So I’ll just post a video of Meredith I stumbled across on YouTube last week.

As you can see, her photos don’t do her justice and she is disgustingly gorgeous in person.  Now time for everyone to run out and get WRITTEN ON YOUR SKIN!

Meredith has a deadline in August.  And so do I, since 10 days ago when my agent emailed and said she wanted the first draft of the next tour-de-force done by August 1.  LOL, guess no-matter how much I deny being in the shitty-first-draft camp, I’ve been unmistakably tainted by my undeniably shitty first drafts.

Had things been different we’d hold a much grander celebration.  But now we’ll just toss this little interview out and call it a release party.  Enjoy!

You have said on this blog that you brainstorm to blaring Top 40 hits on the radio. Can you give me some examples of songs that have helped Bound by Your Touch and Written on Your Skin take shape?

I knew that was going to be a dangerous confession! In many cases, the lyrics are very simple, even trite. But when they touch off an image or a vibe that brings alive some aspect of the characters’ relationship, they become profoundly important to my brainstorming.

With Bound by Your Touch I was particularly struck by “Eyes Open,” by Snow Patrol. The lyrics brought to life, for me, how James inhabits the wreck he has made of his life — the numbness he courts to get through his days, the anger he represses beneath his easy, freewheeling charm (“All this feels strange and untrue… My bones ache; my skin feels cold… The anger swells in my guts and I won’t feel these slices and cuts”). They also capture how central Lydia becomes to his journey toward redemption. He desperately needs to see himself clearly, and that only happens for him when he sees himself through her eyes (“I want so much to open your eyes because I need you to look into mine… “). The lyrics also seem to capture how his redemption ultimately becomes her path to freedom as well (“Get up, get out, get away from these liars, because they don’t get your soul or your fire / Take my hand, knot your fingers through mine, and we’ll walk from this dark room for the last time / Every minute from this minute now, we can do what we like anywhere…”).

So, on my playlist, this would be a “James” song.

With Written on Your Skin, the most influential bit of music wasn’t even a whole song — it was the fiddle solo that comes about two and a half minutes into Dave Matthews’ “Crush.” Seriously — whenever I was stuck, I would listen to that thirty second snippet. It’s funny; listening to it now, in order to answer your question, I can’t understand any longer what I found so inspiring. But I recall being enchanted by how its ecstatic and dramatic quality was leavened by hints of humor. It got me into the headspace of the power play between Mina and Phin, which is certainly dramatic but also, occasionally, very funny.

And here’s the mildly embarrassing part of this answer: another song I listened to quite often when writing Written on Your Skin was Britney Spears’s “Circus.” Mina, the heroine, is a force, and this song is about a woman under pressure (“All eyes on me in the center of the ring just like a circus”), who rises to the challenges thrown at her, and demands that anyone who wants her attention earn it the hard way (“Don’t stand there watching me, follow me, show me what you can do”). Mina, of course, has never met someone who can follow her, much less someone who can beat her at her own game. Until, of course, she meets Phin.

I have to girdle myself to do my research. But you, you like history. You would read primary sources even if you don’t have a book to research. What kind of historical readings do you enjoy the most?

I find travelogues immensely interesting. Judging by what I can find in my university library (and on Google books as well), they were greatly in vogue throughout the Victorian period. Since the authors are generally foreigners to the land about which they’re writing, they end up documenting the social scene and the local mores and everyday customs, all the little things that they would never think to remark on with regard to their own society. Victorian-era travelogues written by Americans visiting England are hugely useful for this reason.

My favorite sorts of travelogue are those that were written and initially published for a limited audience of family and friends; they’re chatty and personable, and often pair fabulous descriptions of various cities and countries with bits of gossip and social commentary about influential figures of the day.

You have written both damaged heroes (Duke of Shadows, Written on Your Skin) and roguish, golden-boy heroes (Bound by Your Touch). Which one do you enjoy better? Or do you just like to alternate them to keep things interesting?

Oh, I think James (Bound by Your Touch) is fairly well damaged, too. Certainly he’s better at hiding it — from himself as well as others. That fabulous sense of humor makes his scars a bit more difficult to spot.
I can’t really imagine writing a perfectly well-adjusted hero. I’m sure I will one day write a hero who *seems* perfectly well-adjusted,but ultimately I find my characters’ flaws more interesting than their talents. And I find it particularly interesting when their talents are inextricably linked with their flaws — as James’s humor and charm are.

