Why isn't there a chess game in A Duke of Her Own? I was looking forward to more chess-in-bed!
The reason there's no chess in the book has to do with Villiers's own development: He started out the series completely obsessed by chess, and using the game as a substitute for intimacy and sex (thus the chess games with Jemma). He fell in love with Jemma through chess; we could even say because of her chess ability. Therefore, it was important that in the process of the books he move away from that substitution of chess for life, and toward an understanding of how important intimacy and love is. He got a fever and nearly died; he had a break from playing; and then there's the signal game with Jemma when he doesn't even care if he wins (she can't believe it). That's the turning point for Villiers: when he's more absorbed in his children than playing a chess game. That's why I couldn't put a chess/sex game in his own novel: because he had to fall in love with Eleanor without a whiff of chess around. At the end I made it clear that she could play, just so they could have fun in the future... but their relationship had nothing to do with that sort of winning & losing.
What happens to the orphans in A Duke of Her Own? Who fed them and took care of them after Eleanor and Leo left the orphanage?
I spread little updates about the orphans throughout the scenes following the orphanage chapter.
“How are the orphans doing now?” Villiers asked, breaking into the cool little silence that followed Lisette’s speech…
“Oh, very well!” Lisette replied. “The baker’s wife from the village has moved in temporarily. The committee is going to hire a new director."
By the treasure hunt, the orphans are already much happier (and better fed), and the ladies’ orphanage committee has gathered:
The lawn was already dotted with the white gowns of the orphanage ladies, their lacy parasols making them look like daisies, viewed from above. The orphans in their blue pinafores were darting and running about and Eleanor didn’t think it was her imagination that they already looked heartier.
Finally, I wanted to remove the orphanage from Lisette's neighborhood altogether, so later Eleanor is found writing a letter:
Eleanor looked up from a note she was writing to Lisette, commiserating over the fact the orphanage was being moved to another county entirely, when Villiers entered the room and closed the door behind him.
I assure you that the orphans were very well cared for, and that Eleanor and Leo never forgot about them. Indeed, they watched over that particular set of orphans throughout their lives, because without those orphans they would never have found the twins, nor—arguably—each other..
Have you ever thought of writing a historical romance set in another period, say in the present or medieval period? What about pirates or Vikings? And do you ever think of writing a novel that’s not a romance at all?
It takes an enormous amount of research to write in a given historical period; even moving from the Regency to the Georgian period involved my reading books on everything from clothing to food – and those periods are basically next door to each other. So I probably won’t venture into another era in the near future. I did try a contemporary romance once, but it was a disaster – my baseball players sounded like Regency dukes, and if you’ve ever watched a press conference, you know just how far in left field I was! I do toy with the idea of writing an historical novel that doesn’t fall into the romance category, but unless a plot grabs me, I’ll stay right where I am: I love writing (and reading) romance.
Will you write a novel for Lisette, Tobias, Louise, Gideon, or (fill in a character you loved)?
I keep a list of characters whom I would like to revisit some day, either in a novel or in a short story. But the truth is that by the time the last book in a given series hits the shelves, I’ve leapt on to a new novel, and my imagination is taken up with a new world. What’s more, that world is likely as populous as my others – meaning that I can’t arrange for everyone to have a happy match. If I ever return to the Desperate Duchesses series, it would likely be to create a series around Villiers’s children. It would be fun to see how the ton handled that particular group of rather wild, beautiful, and illegitimate youngsters, grow into adults.
Do you have a list of all the characters in your books? I noticed a couple of characters with the same names in different books.
I don't keep a list, and that (unfortunately) has resulted in a few characters with the same or similar names among my various novels. Of course, some of those characters actually are the same people. The Earl of Mayne, for instance, appears in five books. Sometimes I bring minor characters back into a different novel if it works for them in terms of the novels' time-lines. My next series is set in the Georgian period, which was before the Regency, so one thing I'm doing for fun is bringing in some minor characters who are ancestors of my Regency characters. All kinds of insider information about characters can be found in my handy Connected Books section on my Bookshelf page.
Do you have a list of all your books I could take
to the bookstore with me?
You
can find a Printer-Friendly book list right here.
You can also order each novel through an on-line bookstore
by clicking on the novel cover under Bookshelf.
I
read Duchess in Loveand fell in love
with Esme. Which book has the rest of her story?
Your next book, Fool for Love, is
about someone called Henrietta.
Believe
me, I fell in love with Esme too! Esme's
story goes through the entire Duchess series,
from Duchess in Love, to Fool for Love, to A
Wild Pursuit, and finally Your Wicked Ways. I
guess there's a part of me that would like to write
books as long as Dickens's long, baggy novels; spreading
her story through several books gave me the chance
to write a complex tale that covered a few years.
Peter Dewland in the Pleasures series did
not have any wish to marry, but I've never really
understood why, even though his brother Quill did.
Is there a specific reason? Will you write a book
about him someday?
