NATASHA OAKLEY, AUTHOR

I was born in an 'old' English county called Middlesex. You won't find it on any modern map - it's been swallowed up by Greater London and at the swish of a bureaucratic pen it disappeared. Nevertheless, I had a perfectly happy childhood there with two parents who love me and a younger brother I still like! Painfully shy, books were my passion and my first career ambition was to be an author -- mainly, I think, because I didn't fancy leaving home.

Everyone seems to have one teacher who's inspired them more than any other. I met mine when I was thirteen and his name was Frank Richards, our drama teacher. He introduced me to theatre and at fourteen I walked on stage for the first time in a play he'd written. It was the beginning of a new passion.

After a three-year classical theatre training at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London, I started my career in professional theatre under my Equity name of Jessica Dean.

In 1991 I married my husband and we decided to start our family. I must have harboured some kind of daft idea that I would have a baby, put it in a papoose and carry on pretty much as before. Not surprisingly it didn't quite work out that way. I hadn't realised quite how powerful mother-love is. I had five children in six years, working only very briefly during this time.

I'm blessed with an easy, happy marriage and five great children, but when illness touched our lives I started to reassess my future. It was the start of my writing career. My second submission to Mills & Boon was accepted in December 2003.

I now live in Bedfordshire with my husband and my children. I love antique fairs, collect kitchenalia, paint in watercolour, and am a signer for the deaf (BSL). My house is in a constant state of disarray but I make great cakes, write books and no one seems to mind.

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No. It's a different line. The NA cover on a Harlequin Romance has a horizontal teal line reading Harlequin Romance. In the UK it's an orange cover with 'Tender' in the bottom corner. The AUS/NZ cover is pale blue and labelled 'Sweet'. It's a line that would be entered in to the Traditional category of the RITA - although we can have non-explicit sex if we choose which would bounce us out of there. 'Presents' is the NA term for 'Modern' romances in the UK and 'Sexy' in AUS/NZ.

Originally the two lines were one but were split as an experiment with the more sexually explicit stories being flagged as 'Presents'. Now the lines are evolving on their own - but there's still a discernible overlap. Basically 'Presents' is more 'fantasy with an alpha hero' whereas 'Harlequin Romance' is a story which 'could happen to you'.

A combination of reasons. My husband bringing home a laptop, missing working in the theatre, wondering what to do with my life...

I've always told myself stories. I thought everyone did! But, essentially, I'm a lazy person and it's far easier to write them in your head than it is to get them down on paper. I needed an incentive to make myself sit down and do it.

In August 2000, shortly after our fifth child was born, my husband was diagnosed with cancer. There's a great deal to be said for being in control of your world and writing is a marvellous way of creating your own reality. This was the time I began my first book.

No, but the second one came close. After two rewrites, my first submission to Harlequin Mills & Boon was rejected because it was felt it fell between the Tender/Modern divide. Book three, aimed specifically at Harlequin Romance, sold.