“But I had hopes. Scones?”

For Daniel Duncan MacGregor his plan to marry off grandson DC to the nearest available millionaire heiress was going exactly as he must have predicted, when we left the first part of The MacGregor Grooms at the end of chapter three. After all, Daniel knows a thing or two about the conventional plotting of a lasting romance, having experienced it for himself before playing match-maker for his three children, his daughter-in-law's brother and eight of his grandkids. His latest attempt at geriatric meddling has centred on his son's artistic yet temperamental son, the playboy painter Daniel Campbell MacGregor and Washington socialite Layna Drake. Unfortunately for Daniel Duncan, or The MacGregor as he is affectionately known, DC has no interest in settling down and giving up his wild bachelor days for a life of watching a woman clean up after him. Yet the wily old drunk has seen something in the youthful pair they cannot see in themselves without the thick haze of whisky and cigar smoke that follows The MacGregor as he accomplishes his zany mission of living vicariously through manipulated offspring. While Layna and DC are diametrically inclined, he the hell-raising, carefree litterbug and she the prim, ordered ice-queen, everyone who has ever read a romance novel or watched a Jennifer Lopez movie will know that opposites attract if they are physically beautiful enough to have others disregard their emotional flaws and disgusting personal habits.

DC is determined not to fall for the ageing slush's mind-games as much as he is determined not to fall for Layna's steely gaze, symmetrical face and visible breasts. Equally Layna has no intention of being attached to a husband, no matter how compelling his stare or how large his hands. She is dedicated to her job, and remains haunted by her parents' marriage of convenience and history of carefully concealed affairs. She has no experience of romance as an adult and learned no comprehension of happiness as an impressionable child. In so many bombastically alluded to ways she is the antithesis of DC, beloved child, brother and cousin of the sprawling MacGregor clan, a family with so much love to give they are simply incapable of allowing that love to become unconditional. With the prospective couple seemingly unable to rush blindly into matrimony Daniel decides to play his trump card, casually mentioning to DC that he has chosen a nice enough banker named Henry as suitable mate for Layna. Sadly for Henry he doesn't exist, but that shouldn't have stopped Nora Roberts writing a book about him, possibly entitled Making a Deposit. Hurry up, Nora, must Bewildered Heart do all the work?

With this imaginary interloper on the horizon DC does what any red-blooded American painter would, he sweeps Layna off her feet, hurls her over his shoulder, carries her back to his building, takes the elevator up to his apartment, climbs on top of her and swiftly tumbles over a proverbial edge into an ecstatic abyss, which is how Nora Roberts describes an orgasm. To her credit Layna only makes the occasional protestation, before the warm embrace of masculine muscle and resignation brings her crashing over a proverbial edge into an ecstatic abyss. Once the regrettable moment of animal lust passes, and the several after, Layna eventually moves things into the kitchen for Italian take-away and a conversation about parents. She leaves DC's home more confused than ever. Has she fallen for this idealised version of a man? What does this mean for her career with the Drake family business and how could they make this relationship work when he lives like a pig and she cannot feel human emotions? With much to ponder in her inadequate female brain she runs into her aunt, who happens to be searching for her outside her house, which she had decided not to return to mere sentences earlier. Once settled inside with a professionally prepared cup of tea Layna pours out her heart to Myra and makes the difficult decision to simply take a trip out of town and hope everything will work itself out in her absence. Aunt Myra pounces, like a trained panther with a keen understanding of upper class social protocol, and, using the pretence of being infirm and increasingly forgetful, manages to harangue Layna into accompanying her to the MacGregor mansion in wherever that is. Perfect, thinks Layna, the best place to escape DC and put him out of her inadequately-sized mind is at his house.

