Okay, I admit it: right now, I am without a pet. I do have a cat nephew called Bear who is half Maine Coon and half vicious tiger, but I don’t have an animal living with me at present.

I don’t know whether that has had an impact on my writing. I certainly have enjoyed writing the dragons (dogs) in my Chances series, a nickname given when the first child of the younger generation had a dog called Dragon, and got a bit confused. The habit stuck with all their siblings, and their cousins, even to adulthood, leaving outsiders to the family a little befuddled when asked if they would like to walk the family dragon.

I have considered writing a cat lady, and in fact readers who adore spotting Lady Romeril in my stories will probably enjoy knowing that she has a great many cats, mostly Persians.

But perhaps I should be challenging myself a little more. Maybe I should be writing more exotic pets: parrots, maybe, or other birds which were hugely popular in the Regency and Victorian era, which is when I set my books.

Or maybe I should go even further, and include turtles, or exotic fish!

What do you think? Do you want to see more pets in my stories?

One of the biggest challenges of moving to London is that I had to leave Bath!

Being a Regency romance writer and actually living on the outskirts of Bath was such a joy, one I cannot truly put into words! It made living and breathing my books all that easier, because if I needed to, I could literally go to Milsom Street and check out what on earth was going on with the intersection between two streets.

Breathing in the atmosphere of a city as beautiful and scenic – as well as historic – as Bath made it all the easier to write descriptions of places and different areas.

And now…now I have to do that from memory, although if really necessary I would absolutely find an excuse to go back.

The thing about Bath is that, in the main, it hasn’t really changed since the Regency era. Any new buildings have to be in keeping with the general architecture, and that means that although there are obviously a few changes, a quick glance down almost every street won’t be able to pick them up easily.

There’s a reason why so many historical dramas, whether or not they are set precisely in the Regency era, film in Bath!

I like to think that if Jane Austen wandered down Milsom Street today, she would be a little surprised at a few of the fashions, and she would be astounded at the prices of things…but she would also recognise a great deal of the place she…well. Didn’t love.

Let me know in the comments – have you ever been to Bath?

If there is one type of scene that I dislike writing compared to the others…it’s a breakup scene.

Almost every romance has one. After all, love is often put under pressure and it can be tempting for two lovers to feel conflicted about staying together.

But a breakup scene has to feel as though the hero and heroine are never going to get back together. The reader has to believe that there is a very real chance that they will never see each other again – and will certainly never kiss again.

And that is tough! Especially when I’ve usually spent the last…oh, say 40,000 words trying to convince the reader that they should absolutely be together!

As an author, I also don’t want to make the breakup scene so believable that the eventual renewal of affection doesn’t feel right. For example, I don’t want me hero to be genuinely cruel to my heroine, otherwise why on earth would she go back to him?!

This means that the breakup scene is often the hardest to write in the whole book.

And yet I do enjoy them! I have said this before and I’ll say it again: my worst day with my writing is always far better than my best day at my previous day jobs – no shade to my day jobs, I just adore writing!

So that’s one of the reasons that I keep writing romance; because sometimes, even I don’t know how my characters are going to get together…and then they do.

Oooh, we’re going to get into it today!

I wanted to spend today’s blog talking about writing love scenes, something that many people I spend hours and hours on. And in a way, I do…collectively. Not per book!

It’s a challenging thing, writing steamy historical romance. Some people automatically look down on the genre because they disapprove of ‘smut’.

Now, I’m the first person to say that there is a place for every type of book because there is an infinite number of types of readers…and there is absolutely nothing wrong with smut!

But romance as a whole, and steamy romance in particular, is often looked down on in the publishing industry. I cannot tell you how many publishing events I’ve been to where I’ve been asked what I write, I tell them…and there’s the smirk. It almost always comes!

That is, unless I’m at a romance event. Then the person grins and asks me exciting, relevant questions. We love to see it! But that’s sadly not the norm.

From my perspective, crafting a good love scene is like crafting a good battle scene. Yes, there is some action, and for some people it might be too graphic for their liking – but the scene exists in some way to either a) propel the plot forward or b) reveal something about the characters or c) spark a conflict. Sometimes that conflict is, of course, far more literal…

For this reason a love scene is just like any other scene. I work really hard at making sure the writing is beautiful and sparkling, and then I move on.

What do you think? Have you ever considered a love scene to be similar to a battle scene?