Our guest author, Caroline Linden, is joining us today to answer a few questions.  Read on and add yours to the Comments.  

 

Most important question… When are you going to write a western? 🙂

Starts with ‘n,’ rhymes with ‘ever.’ No matter how many hot, semi-naked cowboy pictures Laura Drewry sends me.

See, in my western, the big city girl would run off to the primitive mining town, take one look around and NOT take a job in the local saloon, but would hop right on the first train to Boston and never look back. She’d give up cowboys and find a nice hot lawyer instead. Like it?

When you finished What a Woman Needs did it enter your mind at all that you would be writing David’s story? If you did, did his story change from what you first thought it would be?

(blushes) No, not once. This might disqualify me from being a Good Romance Writer, but I had no eye on a sequel when I wrote What A Gentleman Wants. I was busy thinking about secondary characters from What A Woman Needs (my first book) and thought I would tidy up the half-written book about the Duke of Ware. I would still like to do that, actually…someday…

But then…somehow…I did write David’s story, and then even their younger sister Celia’s book (coming out next June). And yes, I was cursing myself every moment of both of those books for not thinking ahead and giving myself more outs and options with their characters.

You now have four books under your belt (six including the first two you didn’t shop).  What was your hardest book to write, out of the published ones of course?

Definitely the last one, about Celia. The trouble with her was that she was too young and too rich and too spoiled. I found myself thinking (to paraphrase Chris Rock), “Man, something needs to happen to this girl before she’ll have a story to tell.” And by ‘something’ I mean I considered kidnapping by pirates, and being lost alone in Russia, and all sorts of off-the-wall stuff. One of my friends suggested having her confined to a mental institution. That was a little too much for me to wrap my own mind around, so I went with good old-fashioned heartbreak. That was hard to do to her, because she’s so nice.

You often focus your books on characters who are ‘older’ Regency-wise. Is that something you do on purpose or just happened?

At first it just happened, and then it was on purpose. I found that the things I wanted my characters to do weren’t believable if the characters were sheltered, young, naïve, etc. And by this, of course I mean I wanted heroines who had smart mouths and spines of steel. I wanted a heroine who was the hero’s equal in every way, or whose strengths balanced his so that overall they were equals. Well, that meant she had to go out and do something, live life a little, experience some pain and sorrow and regret. I think the bad choices characters make shape them even more than the good choices, and the darker sides of their nature are usually more interesting to me than the nobler sides.

Charlotte (the heroine of What A Woman Needs) is almost the female mirror image of David Reece—she had a wild youth, but eventually she wanted to clean up her life and start fresh, and like David she found it incredibly difficult and painful. I really didn’t want it to be easy for either of them to get over their pasts, because it’s hard to do—but that process alone made them both stronger.

Vivian (the heroine of What A Rogue Desires) had a very hard upbringing and was used to looking after not only herself but after her younger brother, too. Because of her hard knock life, she was able to overlook David’s faults, because she knew there were so many worse things men could do, and at the same time she taught David a thing or two about how good he really had it. And most importantly, because she was used to standing up for herself—and knowing no one else would step in and do it for her—she didn’t let David run all over her. I really love the heroines who can give as good as they get and never let the hero think too much of himself.

What are Stuart and Charlotte up too?

They’re having a good time. They go off to Stuart’s run-down wreck of a manor and spend a few years fixing it up, camping out like any couple doing home improvement and grossing Susan out by getting busy at inopportune moments. Both Stuart and Charlotte have sharp senses of humor, so they provoke each other a lot and get into pseudo-fights that end up as not-fights-at-all. But mostly they’re just soaking in the contentment of having each other and not being alone anymore. If I ever get back to that book about Stuart’s friend, the Duke of Ware, maybe they’ll drop in.

You recently posted a free story on your website, great idea I think. How do you feel that went over with readers? Will you do it again?

Thanks! I got a lot of really positive response to that, and will definitely do it again. Early next spring, there will be another one bridging the gap between What A Rogue Desires and my next book, which will be titled A Rake’s Guide to Seduction. [The first chapter is in the back of What A Rogue Desires!] I haven’t written all of it yet, though, so if anyone has anything they particularly wanted to know more about after reading What A Rogue Desires, email me!

How much sex is too much sex? Or what do you think of the Erotic Romance Explosion? Here to stay or coming and going? (so to speak)

Um…what are we talking about here? You mean in books? OK. I think it depends on the story, and the characters, and the author. Some authors can wring so much feeling out of a shared glance, it almost spoils it to share more. Some authors write love scenes so well the pages almost burst into flame (and those are usually the pages that wear out first, when you lend the book around to friends). Personally, when I am in the middle of writing a book, I write out all the scenes that I think will add to the story. There’s really only one love scene in What A Gentleman Wants (although I admit it is quite long). That felt like enough for those characters, both of whom were pretty restrained people. On the other hand, some of my books have…er…noticeably more than one love scene.

There’s pretty clearly a market for the erotic books, and I expect it’s here to stay. No doubt it will go through the same ups and downs other subgenres go through after their initial growth burst, but it’s established itself pretty strongly as a market.

You have said Marcus is your homage to Mr. Darcy.  Are you a fan of Jane Austen’s Darcy or just Colin Firth? Assuming it is Austen, what do you think of the whole Becoming Jane thing and ‘What If-ing’ historical figures?

Can’t I have both? I have always loved Mr. Darcy—he’s so honorable and responsible in how he handles Lydia’s disastrous elopement and yet doesn’t want the Bennetts to know. He’s so ripe for a smackdown after the way he insults Lizzy early in the book. He’s so humble in the way he admits he was wrong about Jane and Mr. Bingley. Sigh. He seems so REAL to me, so human, and so, so heroic.

And Colin Firth just looks too damn fine in that waistcoat and tight breeches and tall leather boots. No other Darcy approaches him.

I HAVE NOT SEEN BECOMING JANE! I am a virtual prisoner in my house until school starts! Well, someone told me it’s like Shakespeare in Love but for Jane Austen, and Shakespeare in Love is my favorite movie evah. Not just because Joseph Fiennes is mega hot, even in those puffy Elizabethan bloomers. I lurve Joseph Fiennes… (where was I?)

I have no problem with dramatizations of famous people’s lives. All I ask for is a good story, and if it could plausibly be true that’s kinda cool, too. Obviously everyone knows Jane Austen died unmarried, but why couldn’t she have had a great love affair that failed? Persuasion is my favorite of her novels, and part of me SO wants to believe that Anne Elliot was Jane herself.

Thanks, Caroline!  And thanks for hanging around to respond to the comments!