by Sabrina Philips, author of The Desert King’s Bejewelled Bride (Harlequin Presents Extra, August 2009)

For every published writer there comes a moment after the elation of getting ‘the call‘, after the champagne and celebrations, when it hits home that it’s time to do it all again: write book number two.

I personally found that moment a whole lot more terrifying than I ever found submitting my first story.  Then, I knew an editor would pick up my work without preconceptions, hopefully they’d like it (and hooray that they did!), but if they didn’t, I’d lost nothing by trying.  But once you’ve had one book accepted it’s like you’ve set a bar for yourself.  What if I’m a one hit wonder?  I kept thinking, what if that phrase — everyone has a book in them — is me and I had ‘a’ book in me, but no more?  Luckily though, my fear was also accompanied by the drive to prove to myself that I wasn’t , that I’d learned so writing book one that in theory I should be able to write another story, maybe an even better one at that.  I made up my mind to do everything it took to prove it.  So, I put away the champagne (oh who am I kidding!  I cleared away the empty bottles) and booted up the computer again.

Thankfully, whilst I was waiting for a verdict on my first submission, I had plotted out and written about half of a second story, so I didn’t have to start with a looming blank page.  It must have been a good six months since I’d last seen it though — set aside when I received a request for revisions on my first manuscript.  I could see immediately that lots of the revisions my editor had requested on my first book could be applied to this story too (really strengthening character motivation and making sure they were driving the story instead of me, for example.)  I could also see that it needed to be completely rewritten.  If you’ve ever heard the advice that the best thing you can do with a manuscript is put in a drawer and give it a good few months before you take it out again, I can testify that so long as you’re not on a deadline (!) it’s absolutely true.

And so I set to work on improving it, bearing in mind all that I’d learned, crafting my second story in the same way that I’d pored over my first.  For some reason, I thought that despite my worries, now I was published the act of getting the story on the page would be easier.  Unfortunately it wasn’t.  It still kept me awake at night as I tried to puzzle my way through plot twists and character motivation, the answers didn’t come any more easily than they had done before.  But one thing this time around was different.  I didn’t consciously think it, but when I wrote my first book, Valenti’s One-Month Mistress, I wrote the story that I thought would have the best chance of getting published, that I felt most comfortable writing.  It was set in Italy, somewhere I’d visited, the plot was centred around the restaurant business, on which I had some experience to draw on, and I felt very at home with the storyline I’d worked out.

When I began writing The Desert King’s Bejewelled Bride, I decided not to be so ’safe’, but to follow another piece of advice — write the kind of story I’d most like to read.  So that’s precisely what I did.  I thought about all the elements I most loved in Presents, and combined them to create my perfect romance, a Sheikh hero with a white horse, a beautiful heroine who is model, a fantasy desert kingdom, priceless gems, a royal wedding, danger and secrets, and a hero and heroine who have really been in love from the first moment they first laid eyes on one another.

Parts of it were outside my writing comfort zone, but the challenge was possibly why I adored writing it all the more.  And luckily, my worries about only being capable of writing one publishable book were unfounded.  Coming to the manuscript with fresh eyes, and writing the story deep down I think I’d always wanted to tell had paid off, because my editor accepted the book without changes!

Then of course, after a second round of champagne, came the realisation that it was time to write book three, and all those fears returned!  Luckily though, even though I’ve faced the fact that the answers are never all going to come easily, the desire and motivation to try and write a better book, and the joy of selling one, has never gone away.  And I’ve got a feeling it never will….

Sabrina’s second book, The Desert King’s Bejewelled Bride (Presents Extra) is currently on the shelves.  Meanwhile, she’s about to begin work on her fifth story.

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