Appendix of Events

Romance authors Lisa Kleypas, Beverly Jenkins, Eloisa James, and Mia Sosa discuss their work and the Romance genre with Petra Maier of NPR on 02/27/2018.

P&P’s first romance panel last August attracted an enthusiastic and diverse audience, and drew admiring notice from The Washington Post, which praised the “exceptionally clever writers” and the energy they and their fans bring to a genre that has often been given less than its due. Join us for another exciting evening of readings and heartfelt discussions.

Kleypas is a RITA award-winning author of more than twenty novels, both historical romance and contemporary women’s fiction. In the fourth installment of her Ravenals series, Garrett Gibson, England’s only woman doctor, falls for Ethan Ransom, erstwhile Scotland Yard detective and rumored assassin. The two can’t resist their mutual attraction, but they may not survive it, either, as Ransom struggles to dodge a treacherous government plot.

Jenkins has won both the 2017 Romance Writers of America Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award and the 2016 Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award for historical romance. A long-time advocate of multicultural romance, she’s set her latest novel in the Old West where Regan Carmichael is not the docile mail-order bride Dr. Colton Lee expected. Recently widowed, he’d only wanted a wife to help raise his daughter, but he soon finds himself falling for a woman more independent than any he’d dreamed of.

Writing as Eloisa James, Mary Bly, a professor of English literature at Fordham University, is the author of several series of Regency and Georgian romance novels. Her latest book is the opening volume in the Wildes of Lindow Castle cycle. The action begins with the return of the Byronesque Lord Alaric Wilde, whose adventures abroad have made him famous, if not notorious, at home. Miss Willa Ffynche, however, is immune from his charms, preferring books – but also bawdy jokes. Neither has met anyone quite like the other.

A D.C.-based writer, Sosa practiced First Amendment and media law for ten years before channeling her early aspirations to sign into writing romance novels. The first installment of her Love on Cue series follows fitness trainer Tori Alvarez on a trip to Aruba. She’s there to recover from an uncomfortably public breakup with a politician and has sworn off men for the near future. But no sooner is she on the plane than she agrees to help her charismatic seat-mate get into shape, only to rue her decision when paparazzi expose him as a famous actor who’s transforming himself for his next big role.

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Politics and Prose Employee: All right, so let me get into Introductions. So, we have Lisa Kleypas, right here, who has published her first novel at the age of 21 and has published over 20 novels since. She has won the RITA award along with many others and, tonight, she will talk about her newest book, Hello Strangers, which is her 4^th book in her Ravenals series.

Next to her we have Beverly Jenkins, who has published her first book in 1994 and has become a trailblazer for multicultural romance. She has won numerous awards, such as the NAACP award, and the 2017 RWA Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award. She is here, tonight, to discuss her latest novel, The Tempest.

And then we have Eloisa James, who has written over 26 novels, while also teaching English literature. She has also won a RITA award in 2013 and has been nominated over 10 times as well. So, tonight, she will be discussing Wild in Love. This is the beginning of her new series, the Wildes of Lindow Castle.

And, last, but not least, we have Mia Sosa, who is a contemporary romance writer, and has practice law for over ten years before trading in her suits for lounge wear. That sounds like a dream come true for me. She was a 2015 RWA Golden Heart finalist and she will discuss her book, Acting on Impulse, which is the first book of her Love on Cue series, which has a follow-up novel, the second novel will come out in April, which is called, Pretending He’s Mine, so, if you want to go pre-order that, you can do that as well.

And, tonight’s moderator is Petra Maier, who is an editor at NPR Books, who focuses on genre fiction and she loves romance, that is why she is here tonight. Her favorite romance novel is Warrior’s Woman by Johanna Lindsey.

Maier: Best cover ever!

Politics and Prose Employee: So, give them a hand, and we will start our panel (handing the microphone to Kleypas).

Kleypas: Thank you!

Maier: Thank you all so much for coming out tonight. Uh, we have an amazing group of writers, here. Mia, uh, you’re the only contemporary here, I hope you won’t feel ganged up on.

Sosa: Well, Lisa’s got a few contemporaries too.

Maier: Oh, that’s right. Sorry, my bad. Um, I think we should start off as promised. We’ll go down the line, you guys tell us about your new books.

Kleypas: No, no, no. You go first, you go first (gesturing towards Mia).

Sosa: If you could just give me a couple of seconds to kind of freak out here, because I am on a panel with Lisa Kleypas, Beverly Jenkins, and Eloisa James. So, ahhhh!

Maier: I’m with you, I’m with you, honestly.

Sosa: Now that I have gotten that out of the way, I think I can speak coherently about my book. So, Acting On Impulse is the first book in the Love on Cue series. It’s my first book with Avon, and I’m really excited about it, and I’m really excited about the follow-up, Pretending He’s Mine. But, Acting On Impulse is the love story between Tori Alvarez, a bad-a** personal trainer (trying not to curse here) and a television actor, who is on the rise and is looking for his big break and, in connection with trying to get his big break, he gets a role and loses a substantial amount of weight, grows a beard, for this role. And, um, he’s basically not recognizable, and he describes himself as the fourth and forgotten member of ZZTop. And, uh, they meet on a plane – she doesn’t know who he is. She’s actually on the plane because she is escaping from, um, the wounds inflicted by her boyfriend, who is a media-hungry guy and wanted to be in the limelight, and she’s done with it. So, of course, she meets this person, thinks he’s this totally cool, nice, down-to-earth guy, and later learns that he is a Hollywood actor, who is about to get his big break and she wants nothing to do with him. And, um, their love story is basically how they come together and figure out how they’re going to make this relationship work.

James: That sounds like so much fun.

Maier: It really is.