If only DC's life was as intricately contrived by outside forces. Now he has had sex with Layna he has no interest in stopping and so resolves to convince her to continue letting him, but this time with a little more grace than he used during their first encounter. Unlike the terrified Layna, however, DC will not skip town just as their relationship has reached a critical impasse. Fortunately for the story, meanwhile, DC decides he will skip town and spend a few days at his grandparents' mansion, in wherever that is. But wait, cries the reader, suddenly stirred into consciousness, that is exactly the same location Layna has ended up in. Surely this will lead to a passionate argument and then awkward dry-humping in front of the family, and lo and behold that is what happens. Daniel Duncan cleverly ropes in another of his grandsons, naturally named Duncan, who happens to be passing, to throw his arm around Layna's pretty shoulders, and once the impeccably-timed DC arrives he cannot help but fall for the exact same 'Henry' trick that had worked only days previously. Then the fighting turns to reconciliation which immediately turns to love which instantly turns to a marriage proposal which is promptly accepted. Within a two page conversation eternal happiness is reached, through a piece of Nora Roberts magic that in writing circles is more accurately known as incompetent handling of narrative form. DC laughs in victory, but his naiveté of his grandfather's involvement is more a result of his own stupidity and arrogance than Daniel's stealthy shenanigans.

There the revealing brief ends, and the key questions that haunted the possibility of DC and Layna's love, such as her career, their incompatible lifestyles and her inability to emote are succinctly rejected without acknowledgement. Roberts has failed to achieve in one hundred pages what most Mills & Boon authors fail to achieve in two hundred. The opening novella of The MacGregor Grooms walks a fine line in discernible quality, never sophisticated enough to be genuinely enjoyable but never sinking to embarrassing enough lows to be a guilty pleasure. Roberts has established a free-wheeling franchise that allows her enough freedom from the Harlequin formula for flashes of creativity, but she never stretches herself beyond familiar plot contrivances and minor emotional epiphanies. Daniel is a peripheral figure, but his force is felt throughout the story. Roberts portrays him as a loveable rogue with a penchant for cigars, whisky and gambling, perhaps saved from an inevitable early death by Anna, his eye-rolling wife with a disapproving nose for smoke and alcohol. There is little wonder the success of the MacGregor novels called for a telling of their own tale. The strength of Daniel's convictions is the one truly original aspect of the novels, but it is a cynical gimmick used to justify the endless sequels, and Roberts never seems willing to flesh out her narrator's practically psychotic obsession with playing fossilised Cupid.

Instead she spends time with her generic hero and heroine, who are typically passive players in the designs of a sociopathic ninety-year-old inebriate. No light is shed on DC as a character and Layna is poorly served by stereotypical anxieties that are not resolved by anything more than a willing penis wrapped in money. To compensate for the truncated word count Roberts removes DC's internal conflict and glosses over Layna's. The plot is accelerated by an impatient Daniel, as appeals to DC's vanity and jealousy further the romance from superficial to serious in a matter of hours. Therefore the courtship is falsely explored and the characters are under-developed, Roberts a victim of her own playfully offbeat structure. Any opportunity for poignancy, or even credibility, is squandered, replaced by lazy romcom jokes and an uncomfortable indecision over what the novel wants to be about. The first of the Grooms is a thinly-veiled father-knows-best tribute to arranged marriage, and the nature of Roberts' favoured set-up and involvement of Daniel means her second and third stories promise little in deviation. To sell a book on its brevity may seem a pessimistic ploy on the part of the publishers, but having read DC the tactic appears more and more inspired.

“I haven't been able to stop thinking of you since that kiss on our wedding day”

With the deadline for Fast Track steadily approaching there has never been a more suitable time to explore the demands of beginnings, and so we turn back to the warm bosom of Secrets Uncovered and shout, 'I want to write for Mills & Boon – but where (and how!) do I start?' Like any good instruction manual Mills & Boon's waits until Chapter Three before discussing how to get started. They argue, somewhat perceptively, that a good place to begin is with an opening chapter, but what is an opening chapter and how does an aspiring author with only a computer and a barely discernible grasp of language go about writing one? 'Your potential readers are busy women juggling studies, careers, families and time is precious – so you have to grab their attention with a gripping first chapter.' Nothing grips like grabbing, but how do we impress these ladies somehow combining school, work and baby-making? With such hectic lives should they really be whiling away idle minutes on romance fiction, inbetween changing nappies while commuting from university to the office?

