Phillipa Ashley read English at Oxford University before working as a freelance copywriter and journalist. 'Dating Mr December' is her first novel and won the UK Romantic Novelists Association New Writers Award 2007. It has now been adapted into a Lifetime movie called Twelve Men of Christmas, 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.