Phillipa Ashley read English at Oxford University before working as a freelance copywriter and journalist and is the author of five romantic novels. Her first book, Dating Mr. December, topped the Play.com romance charts and won the UK Romantic Novelists Association New Writers Award 2007. It was later adapted into a Lifetime movie called ldquo;Twelve Men of Christmasrdquo;, starring Kristin Chenoweth and Josh Hopkins. Phillipa lives in a Staffordshire village with her husband and daughter but also spends part of the year in the English Lake District.