As for my Notorious series, The Prince of Pleasure, about Dare North, Marquess of Wolverton, is Notorious Book 5 and the final one for now. But I expect someday I’ll return to wrap up a few fascinating heroes who caught my attention when I was writing earlier books.
Q: Why Paradise? What does the series title signify?
NJ: My new series is called Paradise because of the enchanting island I’ve created. With its azure seas and sun-splashed slopes, the Isle of Cyrene is a haven of beauty that seems to have an uncanny ability to seduce the senses. According to Greek mythology, Cyrene was a water nymph and princess who relished the hunt and enjoyed wrestling lions. When Apollo saw her, he instantly fell in love, but just as quickly, she spurned him. I merely took the legend one step further—and to a happier ending. Apollo cast a spell over a secluded isle to create a lovers’ paradise and kept Cyrene captive there until she came to love him in return. Thus my Isle of Cyrene.
Q: Who are the Guardians of the Sword? Will they appear in each book of the new series? Is there going to be a magical component to their trust and their mission?
NJ: By design, there won’t be anything magical or paranormal about my Paradise series, but I’ve drawn from Arthurian legend to create my island’s history. Many centuries ago a group of outcasts (King Arthur’s defeated knights) settled the island and started an order devoted to an epic mission—fighting evil and tyranny across Europe. The order nearly died out during the Dark Ages, but in the past century, their noble purpose was revived to meet the grave challenges spawned by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. The Guardians of the Sword are bound by honor to champion justice and defend right with might.
And yes, The Guardians of the Sword do appear in every book of my new Paradise series. Each Paradise book will be about a specific Guardian—about their challenges and adventures and, most important, their loves.
Q: Tell us about your heroine, Caro Evers. Despite her many accomplishments, and her beauty, she has a hard time accepting that a man like Max could be genuinely interested in her.
NJ: Caro Evers is the unconventional daughter of one of Cyrene’s ruling families, and one of the few female members of the Guardians. Caro is both a healer and a warrior. For years she’s defied propriety by trying to study medicine in a time when genteel women weren’t allowed even to nurse men other than their immediate family members. Expected to take her father’s place in the order, Caro was raised more like a son than a daughter, and so she sees herself as lacking the feminine appeal that would attract most gentlemen. She’s had no room in her life for marriage or suitors…or love, either. That is, until Max Leighton unexpectedly comes to her golden Mediterranean island.
Q: Speaking of whom, Max is a veteran of the Peninsula Wars; I suppose in modern parlance, he would be considered to be suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome. NJ: Exactly! That’s a contemporary term, so I can’t use it in my story, but Max suffers the same psychological battle scars. After eight years of fighting Napoleon’s armies as a British cavalry officer, he’s sentenced himself to emotional exile.
In fact, I dedicated Master of Temptation to veterans of all our country’s wars. I can’t help but be aware of the toll that war takes on soldiers, since both my late father and my brother were career army officers. And I wanted to pay tribute to those brave men and women who have sacrificed so much for us.
The Peninsula Wars were particularly bloody. And remember, they had no modern medical techniques back then, not even any painkillers such as morphine. So Caro’s healing skills would have been prized. When Max briefly visits the enchanting island paradise, an unexpected night of passion with her provides comfort to his war-ravaged soul, but her effect is more emotional than physical. From then on, he thinks of Caro as his guardian angel, even though he doesn’t yet know about the secret society of Guardians.
Q: With a steamy sex scene between Max and Caro taking place within the first twenty pages, it’s obvious that you have written a “hot” book. What function does the hot sex serve in your stories? Is this the norm for the genre?
NJ: My books tend to be hotter than most, because I write what I love to read—spicy, emotional romances with strong, appealing characters, powerful conflict, sharp-edged wit, and riveting sexual tension.
By now my readers expect a certain level of sensuality from me, and I try hard to deliver. I often have a love scene in the first chapter or two, and usually one or more scenes that push the typical boundaries of romance. I want my love scenes to be erotic but not erotica. The difference? Erotica focuses primarily on sex, while romance is about love and relationships, of which sex is a very natural part. And since I’m a die-hard romantic at heart, I focus on the romance.
Q: How historically accurate is Master of Temptation? How much research do you do for your novels?
NJ: I pride myself on the accuracy of my historical research. I’ve literally spent months researching the different periods and settings for each book. But I am writing fiction. So my mythical legends, such as my island’s creation or the history of the Guardians, obviously stem from my imagination. But as long as the fictional elements in my books are within the realm of possibility—if they could have happened—then I’m satisfied. If so, then I’ve fulfilled a duty to my readers to provide them entertainment that sweeps them away to fascinating times and places.
Q: Sex scenes are notoriously difficult to write. In fact, every year the British magazine The Literary Review announces its Bad Sex Award, for the worst sex scene, and there is never any lack of entries! How do you avoid falling into the Bad Sex trap? What keeps your sex scenes so fresh and erotic?
NJ: When I’m asked how I do research for my love scenes (usually by non-romance-readers who expect a titillating answer), I reply, “You don’t have to kill someone to write a murder mystery. You just need a good imagination.” But actually, I do research of sorts by occasionally reading erotica, which a writer I admire once advised me to do.
