One of the most fascinating things about becoming a published author is that as the years pass you become friends with other published authors. And then you’re there from the frustrated beginnings of a new book to its triumphant arrival on the New York Times list — which is where Lisa’s new book is as I write this piece — at NUMBER NINE. Hurrah!The truth is that I feel as if I knew Scandal in Spring before it even hit the stores, because it was a tough one. Some books sing from your fingers onto your PC. I’m writing the second book in the Desperate Duchesses series, and although I’m sure I’ll regret saying this later, at the moment it’s behaving itself. The characters are lining up like little tin soldiers, creating huge and irreconcilable conflicts which even I am not sure how they will surmount. In short: I get the feeling I’m not having to do much. I created some wickedly splendid people and they’re doing the hard work themselves.

Well, sometimes things don’t work out like that. I think it’s particularly true with series. When you begin a series, you might have a particular idea about who a certain character will fall in love with — and they don’t do it! Help! Terror! Panic!

Now what I recall from the early days of Lisa writing this book was that a certain gorgeous gypsy named Cam was busy bowing himself out of the scene. How dare he, you might ask? Well, they do. Sometimes a character just sits up and says: That’s not the girl for me. She’s too much like me. Or: she’s too crazy. Or: you know I really want to marry someone like my mother! In fact, some characters just make themselves unmarriageable, at least at that moment (course, it depends on what his mother was like *g*). The Earl of Mayne was a very tough man to marry off, let me tell you.

You probably already know what I found out while Lisa was writing: Cam was not agreeable. Cam did not want to marry Daisy. Daisy probably would have gone along with it (after that kiss? How could she not!) but it wouldn’t have been good for her.

So… after much gnashing of teeth, Lisa started over. And over. And over. Books can be like this — and you know what? After false starts, they just take off and turn into pure gold, which this book definitely is. I gulped it in one sitting, and laughed out loud several times.

The real question in my mind was how could Matthew live up to Cam? But Lisa aced that, in my opinion. It’s the hardest thing in the world to create a man in love. I say this because… hey… it’s not that my heroes don’t fall in love, but in their manly man way, they have trouble bringing it up to the front of their mind. Think of Your Wicked Ways for a man who loved deeply but just couldn’t get his mind around that fact.

Compared to Cam, Matthew is a man, not a boy: a man who knows exactly what he wants and exactly who he loves. I found myself sighing in the end because the ending reminded me of one of Joanna Lindsey’s novels: that deep, to-die-for sense that this hero is in love forever, and he will never stop telling her so.

I’m pulling this from the middle of the book (pg 209) — not the end, the middle — and it’s Matthew’s point-of-view:

Love was supposed to be a giddy, happy emotion. Like the silly verses written on Valentine cards and decorated with feathers and paint and lace. This wasn’t at all like that. This was a gnawing, feverish, bleak feeling…an addiction that could not be quenched.

This was pure reckless need. And he was not a reckless man.

Sigh.