'Start at a truly interesting point, e.g. when your hero and heroine meet. Don’t waste valuable time telling the reader about mundane, everyday details – make sure you open with a point of change in their lives, an exciting moment.' Mills & Boon can throw about phrases such as exempli gratia all they like, but, as Penny Jordan previously advised, all couples must meet on the first page. Occasionally an author will circumvent this obligation with a mysterious prologue, where the hero makes a wager about buying a woman or a working class waitress learns she is princess of a Central European nation from an overly-optimistic Ouija board. Harlequin novels and their readers know what they want and expect to receive it. Therefore early characterisation and scenic descriptions are an unnecessary distraction from throwing lovers together and having them deny their feelings for two hundred infuriating pages.

'Establish the emotional conflict so the reader is dying to know how it will be resolved. Think of the scene in Casablanca when Ingrid Bergman asks Sam to play As Time Goes By…' While the editors of Secrets Uncovered may have missed the point of Casablanca, or not completely understood the meaning of the term emotional conflict, they are right to recommend the film as a masterpiece, although were that film to have been a manuscript it is comforting to know that Mills & Boon would have rejected it. While the thousands of novels published every month fail to adhere to even these most basic of tenets, a competition such as Fast Track will look for a comprehension of narrative form. However, as history proves, skill and inspiration will not suffice and so we continue onto the next important element all winning romances must contain, clichés. 'If you type cliché and romance into Google, you get thousands of sites dedicated to the world of romance clichés.' Yes, but if you type onion and hat into Google you get thousands of pictures of hats made from onions, because Google works as a search engine. Hi, Google! In fact, a search for cliché and romance will likely yield the Mills & Boon website, so what's your point?

'There are ways for a successful writer to use a conventional theme and twist it, and by that we mean taking the tried and tested plot and turning it on its head to deliver something with real wow factor that will help you knock readers’ socks off.' While Secrets Uncovered is more than happy to supply the clichés and stereotypes they insist on leaving the twists to you, the gentle authors. No one enjoys subversion quite like Bewildered Heart, of course, and so the struggle to reinvent the gorgeous billionaire Lothario as new and sock-knocking begins here. Still, tragic gorgeous billionaires have been done as many times as arrogant gorgeous billionaires, and even revolutionary spins such as the sensitive, handsome millionaire have been attempted, to obvious less effect. The novelist faces the daunting task of involving a favoured archetype in an unusual situation, allowing an aspect of the character to emerge through the life-altering event he is confronted with, perhaps by a nurturing, beautiful heroine, who may or may not be a single mother and virgin.

For all their talk of invigorating variations on classic themes, Mills & Boon have been unsurprisingly reluctant to divulge a definition of any of those words, until now. 'Romance conventions are a must, they only become clichés when they don’t bring their own personality along for the ride. The trick is to understand the convention before you twist it. How many stories/films/TV series/cartoons etc. feature the Cinderella storyline and how many then go on to twist it? A few examples which work are Pretty Woman, Twilight, The Holiday, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Maid in Manhattan, Working Girl, 27 Dresses, The Wedding Date. All of these featured a less than lucky heroine, a make-over and a Prince Charming – but all with their own spin!' First and foremost none of those examples worked, and several cannot be compared to Cinderella any more appropriately than Cinderella can be compared to Pygmalion. Furthermore, once you have removed allusions to Solicititilation, Katherine Heigl and ethnicity you are left with Twilight, which was only mentioned to draw in the Twilight audience, a useful trick, admittedly. Twilight. Edward Cullen. Look at his perfect crooked smile. Monetize your blog.