Your two 2009 releases are both set during the 1880s, late Victorian, so to speak. The Victorian reputation in pop culture is the cover-the-piano-leg prudishness. But prudishness was largely a phenomenon of the Victorian middle class. The upper class were a rather naughty bunch–upon whom the middle class frowned mightily, I might add. In another one of your interviews I’d read, you mention that you’d come across “descriptions of parlor games played during country weekends that, let’s just say, you wouldn’t want your teenage daughter playing with her friends.” Inquiring minds want to know. What kind of parlor games are we talking about, exactly?

So, the upper crust played a lot of intellectual parlor games — freestyle poetry or charades, for instance. But they also played rather more physical games, which many of us might recognize from childhood: Blind Man’s Bluff, Sardines (hide-and-seek in which only one person hides; as others find this person, they must squeeze in to hide with him/her), and various “Sit on me” games, like Squeak Piggy Squeak.
Have you played any of these games since you turned sixteen or so? Probably not. Why not? Because piling into closets together, groping each other, or sitting on each other becomes rather more risque once you hit puberty.
Now think of a whole lot of adults playing these games after a night of wine and champagne, in a dark, sprawling country house in the middle of nowhere. Good, clean fun… no?

Your 2010 release is currently titled Wicked Becomes You. Along with Bound by Your Touch and Written on Your Skin, they are a trifecta of total triumphs as far as titles go. Who came up with those titles, you, your editor, or the marketing team at your publishing house? Are there any interesting stories behind those titles?

Yep, they were all my suggestions. Generally, I come up with a list of possible titles for each book, submit it to my editor and agent, and we all confer. (What this pithy summary elides is the many days I spend ripping my hair out while brainstorming titles. Some of my rejected suggestions are laughably bad.)

Interesting stories, hmm… Well, Written on Your Skin was named before it was written, and my agent floated the concern that the title conjured an erotic romance rather than a historical. I occasionally wonder if this is why WOYS ended up being even hotter than BBYT — I “wrote to the title”, as it were.

Then again, when a friend of mine heard the title, she said, “Rethink that. It sounds like it’s about a serial killer.”

Ah, well. You can’t win ‘em all.

Yes, you can, Meredith. Your gorgeous books will win readers and influence aspiring writers! Congratulations on the book release. I’m getting off my bum to the bookstore this minute!

While I was putting together the sidebar for the new blog, I noticed that my May release and Meredith’s August release bear more than a little resemblance to each other.  They are both red dress clinches!  So of course we must have a red dress-off.

First, a little background on the books themselves.

Blurb for Written on Your Skin, by Meredith Duran, on sale July 28, 2009  (just four weeks after her sophomore book, Bound by Your Touch, makes its bow):

Beauty, charm, wealthy admirers: Mina Masters enjoys every luxury but freedom. To save herself from an unwanted marriage, she turns her wiles on a darkly handsome stranger. But Mina’s would-be hero is playing his own deceptive game. A British spy, Phin Granville has no interest in emotional entanglements…until the night Mina saves his life by gambling her own.

Four years later, Phin is finally freed by his new title from the bloody game of spycraft. But memories of the girl who saved him won’t let Phin go. When he learns that Mina needs his aid, honor forces him back into the world of his nightmares.

Phin is a man intent on control. Mina is fiercely devoted to her independence. As they match wits, their practiced masks begin to slip, kindling an attraction more dangerous than any treasonous conspiracy. For in two lives built on lies, love can prove the darkest secret of all…

Blurb for Not Quite a Husband, by yours truly, on sale May 19, 2009:

Their marriage lasted only slightly longer than the honeymoon—to no one’s surprise, not even Bryony Asquith’s. A man as talented, handsome, and sought after by society as Leo Marsden couldn’t possibly want to spend his entire life with a woman who rebelled against propriety by becoming a doctor. Why, then, three years after their annulment and half a world away, does he track her down at her clinic in the remotest corner of India?

Leo has no reason to think Bryony could ever forgive him for the way he treated her, but he won’t rest until he’s delivered an urgent message from her sister—and fulfilled his duty by escorting her safely back to England. But as they risk their lives for each other on the journey home, will the biggest danger be the treacherous war around them—or their rekindling passion?

And now, the Red Dress-Off!

Does your heroine wear a red dress at any point in the book?  And if she doesn’t, would she?

