"I'm having your baby."
They were words she would never speak to her lover, Ryan Blackstone, Australia's richest gem dealer. For Jessica Cotter was his secret mistress, with him only for torrid sessions behind the drawn drapes of his bachelor bedroom. She had no future with the man whose mantra was No kids, no carats. Though she knew the rules, Jess had broken them. Now she had no choice but to walk away from Ryan...unless the man with a heart as hard as diamonds could learn to love her back....
Tessa sold her first Silhouette Desire book after an online pitch on the eHarlequin.com Web site. "It was both scary and exciting, a bit like riding a roller coaster," says Tessa. "Once it started, everything happened so fast."
Several sales followed in quick succession. A keen reader since childhood, Tessa is thrilled to join the author community here at eHarlequin.com. "It took a while to get over the unreality of it all, but it finally started to sink in. There's nothing more satisfying than working on a new story. I love getting to know a whole new set of characters and finding out what they want from life."
There's one piece of advice that Tessa credits with getting her through the publication process. At the first weekend writing course she had ever attended, romance author Robyn Donald said that, to be published, a writer needed three things: talent (which hard work could polish), perseverance and luck. That stuck in Tessa's mind, and so her advice to would-be authors now is: "Hold on to your dream. Keep writing and never give up."
You can contact Tessa though her Web site at www.tessaradley.com. And while you're there, don't forget to check out the fun page and enter Tessa's latest contest. Or you can come read with Tessa over at Team Novelchicks, part of the eHarlequin.com 2007 10,000 Book Challenge.
