RomanceEverAfter
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People You Should Know A Conversation with Ross Howard, A Cure for Kirby, Meet Monica Davis and Geir Ness. The Beauty of Change Series Historical Romance Column and Book Reviewer: Kaye Hatfield NEW! Sam DeMarco Have you dreamed of starting your own business? Sam DeMarco, owner of Compliance Team, did and he tells us how he made his dream a reality! Photo Gallery Romance & You (Articles) Romantic Memoir
Quotes & Poetry Expand your quotes and poetic horizons by visiting our various Quotes & Poetry categories: Thought of the Week: Time for New Beginnings A series of 8 articles by Melissa Hamilton comprising a collection of principles that will allow you to make your vision for the future a reality. Read about the Amish, India, Philippines, Greece, & Rome.
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You can visit Nita at her web site www.midwestfiction.com/nitaabrams and read an excerpt from her two new releases A Question of Honor and The Exiles!
What do you find romantic? The unexpected, thoughtful gesture. Once a friend and I were washing dishes at my house after a huge party. The next morning, when I went to put away the dry dishes, I found a little gift box nestled in with the wine glasses. Helping me wash the dishes--that was friendship. Leaving me a necklace to find when I faced the rest of the mess myself the next morning--that was romance. Why do you like reading and writing romance? I like watching two people discover each other. That can happen in many different kinds of books, of course, but in romance the discovery is always a joyous one. You mention you enjoy historical fiction with "juicy political intrigue in the background." Why? The tension between public obligations and private loyalties has always fascinated me. My favorite plots involve situations where characters are trying to cope with the misbehavior of their own government. Nations make mistakes--and then real people have to pick up the pieces. Brothers find themselves on opposite sides in a civil war. A political alliance requires a marriage between a prince and princess who have never met each other. In romance, especially, I love seeing the "public" part of the plot (battles, treaties, etc.) send the "private" part of the plot in new directions. For historical romance writers, how does it benefit her to visit the places she incorporates into her stories? (London, Paris, Vienna, Scotland, etc.) How does it aid in creating the scenes and physical surroundings for the plot? Trips to Europe really do help my writing. They give me a backdrop I can remember when I'm sitting at my computer 4000 miles and 200 years away from my story. And sometimes I spot things that I wouldn't have known about, and put them in the book--like the slum where Elizabeth's uncle traps her towards the end of THE EXILES. All the details of that scene came from a walk I took in Vienna. That particular neighborhood is being gentrified now, but I got a vivid picture of how crowded and shabby it would have been then. Another big plus is that the trips are a way for my family to get involved in my writing. My thirteen-year old has turned out to be an ace note-taker in museums! What two characteristics did you want to incorporate into your hero, Captain Richard Drayton in A Question of Honor? What two characteristics did you want to incorporate into your heroine, Elizabeth in The Exiles? I have to confess that I had no control over Drayton. He wrote himself. At the end, when I looked back, I realized that he was not at all like the cool, competent hero I had vaguely pictured. He had a terrible temper, he was always jumping to conclusions without thinking things through, and he was far from being a "natural" at undercover military work. But he was honest--with himself, and other people. And he had the courage to acknowledge his own mistakes and try to set things right. With Elizabeth, I wanted to take someone who had been fairly sheltered and let her discover her own strengths--her resourcefulness and her independence. Maintaining her disguise as a boy is an odd experience for her. On the one hand, she has far more freedom as a boy than she did as genteel young lady; on the other hand, she is treated as a child rather than an adult. She finds she likes the freedom--but she also wants respect. And she forces the other characters to give it to her. Nita, you are a newly published author. Tell us about your two new releases, A Question of Honor and The Exiles. These are the first two books in a series about an Anglo-Jewish family serving as couriers during the Napoleonic wars. In A QUESTION OF HONOR (Zebra, March 2002) the daughter, Rachel, finds herself at odds with a British intelligence officer, Richard Drayton, who suspects she is selling secrets to the French--although that doesn't stop him from asking her to marry him. In THE EXILES (Zebra, June 2002) Drayton's colleague Southey is ordered to Vienna, where he and Rachel's brother James become pawns in a dangerous game of diplomatic intrigue. Naturally, there's romantic intrigue as well: a destitute English boy Southey takes in off the street turns out to be my heroine Elizabeth, and James falls hard for a beautiful Austrian countess. What are your three favorite bookmarks (web-sites)? I take it we're excluding the places I spend all my money, like HardtoFindBooks? The Regency Page: http://locutus.ucr.edu/~cathy/reg.html (some listed links now dated) The Victoria and Albert Museum, London: (check out the current special exhibit, tiaras!) and last but not least: warning: if you do not have access to reruns of the TV show, this website may create an insatiable craving which can only be satisfied by ordering very expensive videos. Now that I think about it, this may be where I got the idea that all my heroes had to be involved in military reconnaissance.
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