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Today on the blog we have one of my favorite authors spilling the beans on her latest release. I fell in love with her The Rarest Blooms series and often find myself eradicated from a reading slump between the pages of one of her stories. Check out our interview below:
About the Author:
Madeline Hunter’s first romance was published in
June, 2000.
Since then she has seen twenty-four historical romances and one novella published, and her books have been translated into twelve languages. Over six million of her books are in print. She is a seven-time RITA finalist, and two-time RITA winner. Twenty-three of her books have been on the USA Today bestseller list, and she has also had titles on the New York Times printed list, Publishers Weekly list, and the Waldenbooks paperback fiction list. She has received two starred reviews in Publishers Weekly, and Romantic Times has awarded twenty-two of her books 4 1/2 stars. Madeline is a Ph.D. in Art History, and she teaches at the college level. She currently lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and two sons.Find Madeline Online: Website | Facebook | Twitter
About the Book:
Most women will give him anything he wants. She is not most women…As a well-known barrister and the son of a duke, Ives confines his passionate impulses to discreet affairs with worldly mistresses. A twist of fate, however, has him looking for a new lover right when a fascinating woman shows up in his chambers, asking him to help save her father from the gallows. Unfortunately, he has already been asked to serve as the prosecutor in the case, but that only ensures close encounters with the rarity named Padua Belvoir. And every encounter increases his desire to tutor her in pleasure’s wicked ways...Having always been too tall, too willful, and too smart to appeal to men, Padua Belvoir is shocked when Ives shows interest in her. Knowing his penchant for helping the wrongly accused, she had initially thought he might be her father’s best hope for salvation. Instead, he is her worst adversary—not least because every time he looks at her, she is tempted to give him anything he wants…
Read an excerpt: here | Read a review at RT Book Reviews
Get Your Copy Today!
The Interview
RJ: Welcome and
thanks for stopping by Not Another Romance Blog, Madeline! Congrats on your
latest book, TALL, DARK AND WICKED (October 6, 2015 | Berkley/NAL). Could you
give us the author’s cut of the book’s blurb?
MH: As a well-known barrister and the son of a
duke, Ives confines his edgy sensuality to discreet affairs with worldly
mistresses. A twist of fate, however, has him looking for a new lover right
when a fascinating and unusual woman shows up in his chambers, asking him to
help save her father from the gallows
RJ: Let’s get
to know more about your Hero and Heroine (Ives and Padua). What are some of
their flaws and positive qualities? What attracts them to each other?
MH: The sensible Hemingford brother, the lawyer
with sage advice, Ives also has a volatile streak in him. When it surfaces, he
is apt to throw the first punch. He has refined sensual tastes, and by that I
mean erotic refinement. Think a few shades of light gray. He avoids real
romance in his life, for reasons he never contemplates. Being a lawyer, he can
be a bit preachy about the logic, or lack of it, behind others’ choices and
activities, especially when it comes to his older brother the duke..
No one is more
astonished than he is when he falls hard for Padua Belvoir, the daughter of a
man he is expected to prosecute for a major crime. What he calls desire is
actually more, and as the story progresses he makes choices that could ruin his
reputation, and he risks all that he has built.
His most endearing
qualities are his bond with his brothers and his willingness to defend
criminals if he thinks they are innocent. On the other hand, his decision to
become a lawyer---not totally unheard of for a man of his birth, but hardly
appropriate and extremely unusual--- was mostly a way to thumb his nose at the
eldest of the brothers, who died prior to the series beginning. At least he
does not pretend it was anything other than an immature way to irritate someone
he disliked!
Ives has a little
list of the six essential qualities in a mistress, and Padua fits them all.
Most significant is that she has what he considers the most important one---
loyalty. She stands by her father even as her father repudiates her. Among her virtues
are things that her world and the men in it normally do not admire---She has
always been too willful, too independent and too smart to appeal to men. She is
perhaps too careless with her reputation, too, and even with her sole means of
employment, and her habit of stating her mind’s thinking creates problems that
she doesn’t need. She harbors a romantic streak in her, that prior to the book’s
time got her into trouble at least once.
