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.

The Lady Risks All Interview On Sale September 25, 2012

Why write a story about London's gambling king?

It was more a case of: Why not? I like to try different flavors occasionally, as I did with Eliza and Jeremy in In Pursuit of Eliza Cynster, and I've always intended to come back at some point to Roscoe, but I had to wait for the right moment. Having just finished the over-the-top The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae, I needed something to cleanse my writing palate, as it were, before I leap into the next two Cynster novels. It was a refreshing break writing about two people who definitely fall into the "Stephanie Laurens' World" but who have somewhat different problems and challenges to face.

How did the character of Neville Roscoe come about?

Neville Roscoe first walked onto my stage in The Edge of Desire. The scene is midway or so through the novel, and then he reappears toward the end. He also appears several story-years later toward the end of The Reckless Bride. From his first appearance, Roscoe was a fully-formed character and there were clearly several intriguing questions arising simply from that first appearance - he was London's gambling king, but his appearance suggested a noble background - so who on earth was he, and how did he come to be, of all things, London's gambling king? And why? Most importantly, why? Readers have been asking for Roscoe's story consistently over the years, and as I always knew the answers to the above questions, it was fun to let them come rolling out in his story.

You've described Roscoe as an "inverted Batman." Why?

This didn't occur to me until I was in my editing and polishing phase, when I deconstruct the work, examine the nuts and bolts, and then put it back together again. In that phase, I search for themes and resonances that have worked their way into the story during the writing without me actually being aware of it. That was when I noticed the "inverted Batman" resemblance. Consider -Bruce Wayne lives his public life as a wealthy socialite and in secret converts to Batman, a defender of the weak and powerless and a rescuer of those in distress. Roscoe is the Batman-equivalent, and he's that openly and most of the time. His normal and publicly visible life casts him as a de facto defender of the weak and powerless, and a rescuer of those in distress, but his secret identity is that of a wealthy socialite. I am sometimes quite surprised by what my story-brain comes up with!

Neither Roscoe nor the lady in question, Miranda, are the sterotypical Stephanie Laurens' hero or heroine, yet this book still falls very much within the Stephanie Laurens' World. How do you create characters that are different on the one hand, yet the same on the other?

Both Roscoe and Miranda contain the same critical character elements that typify my heros and heroines, namely the hero is a warrior, in a different disguise but still clearly a warrior, and the heroine is a strong woman - she has intrinsic inner strength. The different nuance in this book lies in where both hero and heroine start their journeys. Roscoe, although knowing himself a warrior, believes that the sacrifices he's willingly made for others puts him beyond the reach of love. This has resonance with soldiers returning from war who have seen too much, or are in some other way "damaged" in their own eyes to the point of believeing they are no longer eligible candidates for a woman to love and marry. Miranda, on the other hand, has been in a familial situation that has suppressed her personal development to the point that she wakes up at 29 and discovers she doesn't know what she wants from her life, let alone how to get it. Most importantly, she knows very little about herself and her own abilities - her story is very much one of self-discovery.

The heroine, Miranda, finds herself searching for a purpose in life - do you see her journey as resonating with today's readers?

Absolutely. In some ways, being able to create a heroine in 1823, who at 29 is forced by circumstances to go forth from a sheltered and reclusive home in which very rigid strictures were imposed on her, and face the challenge of defining what she wants her life to be like, and then going out and making it so, allows me to focus on the issue that all modern women have to face sometime in their twenties. In particular, women who have spent most of their twenties absorbed with their career will wake up one morning to realize - just like Miranda - that they are 29 and have no clear idea of what they truly want of life. This is, to me, one of the primary reasons for writing romances set in historical times - they allow the author to strip away all the extraneous interference (internet, cell phones, phones at all! - in many ways the rest of the world) to focus on the personal, emotional internal struggle.