The Queen of New Beginnings (40 page)

A rousing cheer sounded inside Alice’s head.
Hurrah for the Queen of New Beginnings!
This was one beginning that wasn’t going to end badly. She had finally cracked it.

I’m grateful to a great number of people who directly or indirectly made this book possible. Thank you to new friends and old at Orion, especially Susan Lamb, Kate Mills, Jade Chandler, Genevieve Pegg, Juliet Ewers, Lord Anthony Beardy-Keates of Luton, Andrew Taylor, Jo Carpenter, Ian Diment, Lisa Milton, Sophie Mitchell, Helen Richardson, Lisa Ginanne, Peter Roche, Dallas Manderson, Malcolm Edwards, Mark Streatfield and Pandora White. And not forgetting the ever-supportive reps who like to lunch and gossip with me: Jon Small, Savid Asquith and Judy King. Thanks, of course, to Jonathan Lloyd—Agent of the Year. Way to go! A colossal amount of thanks to my wonderful friend and comedy scriptwriter extraordinaire Ray Allen, who never fails to make me laugh. One day I just know he’s going to pull himself together. Thanks also to the nice people at White House Sound Ltd and the wonderfully gifted Maggie Mash who gave me an invaluable insight into the world of voice-over work. As did Teresa Gallagher. Thanks to my lovely new friends in Italy: Rita Annunziata, Sara Cilia, and Harold Lubberdink, Mikael Mammen, Massimo, Tony and Vicki Monaco, Anne and Ian, and Anna and Simon Carden.

With an insatiable appetite for other people’s business, Erica James will readily strike up conversation with strangers in the hope of unearthing a useful gem for her writing. She finds it the best way to write authentic characters for her novels, although her two grown-up sons claim they will never recover from a childhood spent in a perpetual state of embarrassment at their mother’s compulsion. The author of fifteen bestselling novels, including
Gardens of Delight
, which won the Romantic Novel of the Year Award, Erica divides her time between Cheshire, England, and Lake Como in Italy, where she now strikes up conversation with unsuspecting Italians.

Please visit
www.ericajames.co.uk
for more information.