James: I’m going to hook mine right under hers because mine is called, Wilde in Love and I was really – when it’s historicals, you know, you’re thinking both of the past and the present, always. And, one thing that really fascinated me, that I found out was that Georgians had the beginning of what we call celebrity culture. They learned how to reproduce etching and they learned how to reproduce it cheap. So, they sent them all over England on peddlers’ carts, so everyone started collecting ‘your favorite guy’. For the first time, like the Dutchesses and the Milkmaids, everyone’s collecting the same men, basically, because men were very popular – who knew? But, they also collected women, they collected all kinds of satirical things. So, I have a big family, they live on the edge of a bog – I got sick of London ballrooms, you know, after 26 books or whatever. And, so, they’re in Cheshire and one of the guys, Aleric, is an explorer. And, basically, he sells kind of like the way I did when I was little – I was like, young – my parents, my family bought the book – and not that many other people so he’d go out and go to China, write a book and come back and, you know, meet the Explorers Club, talk to 16 people; it’s great, it’s a perfect life. He goes back out, he goes to America, he goes to wherever he goes. And, then, he’s flying back in, he’s coming back in the boat, and they’re drying up in the London harbor and the captain’s like, “What is that?” And, as far as they can see, there are women – just like women – with parasails and hats and colors bobbing up and down. They’re like, “Whoah! They must think there’s a Prince in the boat,” you know, he’s making jokes. And the guy comes over and says, “It’s you, you’re really here. And he’s like, “What?” And, not only has he become unbelievably famous in his absence, but there is a play running – now, think about Hamilton, right? – called Wilde in Love, which is about him falling in love with a woman in Africa, who gets eaten by the cannibals. It’s a tragedy and everyone is desperately in love with him and there are pictures of him all the way across England, wrestling, cracking, climbing mountains, wrestling cannibals – he’s never been to Africa, but never mind – and that’s where it starts – because my heroine wants nothing to do with him. Like, “Who would want him?” His house can’t even keep the bricks in it; people running up and stealing the bricks, selling them on the London streets.

Sosa: I didn’t think you were going to be able to do it, but you did it. I’m impressed.

James: Great minds think alike, yeah. Try to match that, Bev.

Jenkins: I’m trying, I don’t know if I can. Okay, well, adventure!

James: We did okay.

Jenkins: Girlfriend got jokes. Adventure. Tempest is the 3^rd book in, what Avon calls, The Old West Series. And, when you do Old West, you gotta have boots, I’ve got my boots on. Regan is the niece of Eddie and Ryan from the 1^st book, Forbidden; 2^nd book is Breathless, which stars her sister, Porcha. And then we have Regan, who’s looking for love but also looking for adventure, so she answers an ad to become a mail-order bride because – why not, right?

Maier: Like you do.

Jenkins: Plenty of adventure in that. So, she goes – and if you’ve read the first part of the book or if you have not – she’s pretty good with a gun because she was raised in Arizona territory; everybody needs to know how to shoot. The stagecoach she’s on is attacked – she shoots, kills a couple of people – stagecoach goes on. Stagecoach is set upon by another group, she thinks, “Okay, these are the same guys. Let me start shooting again!” Well, it’s not. It’s the Sherriff and his boys, and one of the guys that she shoots is the guy she’s coming to marry.

Maier: That’s a meet cute for the ages. Yeah, oops, I shot ya.

James: Talk about adventure. So, that’s the story, and he has no intentions of loving her. All he wants is someone to raise his daughter so, 1. How are they going to get past this shooting? And number 2. How is she going to affect his heart, because he buried his heart with his dead wife? So, it’s a great story. Lisa’s turn.

Kleypas: It sounds great! It sounds so great!

Maier: It really is good.

Kleypas: Okay, well, sometimes, when you’re writing, a minor character will just leap out of your imagination fully formed, and I don’t know why, I wish I knew for sure what would make it happen, so it could always happen, but you’re just lucky when it does. So, one of the best pieces of advice I ever got, you know, for writing, was from Jennifer Crusie, who during a talk, said, “Every character in the story thinks that they’re the star of the story, and never forget that.” So, she said, “The pizza delivery guy, who may be on, you know, for a paragraph in the entire book, thinks he’s the star. So, be aware, you know – he just broke up with his girlfriend, he’s always wanted to have his teeth fixed.” So, knowing these things, knowing these things really – I added the thing about the teeth – but, so knowing this, just with you knowing this as the author, helps to kind of give you this dialogue and these ideas that kind of give life to a minor character. So, that’s, you know, the preparation for this. So, when I was writing, Marrying Winterborne, a couple of historical books ago, the hero happened to get hurt; there was a collapsing building, his shoulder got dislocated, so I wanted to – conveniently – have a doctor somewhere on the scene of this building demolition. And, so, I was just about to do it, and I thought, “Yeah, white whiskers, older guy, black coat” and then I thought, “What if this minor character, this doctor, were a woman in 1876-77 – 1876 England? And I thought, “This is a really good way to make this character interesting.” So, I started looking up all about female physicians back then; there was only one, in all of England. It turns out, there was a real-life woman, her name was Doctor Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, and she had always wanted to be a doctor – just because – she didn’t have any doctors in her family. And, it was impossible. You couldn’t get a medical degree in England because they wouldn’t let you go to school, wouldn’t let you go to college. And, girls’ education was so bad at that point. They taught you sewing and stuff, which is nice but it’s not like Algebra, you know. So, anyway, she was so determined, that anyway, she learned French, went to the (University of) Sorbonne in France to study medicine there; earned a degree there, because they allowed her there, and then she came back to England and wanted to become a certified physician so that she could practice surgery and be a doctor in England, and they wouldn’t let her. No one would give her the test. Now, the test could be administered by 12 different types of medical societies like, you know, Apothecaries, or special kinds of surgeons, and no one would. But, the Apothecaries had some weird loophole in their rules, where they couldn’t say, “No” to her – and she found out about this. So, she took that test, they could not refuse her, and she passed it. And, they were forced to give her medical certification and, as soon as she did that, and became the first legal, medical, surgeon, physician in England. They closed that loophole and no woman was admitted to the British Medical Association for the next 20 years. She was the only one. So, phenomenal woman. So, when I read about this, I thought, “That is extraordinary! What a woman she must have been, what a personality she must have had.” And I thought, “She’s going to inspire this minor character, who’s walked onto the scene.” And, so, that will make this scene really vivid and that will be the end of it. So, she was in that scene and it just caught fire in my imagination, it was just so exciting that I brought her in again, later in the book – someone got a migraine, so – and, then, after that, I really had no plans for her. But, in the next book, someone got shot; it turned out, lots of people in my books get hurt so I kept bringing her on, and then I thought, “I must, I must make her a heroine, because that would be so exciting – and I’ve already done all this research, so it won’t be a problem.” So, when I decided to make her the heroine of, Hello Stranger, it was amazing, because you can’t do things like having a character bleeding out without learning about how to do blood transfusions, which was very tricky back then, because they didn’t know about blood types – so it was almost like Russian Roulette, you know, if you got lucky enough to get the right donor, that was it. So, I had this strong, educated, individual, unique woman, and I thought, “I have to give her a powerful hero to match her.” And, it turned out, I had another minor character in the series, who I had implied was sort of a secret government agent. And, so, uh, thanks to some suggestions from my Facebook readers, I named him, Ethan Ransom, and I had him uncover a government conspiracy before the story just starts. So, Ethan knows, as soon as he reveals this conspiracy – because he’s one of these 8 secret agent James Bond pre-cursors that actually did exist back then – that he knows he probably doesn’t have long to live; they’re going to ‘take him out’ as soon as he does this. And, so, at this moment, he meets Garrett – he knows about her, he’s met her briefly in a previous book, and he was so fascinated by her, that unbeknownst to her, for two years he’s been sort of her guardian angel looking out for her when she goes on her dangerous rounds in London; going to visit work houses and things like that. But, then, one night, she is approached by three drunken soldiers, and they are clearly going to do terrible things to her. And, I decided, “If you have a female doctor, who’s going to be going around London by herself at night, she’s gotta be kind of a bad ass who knows how to defend herself.” So, I made her an expert in the Victorian art of cane fighting. So, she immediately gets her cane out – whap, whap, whap, whap, whap – takes care of one of them, you know, distracts them by flinging a surgical knife at one of them – she is whirling around, doing these amazing things – she turns around to take on the other two, and they’re already on the ground. She’s like, “What!?” They’re passed out on the ground; they’re all beaten up like within a matter of seconds, and she’s like, “Who did this? What happened?” And then she realizes someone else is on the scene so she’s like, “Come out! Whoever you are, I know you’re out there.” And, this man materializes out of the shadows. And, so, that of course is Ethan. And, now that they’ve met in this way, he just can’t stay – he goes away from her, “No, I can’t be with you any more, I’m about to die. Yeah, no, I gotta go, I’m gonna die.” And, they keep meeting each other. So, that’s the set-up for this story, and I don’t want to – there are so many spoilers – it turned out to be just a roller coaster of a book for me – difficult, exciting – I think more deeply emotional and romantic because he’s half Irish, and I researched all this beautiful Irish poetry of the time to give him these turns of phrase like, “Your shadow on the ground is sunlight to me.” You know, things like that, so, that’s the way he speaks; it’s really, really, fun. Yeah, so –

