"Spies and Lovers" is a trilogy set during the Victorian era in the 1840s.  The three heroes are a band of spies, tracking a traitor through three books.  But if you've read any  of my books, you know that I definitely enjoy the romance relationship the best!  I came up with the premise about three spies, because I was looking to create heroes who were comrades-in-arms, closer than brothers. No Ordinary Groom and The Beauty and the Spy actually take place in the same time frame, so there are a couple identical scenes in each book.  The only difference is, you'll read the scene from a different main character's point of view.  Plotting the first book was fun, but the second one was...tricky.  There were so many things I couldn't do, because I'd already "set the scene" in the first book.  Another challenge was making sure each book stood alone.  I don't want my readers feeling like they have to read my books in a certain order!  In A Woman's Innocence, the final spy gets his lady. I don't want to say too much so I don't ruin the surprise!

My second trilogy didn't start out with a title, but became the "His" books by default.  My editor came up with the title His  Betrothed, and we decided to keep "His" going.  These books are set during the 1590s, the Elizabethan period (think  "Shakespeare in Love").  To many readers, they're just as medieval as my first books, but historians like to insist that the medieval period ended in 1485, when the first Tudor kings came to power.  So technically the next era (including Queen Elizabethan's reign) was the Renaissance. More than you wanted to know, I bet...;)  So anyway, I was reading a research book (my favorite thing to do!) about the Spanish Armada, and how some ships were destroyed at sea, leaving sailors to be washed up on the Irish coast.   I started to think, "What if he washed up on the English coast?" I decided my hero couldn't be Spanish, so "What if he was a British spy?"  And then, since my hero Spencer was away spying for the Crown, I gave him a twin brother who took his place--Alex, the hero of His Scandal.  And Alex had to have a buddy, someone he could talk to, who also set up a plot that continued into the third book--and there you have Edmund, hero of His Bride.  So do you think I like to base my books around men? ;)

Though the titles don't seem connected, my first trilogy is based on a family, two brothers and their sister.  It didn't start out that way, though.  The Darkest Knight was my first foray into the medieval period, as well as my first published book.  But I  had previously written two other manuscripts that now sit fondly in a box, never to be published.  But they were my practice manuscripts, and they taught me so much.  I set one during the 1840s (surprise, surprise, I came back!) and another during the American Revolution.  Then I decided medieval, and thought a novice monk could be pretty tortured--about his past, that is.  I set this fiction in the middle of a real historical moment, when Richard III was about to lose his crown.  I came up with my fictional plot idea by reading real history. (WARNING: if you don't want a plot element spoiled, don't read the rest!)  I named the villain James, the hero's brother, after my husband, just to be cute.  Before I knew it, James had reasons for what he did, and I couldn't make him a bad villain, and suddenly--he was the hero of the next book!  That was such fun!  When I was searching for a third book idea, I realized their sister might be interesting, but she'd led a privileged, normal life, so I had to have something bad happen to her, to give her some internal conflict.  And that's how an accidental trilogy happened!

"Compromised," in the anthology Hot and Bothered, was my first novella, and hopefully not my last.  It was such fun to write! The premise was that the novella had to be a hot, sexy summer read (see the title).  Well, it's hard to write a historical and  have likable characters true to the period who would so quickly become...physical.  I had to give my heroine a darn good reason to allow herself to be almost seduced in a garden in the first chapter of the book.  And of course, this being a historical, a forced marriage resulted.  Ah, now it was legal for my characters to be seduced!