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.

Back to Top

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.

Back to Top

I love the extra chapters in your Readers’ Pages. Will you write any extra chapters for your older books?

Not for most of them, but I have found a couple of deleted chapters that I might put up in the next few months. And of course I'll write an extra chapter for each of my new books! If you check the website Bulletin Board in the first month after a given book comes out, you'll see a topic asking you to suggest what should happen in the extra chapter. Would you like to see a heroine tell her husband that she's pregnant? Would you like to see the hero and heroine five years in the future? Once we have enough suggestions, we'll post a poll. I'll write the winning chapter and it will go up in my Readers' Pages a month later. Enjoy!

Back to Top

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.

Back to Top

Do you have a list of all your books I could take to the bookstore with me?

You can find a printable book list right here. You can also order each novel through an on-line bookstore by clicking on the novel cover under Bookshelf.

Back to Top

I read Duchess in Love and 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.

Back to Top

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.

Back to Top

I just finished Taming of the Duke and I can’t figure out when Imogen realized that Rafe was masquerading as his brother. Help, please!

I planted clues as to when Imogen discovered Rafe’s deception – but I fell into a novelist’s trap: it was so clear to me that I wasn’t clear enough with readers! Not to worry: I’ve written another chapter in which Imogen and Rafe talk through exactly when she found out his deception – and how. It’s posted in the Readers’ Pages, here. And if you’re interested, I also wrote a narrative explaining all the clues I planted, here.

Back to Top

What are some of your favorite books/writers?

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.

Back to Top

Are you really married to a knight?

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.

Back to Top

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.

Back to Top

How did you get started writing romance?

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! If you are a would-be writer, the Readers’ Pages includes a few articles that might interest you – on my first year as a romance writer, for example, and on the art of romance promotion.

Back to Top

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.

Back to Top

Where do you get the ideas for your covers?

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 Ways was too green, for example, but that was my first New York Times bestseller!

Back to Top

Will you ever visit my town?

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.

Back to Top

How do I get published by your publisher (Avon)?

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!

Back to Top

WHERE WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO NEXT?

Read an excerpt from the Desperate Duchesses series.

Try an excerpt from one of Eloisa's other series.

Read some of Eloisa's Extra Chapters in the Readers Pages.

See what's coming next from Eloisa.