Jenkins: Very good!

James: Like all the cops we know, right?

Maier: Ewww… I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking about the fact that he has black hair and blue eyes.

Kleypas: So! There’s Hello Stranger, I hope if you can, or if you buy it, you find out what happens!

Sosa: Can we just note that Lisa Kleypas said “bad ass” before I did, so.

Maier: I think we can make a house rule that “bad ass” is acceptable since we are all bad asses. Well, there’s one thing that I’ve noticed that binds all these books together – we’re talking about violence and government conspiracies and celebrity cultures, and it all feels sort of topical, and my jam is genre fiction, and usually when I’m explaining or trying to – not justify – because I’m not justifying anything – but when I’m trying to evangelize about genre fiction to people, I say, “Oh, science fiction fantasies are ways that writers can deal with issues of the day through a lens that provides a safe remove; it’s a really interesting way to talk about things that are really important, right now. But, I feel like romance is really steppin’ up to the plate, right now. One thing that really binds all of your books together for me is that they all feature heroines, who enthusiastically consent to whatever’s going on – one point in Hello Stranger, Garrett says, “Kiss me or I’ll break your nose,” which is about as enthusiastic as you can get. Were those conscious choices? Jump in anyone.

Kleypas: I just talked so someone else start.

Jenkins: I think romance is, at least modern-day romance – we won’t talk about the rapey 70’s – has always been about consent. Women who have agency over their own sexuality, women who decide, “Yes, we can do it” or “No, we can’t do it.” Um, and, I think it empowers women. I think we’re about consent.

James: I just want to put the academic thing here.

Jenkins: Okay, good.

James: Because I have a lot of young, feminist, academics writing me just about the “rapey culture” – you know – the pill had come in and there was a lot of fear, a lot of pressure on women, “Go out there and enjoy it! Yeah! You’re supposed to be like really enjoying this. You’re supposed to be having sex now. You’re free now! Go out there and have lots of sex!” And the rape culture is – now looking back at it – if you look at it in a historical firm to it – that really was a lot of women going, “I can’t handle this freaking pressure. Oh! Someone tied me to the bed and guess what? I’m having an orgasm and I never knew what this was before.”

Maier: True!

James: I mean I think we should be – well, I’m all about being kind to those readers because I learned a lot from those books early on – on the bus, the school bus – I learned everything. But, I also feel like those books were dealing with the problems of – the sex problems of those moments, right?

Jenkins: Yeah.

James: And, I have to say, we’ve all – this (Mia) is a baby here, four books – but, the rest of us have been around a long time, written a lot of books. And, so, what happens is you decide, “Oh, I haven’t done a kidnapping in a long time and it’s time for a kidnapping; this has happened to me, the time before and I was like, “Wait a second,” because kidnappings have changed. We have to hit the fantasy – we have to hit that fantasy, fun, someone’s taking you away.” They’re not saying, “Do you want to go for the weekend? But, we’re just hanging out, we’re just hooking up, we’re not doing anything here. This is nothing serious, and I might go to next week, even though.” You have to hit the fantasy of “you’re gonna do that and it’s going to be great” at the same time, you’ve got to add the consent. And, I have to say I had, I found myself really thinking and it was like, “I’m kidnapping you. I’m taking you away from London.” And she’s like, “What?” and he’s like, “Well, unless you don’t want to.” – “Fine! I’ll go.”

Jenkins: Or, you could switch it up! I had the heroine kidnap the guy.

James: Yeah! There ya go too! You still get the kidnap, yeah.

Jenkins: You get the kidnap, yeah, and the guy, stole his boat, so.

Maier: But, I was actually thinking about that as I was preparing for this panel that you can kind of draw a parallel between the original actual bodice rippers and the consent as a hot movement that is today because they’re both about legitimizing centering female desire, right? Back then, according to the strictures of the day, that was a way women could enjoy themselves; now, we’ve moved on a little bit.

Kleypas: Yeah, I think we’re at a time when we’re really blending feminism and fantasy in an interesting way, where, uh, you know, we have to all – I mean, not just us – but society has to understand that a fiction novel is not a guide to life, you know. As she was pointing out last night, you know, just because a man will watch a James Bond movie doesn’t mean he can jump out of a helicopter or even wants to. And, so, it’s, um, it’s important to recognize that things can happen in fiction books that we like to enjoy vicariously that we don’t necessarily want to happen to us; but, it’s just – it stirs our imagination, it sends sparks to our imagination – and, so, you know, it’s, I really strongly believe that women are entitled to our fantasies without people looking at us and saying, “Well, you can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality.” You know, we’re allowed to fantasize about being ice-skaters or about being kidnapped or about being a princess. I wouldn’t want to be a princess in real life; although, I would like the crown. But, I’m just saying that it’s ridiculous to me that people seem to have this mistaken idea that women can’t tell the difference between fantasy and reality or that reading romance novels will make your husband less attractive to you; in fact, the reverse is true. Romance readers tend to have much better relationships with their husbands and spicier love lives because of it. So, you know, it’s, um, I don’t feel that men get this accusation that they can’t tell fantasy from reality, you know.

