1.Welcome Gaelen! Finally after many years the day has come that Jack's story is available to the masses. Can you tell us briefly about His Wicked Kiss without giving major plotlines away?

I would describe His Wicked Kiss as a big, sweeping, passionate romance that moves from the jungles of South America (really!), to adventure on the high seas, to the ballrooms of Regency London. The heroine, Eden Farraday, is the daughter of a doctor-turned-scientist who is studying jungle plants for medicinal purposes, while the hero, Lord Jack Knight, is in South America making a deal with the rebel colonists under Simon Bolivar (known as the George Washington of South America) to bring him mercenary fighters to help save his cause. Bolivar's little army is badly outnumbered, so Jack agrees to bring him men in order to fend off the much larger Spanish forces that are about to try to squash the colonials' hopes of liberty.

2. What is it about Jack that will have the readers' swooning? I know as I was reading the novel he was everything that you briefly described him to be in the previous novels. But what is your take on Jack and how come you were so mysterious on his character in previous novels?

LOL, the only reason I was so mysterious about his character is because I didn't know yet what I wanted to do with him! If readers are under the impression that I have everything figured out years in advance, then I'm afraid they might be giving me too much credit. *g* A lot of the time I just have to figure it out as I go along.

To answer the other part of your question, Jack is a swoon-worthy hero because he's a big, bad, hard-ass dude who doesn't anybody finding out that behind that tough cynical exterior, he's got a heart of gold. He's shrewd, he's funny in his own smart-ass way, and he's a dynamo in bed. He's a man who can take care of his woman in every imaginable way, and he's willing to tell Eden what he's thinking/feeling in his own gruff idiom without turning into a wimp. He can make big scary pirates cower before him, yet this is a man who's got a soft spot for his dog, as well as a paternal streak toward his little orphaned cabin boy. He's just pure Alpha, plus he's got a sense of humour, a lot of money, and a great bod. Is that not the perfect man??? LOL.

3. Did you have any doubts while writing this novel about how your readers were going to accept Jack and his story?

I'll let you in on a little secret: I always have doubts along the way as I'm working on a book. But even though it means putting a heck of a lot of pressure on myself, I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. A healthy dose of self-doubt actually drives me to try harder, dig deeper, and give my very best on every page. You know what they say, the minute you think you're ripe, you start to rot! So I just keep on revising and polishing, and I never let any of my books go out into the public, unless and until I feel that the entire manuscript is in tip-top shape-after all, it's my reputation on the line, and my readers deserve the very best I have to give. It's always been my policy to strive for writing not just books, but keepers, and to make every book a little better than the last.

4. Tell us about Eden. The opening chapters of her are just incredible and as a reader I instantly bonded with her. How did she evolve in the story that was different than you had originally planned if at all?

Well, thank you! I'm so glad you liked her. She did cause me to wipe away a tear or two while I was writing the sad parts, with how lonely she was, and on several occasions she made me laugh out loud at some of her dialogue. I think what's most endearing about Eden is how much she wants human companionship. She's part bluestocking, part Jane of the Jungle, but yet she's got this sweet, please-be-my-friend sort of earnest quality. As a girl who has virtually grown up in the rainforest, everything is new and wondrous to her. (Especially the oh-so-worldly Jack.)

Another behind-the-scenes secret I can tell you about Eden is that the inspiration for her character and the dynamic between her and her father, Dr. Farraday, came in part from one of my favourite Shakespeare plays, The Tempest. The sorcerer Prospero and his daughter, Miranda, are stranded on an island where there are no other humans. Prospero is understandably worried how the extremely-sheltered Miranda is going to react when a boat full of men arrive on their island, just like Jack and his crewmen coming along the river past the Farradays' jungle camp.

The main way in which Eden evolved through the various revisions of this manuscript was that she started out as very much a strong, action-oriented character, but I needed to keep bringing more and more of her emotions out onto the page. One of the areas where I had the opportunity to do this right from the beginning was in her dreaminess about longing to go home to London to find someone to love, as well as in her relationship with her dad.

In the first draft, I had her simply angry at her father for reneging on his promise and refusing to leave the jungle, but my editor and I discussed it, and later agreed that she should have more depth and softness. So I went back and made her someone who already understands perfectly well that her father can't keep his promise because he is a man obsessed with making up for his failure to save his wife-Eden's mother-when she got sick with a mysterious fever. He won't leave the jungle because he must find cures to save others. It's the only way he can make up for his deep sense of guilt.

So instead of Eden being merely angry at the disappointment that he's reneging on his promise to take her home to England, her heart hurts for him-she knows he's a man in great pain, and she is desperately worried about him.

Her worry for his mental/emotional wellbeing is part of what then drives her to go rowing out of the jungle and stowing away on Jack's ship. She figures Papa will get so consumed with worry over her that he'll be forced to leave his isolation in the jungle and come back into civilization and hopefully, slowly, become a part of the world again.

It's probably pretty obvious to the reader, but Eden's dad, Dr. Victor Farraday, is one of my favourite secondary characters from all my books. I had him pictured in my mind rather like Sean Connery as Indiana Jones's father in "The Final Crusade."

5. The location of this novel is beautifully written in description, placing the reader within minds eye of the location and scenery. Did you spend much time on researching this area and myths? I found one myth in particular in this novel of interest and I have to ask do Pink Dolphin's and this myth really exist?

I spent A TON of time researching this setting. Thanks for noticing! And yes, the pink dolphins and the Waroa tribe's myth about them are real. Research for the jungle setting in His Wicked Kiss has turned me into an avid supporter of rainforest conservation.

I did not know how dire the deforestation problem was before I started doing research for this book. Can you believe that every hour, every day, around the clock, the earth loses 7,000 football-fields worth of rainforest? That's one football field sized patch of ancient, virgin rainforest burnt down to a wasteland every second, and once it's destroyed, it can never grow back. (Visit www.savetherainforest.org to learn more.)

6. What is your favourite scene out this novel that has stayed with you long after writing it?

Jack's last line in the final chapter (not counting the epilogue at the end) is one that gives me a little twist in my heart every time I think of it. But there were a lot of great moments in writing this book. Another of my favourites is when they arrive at Ireland. And I loved the scene where they first meet-and the ruckus that erupts when "the stowaway" is first discovered aboard Jack's ship.

7. From looking over your website in preparation of this interview. I see you have a listing for a new series coming out. Is Jack's story the last of The Knight Miscellany series or will there be more?

The new series is called The Spice Trilogy and it picks up the saga with another branch of the Knight family. It turns out that Jack and his London brothers have cousins from an uncle who went off to India thirty years ago as a young man seeking his fortune. Now circumstances arise where the three Knight cousins are heading for London. There are two brothers, Gabriel and Derek, and their sister, Georgiana, or "Georgie." Georgie, of course, is named after her aunt, the scandalous duchess aunt known as the Hawkscliffe Harlot, who is at the heart of the Knight series.

Georgie's story will be the first of the trilogy, and as of now, we have it slated as a March 2007 release. Readers familiar with the Knight series may be happy to hear that Georgie's hero is none other than the serious and dutiful chap, Ian Prescott, the Marquess of Griffith, who grew up with the Knight boys and has appeared in several of the books. I'm having lots of fun writing their story now. :-)