Heidi Rice's first...paragraph from her first book!

So excited to welcome my witty, savvy, party-ready cohort Heidi Rice!  This ought to be good :).

First off, big congratulations to Ally Blake for 10 glorious years writing for Harlequin Mills and Boon! And thanks for inviting me to contribute to your anniversary blog.  (AB: Pleasure!)

When Ally asked me to come up with a blog on any significant first - I opted to do the first paragraph of my first published book. For the simple reason that I feel it contains a valuable lesson for all would-be novelists.  In the first draft of this story I had about three pages of navel-gazing info dump as my hero muses endlessly about his back story.  There was no sign of the heroine, no dialogue, and absolutely no action of any description (other than the odd gear change). So far, so mind-numbingly boring I hear you say! Then, while nodding off as I read though my manuscript before sending if off to M&B I had a moment of inspiration worthy of a cartoon light bulb, about where I should actually start the book, which I believe to this day is the reason why this book got published:

So here's the final opening paragraph:

"Whoever he is, he's completely naked," Jessie Connor said as quietly as possible. Not easy with the heat flaring in her cheeks and her heartbeat pounding like a sledgehammer in her ears. The most magnificent male specimen she had ever seen stood less than fifteen yards away. Stark naked. Thank goodness he stood with his back to her, or her heart would have probably stopped beating altogether. 

Shameless plug alert: If you want to read more about Jessie and Monroe their story has been reprinted recently in the UK as part of the Bedded for His Pleasure anthology, and is also available as an ebook in the US...

Happy 10-year anniversary Ally. Here's to a whole lot more!

Heidi x

Fabulous Heidi is giving away an ebook copy of Maid of Dishonor from the wildly popular The Wedding Season #HarlequinKiss quartet.  Just head over to my Facebook Author page and on Heidi's post, let us know if you have a favourite opening to a book ever?