I have a scene in my new romantic comedy, The Perfect Hero, where my heroine, Kay, makes a cake for Oli – one of the rather delicious heroes.  It didn’t take me long to choose the cake she would make for him: lemon drizzle cake.  I was first introduced to this lemony wonder a couple of years ago when we were chicken-sitting for friends in Kent and they made us a gorgeous lemon drizzle cake.  I begged for the recipe and, now we have hens of our own and a regular supply of eggs, it’s a favourite treat.

Then I read the lovely Miranda Dickinson’s new book, Welcome to My World and guess which cake had a walk-on role?  A lemon drizzle!  And, just last week, I was reading Freya North’s gorgeous new novel, Chances, and up it popped again – in the sweetest of scenes where her heroine makes it for the new man in her life.

It’s so funny when this happens.  When my book, Molly’s Millions, came out, there seemed to be a sudden deluge of heroines who were florists.  Then there was a big chocolate craze with novels focussing on this most delicious of delights and now, the shelves of the supermarkets are heaving under the weight of books set in New York. 

Perhaps authors are all in tune with each other or there’s a secret muse we all share who flits between us all whispering ideas to us.  What do you think?