Jenkins: As we talked about last night, all of the Arnold books; you know, Arnold never died – men were wonderful with whatever Arnold was doing, and they were allowed to do that.

Kleypas: Yeah.

Jenkins: Whereas women, you’re reading romance and you’re like, “Oh, you poor diluted thing. And your husband, he must be…” no!

Kleypas: Yes.

Jenkins: You guys are smart enough. You know this is fiction.

Kleypas: Ah, huh. Ah, huh.

Jenkins: But, romance novels are empowering. We want you to be able to tell the difference between a bad relationship –

Kleypas: Yes! Yes!

Jenkins: And a good relationship.

Kleypas: Exactly! Exactly

Jenkins: There’s nothing wrong with wanting communication. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be treated like a human being. There’s nothing wrong with an H.E.A.

Sosa: You know, when you were asking about being purposeful about it, and I think at least in my experience, because I am a new writer, I am thinking about this more and more. And, one of the dangers that I see is that when you’re writing, you – and at least in my books when I have both the hero and the heroine’s point of view – I know that they both want each other. That couple doesn’t necessarily have those cues; so, it’s very important to me now to take that step back and go, “Okay, what does he know about what cues she’s giving to him?” and “What does she know about the cues she’s giving off?” Because, for the romance to work, in my mind, they have to communicate, they have to fall in love; it’s not the stuff that the reader necessarily reads or is in the reader’s point of view; it’s “What do they see in each other through the eyes and words of the author?” and, so, that’s an additional step that I’ve been taking.

Maier: And, it almost sounds too nutritious to say this, but I noticed this, especially, I noticed this with your book that romance can model healthy relationships, because I learned a lot from watching Tori and Carter – I keep wanting to say Mason; Mason’s her ex. So, Tori and Carter talk to each other and I was thinking, “You know, I could stand up to a dude like that.”

Sosa: Right.

Maier: I think.

Kleypas: Yeah, and I think authors – as you develop your readership – your readership kind of learns what to expect from you; they know they’re safe within certain boundaries. And, I think, different authors have different boundaries as far as what they’ll do.

Sosa: Right.

Kleypas: So, that’s why there’s all different authors and, you know, it’s –

James: I just want to add something about desire, though. Because, I feel like one of the reasons we get this, this lash-back is because our culture has an iciness surrounding women’s desire, right? women’s erotica. You’re going to read that book, you’re going to become aroused. Oh, ew, right?

Maier: What’s wrong that?

Sosa: Right.

James: And, frankly, you know, desire is not all that PC. I think those two things that hook together, maybe, through a conjunction that came slightly through 50 Shades of Grey, when they were like, “Oh! That’s kind of gross.” But, you’ve got guys out there getting aroused nine thousand different ways and no one’s going, “That’s gross.”

Kleypas: Right.

James: It’s something tied to women’s desire.

Jenkins: It’s the porn.

Kleypas: Right.

James: And we’ve got to own that; desire is not PC; it just isn’t.  I mean –

Jenkins: Not for women.

Kleypas: Not for women, yeah.

Maier: True, and one of the most –

James: Well, I don’t think for men, either.

Maier: One of the most common dismissive things that they say about romance novels is, “Oh, that’s housewife porn.” Which is arrgghh!

Kleypas: Yes, yes.

Jenkins: I hate that. I hate that. We’re not allowed to desire.

James: Here, say that, say that.

Jenkins: We’re not allowed to desire.

Sosa: Right, it’s this notion that –

Jenkins: We’re allowed to be aroused.

Sosa: I think we are. What else do we have?

Jenkins: I don’t know.

Sosa: To be ravaged.

Jenkins: Well, you know, you have a readership that wants to be ravaged.

James: That’s okay!

Jenkins: It’s okay! So, yeah, go ahead.

Sosa: I just think, you know, part of it, when you were talking about this notion of, you know, the housewife – the person who can’t really own their desire – I think that part of it is, there’s this sense that it’s the snowball effect, right? If women start demanding equality and demanding what they want, and showing their desires, and asking for more in the bedroom – oh, my goodness – it’s going to go outside the bedroom and we don’t want any of that.

Kleypas: Yeah.

Sosa: And, I think, romance empowers us in that way to say, “No, there is no place – whether it is inside the home or outside the home – where we can’t ask for what we want.

Kleypas: Right. Yeah.

Sosa: And, a lot of people miss that.

Kleypas: Well, you know, when you study from a historical perspective, you know, how women’s desire was regarded, I mean, women were praised for their ignorance in matters of the bedroom. Girls were especially virtuous in praise, if they knew nothing at all and that on their wedding night, they’re introduced to the experience with pain, confusion – I have a part in this book that came out today where Garrett, my doctor heroine, and her partner, and older male doctor, are discussing this issue about women being able to talk about their own physical problems to a doctor. And, I had him remark that he had to have a doll in his office where women, who were so delicately bred or modest or just wanting “to be good” couldn’t talk about body parts or say certain words, so they would point to areas on the doll, “It hurts here, it hurts here.” And, some doctors, at the time, the more old-fashioned ones, would do a gynecological exam or something without ever looking at the woman – they would look away and they would have a cloth. My goodness, so, no wonder so many women had problems and died in child birth. I mean if you can’t even, you know, yes.

Jenkins: And, that was one of the issues with, um, my hero and the heroine, because he’s like, “What do you mean women have needs?”

Maier: I wanted to punch him.

Jenkins: And, she says, “You call yourself a doctor!” But, yeah, women weren’t supposed to have needs and, I mean, if you think about it historically, very few couples saw each other nude in the 19^th century.

Kleypas: Ah, huh. Ah, huh.

Jenkins: You know, you couldn’t be naked running around the house with him chasing you. Not allowed. You know, it was like, throw up the dress, open the legs and that was it. Unless he was with a woman of ill repute. You know, you’re not supposed to bring that into the bedroom.

So, with, like, Regan, she’s like, “No! We’re gonna take this dress off, because I don’t want it ruined,” and he’s like, “What are you talking about?” And she’s like, “Nah, nah, nah, no, we’re going to do this right.” Yeah, so.

