Susan Interviews Stephanie Laurens

I first got acquainted with Stephanie Laurens--as well as you can get to know someone via the Internet-- sometime in '96 or '97 on an Avon Romance Writers loop Julia Quinn had set up. We didn't meet face to face until the RWA conference in Anaheim, California in July, 1998. We've been friends pretty much ever since, although we're generally lucky to see each other once a year, as I live in the Pacific Northwest and Steph lives in, oh, Australia. Not exactly next door neighbors, don'tcha know. But we have a bunch in common. For instance, did you know we write just alike? Her first novel was published in 1992 (mine in 1989) and she's been publishing steadily ever since (Okay, I've been bounced from a few publishers in my career and have had raggedy gaps between my books). The Brazen Bride is her 42nd work. Forty-freaking-two books! My 18th will be published in September.

So, yeah, yeah, we write nothing alike. Well, what the heck. I love her anyway--and I know you will, too. So please forgive the changing font sizes (stupid blogger!) and join me in extending a big Quills welcome. Take it away, Steph!

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Susan: Welcome, girlfriend. It’s wonderful to have you visit us here in Quillsville, especially with your hot new novel out–#3 of the Black Cobra Quartet, The Brazen Bride. You’ve got a shipload of published books out there (she said not at allll jealously). What is it about your works that you feel has changed over time? What’s remained constant?

Stephanie: Looking back, I’d have to say that my storylines—the skeleton of the stories I tell, the type of plots I use, the way I weave the threads—has remained, if not constant, then very strongly recognizable—almost a signature, if you will. The way I tell the stories, however, that unquestionably has changed and continues to change, but more as a process of evolution, an ongoing one at that. With every book, I consciously strive to do better with my “telling,” and that does lead to gradual shifts in the way I construct scenes and deliver dialogue or descriptive passages. I would have to say that I think that sort of developmental evolution is healthy for any storyteller wanting a long-term career. Our audience constantly evolves, and how they want their stories told evolves with time, too.

Susan: All your works are chronologically set in or around the English Regency era. The Black Cobra Quartet, for instance, is set in 1822. What attracts you to this period?

Stephanie: There’s two very strong reasons why I write stories set in that era, one of which I’ve known about for ages, but the other I only recently realized. The first is that the Regency-era was the first period in history in which members of the British aristocracy, in approaching marriage, faced the questions: Do I marry for convenience (dynasty, wealth, social standing)? Do I marry for love? Or do I remain single? These are the same questions men and women face today, but in that time, with that group of people, those questions were new and the answers were by no means clear and definitely not automatic. The romance movement, driven by poets, writers, and artists, had flowered in the 1790s. By 1810, it had at last become at least marginally socially acceptable for aristocrats to engage in love–matches. Not that such things had never before occurred, but they had previously been frowned on. So in setting my stories in Regency times, I can have my hero and heroine grappling with those eternal questions, and all without the distractions of the internet, and telephones and, because they are aristocrats, they don’t even have to cook dinner or go to work.

The second reason is that, apparently, one of my favorite groups to write about are archetypal warrior-males returning from war and having to merge with civilian society again. As noted, I didn’t realize this until recently, but the Cynsters, the Bastion Club, and now the Black Cobra Quartet, are all based on heroes returning from war. In Regency times, this translates to books set in the years after Waterloo. In terms of my readers, this is of course a very emotive, engaging aspect, because we live in a time when once again we have soldiers returning from war, and having to reacclimate to civilian society, and one of the most difficult aspects of that lies in the emotional connections.

Susan: Do you have favorite characters—heroes, heroines?

Stephanie: Not as such. It’s more a fascination with characters for whom I’ve yet to write their stories. Once I’ve written about a couple and seen them into matrimony, other than casting a curious glance over them from time to time—as I do when I use the couple as secondary characters in later books—I tend to focus on the characters I’m wrestling with at the moment, or that are, figuratively speaking, hovering over me, waiting their turn to be given life on the page. I do love exploring characters—they truly surprise me at times, which is one of the joys, I think, of being a romance author.

Susan: Tell us more about the Black Cobra and The Brazen Bride.

Stephanie: The Black Cobra Quartet came about through wondering what happened to the rest of the heavy cavalry troop who fought with the Cynsters at Waterloo. The answer that popped into my mind was that five of them went to India, and were officers in the British Army there, which at that time was under the command of the Governor-General of India, who was appointed by the East India Company and was essentially in control of all company activities there. From that, the story of the scion of an English noble house setting up a villainous cult, the Black Cobra cult, for his own gratification grew—and of course our heroes were drafted in to stop him. How they achieve that is the story told in the quartet. It’s been something of an experience writing four books that run concurrently, with all four heroes leaving Bombay on the same day, all going by different routes, each carrying a copy of crucial evidence back to the Duke of Wolverstone and the Cynsters in England. Believe me when I say I’ve been learning a lot about geography in 1822!

The Brazen Bride is the third volume in the quartet. Major Logan Monteith, the third of our heroes, is attacked by Black Cobra cult assassins during a horrendous storm in the English Channel, and is thrown overboard, badly wounded, when the ship wrecks. He’s washed ashore, almost dead, on the island of Guernsey, where he’s rescued by the household of the local lady of the manor, who rules over the area rather like a queen. But when he comes to, Logan has lost his memory. There’s plenty of twists and turns, and surprise discoveries as he bit by bit remembers who he is, and then sets out to complete his mission, racing across the Channel, then across England.

While many of my books are much in the vein of Errol Flynn meets Jane Austen—lots of dashing derring-do grounded by a healthy dose of feminine common sense—in this case my heroine isn’t the sort to stand back and let the hero have all the fun.

Susan: You can learn more about Stephanie’s latest book, The Brazen Bride, and watch a rockin' trailer for it and for the previous two Black Cobra books as well at http://www.stephanielaurens.com

Pssst. But, first,I how much you guys like your hunks. So here's a little teaser:

He was startlingly, heartbreakingly, breathtakingly beautiful.

His face, all clean, angular lines and sculpted planes, embodied the very essense of masculine beauty--there was not a soft note anywhere. Combined with the muscled hardness of his body, that face promised virility, passion--and direct, unadorned, unadulterated sin.

Such a face did not belong to a man given to sweetness but to action, command, and demand.

Chiseled lips, firm and fine, sent a seductive shiver down her spine. The line of his jaw made her fingertips throb. He had winged black brows, a wide forehead, and lashes so black and thick and long she was instantly jealous.

As usual, her instincts had been right. This man was--would be--dangerous. To her peace of mind if nothing else.

Men like this--who looked like he did, who had bodies like his--led women into sin.

And into stupidity.