They are initially
attracted by physical qualities. Even though Padua is not a typical beauty,
Ives finds her quirks, like her unusual height, elegant and provocative. From
their first meeting each intrigues the other as distinctive and interesting.
There is the magnetism of equals meeting from the get-go.
RJ: Is there
anything special you can share behind the inspiration for the book’s plot,
characters, or setting? Also, did you incorporate any quirky research findings
into the story?
MH: Ives’s
character developed in the first book in the series. In the course of that
book there is a little
exchange/misunderstanding regarding which brother another man’s wife meant
when, in a letter her husband found, she referred to her lover as Hemingford.
Ives explains he never allows his mistresses to call him that. He much prefers
they call him Lord and Master. With that line I saw an inner life for this
secondary character, who, with his written contracts with mistresses, orders
that part of his life as neatly as the rest. What, I asked myself, if he met a
woman who makes his life very messy?
Padua is named
after the city in Italy where her mother studied at the university and received
a degree. There were several such cities in Italy where woman could obtain a
higher education, and even teach. The history of those women and those
institutions was very interesting to me, so I gave her this background and the
dream, fading fast, of literally following in her mother’s footsteps. I chose
the university in Padua because that worked as a woman’s name, where, for
example, Bologna does not.
RJ: I
understand that this book will be the second in The Wicked trilogy. What is the
premise for this series and how did the idea for it come about?
MH: In my last couple of series, the males
characters have had a bond, and their give and take while together, away from
the ladies, was a lot of fun to write
(and, I hope, to read.) They joke with each other, and there is a lot of
good-natured male goading too. My editor suggested I consider a series that is
male-centric. The men would need a connection, and I chose having them be
brothers because an overarching plot point came to me, the event that serves as
the catalyst for the first book’s beginning, and the final book’s plot. That
plot required they be brothers, all sons of a duke.
RJ: What makes
a good romances novel to you and who are your favorite authors?
MH: I like
stories with stakes that require the characters to grow in their understanding
of themselves, and each other. Also stories where the characters seem very real
to me, and are experiencing the kinds of things real people experience, and
processing it all that way too. I like there to be a meaningful secondary plot
that brings them together and that weaves into the romance. I have enjoyed
books by many authors, and have a long list of auto-buys, but some of my
earliest favorites that I continue to read are Mary Balogh, Mary Jo Putney, and
Amanda Quick.
RJ: What
projects are you currently working on and what can we expect from you next?
MH: I am
writing the third and last book in the trilogy, The Wicked Duke. When book #1
opened, the eldest of the brothers and the then current duke has died
unexpectedly. There is a chance he was poisoned, and suspicion falls on brother
number 2., Lance, who inherits the title. The Wicked Duke is his story, and
revolves around that mystery and its solution, and the woman he pursues because
of his need to clear his name.
RJ: Final
Question: Let’s say your book gets its own PBS Masterpiece Classic adaptation;
which actors and actress would you ideally cast to portray your characters?
MH: Wow, don’t
I wish! For Ives, I would seriously consider James Caviezel and for Padua, Anne
Hathaway.
RJ: Thanks
again for visiting my blog and I can’t wait to get to know Ives and Padua
better! Best wishes on TALL, DARK AND WICKED available 10/6/2015!
--
I hope you all have enjoyed this interview and will get to know Ives and Padua through Hunter's latest release! What's your favorite book by one of Madeline's go-to authors: Mary Balogh, Mary Jo Putney, and Amanda Quick?
How exciting! I knew Madeleine was on the road to writing a male series, since her Rarest Blooms were of the ladies, and we're my favorites too. As for the to-go authors, shockingly I haven't read many of them. Well, I have read one of Mary Balogh's books, DARK ANGEL/LORD CAREW'S BRID, and in the anthology, It Happened One Night, in which she took part in with a novella, Spellbound. So, I liked them all.
ReplyDelete@Ki Pha, loved that series!!! And WHAT?! Let me change your life real quick: read Mary Balogh's Bedwyn series (start with Simply Married) or the Huxtable series- (start with First Comes marriage) and you'll be hooked!!
ReplyDeleteoh I so need to read this author. I believe I have some of her books but have not dived into them yet and with little one now taking up my attention. It's awesome thought that she has a brand new series in the works :)
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