James: Go, Regan. I’m just going to add that this is an economic issue, right? We were talking about slavery on the train.

Jenkins: Yeah.

James: And, that’s an economic issue among other things.

Jenkins: Right.

James: But, partly – this was also an economic issue – I’m a Shakespeare scholar, so, you chaste sound and obedience because you are an object that belongs to a man – because it’s going to be a transfer of power – and if you’re not chaste, your first child may not be the child of the man, who you were sold to, essentially, with your dowry, right? That’s a huge economic transgression then; it’s just straightforward – and if you learn how to desire and you’re like, “This guy’s useless,” you might go outside the house and then, boom, he’s got a cuckoo as an heir, because he actually sucks in bed.

Jenkins: Right.

James: That’s a huge fear, right? It’s all about property.

Kleypas: Yeah.

James: It’s all about transfer of property. 

Kleypas: Yes.

James: So, I think it’s really weird that that has carried forward now to the extent to which it has carried forward, because, like –

Kleypas: Well, it shows how deep and pervasive it was that it’s still sort of seething there a little bit, you know.

Jenkins: She couldn’t own property.

Kleypas: No.

James: No.

Jenkins: She couldn’t own property.

James: You could be owned.

Jenkins: You could be owned like you said but you couldn’t own property and, if you did, then it would go to your husband just like your bank account. You have a lot of instances in the United States in the 19the century, women couldn’t have bank accounts. So, it’s all about the power and now, here we are, you know, with romance novels, where women are saying, “Let’s change the tune, you know, not only in the bedroom, but outside the bedroom – and that scares the hell out of a lot of people, women too!

Kleypas: Yeah.

Jenkins: But, we don’t care. We are writing, and we are reading romance!!

Kleypas: But, I think that’s how things change; things change through fiction, through Hollywood, through publishing, through acts of imagination, that gently bring people along until reality can follow these dreams and this imagination, you know. The Black Panther movie is like that I think; it’s gonna help to really change things in a beautiful way!

Maier: Wakanda forever!

Kleypas: Yeah!

James: Everybody’s gonna look like the people in those movies, gorgeous.

Jenkins: Yeah, yeah.

Maier: Ahhh, hah, hah, hah, oh, my god. How can I follow this! Like, no. But, you kind of went into what I was going to ask, which was, you know, another knock on romance is that it’s escapism, right? That you’re just drifting off into a fantasy world. But, I think that we’ve established, that romance has a role to play in the world today.

Kleypas: Ah, huh.

Maier: Are you changing what you write at all because of current events? Changing the way you write your heroes, for example? Like, the old dominating Alpha hero – the slab of muscle, you know –

James: That’s mine!

Maier: My way or the highway guy.

Maier: Does he fly today?

James: Yeah!

Maier: How do you do it?

Jenkins: Somebody said, “If you took the Alphaholes from the 70’s and the 80’s

Maier: We can also say, “Alphaholes,” this is true.

Jenkins: Yeah, I did say Alphaholes, um, and brought them to the 21^st century, with these heroines, they’d just kick his ass, you know!

Kleypas: Ah, huh.

Jenkins: Because, you know, just Alphaholes. I just have always written heroes who are supportive, you know, except for this guy here. This new guy. I mean –

Maier: He gets there in the end.

Jenkins: I mean, yeah, really?

Maier: I know. Every time he said, “Good woman,” I was like, nahhh. I like you.

Jenkins: Yeah, yeah, he was kind of hard to snuggle up against – um, I forgot what I was going to say.

Kleypas: Yeah, I think what’s interesting, though, is that the more I’ve been able to research about actual people, who lived back then, and read periodicals and books that were written back then, um, you realize our stereotypes of the prim little Victorian woman – you know, all bound up – and, then, you know, the big dominating men – yes, there were many people like that – that was a cultural value. You know, the idealized woman, trapped in the home; but, there were women like Doctor Elizabeth Garrett, I understand, there were other women who were really blazing trails, and doing these incredible things, and paying the price, I mean, really making sacrifices. And, there were tremendously supportive men, at the time. One thing that surprised me was in the last book, Devil in Spring, when I was researching the property rights for women and laws, and things like that – such as the fact that if you did not say the word “obey” during your marriage ceremony, it was not a legal marriage.

Maier: Boo, hiss.

Kleypas: And, so, it surprised me to learn that Queen Victoria was very much against women’s suffrage; whereas she had a couple of prime ministers, who were underneath – they couldn’t be too open about it – but, they were trying to push her saying, “Let’s let some women have some more rights and, eventually, work towards the right to vote. And, yet, here’s a woman, you know, who I – I love the TV series and all that – but, she betrayed other women by keeping them down. It was like, “Well, it’s okay for me to have all the power, but I don’t want any other woman, too.” So, yeah, it’s –

Jenkins: Issues.

Kleypas: But, there were all kinds of people with all kinds of beliefs back then; and, so, we tend to narrow it down to “men were all this way” and “women were all that way” you know.

Maier: Mia, I feel like you’ve been left out because we’ve been talking about historical stuff.

Sosa: No, that’s all right.

Maier: In your book, you did create a situation where there’s a definite power imbalance between the hero and the heroine, and they have to negotiate that. Was that a conscious choice?

Sosa: Um, yes! I think I skipped over this, in explaining the book, but Tori is a personal trainer and, um, ultimately, through some shenanigans of his own, Carter, the hero, hires her to train him to, basically, get him back in shape. And, that is how they spend most of the last half of the book. And, there are some real issues, on her part, about navigating what is essentially a client-trainer relationship, and there are many parts where I wanted to be clear that – although they were attracted to each other – they were not going to go any where in this relationship until that had resolved. And, that’s one of those things that doesn’t often happen in books. There is, you know, the heroine starts out, worried about this working relationship, and, then, it goes away. And, I’m not really sure what happens to that line, but, in this instance, I wanted to be very clear that she wasn’t going to go any where with this relationship until they had resolved that – and that’s when they felt comfortable to move on with their relationship, seriously. Not that there wasn’t, uh, you know, a couple of things before that – nothing, you know, that was, uh, sort of “we’re going to be together” and, um, I think that that was important. And, it was important for him, also. There’s a moment when he’s thinking about her and is obviously attracted to her – and she’s doing her job – and he pulls back and says, “Basically, I’m being a douche right now.” And, I shouldn’t be thinking about her in this way, and I trained her for this purpose. It was important for me to have those kinds of dynamics because what I want – when I put books out – I want people to read them, and I want women, you know, to sort of see that and see an ideal, and know that that’s what you should expect. Because that’s kind of what I want to expect, um, from the people in my life. And, so, it was important for me to do that.

