me. When you write romances and have them published then every year is punctuated by those extra special dates when the book that I was writing about 12 months, sometimes less, ago, is now going to make its appearance and hopefully be read by lots of expectant readers. Even when I’m not in the country where the book is on the bookshop shelves, like now, when Cordero’s Forced Bride is being published in the Presents edition in America and I have to wait another month until the UK Mills and Boon Modern edition is available over here, I still feel this thrill of excitement to think that people will be spotting that cover, picking up the book, browsing the blurb on the back, checking the first page and maybe – hopefully – taking the book to the checkout and then home.

And on a day like today it gives me an extra thrill to think that they might be curling up, keeping warm, and being carried away from the cold and grey weather and into the warmth and sunlight of the beautiful Spanish city of Seville where a wedding is about to take place or so everyone thinks . . . . But that wedding isn't going to happen and it's Alexas's unwelcome job to tell the groom, Santos Cordero that his expected bride has run away. She's not at all prepared for his reaction - or the demand he's makes of her.

ear. Last time I blogged here - and by the way, the first Sunday of every month will be my regular blog date from now on – I talked about the way that I was looking forward to enjoying and appreciating the good things, not just blinking and almost missing them. So here I am enjoying the first of those; the knowledge that my latest book has already sold so well as an ebook that it has been on the eHarlequin ebook Bestseller list all last month - before it was even officially published. And now Cordero’s Forced Bride is also riding high on the Waldenbooks Top 10 Romance sellers list. And that’s enough to brighten the coldest, darkest day. There will be plenty of other good days like this coming up in the year too – another new book in September, a reprint in May. And only this last week I booked for RWA Nationals in Washington which means I get to meet up with so many friends in the summer. All these bright spots come to me because of my career as a romance writer.

And talk of the RWA Conference reminds me that I have a special task to do for that. I have seven RITA books just waiting to be read and judged so that I can send my marks in on the right date. So I’m going to join those cats of mine and curl up in front of the fire with one of these books and forget all about the cold and the wind and the snow. When we are romance readers too, there are so many wonderful stories just waiting to take us away to another wonderful, warmer, brighter place.

What about you? Are you somewhere cold and shivery right now? Or perhaps you’re on the ‘other side of the world’ and baking in the heat of summer. Wherever you are, I hope that you have a great book to read to sit by the fire or out on the beach. Why not tell me about it and I’ll get Sid the cat to pick out one of the comments and I’ll send a signed copy of Cordero’s Forced Bride to one lucky winner.

You can find out more about me and my books over on my web site or my blog.

My apologies to everyone who posted - thank you all for your contributions. I'm afraid that life swallowed me up and I didn;t manage to get back to see your comments until now

But I got Sid right on to the job of picking a winner and he has chosen

Stefanie from Belgium.

Stephanie please email me Kate AT kate-walker.com so that I can arrange to get your copy of Cordero's Forced Bride to you.