What do you like most about "The Spymaster's Lady," your sensual new romance that features a beautiful French spy who finds it hard to keep secrets from the dangerous English spymaster who should be her worst enemy?"

I like the strength of the heroine. She is one gutsy lady.

Annique begins this story at what may be the lowest point in her life. She's lost her mother. She's been entrusted with an impossible task. She's captive to someone who does not wish her well. She has nothing to look forward to but a prolonged, imaginatively enacted, and unpleasant death. Oh — and the failure of her mission.

What makes this terrible situation important is not that she's scared and miserable. I'm not trying to create somebody pitiable just for the sake of it. What's important about the helplessness and misery is what she does about it. With literally nothing but her wits and her determination, she escapes. Nothing can make her a victim. She shapes her own destiny.

Who or what inspired "The Spymaster's Lady?"

I was lucky enough to live in France for a number of years. I had an apartment overlooking the Seine — not far from where Annique is held captive by LeBlanc (a villain), in fact. I've stood on the beach in Normandy where Annique made her escape across the English Channel. This gave me the atmosphere for the Spymaster Books. More important, it got me thinking in new ways about the assumptions we make in historicals set in the English Regency period (1811-1820). I asked myself, "Why not a hero or heroine who takes the French side? Why don't I write myself one of those passionate idealists?"

Related Links

Romance novels always highlight the heroics of both men and women. Tell us about the most heroic person you know.

I have to be serious here. The most heroic person I've known was a fat, bald, old man, not much taller than I am. His name was William Perl. He was responsible for saving thousands of German Jews from death in the Holocaust. He went in alone and he talked them free. He entered Germany and bribed, cajoled, convinced and tricked Nazi leaders into releasing groups of Jews.

He was a great warrior on the side of Light.

Your heroine is remarkably self-sufficient and somewhat world-weary. Yet she's retained an innocent quality. Why is this type of character appealing to contemporary women readers?

Hey ... who among us doesn't have to be bloody self sufficient? We are all just "self-sufficient-ed" up the gazoo these days. But I think we all also feel vulnerable and overwhelmed.

That's what I'm trying to catch with Annique — the sense of getting through hard times by keeping up a bit of a façade. Acting and talking more competent and calm than we really are. Making it up as we go along. And Annique wins in the end. It's good when vulnerable wins in the end.

What's up next for you? Can we look forward to stories of any other earthy, intriguing men from "The Spymaster's Lady?"

I'm working right now on "My Lord and Spymaster." It's not Adrian's story, another English spy from "The Spymaster's Lady" whom readers seem to find very appealing. That one will have to wait. This is Jessamyn and Sebastian's story. Adrian appears as a secondary character.