Maier: How are we on time? Is it time to go for questions or okay.

Audience: Yeah. Yes.

Maier: Great, okay. The mike is right here, if you have questions for these wonderful women.

(Voice from out of sight) Step up to the mike!

Maier: Awww, come on, come on.

Jenkins: No questions? There’s nothing we haven’t answered before!

Maier: Ah, hah, hah, hah.

Jenkins: Don’t be shy.

Attendee: You’ve had long careers, many of you, good careers, and lots of expectations. With all of those expectations on you, as a writer, as a best seller, as dealing with these people, um, how do you still sit down every day and make sure you write the words that are true to you?

Jenkins: Just by doing it. I mean I couldn’t ask for a better life to be able to tell the stories that are inside of me. And, as I said last night, to be able to tell stories of women of color – because if I don’t do it – who’s going to do it? And I know that you guys are expecting these great books. You’re always saying, “Lisa, Bev, Eloisa, Mia, “You’re not writing fast enough!” So, I got you guys looking in on me while I, you know, sittin’ on my bed in my pajamas, “Write faster! Write faster! Write faster!” But, we love what we do.

James: I think, I don’t know if you’re a writer or not – I think it’s really important to let yourself write crap to know, like, “Oh, this is so bad” – what I’m writing today, like, if anyone saw it – like, if I died going to pick up my kid, I’d be so humiliated because someone would see this – you just have to take a deep breath and say, “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to make my page count, no matter what!” Because on the last page of your page count, something interesting might happen. But, if you don’t treat it like a professional – I gotta go there and I gotta screw on the toothpaste every day – it’s not gonna happen for you long term. You can’t sit around and wait for the muse to hit.

Mine, in the book that I’m finishing right now, the 3^rd Wilde book, my editor called me up and she was like, “Well, I really like it,” you know, they all say that, right? “I really like it, it’s really great, but do you think the book starts at around page 145?” She’s so nice, we have the same editor (gestures towards Kleypas). She doesn’t say, “It’s total shit until 145,” she says, “Do you think it starts,” so, you have to be able to take the knocks because, better to take it from your editor, and from your friends, and from anyone else you can talk into reading it, than let your readers down. If you want a career, you’ve got to constantly be changing and thinking and growing. What worked for us in historical, 25 years ago, you know, a lovely digressive discussion of a dress – that’s not working any more – it’s not.

Kleypas: I still kind of do that with dresses sometimes.

James: I got it down to a page, though.

Kleypas: I know, I know, it’s true. And, you’re right of course. I mean I still love the detail. I would put more details if I could but –

Jenkins: No, no, no, no, no, I don’t want to read that.

Kleypas: Because I just want the story to – but, I think it’s good to scare yourself. I think no matter what your profession is, it’s good to frighten yourself by trying something a little hard, a little different, and wading into slightly unknown territory because, you know, you could fail, you could do it badly, um, you could make a mistake and, then, as we all know, it’s out there forever.

James: Yeah.

Jenkins: It’s hard work, it’s hard work.

Kleypas: But if you don’t that, you don’t stay fresh. And, then, all of a sudden, you’re doing the same old thing, and everyone’s bored with you, and then your career just sort of fades. So, I think we’ve all scared ourselves a lot, haven’t we?

Sosa: Yeah.

James: I would say we’ve all know a lot of people. When I came to my first dinner, it was a first big dinner at Bantam Tower, which doesn’t exist anymore; and everybody there was like so famous and cool, and none of them are left.

Kleypas: Yeah.

James: I’ll just leave you with that.

Jenkins: Yeah.

Maier: Thank you.

Attendee: Hello, me and my mom just finished Tempest, what’s next?

Jenkins: Oh, god!! Oh, god!! Oh, no!! Everybody wants Spring!! Oh, no!!

Attendee: But I do, I’ve been talking to her and she said, “Why don’t you send her a letter, Two-chefs July.

Jenkins: Oh, god!! Okay, Two-chefs dies alone in the hills of Arizona.

(a few audience members moan)

Attendee: Okay.

(laugher)

Jenkins: On my Facebook page, we have a Two-chefs support group

(laugher)

Jenkins: Because of ladies like you who really, really, want this book, and I’m not going to write – he done.

Attendee: Can’t they work together?

Jenkins: He don’t want a book. He don’t want a book, I’m sorry. So, what’s next is that I’m trying to finish the 9^th Blessing series, Blessing book. And I just signed another contract for 3 more historicals.

Audience claps: Yay!

Jenkins: So, I don’t know what they’re gonna be, and I don’t know if it’s going to be Spring, everybody, everywhere I go, people are like, “Is Spring going to get in the book?” and I’m like, “I don’t know.”

Kleypas: I’m even tired of hearing about it!

(laugher) Jenkins hugs Kleypas

Jenkins: And we didn’t start hanging out until this weekend!

(laugher)

Jenkins: Everywhere I go! So, I’m gonna try and give you good books, that’s all I can say.

Attendee: I went in order and my mom said, “I think you’re old enough to read this now.” I’m not going to lie, what she didn’t know was that I was sneaking and reading them behind her back.

Jenkins: Thank you for the support all these years.

Attendee: When I started reading these stories, our washing machine is broken right now. So, I had a load in the wash, took it out, and took it upstairs to the bath tub, and I was washing and said, “Do you know who I feel like? I feel like Jessie, I feel like Vivid.

(laugher)

Attendee: I love these books, these are my people. And I’m like, just thinking, like, “What would they think of the world now? We got cars, ones you plug in the wall.” I’m like, “What?” I don’t know, but, just keep it up; it’s great, it’s great.

Jenkins: Thank you.

Attendee: Hi, this is mostly directed to Eloisa, sorry. I also have a masters in English literature, so, I’m pretty familiar with the blessings of the library, the Internet, and so my question to you all is, um, “The gems of your books are, for me at least, all of the detail, particularly with yours, Miss Jenkins. The detail, the level of microscope work that you do is really extraordinary, so, I’m wondering, “Where are some of the specific resources that you all go to for these books?” And, if there is time, “If there’s a favorite fact that you found while researching any of your works,” share with the class, please.

James: I’ll start. I go for the source, right? So, obviously, I work at a university, so I’m surrounded by people writing about things. So, I go to lectures because I’ve got a lot of ideas at lectures. If somebody’s up there, and they’re really excited about the first woman who wrote the first waltz then you could turn her into a heroine. But, if you go and read a history book, I find that it influences you. Whereas if you go online and you go onto Google Books, and you write in: I want the London Times from 1780 – and you just start looking – you know, you can get it through the university, you can get it anywhere else like Google Books, you can go for a book of that year for Scarlet Fever. Forget what people are saying about it now, you want what they thought about it then.