Meredith: Oh boy, does Mina wear a red dress.  To wit:

“Hullo!”
Her cheery announcement won the ladies’ instant and wide-eyed attention. Phin turned. She was draped along one side of the doorframe, a small, curvaceous package done up in scarlet silk.  How the hell had she gotten out? “Miss Masters,” he said.  There was no help for it; he had to introduce her, as she well knew and had certainly counted upon. “Do come in.”
As she let go of the door and slinked toward them, he caught sight of his pathetic, incompetent, bloody fool of a footman skidding to a stop outside the door.  He gave Gompers a small shake of his head, which turned into an astonished double take as the full effect of Miss Masters’s gown became clear. All at once, he understood that his earlier unease had been a premonition of disaster.  The gown had no structure or tailoring, save for the high, square neckline and the capped sleeves.  The gold sash tied at her waist drew the thin fabric tight around her hips, announcing, very bluntly, that she did not wear a corset.
At her next step, petticoats also began to seem doubtful.

In fact, were she limited to wearing one color for the rest of her life, Mina would probably choose scarlet.

Sherry: LOL.  It’s completely the opposite in my case.  This is what Bryony wears:

He was completely enamored of the severely cut jacket-and-skirt suits she wore, so serious and put together–his lady knight, in her armor of crisp silk, ready to do battle with London’s microbes and infirmities.  At night he lay awake and thought of her prim little hats, her utilitarian walking boots, and the buttons that strained just slightly at the rise of her breasts.

I think Bryony would go through life never wearing red, and never notice that she never wears red.

Does your hero have that sort of build/musculature?

Meredith: Erm… well, let’s put it this way: if any British aristocrat is going to look so fit, it would be Phin.  Once upon a time, Phin served in India with the Royal Engineers, which entailed climbing a whole lot of mountains in order to contribute to governmental maps of contentious border zones in the Himalayas. Since mountaineers tend to be extremely muscular up top (takes a lot of strength to haul yourself up cliffs!), I can imagine he was in pretty good shape.

His more recent, and rather more nefarious activities also require a good degree of physical fitness, albeit of a different type.  To maintain the vein-popping magnificence we see on this cover, I will assure you that only the restriction of word count prevented me from including a riveting scene in which Phin does his nightly round of push-ups and pull-ups.

Sherry: I was very, very thankful that my beefcake does not have that vein-popping magnificence.  Still, the model has got a lot of meat on his bones.  This is what Leo just went through:

Weeks upon weeks of trekking across some of the most inhospitable terrains on Earth, sleeping on cold, hard ground, eating what he could shoot and the occasional handful of wild berries so he wouldn’t be weighed down by a train of coolies carrying the usual necessities deemed indispensable for a sahib’s travels.

Also, he is in denial about coming down with malaria.  Malaria does a heck of a job destroying appetites.  So when Bryony first sees Leo again after a three-year separation, this is what he looks like:

But he had shadows under his eyes. He was thin almost to the point of gauntness. And despite the tan of his skin, his face had a pallor to it.

Of course Leo, when you strip him down, is still ripped from all that climbing and trekking.

The weight he’d lost and the illness had not been enough to diminish what months of strenuous daily exertion had done for him. His body was efficient and compact, his shoulders strong, his abdomen ridged, his legs longthewed and shapely.

In other words, less bulk, but still the same hawt!

Does your title reflect your book?

Meredith: Yes.  Both Phin and Mina are profoundly influenced by (separate) incidents that left a physical mark on their bodies.

Sherry: Absolutely.  He was her husband.  Now he is not.  Ergo, NOT QUITE A HUSBAND.

Does the font size of your name indicate your stature as an author?

Meredith: Ha!  All I can say is: 1) Sherry came up with this question; 2) Sherry is nominated for two RITAs!

Sherry: Hehe.  I am tremendously unobservant.  So for me to notice the font size of Meredith’s name says something.  When I did notice, I went, whoa, them’s some NYT bestselling font size!  Of course the font size of my own name accurately reflect my  modest, relatively new status.

And I’ve been treating Meredith much nicer since I noticed. 

What input, if any, did you have on the cover?

Meredith: So here’s how it goes: the art department asks me to physically describe my hero and heroine, and then they come up with a cover, which they send to me to make sure that the people on the front sufficiently resemble the characters within.

This one wasn’t changed at all, I believe. This pic is a little muddy, but the actual cover is much warmer and richer in color, and I was very happy with that, as it seems to reflect Mina’s personality.  There is a height discrepancy between Phin and Mina that isn’t represented on the cover, but if it were, the clinch would probably look… odd.

