Sarah Mason, once a business woman who was big in the popcorn business, yesterday won the Parker Romantic Novel of the Year award - £10,000 and some very nice pens - for her first book, Playing James.
Mason was the only first-time novelist on the shortlist.
"To say I was surprised to win is a serious understatement," she said. "I got out of there fast before the others could do anything to me."
Last year the prize went to Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl, which won respectful reviews and became a lavish TV costume drama.
This year the prize is back on more familiar ground: dizzy girl reporter; arrogant green-eyed policeman.
Before the reader can murmur "Pride and Prejudice", the heroine does it herself, grumbling: "I don't remember Elizabeth having to watch Darcy marry Miss bloody Havisham."
Romantic fiction is a serious business, the second largest-selling fiction genre after crime, shifting some 180m copies worldwide every year.
The shortlist suggests a sound career move is a more powerful motivation than inspiration.
Sheila O'Flanagan, author of He's Got to Go, was Ireland's only woman chief bond dealer before she became a financial journalist.
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, author of Julia (and 60 other novels, including a former winner of the title), had been a sales manager for Coca-Cola in Scotland.
Mason's reincarnation as a romantic novelist was equally pragmatic.
She was once the queen of an English popcorn business, turning over £2m a year making own-label popcorn for Blockbuster videos and Tesco, which won her a nomination as one of the UK's five leading entrepreneurs.
But when her factory suffered a flood she sold up.
"We started with nothing and we ended up with ... well, not very much more," she said.
"Certainly not enough to live the life of a lady of leisure, so I was looking around for something else to do."
Mason turned to her word processor when she read an article about a successful romantic fiction author.
Her second novel is due out in the autumn.
An extract from the winning novel
You may be wondering why I am not just coming straight out and telling James how I feel. Well, I'm wondering the same thing. I think he is quite fond of me in the way you get quite fond of a pair of slippers, or perhaps more like the way I tried taramasalata a few times and hated it and then started to quite like it. But the point is, I don't think he feels the same way about me as I feel about him. If you put the whole thing into perspective, which believe me I have struggled to do over the last few days, then you can see he has asked this beautiful, kind girl (with a few roubles to her name to boot) to marry him. At this point I am already seeing the 'happy ending' signs. Then I pop up six weeks before the big day and I cause him nothing but aggravation. We row endlessly, but get on quite well towards the end. Would you call off your big day on the strength of that? No, quite.