Jenkins: Right, right.

James: And you’ve got the voice, you have what it feels like, right? And I would say the most interesting fact I’ve come up with lately is, when I was in a museum – because I go to a lot of museums, right? I’m hauling my teenage daughter with me; she’s being a pain in the ass, won’t get her hand out of the phone, you know? So, I’m making this ridiculously lively conversation with the docent, like trying to intrigue her, which is failing absolutely. And, I’m like, “What about that pineapple? What’s that pineapple doing there?” I’m like, “Oh, look at this! This is a pineapple.” And she’s like, “Ugh.” Anyway, that pineapple was rented because the Georgian period, pineapples were so popular that you would rent one for your dinner party; it would go from dinner party to dinner party. I was fascinated by that, so, that’s my first American heroine because I was sitting there in this room, she’s explaining that a pineapple cost equivalent, some of them are $5,000.

Audience members: Wow! (*clapping in background*)

James: So, what if you were an American heroine, because they had pineapples over here, right? They would come in the hold and you would put them out on your porch. They were still expensive. They indicated hospitality, there’s a different feeling about them. But, they had them. So, my American heroine comes over to England, there’s a long big dinner party, there’s huge piles of fruit with the pineapple on top. The food man comes around and says, “What would you like?” And she says, “A slice of pineapple.” And there’s like this silence, and then everyone around the table goes, “I want pineapple.” The hostess, up at the front, doesn’t even see it until it’s too late. The thing is cut up. Ten thousand dollars, later. So, that’s the kind of detail you’re praying for because, I mean, I was telling Bev on the train, I mean, I learn most of my American history from her, because I grew up on a farm in Minnesota, and they just don’t – we did World War I and World War II – then we kind of just evaporated and that was it, we went into Romeo & Juliet.

So, that’s great, but when you’re writing a book, romance, one thing that she (points to Jenkins) never forgets is that the details are one thing, but the story, the heart, it’s the people that you carry away. The details are just the wallpaper. You want to carry these people. You want people up there going, “Where’s Spring’s story? I gotta have it.”

Jenkins: It’s in the spine, just look in the back of the book; it tells you everything.

(laugher)

Jenkins: I make it real easy.

Kleypas: I would definitely say Google Books, and I’m consulted all the time. I will give you two quick examples. One was that, when I was researching what the opinions of the day were from the sources of the time, on women’s education, I wanted to find out what the reactions from family and friends might have been, when Garrett, as a girl, wanted to study boys’ subjects, you know, math, Greek, Latin, you know, all those things. And, so, there was a Lead Educator, I cannot remember his name right now, but he was the expert on children’s education back then in England. And he wrote this very detailed book on – how if you allowed girls to study math and science, and things like that, the shock to her tender brain would be so terrible that her children would be born with deformities and mental problems, and so would their children. So, that was the resistance to girls being educated.

Another thing that I found out was that, ah, back in the 1820’s, before it became illegal to publish information that women might read about contraception, there were several books and pamphlets by several, I mean, at least four or five that I could find with a quick search that had this kind of information and one of them was that a very effective method of contraception was to take a little silk sponge, soak it in lemon juice, and, you know, use it like we have the sponges today. So, back then, guys were sponge-worthy or not. You know what I mean? It was like, it was amazing! But, who knew? Who knew?

Jenkins: I use sponges a lot in my book.

Sosa: I just wanted to add that there is this perception that contemporary romance authors don’t research, but we actually do, do a lot of it.

Kleypas: Yes, that’s very true.

Maier: Yes, yes.

Sosa: I will just share with you one fact that I learned while I was researching, Acting On Impulse. Which is that there is an insect and it’s called the tovaris bush cricket, and its balls weigh 15% of its body weight, okay?

Jenkins: Its balls?

Sosa: Yes, yes. 15% of its body weight. And I use it in the book, and you’ll have to read why I do.

Kleypas: Okay! I am so reading this book.

Sosa: Don’t let it be said that contemporary romance authors don’t research their books.

Kleypas: You just need to say that at the beginning, and you will sell a million books, okay! Because, now, I gotta find out.

(laugher)

Attendee: Hello, first of all, I just want to say thank you to all of you ladies for your contributions to this community. Obviously, we all feel very strongly about reading your work, and it’s important to a lot of women in a lot of different areas of the world. Not just in this country, but around the world.

Sosa: Thank you.

Attendee: I just want to start with that. But, um,you have all touched on female agency and kind of ownership of your body and sexuality, and there are of course different nuances to that, specifically, in the United States – and, Miss Jenkins, when you’re dealing with your characters, who are usually women of color – there’s a specific kind of known insidious deprivation of our agency, right? Right? And, so, when you’re treating the type of characters like Regan, who are otherwise well-raised women, um, who are very clear about the fact they would like to have some sort of sexual agency, like, how, what are the biggest challenges you deal with in kind of sculpting those characters? Speaking of Regan and then, also, of her Aunt Edie, who finds herself in a compromising situation with a man she believes is white, which makes, you know, which adds a different nuance to that situation.

Jenkins: I don’t – having your own agency within your own community is not an issue as much as trying to have that outside of the community – which is why Edie was having such an issue. But, she still stuck to herself – I mean, when he said, “I want to take you out,” and she said, “Is your fiancé coming?” So, he was dealing with her as if all she wanted to do was fall at his feet – and I don’t know if that had anything to do with race or she’s just going to be a handful – so I try and make my women as real as I can. And within themselves, they have no issues with who they are, and holding onto their agencies for themselves; it’s just, when the outside community decides something different, that you have something different. So, I don’t know if that answers your question?

Attendee: It does; it’s helpful.

Jenkins: Okay.

Attendee: Thank you, and, I just have one more question on the Blessing series.

Jenkins: Yeah?

Attendee: You also had done several contemporary romance novels.

Jenkins: Right.

Attendee: Do you intend to explore contemporary romance outside of the Blessing series?

Jenkins: I’d love to be able to go back to this.

(laugher)

Jenkins: I love blowing stuff up, you know, I love that practice, but I’m trying to finish the stuff that pays the mortgage.

(laugher)

Attendee: Thank you.

Jenkins: So keep me in mind, I ain’t forget you.

Attendee: Hi, I’m having a fan girl moment, right now. So, one of the favorite things that I’ve always loved is, I snuck romance books, as a way too young girl, was the sex, right? The Banters grade (?) and, here I am, the daughter of immigrant families, we didn’t talk about sex – my sex talk was, “Don’t get pregnant,” but they didn’t tell you how.

