**Re-read** I can't believe I picked this up again almost a year later to the day. So many second chance stories begin with a checklist of grievances that the H/h move through like counselling sessions - rather than a story narrative. The hero doesn't hear about how awful his family was to the heroine until the last few chapters when they are actually introduced. *second re-read* I was struck this time by how well MR sprinkled in the backstory while keeping the action in present day. So twenty years on and almost forty books on, here I am still writing and still loving it! I’d found my new love, as in reading romantic fiction and inevitably writing it too.

At some point I discovered Mills & Boon Romance books and that was pretty much it for me. So, I started to write, by hand at first, scribbling short stories in notebooks which never saw the light of day. To this day I don’t know why, unless it was a natural progression from my never being without a book close by-often several-because books have always been an important part of my life for as far back as I can recall. Somewhere in between my girls growing up and the grandchildren arriving on the scene, I started writing. Eventually I met my husband, we married and produced two daughters who then grew up and between them presented us with two gorgeous grandsons and one beautiful granddaughter. So what was I doing twenty years ago before I wrote books? Well, I did the all of the usual things, like growing up and attending school, finishing at secretarial college, which I hated, then spent the next several years wandering aimlessly from job to job.

I know it isn’t a great average when compared with some authors but it sounds pretty good to me! Twenty years with almost forty books published or in the pipeline. So, hang on for a minute while I take this huge milestone in.

Hi, my name is Michelle Reid and I’ve been writing for Harlequin Mills & Boon for the last twenty years, and the crazy part about it is that I only realised it had been twenty years while updating this page!

A passionate marriage michelle reid