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What of the future? Well, I have Reversing Over Liberace in print now, and Slightly Foxed comes out as an e-book in August. It will follow Liberace into print in June of next year. I am working hard on Beethoven Complex, in the hope that this will find acceptance somewhere. These things are all known. But what of the great vista of Unknown Possibilities that stretches from here all the way to the coast?

Well, Romance as a genre seems to be going strong, and I can’t foresee any end to this. Not even using my crystal ball with the special attachment that lets you see into Closed Wednesdays (even if I can’t get this to work properly and have to foresee only events which happen upside down and/or in Madrid). Everyone likes to read about people they can relate to, and the wonderful thing about romance is that a happy ending is (almost) guaranteed. The feel-good factor can never be underestimated, particularly when the world seems like a scary place full of horrors and unmanageable circumstances.

I shall go on writing romance. Some will be romantic comedies, like Liberace. Some will be a little more serious but with funny moments, like Foxed. (For more details of these, please check out my website, www.janelovering.co.uk. Sometimes there are biscuits). Some might fall more into the category of blood-and-hysteria, like Dead Run. But they will all follow a theme. People, as real as I can make them, falling in love with other people. And doing the sort of things real people do; falling into a longed-for clinch just at the moment they realise they really, really need the toilet, leaving incoherent messages on one another’s answer-machines, being violently sick on the objects of their desire. I don’t believe in writing either heroes or heroines who are impossibly lovely in all ways (she’s got a child? He’s excellent with children. She’s in financial trouble? Never mind, he’s loaded, and has to give some of it away or he’ll die. Horribly. She believes she’s plain? Aw, just take off those glasses, buy some new clothes and – look! She was gorgeous all along!).

Women have PMT. Their periods arrive at inconvenient moments. Sometimes they really are plain, in a way that takes more than a visit to Debenhams and a new lipstick to get over. But they are still heroines. They still have stories of love, lust and lost boyfriends.

You know what annoys me? Oh, yes, of course you do, you’ve been listening to me rant on for a week. But I’ve got a really long list of dislikes. Here are some more:

• women who are purportedly ‘single mothers’ and therefore can’t find a nice man because they don’t want ‘just anyone’ to meet their child. But somehow they manage to find babysitters, nannies, child-carers to take care of their child whenever and wherever they need to meet Mr Right. They never have to take a vomiting child along on a date because no-one wants to look after him. They never have to cancel a date because the babysitter doesn’t turn up. They never meet Mr Right when they are out on the street pushing a stroller with a screaming infant who, when Mr Right bends down to greet them (because, of course, he’s fantastic with kids), pokes him in the eye with a snot-sodden stuffed elephant and tells him he’s a great big pooh.

• women who misunderstand everything that Mr Right says to them, to the extent that they argue every single time they meet. Yet somehow, despite hating each other and being unable to hold a conversation without accusations flying, they fall in love.

• women who maintain that they like their men to be ‘different’. ‘Unconventional’ ‘not to be gorgeous’. And then end up with that great big, sexy hunk who spends most of the book impersonating a brick wall.

• women who think that they are not beautiful, despite every single person in the damned book telling them that they are. And descriptions like ‘her nose was just too tip-tilted for beauty’ or ‘her hair was just the wrong shade of blonde to be beautiful’. Or even worse ‘her mouth was too small/large to be considered lovely’. Aw, come on! You think we’re stupid?

And then there’s my very favourite hate. The woman who meets a man she used to overlook in school/college/university/her first job, because he was too skinny/a geek/in the wrong crowd. Only now he’s buffed up and is gorgeous and he’s had a thing for her all those years. I have seen this delightfully subverted, so that he shows her up for the shallow little cow that she really is. But to have him sweep her off her feet while she admits that she loves him now (with his great pecs and his tight jeans), is just asking for a follow-up story telling how Miss Superficial promptly runs off with his hunkier, buffer, but above all richer, brother.

Oh, and then there’s the other book I’ll never write. If my hero and heroine ever fall into bed within moments of meeting and decide, because they shag like a pair of compatible stoats, that this is Real Love, then something terrible must happen to one or the other of them. Possibly involving their lower portions. Although my books have sex (I mean that there is sex in the storylines, not that the books themselves have sex. Although sometimes I do come across two hardbacks which seem to have become stuck together... I always wondered where those tiny little self-help books came from, I guess that’s what happens when you let books breed), it more often results from two people with an emotional involvement than two people who can’t keep their hands off each other. While books full of lusty sex are brilliant reads, I can never envisage an HEA for a couple whose main hobby is having sex. I keep thinking ‘what happens when the first baby arrives and she’s too tired to hang from the chandelier any more? And every night is broken with nappies and feeds, and her boobs get all saggy and her stomach hangs to her knees and she’s leaking from every orifice? Will they still want each other?’

And now I see the giant hand approaching to pull me forth from this blog. I did warn them that they’d have to drag me out, kicking and screaming... Well. Thank you all for coming, don’t forget to tidy up as you leave and put your donations in the tin on the way out.

Oooh. I nearly forgot! Did I tell you about the time I...no! Mmmmmmmppphhh!