(laugher)

Attendee: But, you weren’t supposed to do it. So, now that I’m older, and I’ve been reading, you know, romances for so long, I love that the sex empowers and give women agency, that’s the theme tonight; so much, that I write about this on my blog. I take romance books and pair them with sex toys so I’m curious with, I’ve only done it with contemporaries,

(laugher)

Attendee: I do!

Jenkins: I like that!

Voice at microphone: We can talk.

Jenkins: I like that, pure romance, okay.

Voice at microphone: It’s like wine but much more exciting.

(laugher)

Voice at microphone: So, my question is, because I have yet to do a pairing with historical, is, how much research do you do for the sex scenes in your book? Like, you know, there’s certain positions expected of women of the certain class, right? And, um, different things are expected in the bedroom? So, how much of that is accurate? And how much of that are modern values and expectations in those sex scenes?

Jenkins: Women have been doing it in all different ways, forever!

James: Yeah.

(laugher)

Jenkins: There is no such thing, people were like, “Did they do that in the 19^th century?” Yes!

(laugher)

James: I have my – I have this woman, Lavina, she goes into her debut, and she’s with all the other girls going into their debut, all of them are nervous, and so she tells them about this artifact that she found that belonged to her grandmother, which exists – which is one of the biggest dildos I have ever seen, it’s huge – and she’s like, “Look at this guys,” and they’re like, “Ugh!” They calm down instantly. Everybody calms down. The fact is, dildos were around, lots of stuff were around, and if you had money, you were in upper class, you could afford those. Your mother might be going, “Hey, I’m just passing this over, don’t say anything.” – “It’s in the library, why don’t you go borrow it?” It’s in the library, they were in the library, so, I mean, who’s using them? Somebody’s using them.

Maier: Can I find that information in Google Books?

(laugher)

Maier: I just want to say, I had to google something because I had forgotten the name. Look up a book called, The School of Whoredom, by Pietro Aretino, it’s from the 17^th century, it will blow your mind. Get the illustrated version, it will blow your mind.

(laugher)

James: And Aretino was in tons and tons of libraries in the Renaissance; so, I mean, those, those, family libraries – I mean, this stuff is filthy.

Attendee: In a good way.

Jenkins: Well, there’s no such thing as a certain – I mean that’s our own limited education – that there was a certain way of doing it and a certain way of not doing it. I mean, the man might have, “Okay, we’re only going to do it this way.” But, there are men like, “Okay, baby, turn over,” so, you know.

(laugher)

James: Well, it was a fun thing about how Aristocratic women were not supposed to give blow-jobs. I played on that a few times, when the guy’s like, “Oh, my god, have I told her should would?” But, he doesn’t tell her so they both can have fun.

Jenkins: It’s fun what we do.

Sosa: I will tell you one thing, though. I did research, again, contemporary romance, about sex toys and found a product. I found a product, okay people, during research, and it was –

Maier: We’re not surprised.

Sosa: Exactly! It was an oral sex light, okay?

Maier: A flood light?

Sosa: No, it’s an oral sex light; it was actually a head set.

(laugher)

Sosa: Put the head set on, you’ve got your light.

Jenkins: You’re lying.

Sosa: No, I’m not, you can find it on Amazon, I’m telling you, I did research; it’s not available, though. Don’t go looking for it because you’re not gonna buy it, because it’s not available on Amazon. But, it is there, still there.

Attendee: I’m imagining those caves, blinking lights.

Sosa: Exactly! That’s exactly right.

Jenkins: Or, miner’s cap, right?

Sosa: In my book, the book that’s coming out in April, Pretending He’s Mine, one of the heroines says, “Hi, ho, hi, ho, it’s off to work we go,” and does that exact thing. But, it’s out there.

Jenkins: See, this is why we wrote it, right?

James: What’s the name of your blog? I think we all need to know that.

Attendee: Body Bookworms; it’s actually a subscription box. I put romance books and sex toys together.

James: Oh, nice.

Kleypas: You’re a genius.

(audience members clap)

Jenkins: I love it.

Attendee: Okay, I’m going to follow the fan girl moment, because I never imagined that I could get the four of you together in a room. I just have a question for you, Lisa, and you can signal me, you can pull your ear like Carol Burnett, but, one character, Tom Severin.

Kleypas: Ah! You want me to tell you? Yeah, he’s going to be paired with Cassandra in the last book of the series – there were some questions and some very good suggestions about possibly pairing him with Doctor Garrett Gibson because they did have a couple of interactions that they seemed to have some chemistry. But, then, when I seriously started thinking, “Who would I pair her with?” I realized that Tom Severin is so cerebral, detached, in control, professional – now, underneath we don’t know what he’s like – but, this is his way of being most of the time. But, he was really too much like her, because she is very professional, and it means a lot to her not to cry in public, not to be emotional. So, I thought, she needs a foil, who is just all out romantic, you know, “If I could choose my fate, I would never be parted from you,” you know, I mean, those are the kinds of things that Ransom says to her. Severin would be just too – he runs cool – you know what I mean? So, pairing him with someone like Cassandra, who is gentle, whimsical, beautiful, emotional, in some sort of a forced marriage, or marriage of convenience situation, I think would bring out the best in both of them, and there would be a lot of sparks. The only other person I thought I could possibly pair Garrett with would be West; but, um, but I wanted to save him for Sabastian & Evie’s oldest daughter, Phoebe, so I’m writing that book, right now.

Attendee: I went to the end when I got my paperback.

Kleypas: Yes, yes, the first chapter of Devil’s Daughter is at the end of Hello Stranger.

Maier: I wanted her with West.

Jenkins: Petra wants West.

Kleypas: I can say that West has a big part in Hello Stranger and, at one point, he’s assisting her in surgery, unexpectedly, and he keeps talking, and she’s like, “If you don’t stop talking, I’m going to chloroform you and do this myself.” And he’s like, “Sorry, if this was a plague-ridden cow, would know exactly what was happening.” So, yeah, he has a big part.

Attendee: Are we out of time?

Maier: Yes, but I have an impromptu giveaway. Is it anyone’s birthday? Nobody?

Jenkins: No cheating, no lying.

Maier: No cheating, no lying.

Attendee: Right here!

(audience claps and cheers)

Kleypas: We should sing Happy Birthday to her.

(Everyone sings Happy Birthday)

Maier: Thank you, everyone!

Jenkins: Thank you for being such a great audience, we love you!

Kleypas: You’re terrific.