Sherry: My publisher does its own secret plotting and just shows me the close-t0-end product.  The first round result looked like this:

The art department made the correct choice to remove the border–which is now tinted red and on the back cover–for the figures of the models to pop much more. I wanted longer fingers for him and hair enough on her to engulf small villages, especially since the latter is specifically referred to in the book.  Didn’t get too much more hair on her–art department said it would muddy the picture–but did get longer fingers on him.  Also, art department gave him a deeper tan and changed his trousers.  Nothing like black trousers on a man to say mysterious virility. 

And why clinch instead of ladyback/mantitty?

Meredith: You know, the covers are designed with an eye to attracting browsers in a bookstore, and it’s safe to say that Pocket has done a lot more research than I have in regard to what attracts a casual browser to pick up a book.  I’m guessing, then, that clinches appeal to readers.  And here’s a confession: I don’t mind clinch covers.  I’ve long dreamed of opening a bar that would be wallpapered entirely in old-school clinch covers.  It would serve drinks with names like “Purple-Headed Passion,” “Throbbing Banana” Daiquiris and “An Ecstasy of Oranges”, and have dim, velvet-lined booths with private jukeboxes constantly tuned to Frank Sinatra and Etta James.

Without clinch covers, this fantasy would be horribly incomplete.  Long live the clinch!

Sherry: According to Sue Grimshaw, Borders’ romance buyer, for newer historical romance authors, the clinch is a must.  And since I do write very hot books, I like that the heat level is reflected in the cover.  (And I especially like her expression on the cover.  She’s thinking: My God that is a bloody cricket bat he’s got there.)

And man, Meredith, the Old-Skool clinch covers are as abundant as hydrogen.  Your bar would run out of walls to display them all.   And even though I don’t drink, I plan to order a “Purple-headed Passion” just to say that I’d experienced it once in my life.  May I also suggest “Explode Like a Ripe Melon?”

The question then becomes: how does this backstory make for a plot?  To answer this question, I… procrastinate. I play with random ideas, read everything I can get my hands on, and daydream to a long and inspiring playlist of Music that Deeply Offends My Boyfriend’s Superior Taste.

I also occasionally entertain myself by searching Parliamentary records and date-restricted Google results. During my most recent search, I discovered a Ghost in the Google Machine: Eva Fox-Strangway, birthdate: unknown; death: March 1910.

Eva Fox-Strangway: who were you?  Not who you said you were: that much is clear.

Your story seems as extraordinary as any piece of fiction. The internet has only two records of your existence: both New York Times articles, the first of which details your arrest, and the second of which records (after an amusing article on how ladies’ Bible study groups will save us from the evils of suffrage) your death.

As far as I can tell, you were clever, well-educated, ambitious, and beautiful – or “personally attractive,” as the newspaper so delicately put it.  You also had a talent for lying.  You came to the United States in 1907; to acquaintances on your ocean liner, you introduced yourself as the niece of the Earl of Ilchester.

But you weren’t the niece of Lord Ilchester.

Who were you?

Your new acquaintances were charmed by you; by the time autumn rolled around, you were a staple in America’s most glittering social circles: Newport, New York, Philadelphia.  But by the summer, you must have realized that you’d overplayed your hand.  You disappeared, leaving behind you a string of creditors who wanted recompense—dressmakers, jewelers, the Savoy Hotel.

You reappeared a month later in Montreal.  You must have felt more daring than ever, for now you were not merely the niece of Earl Ilchester, you were his countess.  You stayed at Place Viger Hotel.  They caught on quicker this time.  They seized your trunks for collateral.  You fled to Toronto, where you were caught and arrested at the end of August.

How did you get out of custody so quickly?  Did you work some magic on the lawmen?  For a year later, in autumn 1908, you were back in New York, where you now introduced yourself as Helen Drummond.

Why did you go back to New York?  With such talents of deception, I expect you could have moved to a new city and started your game from scratch.  Instead, you chose to go back.  Was there someone in New York whom you’d decided you couldn’t leave behind?

And why, of all things, did you choose to work as a journalist – side by side with someone who had interviewed you when you were Eva Fox-Strangway? You liked living on the edge; that much is clear. And for a time, you succeeded.  Somehow, the journalist didn’t recognize you.

