They finalise work on their autumn release, of course.

Or at least, that’s what I’m doing. Autumn Antics, book 2 of my second contemporary romance series, The Boardwalk by the Sea, was supposed to be published in the spring. However, what I hadn’t bargained on at the end of last year, was being commissioned to write a historical romance, The Poppy Field, for HarperImpulse, the innovative, award-winning, romance imprint of HarperCollins UK. This was a dream come true and one that I had never truly expected to happen so, as much as I hate delaying the release of a new book, in this instance I felt I had no choice.

I also hadn’t expected the previous publisher of my first four-book series, The Jersey Scene, to finally agree to revert the rights of those books back to me. They now have new covers, and have been re-released in a box set and also individually. The fourth and final book, A Jersey Bombshell, is available for pre-order and will be out on 8th June.

I’m in between structural and copy edits for The Poppy Field, so I’m happily back in the lives of Bella and Jack, the protagonists of Autumn Antics. In book 1, Summer Sundaes, Jack’s sister, Sacha Collins, met an archeologist, Alessandro Salvatore, during a holiday in Rome. He came back to the boardwalk where Sacha and the rest of the characters live and set up a gelateria in direct competition with Sacha. You can read more in Summer Sundaes.

This series is set during the four seasons of one year and is about four female friends. The first book, Summer Sundaes is about Sacha and her beachside cafe, Summer Sundaes. The second is Autumn Antics and is about Bella, a part-time hand model and antique shop owner. Bella also rents out two rooms in her tiny cottage on the boardwalk, one of her lodgers is Jack and the other Alessandro. Book three is Winter Whimsy and is about Issy and the holiday cottages she runs after her mum dies. What she doesn’t expect is for her artist father to sell them without telling her. Devastated and needing an income, Issy ends up having to work for Oliver Whimsy, a Scottish entrepreneur who has come to Jersey to live after a scandal in London. The fourth and final book, Spring Siren, is about Jools, an artist who runs a second-hand book shop with her disabled mum. There is a mystery running through all four books and the person behind the strange goings on and the reasons behind them are revealed in the final book.

Right, I really should stop chatting and get on with Autumn Antics, or it’ll never be ready to go out to my beta readers.