The following interview is intended to give readers a greater insight into what motivates certain storytelling decisions, what goes into constructing a story, and what challenges I've faced along the way.

In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster Interview 27th September, 2011

Eliza is a subtly different sort of heroine to your usual type. Why is this?

Put simply, Eliza is the middle sister. Any middle sibling has different character traits to either the oldest or the youngest. So Eliza emerged as the sister who was less inclined to outdoor pursuits - who in her own words, enjoys embroidering! She plays the pianoforte and the harp and sings like an angel. She's quieter, but neither shy nor truly reserved. At the start of the story, in her eyes, and that of society, she is the quiet, softer, gentler sister-and she believes she's less adventurous, and, even if she never puts it into words, she believes she's somehow less capable than Heather or Angelica. What happens during the story challenges, tests, and ultimately rescripts that view. The physical journey of her kidnapping, rescue, and escape to safety parallels a personal journey of self-discovery as she is lifted out of her comfortable world and placed into another, more difficult and dangerous world, and faced with hurdle after hurdle which, together with the hero, she must overcome. More than any other heroine of mine, Eliza is a heroine who transforms. And love - falling in love, learning how to deal with that and fighting to hold onto it - plays a big part in her end result.

Jeremy is also a new play on the old archetype - what were the reasons for him being so?

Jeremy is a character I established long ago (The Lady Chosen) and have had simmering on my back burner ever since. I needed the right heroine, and the right sort of plot, to bring him to the boil, so to speak - to fully realize him as a hero. I had to have the right challenge. We first met him as a scholar; he is now a world-renown expert on hieroglyphics. His identity is firmly established as "scholar," not just in his mind but in that of all others. He is comfortable and his life appears full and rewarding, except...his emotional future looks empty and potentially bleak. At the start of the story, he has accepted that all is not perfect in his world, that he wants wife and family, as all those around him - warriors though they may be - have. But of course, being a scholar, his view of the wife he needs is of someone quiet, mild, and capable. But the thought has barely occurred when he is distracted by having to rescue Eliza. Only he can, and he accepts that he must. What Jeremy discovers through the chase, rescue, and escape, is that he is not just a scholar, but that he, too, possesses a "warrior" side. His interaction with Eliza evokes this warrior side, and through pursuing a relationship with her, he merges and embeds this until now dormant side of his personality into who he becomes. He, too, changes through the story, although in his case, it's more in the way of adding and integrating the missing piece of himself into his whole. And because he is not solely a "warrior" but a "scholar-warrior" and therefore potentially something more, this changes how he, at the end, approaches the question of acknowledging love - what he does is very definitely a new twist on the old archetype!

Were there any special challenges in plotting this book?

In writing the second work in a trilogy, there's always a balance to be struck between what can be revealed and what must be withheld for the third book. Book 1 is usually easy, because you have so much to set up and can race into the story. Book 3 - well, in this case, I knew most of what happens in the last book before I started writing the first. But Book 2 is often the hardest to pull off - in this case, I was very grateful I had two such strong and fascinating characters as hero and heroine to claim center stage…and in the background our mysterious laird and his motives are being more and more revealed. However, in this trilogy, there was an additional challenge - both book 1 and book 2 had to involve abduction, chase, rescue, and escape - in other words, a journey. In the first book, the "journey" was pretty evenly divided between chase, rescue and escape, and the escape wasn't under serious and immediate threat. In this second book, it needed to have a different feel - so book 2's journey is quick on abduction and chase, has more rescue, but is mostly about the escape - and that escape is under serious and constant threat. So book 1 and book 2, although moving through similar plot sequences, "read" very differently - the experience the reader gets from each book will be different and unique.

Most of the action in the trilogy occurs in Scotland, but each book thus far goes to different places - what led you to use the regions you do in the first two books?

