Your new book is A LADY AWAKENED. Can you tell us about it?
It’s the story of a scandalous bargain between two people with drastically different agendas. Desperate to keep her estate - and housemaids - out of her brother-in-law’s hands, strait-laced widow Martha Russell recruits cheerful wastrel Theo Mirkwood to help her conceive a fraudulent heir. He’s primed for a month of sinful indulgence, she’s gritting her teeth against the whole sordid undertaking, and the battle of wills is on.
Where did you get the idea for this series?
I think the spark of the idea came years ago when I was a kid. Every summer I would go to a small town and spend a few weeks visiting my Aunt Dixie and Uncle Leroy. He was in the rodeo association and he’d leave a saddled horse for me every morning. I could ride all over town. I remembered feeling safe in such a little town and I found everything interesting. From those days began the seed of Harmony.
Where did you get the idea for this story?
For a long time I was trying to write traditional Regencies, which mostly don’t have sex in them. When I made up my mind to switch to Regency-set historicals (longer books that do have sex), I started by looking for believable reasons why two people of that era might wind up in bed. “To produce an urgently needed heir” seemed like an obvious choice, and after that the task was to take that obvious concept and steer it in some not-so-obvious directions.
What do you like to do in your free time?
I get a big kick out of watching reality tv with my smart, snarky 15-year-old. We’re major fans of the Bachelor/Bachelorette franchise. We watch together and high-five whenever anyone makes reference to being there “for the right reasons” or “for the wrong reasons,” or when a date, person, or scenic locale is described as “amazing.” (If it were a drinking game we’d be out cold in the first 20 minutes.)
What's next for you? What are you working on now?
A GENTLEMAN UNDONE, the follow-up to A LADY AWAKENED, comes out May 29. Right now I’m working on the follow-up to that one, and it doesn’t have a title yet. But the hero of that book, and the hero of A GENTLEMAN UNDONE, are both brothers to A LADY AWAKENED’s Martha.
Thanks for having me. It was an honor to be your Mystery Author!
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