2. What particular challenges come with writing historical fiction?

If you don’t want to answer it, that’s totally cool. I just thought you might have accidentally overlooked it.

1. What does your writing process look like, and were you (like me) concerned when you found out you were supposed to have such a beast and be able to describe how its appearance?

2. Are you one of those people who knew they’d be a novelist from the time you first held a crayon, or did you slike in by accident, on a dare perhaps?

3. How significant a motivator was the chance to have a real live nom de plume of your own in your perseverance when shopping around your MS? And do you realize that your choice of ‘Milan’ obligates you to set a story in Italy? (Not really but I love Italian settings)

A. Mr. Milan.

Yes! If I’m at home, I will listen to a variety of music without words–classical, jazz, what-have-you. But I also work well in coffee shops with lots of ambient noise.

2) You starting writing (and sold??) while single. This seems to be outside the norm for many writers. Do you think this helped you in some ways?

No, actually, I didn’t. I started writing (and sold) while I was engaged. That may be single for tax purposes, but it’s not single in the ways that matter. Mr. Milan didn’t need to be married to me to support what I was doing 100 percent of the time. He never questioned whether I would get an agent or sell; he never asked me if it was wise to choose to do something when I would make much, much more money going another way. He believed in me from the beginning, and the fact that he wasn’t married to me at the time doesn’t negate the fact that he has never been anything but completely supportive of me.

3) Do you have to stop yourself from getting lost in the research?

No. I do sometimes spend more time doing research than seems necessary, but I’ve found that the tidbits I pick up then often crop up again in ways I didn’t expect later on. So there’s no such thing as “wasted” research time–even if I do sometimes wonder why on earth I spent an afternoon reading regency-era recipes for boiled turnips.

4) As fellow lawyer-turned-writer, I have to ask–did law school help your writing? Are you still glad that you went?

The boss I had right after law school was nothing short of an amazing genius, and he taught me more about writing than I’d learned in the 18+ years of schooling I’ve received. it was from him that I learned how to really edit, and edit for voice.

Also, I loved law school. Law school was worth it for me in and of itself.

I was one of those geeks that read all the stuff in the textbook, even the stuff that you knew you didn’t need to know for the exam, because really, why does it ever matter these days what the difference is between courts of equity and courts of law? Who needs to know what code pleadings were like, when these days complaints are liberally construed? Who really cares what the knock-and-announce rule was in 1787 Britain?

All you really need to know is the rule today, right?

Probably not if you’re a lawyer practicing today, but if you’re writing historical romance, and you read and remember the entire section of Thomas’s opinion in a Fourth Amendment case explaining the constitutional derivation of a rule, you actually have a really good idea of police procedure in Britain around the Regency era. You may not need to understand the exact operation of the Rule Against Perpetuities in today’s world, especially if you don’t touch trusts and estates–but you’ll know if the will you write for your characters is invalid.

One of the things I got from law school was the ability to pick up a case from Chancery or a treatise on the jurisdiction of the Queen’s bench, and read it and understand the nuance and the background. I don’t think there are many historical romance authors who can say the same thing.

2) You starting writing (and sold??) while single. This seems to be outside the norm for many writers. Do you think this helped you in some ways?

3) Do you have to stop yourself from getting lost in the research?

4) As fellow lawyer-turned-writer, I have to ask–did law school help your writing? Are you still glad that you went?

Hm.

Um, they are both good in bed.

I think that’s about it. Everything else is totally different. I would never write a hero anything like my husband. There is no romantic conflict between me and Mr. Milan. The most there has ever been is that he is neater than I am, and so he wishes I picked up after myself more. This does not make a good book.

Mr. Milan is basically wonderfully supportive, and believes I can do anything. He doesn’t need a whole book to become awesome. He just started out that way.

I, on the other hand, have a lot in common with both Gareth and Jenny.

For Jenny: The emotional heart of Jenny is that she believes she is a horrible fraud, even though people repose a great deal of trust in her. This is something I feel on a regular basis. Jenny is, in fact, actually a horrible fraud. So am I–but so far, nobody has figured it out. Whew.

For Gareth: Gareth’s hyper-rationality is something that comes entirely from me. Gareth was a lot of fun to write, because I could use him to make fun of some of my more ridiculous tendencies. One of my worst faults is that I can be dismissive of people who I think are wrong or stupid. I try to watch myself on that one–but when I was writing Gareth, I got to channel that and magnify it a thousand fold. It was fun to indulge in that side of myself in a setting where it would do no harm–and even more satisfying to make sure that the comeuppance came.