The choice of routes for the kidnappers was largely dictated by what the laird, in the circumstances, would specify. In book 1, there was no reason not to go up the Great North Road at a pace that wouldn't attract attention. However, the laird wanted the kidnappers to bring Heather to Gretna Green - yes, there was a purpose behind Heather's kidnappers taking her there, and we'll learn what it was early in Book 3. Once Breckenridge rescued her, it was obvious that they would head to Richard and Catriona in the Vale of Casphairn as that was the closest place of safety. However, with Eliza's kidnapping, the laird would obviously specify a different route to avoid the Cynsters, and that landed Eliza in Edinburgh - a wonderfully romantic city - from where Jeremy rescues her. He and she then face the question how best to get south to Wolverstone Castle - their closest safe place - while avoiding the kidnappers and the laird, who come after them. The answer to that took us on a journey through the Scottish lowlands, an area I hadn't visited, either in real life or story life, previously. It was fascinating learning about the towns, hills, rivers and valleys. But to return to your question, in the first two books in this trilogy, the story itself - primarily the laird's motivations, and then how the girls and their rescuers respond - is what determined the regions through, and the routes by which, the characters travel.

Continuing the question above, where in Scotland will the third volume in the trilogy take us??

Aha - into the highlands! The majority of Book 3 is set on the laird's highland estate, his clan lands. As he terms it, glen, loch and castle - and we've already had a small glimpse of the castle in the Prologue of book 1.

Once again in this book we see a hero we've met before, in this instance when he was considerably younger, and in a book, The Lady Chosen, which was published a long time ago. Is it difficult to go back and pick up a character who you originally wrote a long time ago?

Not if he's been set up in the original book correctly. As mentioned above, Jeremy was, from the first, clearly a hero in waiting, with definite potential, but the question was how to develop it. The essential elements were there. I've done this - gone back to an earlier secondary character and developed him into a hero - a few times (Dillon Caxton - A Rogue's Proposal originally, and What Price Love? for his own story; Gerrard Debbington - A Rake's Vow and The Truth about Love; Charlie Morwellan - A Secret Love and The Taste of Innocence), and it's always a special challenge, but also very rewarding to see characters blossom from adolescence into full blown adulthood. I have a much deeper sense of their history, and I think that shows in the depth of the character in their own book. I think readers respond to this sort of storytelling, with characters the readers see as they mature - I know I enjoy writing such stories.

In the latter sections of this book, we revisit Wolverstone Castle, and a number of scenes take place there. Is it difficult to go back into an imaginary building and keep the internal structure and layout of the rooms consistent with what you've described before?

I have a very accurate visual memory (against that, I'm hopeless with anything people tell me). If I've read it, or seen it, I'll remember, and I have a very good memory for buildings and places, and roads, for instance. So for me to return in my mind to a place I've been before isn't hard. It almost as if I call up a video of the place in my mind, and I can walk through it, see the same tapestries on the walls, the same fireplace, the same stairs with their same carpet. I don't forget the spaces, or how they interconnect - how you get to the library from Minerva's sitting room, where the door to the battlements is - and I remember the furnishings and the atmosphere of rooms as well. Very useful in this profession!

The villains of this story seem to be evolving and changing - was this deliberate plotting, or did it come about as you wrote each story?

The notion of a villain who wasn't a villain - namely an honorable man forced by circumstance to act in a villainous way - was a key feature of the trilogy from its inception. The story of the laird and what he's up to and why provides the backbone of the trilogy, and culminates in the third book, when we learn all the answers. So that's one level of villain, but in addition there's the laird's hired henchmen in each book, who are villains in the customary sense. And there, too, we have progression as we move from book1 to book 2 - from Fletcher, Cobbins, and Martha in book 1 to the distinctly more dangerous Scrope, Taylor, and Genevieve in book 2. As for the laird, at the end of book 2 we are left with more questions than answers - which is what book 3 is all about.

This is the second and middle book in the trilogy. In terms of style, what can we look forward to in the third volume?

A rollicking adventure. Book 3 is the volume I've dubbed: Elizabeth Bennett rescues Errol Flynn in the Scottish highlands. Book 3 is Angelica's story, and as a heroine she is shaping up to be quite a handful, and as for her hero, he is so over the top, so very much larger than life; put the two together and the sparks will fly - which will be immense fun for us all. The six original Cynster cousins play cameo parts, and Lady Osbaldestone and Aunt Clara play small but crucial roles. I have a feeling Book 3 might well be the most humorous book I've ever written - there's certainly a lot of scope for repartee - but in terms of overall style and atmosphere, it will continue the trilogy theme of the high adventure, drama, and passion of the first 2 books, culminating in a romantic grand finale of epic proportions. Book 3 is definitely a case of "live large."