The conclusion drawn from this contemporary examining of Cinderella is both eye-opening and disheartening. Firstly, whoever wrote it has a woeful taste in film, but secondly they are right to call for the reader to understand the appeal of Cinderella before making her Mexican and liberally stealing ideas from Roman Holiday. Mills & Boon seem increasingly intent on pushing the aspirational attraction of their books. Cinderella is a fairy-tale of fate, a rags-to-riches story of over-coming adversity with the trendy moral that beautiful people are better than ugly people. Readers empathise with characters who have made good and realised their dreams despite coming from nothing, often relying on nothing more than stunning good looks, a magical deux ex machina and a man with an unlimited fortune and plenty of time on his hands. Therein lies the secret to Cinderella's ever-lasting success, and the reason a handful of superficial changes can lead to publication, Hollywood adaptation and a red-headed actress reinterpreting the legendary character as something deeply offensive to women everywhere.

Somewhere awhile ago Secrets Uncovered gave up on trying to offer advice for writing a first chapter and simply slipped back into the standard sentences all of their articles slip back into, 'Make the reader believe that true love exists. Make characters unique and believable. Dialogue needs to fit with your characters and not be forced.' Those statements may well prove worthy of implementing, but a wannabe writer can look to the nonsensical contradictions of Secrets Uncovered for the reality behind the Mills & Boon spiel. The lack of depth of the characters and non-enterprising scale of the plot forces the author to fall back upon recognisable tropes. What other choice do they have when told to introduce both characters to one another and reader within the opening pages and hurry the story onwards with the minimal use of external conflicts? More worrying, however, is the implication that the target audience will not accept large-scale changes to the formula. 'Mills & Boon is about creating fantasy out of reality. Surprise us with your characters, stories and ideas!' The article ends on an uplifting note of innovation, but this is possibly the fantasy they were mentioning moments earlier. When working within a much tighter structural framework than the publishers seem willing to admit to, competition entrants may struggle to create characters and plotlines enterprising enough to shake the editors from their comfortable chairs while remaining suitable material for the Fast Track brief. If they do, mind, it is likely they have rewritten Casablanca with a happy ending and less memorable dialogue.

“Why did his deep voice pour like hot fudge through her veins?”

Following the debatable success of New Voices Mills & Boon have returned with a different occasional competition, named Fast Track and dedicated to discovering the unearthed talents toiling in the field of Medical™ Romance, a subgenre Bewildered Heart shall now lay claim to an understanding of. In 2010, when the previous call for submissions was announced, Romance HQ received one hundred and seventy-four entries, promising to read and respond to each within the month. From the deluge of opening chapters submitted five new authors saw their novels published and their pseudonyms in print. This June Mills & Boon hope to repeat the trick, and so send the call out to all disillusioned healthcare workers with vacation-time and hazy dreams of frustration and embarrassment in a poorly-paid industry. Send a first chapter and a two-page synopsis to Richmond, London and the publishers promise a prompt rejection. It is just that easy!

Naturally the masses of frantic writers chancing their arm at literary doctors and nurses cannot go into this opportunity blind to the demands of Medical™, and therefore two handy guides have been written and posted online. The first is a simple list of top ten hints, borrowed from the numerous other top ten hint lists, but now with words such as medicine, surgeon and bedside replacing those beloved standards blackmail, billionaire and bedroom. For help we turn to a Thesaurus and novelist Fiona Lowe. Having read the submission guidelines in preparation for Neurosurgeon... and Mum! many of the insights are predictable and short-sighted, but surely a seasoned professional like the author of The Playboy Doctor's Marriage Proposal can conjure up some much-needed wisdom. 'Having your hero and heroine work together is very important because it keeps them on the page together and avoids “token” medical scenes. Your reader wants to see the relationship growing and it’s a lot harder to show this if they don’t work together.' The sheer number of times the word together was used in that statement suggests the aspiring author's couple must be paired in close proximity throughout the story. Keeping your leads apart, even in separate countries without the means to communicate, often results in a stunted development of their affections. This alternative also forces the narrative to rely on arbitrary sickness to fill the quota of health scenes, allowing the plot's momentum to flag even further, as we witnessed repeatedly throughout Kate Hardy's novel, published by Mills & Boon.

