The author of hugely successful and popular chick-lit fiction such as The Chocolate Lovers' Club, its sequel, The Chocolate Lovers' Diet, A Compromising Position and For Better, For Worse explains her predicament as we chat.

With her latest book, All You Need Is Love, just published, Carole is about to start work on her next – and this is the cause of her quandary.

"The problem is I have three ideas and I cannot decide on which one," she says.

"Normally it's straightforward. One will just float to the top and off I go, but all three seem equal and as a result at 3am the other day, I was laying fully awake in bed while all three plots whirled round my head.

"I pitched all three to the publishers and instead of helping me make up my mind by saying 'do that one', they said 'oh we like all three.' Maybe I'll end up doing ip-dip-dip, my blue ship and see what happens."

Carole, one of three guest authors at the Courier's literary lunch next month, admits that things often whirl round her head and sleepless nights are not an uncommon occurrence.

"It seem to be a time when my mind is buzzing and just will not switch off," she reveals, adding that this is just as frustrating for her partner "lovely Kev" as it is for her.

Her insomnia is something she has shared on her website with her many fans through her hilarious blogs. In one, she describes herself as Sleepless in Milton Keynes.

But it is not always her writing that keeps her wide awake.

"I have lots of favourite television programmes and recently I have loved the BBC's The Tudors. Now that has kept me wide awake. Seeing Jonathan Rhys Meyers's bare bottom – he plays Henry VIII – is very unsettling to a woman of a certain age."

Carole, who is 38, confesses to lots of other passions including the novels of Philippa Gregory, any film starring Hugh Grant or Gene Kelly, and singer George Michael.

"I am still in a deep state of discombobulation after going to see him in concert," she says, adding that when she needs inspiration for her writing she often turns to his music.

It is hardly seems as though she needs any kind of incentive, as she manages to write two books a year.

"I like to work at a fair pace. I don't think one book a year would be enough for me," she says.

Originally from St Helens, Carole trained as beauty therapist and became a TV presenter on a series called Look Good, Feel Great in the mid 1980s.

But writing had always been a secret passion and she began to supply beauty articles for magazines.

"Initially I was writing about massage and aromatherapy, factual articles," she says.

"Then I saw a competition for short story writing, entered and managed to win. The prize was £1,000 and instead of spending it on shoes and handbags I spent it on a writing course."

The tutor was impressed with Carole's work and promptly advised her to get an agent. In 1997 her first novel, Let's Meet On Platform 8 was published.

Since then, others have followed, topping the best-sellers charts and earning Carole a short-listing for romantic novelist of the year last year.

And it is not just in the UK that she has a legion of fans. She is now published in 24 different countries.

"All kinds of things inspire me. I'm an avid newspaper reader and sometimes a story I read will really set me off."

This was the case with her latest novel, All You Need Is Love, which centres around single mum and superwoman Sally Freeman wanting a better life for herself and son, Charlie, growing up on a run-down Liverpool council estate.

"I was just sick of reading about so-called sink estates where everyone living there was supposed to be bad and a no-hoper. I thought there is more to life than this. There are good people living in these places, trying to do good things."

The book is dedicated to her late cousin, Allan Case "who lived life to the full."

"He was a lovable rogue and I was always close to him. He chose to live his life the way he did despite others trying to make him tread a different path. I think he would have been chuffed about the dedication," she says.

When she is not writing, she says she loves to trek in the Himalayas, rollerblade in New York's Central Park or just catch up on lost sleep, snoozing in her garden shed in Milton Keynes.

At the moment she is having a "little breather" between books but it will not be long before she has to make a decision about which of those three plots to choose.