Surf, Sea and a Sexy Stranger (Modern Heat) by Heidi Rice

‘You can have sex, Jan, but only behind closed doors,’ says successful Mills & Boon author Heidi Rice. However, here in this workshop dedicated to teaching the dark art of the M&B bonkbuster, we are getting right down to the real deal - we are workshopping the dirty bits. They also run hugely popular competitions to discover new writers and entries for the current one can be read on. That’s one reason why they constantly hold seminars to teach virgin authors like me how to write a raunchy Mills & Boon best-seller. To cope with demand, M&B publish over 70 new books every month in this country alone, and need an army of authors to produce them. In Tesco, about 140,000 Mills & Boon titles were downloaded last year. Broad shoulders, a perfectly defined six pack and long, leanly muscled flanks were exquisitely showcased by the sleek black wetsuit.

Maybe he wasn’t classically handsome like Luke, but the dramatic slash of dark brows, high hollow cheekbones and the rough stubble accentuating a strong jaw gave him a raw pagan beauty that had Maddy’s breath catching.

The heat coiled low in her belly as she stared down at the man she’d saved. Tagline: Honed, handsome and needing the kiss of life! SURF, SEA AND A SEXY STRANGER, BY HEIDI RICE Remarkable, considering that in real life, women are more cynical than ever before and proper heroes are thin on the ground.ĭespite this, over 200 million Mills & Boon novels are sold worldwide every year and a Mills & Boon paperback is bought in a UK bookshop on average every six seconds.Īnd thanks to the arrival of electronic reading devices, a growing number of younger women have begun indulging a secret passion for some of the raunchier titles - the kind of thing that might now make Martin Amis blush. The outside world may have soured but here, time stands still and the appetite for such escapist romantic fiction remains undimmed. Of course he does!įor in Mills & Boon land, cowboys are always noble and rugged, hunky doctors still chase pretty nurses around the wards and snakes of lust uncoil anew in the duchess’s heaving creamy breast.

It is the cockle-warming story of a handsome cowboy called Wayne Black who finds a baby with china-doll cheeks abandoned on the steps of his ranch one fine morning. On the boardroom table in front of us, there is a stack of the company’s best-sellers, including The Rake And The Heiress, Valentino’s Pregnancy Bombshell, Unfinished Business With The Duke and - my favourite - Proud Rancher, Precious Bundle. Here in the Mills & Boon bubble, we are deep in sex talk. To discover the truth, I travel to the mothership of mass market romantic fiction a place where bodices are still ripped and ravishing men and women are willingly ravished, on the page and off it. The real trouble starts, says Martin Amis, when emotion meets sex on the page

Surf, Sea and a Sexy Stranger (Modern Heat) by Heidi Rice