Writing love scenes isn’t difficult for me. Trying to make them good, however, is darned hard! I want my stories to be spicy, so I purposely devise plots where sex and lovemaking are important to my hero and heroine’s relationship. Beyond that, I make certain each love scene has a clear purpose—a reason for existing. And I always strive to make each one integral to the story, so that it both impacts my characters in some definitive way and changes their relationship to some degree, moving it forward or backward. Other major challenges in writing love scenes, I’ve found, are keeping the sex appropriate to the times and to the characters, and making each scene different from all the others in the book and from others in my previous books.
And so that I’m not simply writing sex, during the actual writing process I focus on the emotion and sexual tension and growing relationship between the characters, not just the sex and sensuality. Lovemaking between two people may not be unique, but if I’ve done my job right, their relationship most assuredly is.
Q: What are you most proud of in Master of Temptation?
NJ: I think I’m most proud that I’ve created a historical romance that is emotional and exciting and sensual all at once. New York Times best-selling author Lisa Kleypas calls Master of Temptation “an erotic and emotional experience that boldly seizes you by the heart and never lets go. A novel to keep and to cherish.” I consider that high praise indeed.
Q: Going back to a previous answer, I assume that the next book in the Paradise series will concentrate on other characters than Max and Caro. Can you give us a brief preview?
NJ: By the end of Master of Temptation, Max and Caro find their happy ending, so they will only make brief appearances in future Paradise romances. For now I have five books planned in the series, with five entirely different pairs of heroes and heroines who meet their matches and find true love.
Book two, entitled Lord of Seduction, is about Christopher Thorne, a duke’s rebel son and charming bad boy who loves danger and excitement. Banished to Cyrene years ago for his outrage
ous behavior, Thorne willingly joined the secret order. Now his main goal is avoiding the marriage traps set for him by his father, who wants a grandson and heir. When a fellow Guardian is murdered in London, however, and Thorne goes undercover to investigate, he has to pretend a betrothal to a beautiful artist and unexpectedly gets ensnared by love.
Q: Have any of your books been optioned for TV or the movies? Is there anything currently in the works?
NJ: No film options so far. Romances are notoriously difficult to convert into movies, because so much of the magic in a romance is based on emotion and feeling, which is hard to convey without introspection. Plus historical films have fallen out of favor because they’re expensive to produce and don’t have a large following. But the success of Master and Commander, a men’s adventure/action film set during the Regency era starring Russell Crowe, may help stimulate appetites for my genre.
Q: What other upcoming projects can you tell us about?
NJ: My publisher, Ballantine Books, plans to reprint several of my older, hard-to-find novels. But for new projects, I’m focusing on my Paradise series. I’m having a delightful time creating my rakes and adventurers, and I hope my readers will be just as delighted.
Q: Your Web site, www.nicolejordanauthor.com, has been written up in magazines as being very reader-friendly. What special features do you have on your Web site?
NJ: The word about my Web site’s Pleasure Palace has certainly spread! On this section of my Web site, a madam interviews the heroes from my Notorious series—and soon, my Paradise romances—on how these rakes satisfy their ladies. Not R-rated, but certainly fun! And my Hall of Fantasies offers a taste of my heroes’ love lives from each of their books.
I also keep things lively with other features such as monthly contests with great prizes, monthly news updates, detailed descriptions of my previous novels, chapter excerpts, announcements about future books, and a Q&A page to answer questions that readers frequently ask me.
I love to hear from readers, so please stop by my Web site and sign my guestbook or jot me an e-mail. The URL again: www.nicolejordanauthor.com.
She shivered as he took the goblet from her and raised it in the air. “May I propose a toast, mistress? To our experiment.”
“Experiment?”
“In lovemaking.”
“I won’t make love to you.”
“Ah, but you must, my sweet. As I said, I have a very lusty nature, and I intend to make quite certain it is reciprocated in my bride.”
Sabrina felt her breath catch as Niall’s implied threat sent an intoxicating sense of peril scurrying across every nerve ending in her body.
“You’re not afraid of me, are you, sweeting?”
She was indeed alarmed by the overwhelming maleness of him, by his dark beauty and power, yet she refused to allow herself to be intimidated. “I am not afraid, sir.”
She raised her eyes to meet his fearlessly. He liked that.
The air between them crackled with challenge as their eyes clashed wordlessly.
Swallowing hard, she forced herself to gather her courage. “Very well…What must I do?”
“Perhaps you should start by kissing me….”
The Lover is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Ballantine Book
Published by The Random House Publishing Group
Copyright © 1997 by Anne Bushyhead
Excerpt from Master of Temptation copyright © 2004 by Anne Bushyhead
Author interview copyright © 2004 by Anne Bushyhead and The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in slightly different form by Avon Books, a division of HarperCollins Publishers in 1997.
Ballantine and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
www.ballantinebooks.com
eISBN-13: 978-0-345-49417-7
eISBN-10: 0-345-49417-2
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