I won't write a book about Quill's brother, because
Peter is gay. There's one moment when Peter says he'll
never get married, in Chapter Ten of Enchanting
Pleasures, and Quill understands something "he
had certainly known, without thinking, all along." That
understanding is that his brother is fundamentally
uninterested in sleeping with women, although Peter
does love to be friends with women. I picture him
as someone unlikely to have relationships with people
of either sex, although his fundamental orientation
(as we understand it today) would be toward another
male. For him, the great pleasure in life comes from
being exquisitely dressed and having charming friendships,
not from deep sexual passion such as Quill and Gabby
will share.
I heard you have extra chapters and free novellas on this site. Where are they?
I do have extra chapters and free novellas for you—but they've been taken off the site for a short while so they can be revamped and reformatted and rereleased better than ever.
I
read all the time, so I literally have too
many favorite books to list! I made up a special page for Authors
I Love and every month I write a piece in Books
to Love about
a terrific book I've read lately. Be sure to check out the Books
to Love Archives-
there are so many great stories waiting for you there.
When I was a
child, I kept a boxed set of C.S. Lewis's Narnia series
right by the door to my bedroom. I had marked
on the top: Take first in case of fire .
I guess this was a note to my parents: leave
your daughter and take the books? It certainly
shows my passionate commitment to reading!
Another favorite book was I
Captured the Castle, by Dodi Smith.
It's a love story about an eccentric family
of writers, and since my father is a poet,
I identified with the heroine. The only problem
was that I grew up on a farm, and Dodi's
heroine was living in a castle. Plus, very
handsome, rich men moved next door to her,
and that never happened to me.
Yup.
I met my husband, Alessandro, on a blind
date when we were both graduate students
at Yale University. He's from Florence, Italy,
and he's a cavaliere , which means
knight in Italian. Unfortunately, he doesn't
have a horse or a suit of armor.
How do you manage being a mother, and a bestselling
author, and a professor?
Sometimes I wonder about that myself! The truth is
that my husband is incredibly supportive. I can't
say that writing books is pure joy - against all logical
explanation, each book seems to be harder to write - but
writing them is enormously pleasurable. Teaching Shakespeare
gives me the same joy. And motherhood, when it doesn't
involve getting people to school on time, is just
as marvelous. So though I get tired sometimes, I feel
that I am tremendously lucky.
Like many things in life, my start as a romance writer sprang from a combination of love and money. I had a love of romance – and I needed money. At the point at which I started writing, my husband and I were both badly paid assistant professors. And the worst of it was that I had big student loans (with degrees from Harvard, Oxford & Yale…you can imagine). I wanted a second child, but my husband disagreed. “We can’t afford a second child,” he told me over and over. I wrote Potent Pleasures in a desperate bid to grow my family. When I finished the manuscript, I sent a letter describing my book (including its hero, who had annulled his first marriage on the grounds of impotence) to five literary agents, attaching a letter. Four of them winged back to me with notes like “This will never sell” scrawled on the front. The fifth asked for the whole manuscript. A few months later, a bidding war among publishers erupted. The final offer was just over my student loans; our daughter was born around nine months later. After that, of course, the story becomes more complicated. I had to write three romances to earn that advance. By the end of three romances, I was so in love with writing that I just kept going… but to my husband’s great relief, I didn’t have a child per book!
Eloisa was featured in the Wall Street Journal with "The Hidden Life of a Romance Writer." Watch Eloisa's lovely video about her "double" life below. Read the full Wall Street Journal article here»
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Julia and I loved the community that came together on our Bulletin Board, but as Facebook has become increasingly dominant, we felt that the Bulletin Board had run its course. That said, become my fan on Facebook to continue the conversation!
Do
you have any tips so that I can get started
writing my own book?
If
you're thinking of writing a romance, you should
join the Romance
Writers of America. They have loads and
loads of local chapters. My local chapter is
only a half hour drive away from me, and they
meet once a month. You can go a few times for
free and see if you like it. Then find a critique
partner through your chapter--someone who is
also starting to write, or even a critique
group. Critique partners help enormously with
figuring out the ins and outs of writing fiction.
Second bit of advice:
On the days when you have a bit of time,
sit down and say to yourself, "I'm going
to write two pages, no matter how terrible
they are." Nora
Roberts says that she can work with a
page of bad prose, but she can't do anything
with a blank page -- and she's right.
In
truth, I don't have anything to do with my
cover designs. Sometimes I love them, and
sometimes I'm less enthusiastic. Publishing
companies spend a lot of time thinking and
designing covers; they're the experts. Sometimes
when I've thought a cover would be a total
failure, it was a huge success - I thought
that Your
Wicked Wayswas too green, for example,
but that was my first New York Times bestseller!
I
wish I could do more book tours, but at the
moment I'm raising small children, and being
a professor, plus writing a book or two a year,
and I just don't have time to do many book
signings. If you sign
up as an Eloisa Reader, I'll send you an
email if I'm ever doing a booksigning in your
state.
I
really think that Avon is a fabulous publisher of historical fiction – which
makes it pretty hard to get a book accepted there. You can't do it without
a literary agent; Avon doesn’t take novels from the slush pile. So
you need to find an agent. My first suggestion is that you join the Romance
Writers of America. They have monthly meetings and a monthly magazine with
loads of great information about agents and publishers -- they do interviews
with agents almost every month. Another thing you could do is watch out for
a contest in which the final judge is an Avon editor. I know several people
who’ve
got published by winning contests. Good luck!
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