And so you took bigger risks.  (Why?  What was driving you?)  You went to the very police station where your photograph was hanging in the Rogues’ Gallery, to ask questions related to your new job as a journalist.  You became a public figure, briefly.  You claimed to have known the President, and he never contradicted you.  You gave speeches about women’s right to vote.  You interviewed U.S. senators and society leaders.  You had your articles published in London newspapers.  (Was that where you were really from?  Were you amused at the idea of former acquaintances from the homeland—former lovers, your mother, your brother or sister—reading your words, all unaware of the success you’d found under your new name?)

But your end was nearing, although you didn’t know it.  An acquaintance spotted you and outed you to one of your fellow journalists, who scented a story.  (Was his ardent pursuit of the truth motivated, perhaps, by his envy of your sudden rise to journalistic fame?)  He confronted you.  Asked you if you knew one Eva Fox-Strangway. You bluffed your way through it—successfully, you must have thought.

This was when you should have run.  It seems you had the chance.  But instead you stuck around (who or what was holding you there?  Why was it so important for you to be in New York?), trading on the new friendships you’d made, hoping you could secure a loan and keep your new life going.

On March 3, 1910, they came to arrest you.

You drank poison.  It didn’t kill you immediately.

They shipped you off to Bellevue Hospital for treatment.  They held a trial while you lay unconscious.

You were sentenced to twelve months imprisonment.

On March 9, you died of the poison you’d drunk.

Eva, if I put you into a romance novel, I would knock that poison from your hand.  I would give you a history that illuminated why deception seemed to be the only choice remaining to you.  I would give you a mother who anxiously hunted through newspapers for the articles you published – or a brother who was searching for you tirelessly.  I would give you a hero who appreciated the extraordinary nature of your talents, and who helped you turn them to something other than petty thievery.  I would give you a happy ending.

There’s only one thing I wouldn’t do: I would never, ever strip of you of your incredible nerve.

That journalist who asked you about the criminal, Eva Fox-Strangway?

“I’m very sorry,” you told him, “but I can’t help you in this.  You see, I haven’t been in the habit of associating with swindlers of any kind, international or otherwise.”

Such incredible steel.  From such steel are heroines born.

I just received the audio CDs for DELICIOUS in the mail yesterday. Now I feel like a rock star, or at least like Diane Settlefield, whose book The Thirteenth Tale, was the last book I listened to on audio. The narrator is Virginia Leishman, who also narrated Possession by A. S. Byatt for Recorded Books. Boy, does she make me sound like Masterpiece Theater. And it’s got a great cover. (My camera is broken. I’ll see if I can’t take a picture of it with someone else’s camera.) I’m wondering if I should do a giveaway. This would be the perfect romance conversion item, cuz your quarry wouldn’t even have any idea s/he was listening to romance, until it’s too late of course.

I’m running a contest on my website, giving away an autographed copy of Shana Abé‘s Smoke Thief, the first book in her Drakon series, in honor of her upcoming new release, Treasure Keeper. I’ll interview Shana Abe and give away Treasure Keeper on my e-newsletter on the day of her release, March 24. I’ll also be posting the interview here. There is an absolutely hilarious story which I’d never read anywhere else on how she came to write about those dragons. Stay tuned.

If you haven’t read GQ‘s feature on Robert Pattinson (ya know, the guy who plays Edward Cullen in the Twilight movie), you are missing the year’s best comedy. I was rolling in the aisles. It is the most hysterically funny feature article I’ve read in a long, long time. The thing is, you have this clueless dude who comes into this mania completely blind. He is the anti-Edward, a beta male (a child, really), he doesn’t smell good, he’s insecure, completely flummoxed, and cannot stop talking earnestly and semi-coherently. I felt like making him tea, knitting him a pair of socks (I don’t know how to knit), and maybe getting a girlfriend to have pity sex with him just to tell him it’s alright. He’s a nice kid. I hope he comes out of this okay.

The only movie I want to see right now, The Young Victoria, is, alas, not yet playing in the U.S. I usually don’t go for costume dramas–surprising I guess, given I write costume dramas–except for Pride and Prejudice. But this one, I’m dying to see, cuz they’ve captured Victoria and Albert as real people, young, passionate, flawed–and hot, omg hot.

And last, but not least, I finally have a proposal accepted. Change of plans. It won’t be THE IDEAL GENTLEMAN, for now. But a new one, THE PERFECT DECEPTION. When I’m further along in the writing I will make a page for it and post excerpt. For now, I’m still grappling with elements of the story. Suffice to say, it was inspired by Meredith Duran’s upcoming book Written on Your Skin. Go read an excerpt. She is going to be one of the greats in our genre.