Tempted at Every Turn has been out about a month now and I’ve already received such great reader feedback about Willow and James. I normally do my Under the Covers feature on my website and I will put this there too, but my Jaunty friends are getting a sneak peek at the behind the scenes.

Heroine: Willow Mabson
Inspiration – actually Anna Paquin, not someone I would ordinarily look to for a heroine, but this picture seemed to capture the essence of Willow for me.

Hero: James Sterling
Inspiration – Josh Holloway, I actually had a difficult time “finding” James. And as silly as it may sound, I get stuck if I can’t find THE right picture. But then, I found it…

Yowza! It totally embodied his arrogance and sexiness.

It took me a while to narrow down the subject matter I wanted to deal with in the mystery subplot of the book. I jumped around to several different ideas, even one about a kidnapped show dog – as it turns out, that would have been a WAY different book. The idea I ended up with worked so much better.

Anytime you have a really starched, repressed, uptight society, you’ll have an underground movement that swings the other way. As most you know the Victorian era is known not only for the industrial revolution, but also for their strict morality. But while so many were busy being prim and proper, prostitution was at an all-time high, and there was an emergence of both erotic literature and photography. It was the latter that I chose to use and it worked perfectly with Willow’s rather rigid nature. Needless to say it was rather interesting research.

The other aspect I tackled was Bi-polar disorder, a tricky feat for a historical novel when none of the modern terminology would have applied. I have a friend who has family experience with this and was able to assist me with making sure I portrayed the illness appropriately, especially in a day and age when we didn’t have the benefit of the medications.

On top of all of this, I had all the Scotland Yard (technically Metropolitan Police) procedural stuff to work out. Needless to say it was a really interesting book to research. And the characters are probably my favorite thus far. Well, I hope you enjoyed this peek from the inside of Tempted at Every Turn.