'Dare we say it but our medical heroes are divine and a little bit different from other category heroes. They’re strong, independent and focused, but they have compassion, heart and a bedside manner to die for.' Not literally, mind, because this publisher does not take kindly to displays of irony or death. Nevertheless, the adjectives not related to their job description are consistent with all romance alphas, thus this piece of perceptive analysis should not be considered useful by anyone planning their potential competition attempt. 'Due to the huge variety of specialisations in medicine, this opens up a huge array of settings... the outback, flying doctors, ER, small town, big city, drop-in centre, the White House, Africa, sports medicine, surgery, midwifery and complimentary.' Yes, as Mills & Boon have reminded their readers and authors beyond the point of repetition, anything is possible and acceptable. The only limitation is your imagination, but before you allow that to wander off to levitating surgeons healing the President's tennis elbow by unorthodox means, there are a few more hints to consider that might well destroy the credibility of that earlier sentence.

'Popular themes in medical romances are midwifery, paediatrics, surgery, secret babies, miracle babies, bachelor dads, Mediterranean docs, new-found families with young children, – families with young children, billionaire and posh docs, playboys docs, royalty, aristocracy, sheikhs – duty to patients or title?' The list is endless if you are willing to repeat the same phrase ad infinitum. From the inception of romance fiction the interests of its readers have not changed beyond the gradual approval of foreigners. Medical™ taps into universal common ground and the combination of finding love, prolonging the lives of the elderly, babies being adorable and technical language has solidified the subgenre as enduringly fashionable. The next step, Harlequin mistakenly claims, is to find methods to reinvigorate classic themes while remaining true to the much-loved, recognisable archetypes. However, all Fast Track asks for is the opening chapter, so it is more advisable to forget any grand notions of reinventing hospital love and concentrate on the second essay, How To Set Our Pulses Racing... assembled by the very editors who should know what they are looking for.

The points found here never stray too far from reminding the potential author that they must not display utter incompetence at the art of writing. Therefore we are told to capture the reader's attention from the first sentence, not use clichés, think before typing, focus on the characters, make the hero handsome and the heroine nice as well as medical professionals, and finally sow those conflict seeds to give the reader something to read while they stare absent-mindedly at the book. There is one additional argument tailored to the particular category romance. 'Immerse your reader in the medical world. Some insight into the community in which your hero and heroine work is part and parcel of the series.' A passing knowledge of the industry may stand authors in good stead, therefore, but cutting and pasting from Wikipedia should suffice if not. After all, Medical™ just wouldn't be medical without medicine, and there remains an implication that while anyone with a pen or computer can write for Modern, Cherish, Nocturne or Spice, this subgenre requires specific life experience. There is more to this than a simple tale of hero and heroine over-coming emotional conflicts through the redemptive power of love while happening to be doctors.

Nevertheless, no mention is made of how to construct a Medical™ Romance beyond the usual meaningless, contradictory revelations that a novel must put character before plot while revealing personality subtly through actions allowing empathy with their decisions and interactions, and insight into their thoughts and feelings without resorting to telling the reader instead of showing. If not that exactly, then words to that effect. How in-depth into terminology should the writer go? Surely if readers did not want a veneer of expertise there would be no need for making medicine a speciality romance when other occupations are not catered for in the same manner? Why must both leads be professional colleagues when this necessitates the creation of patients as secondary characters that Mills & Boon tells us should be kept peripheral? Is this inept lack of vision and clarity the reason the previous Fast Track yielded a success rate of less than three per cent? Be that as it may, there is little choice but for our Bewildered Hearts to fill in the gaps, which is what working for Mills & Boon basically amounts to anyway. We begin by combining elements of the most popular themes, a sheikh performing surgery on a secret Mediterranean baby in Africa for a midwife with Royal blood, throw in a complicated description of an incubator and a subplot involving emotional extortion and there we have a contest submission bound for glory. We can worry about what happens in the following eleven chapters in July.