The Quills are very happy to welcome back NYT Best Selling Author, Victoria Alexander!!

(Everyone who comments on her post will be entered into a drawing to win a copy of her book, A Little Bit Wicked. The winner will be announced Sunday evening)

Just about a month ago I was honored to be the keynote speaker at the Romance Writers of America annual conference in San Francisco. Let me tell you—the conference was great and San Francisco is amazing. I had a fabulous time.

One of the things I talked about was—whether you’re a writer or a reader—not apologizing for your literary tastes or for where you get your literary inspiration.

I love Jane Austen’s stories and the way she looked at her world. I love Mark Twain and I think the Diaries of Adam and Eve is one of the most romantic, funniest, charming stories ever written with an ending that just touches your heart. If you have never read this—go, now, read it! I think the last few pages of Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities is the best ending ever written. It brings me to tears every time I read it. I think I’ve read the entire book maybe once but I’ve read the ending dozens of times. wm So, in terms of literary inspiration, I would love to say Jane Austen or Charles Dickreaens or Mark Twain but I can’t. The influence on my own story telling is grounded firmly in the 20th century, and very much in the 1960′s.

Several years ago, I came face to face with the 60′s and my writing roots while cleaning out a closet. I ran across a stack of comic books originally published in the early 60′s. I had started collecting them again as an adult—whenever I’d run across one I’d buy it.

These were comics I had bought as a child. These were old friends. I knew these stories by heart. Because these weren’t just any old comics. These were Lois Lane comics.

Lois Lane. Girl reporter. Superman’s girlfriend.

I loved Lois Lane. And I’ll confess to you, I was a Lois Lane addict. I knew what day the new comics arrived at the drug store that was a mere five minutes from my house in Stillwater, Oklahoma. For twelve cents I could be swept away to an entirely different world peopled with superheroes and practically unbeatable villains and best of all—a heroine worthy of the name heroine.

In an era in which women were only beginning to look at the world of working outside the home, Lois Lane had not merely a job but a career. She was brave, if somewhat impulsive, intelligent if not always as practical as she should have been, dedicated, honorable and she never had a bad hair day that wasn’t fixed on the next page.

And she was hopelessly in love with a hero too noble to surrender to his own feelings about her and thereby put her life in danger because, of course, evil doers would try to get back at him through her. In addition, her hero, our hero, Superman, was extremely well drawn.

Lois Lane had a profound impact on my writing and probably my life. When I look at the heroines I create today, regardless of what time period they may be set in, I see the influence of Lois Lane. I see her impulsiveness and her imperfections and I also see her courage and strength and sense of honor. And willingness to sacrifice her own happiness and sometimes her very life for the good of the man she loved or even to save the world.

I see Lois Lane in the heroine of my new book—Seduction of a Proper Gentleman.

Kathleen MacDavid is willing to sacrifice, to do whatever it takes including marry a man she’s never met to save her family from a centuries old curse. A curse she had always considered herself way too practical and sensible to believe in.

Seduction is the last of the Last Man Standing books. I’ve never actually brought a series to a close before—I truly think I will write the Efffington stories forever—and I find I’m feeling a little mushy about it. Oliver Leighton, the hero of Seduction has been with me for 6 books now and it’s strangely hard to say goodbye. I know he’s just fictional still…

Apparently, I am not as stalwart, as self-sacrificing, as tough a heroine as Lois Lane. Go figure.

Oliver Leighton, Lois Lane, Sydney Carton, Elizabeth Bennet, Adam and Eve—all characters that have affected my life in some way and will stay with me forever.

So who are those characters that still live in your heart?