An interview with Loretta, by Susan/Miranda
Welcome back to the second part of my interview with my fellow Wench Loretta Chase, marking the reissue of her legendary historical romance, Lord of Scoundrels -- a book that's simply too magical to be contained in a single blog. As I mentioned last time, Lord of Scoundrels is the winner of numerous awards and honors, and most recently has been named again as the number one favorite romance of all time in the All About Romance Top 100 Romances Reader Poll (#1 in the 2000, 2004, and 2007 polls; here's this year's AAR Poll if you'd like to see the rest as well.) An extra tidbit about this poll: among the thousands of romances eligible for this honor, Lord of Scoundrels appeared on over 40% of the voters' ballots. Now that's reader loyalty!
Avon Books will be releasing a new edition of Lord of Scoundrels this week. In addition to a beautiful new cover, the new edition includes a special letter from Loretta. If you've yet to discover this marvelous book, then you have a treat waiting for you.
This time, Loretta answers more of our most pressing questions about Dain, Jessica, and exactly how she researched Dain's underwear....
Susan/Miranda: When Lord of Scoundrels was first published, Dain was a most unusual hero: an English peer, but one whose Italian mother made him somewhat suspect in polite society. I’ve heard you call him a “mongrel”, an outsider. How did you invent this pedigree for him, and how did it shape his character for you?
Loretta: What can I say? I have a weakness for things Italian. (That's a painting of one of the Medici guys, Ippolito.) The other night I watched an Italian movie, Ginger and Cinnamon, and simply sat there in utter delight: the language, the attitude--and the men. Before this book, I’d written Captives of the Night , whose hero was Albanian; so it wasn’t a big stretch to create a mongrel English aristocrat. Having Dain be half-Italian fit so many aspects of his story: his background as well as his behavior, which does get operatic at times. 
Sometimes people from two different cultures complement each other; sometimes it’s a horrific collision. The latter is the case with Dain’s parents, and this is what warps him and makes him a misfit. In a loving household, he would have grown up with a better self-image, and would have dealt with bullying at school in a different way, and thus would have grown up into someone altogether different from the man Jessica meets in that antique shop.
Susan/Miranda: Smart, funny, practical heroines like Jessica Trent are rare creatures in historical romance, especially one who is also a virgin with a great deal of knowledge of men and sex. How did her character come to you?
Loretta: If Jessica were like what we assume to be the typical young lady of her time, she could never handle Dain, and he’d think her too boring to live. But Jessica is more like the ladies of her grandmother’s (and great-grandmother’s) generation. They had a more practical, frank attitude toward sex. These were bawdier, more rough and tumble generations (think of Tom Jones). By the 1820s we’re seeing the prudery & hypocrisy that foreshadows the Victorian era.
Still, I’m not sure this was a conscious decision in creating her. I knew instinctively that she had to be a woman Dain couldn’t crush. Other than that, she more or less assembled herself as a character, as Dain did. These, like every other character in the book, were quite clear from the start, while I was writing the outline.
Susan/Miranda: Word Wenches readers are always fascinated by cover art. Avon has given the reissue of Lord of Scoundrels a handsome new cover. How do you feel this cover better captures your book?
Loretta: I think the artist has definitely caught something of Jessica--certainly as Dain sees her--and I like the way the hero is a distant figure approaching her. I love the colors--and I think it’s great that the inside clinch is actually the old one, but touched up so that it better resembles the hero and heroine. What I have loved about my recent Avon covers (and I’m hoping to be able to show the one for Your Scandalous Ways soon) is the feeling that we are seeing the heroine as the hero sees her. So they’re not simply beautiful paintings, in beautiful colors, but they capture the feel of the story. There’s a consistent look, yet each cover has its own distinct feel.
Susan/Miranda: Fashion is important to Jessica, and her clothes are a constant puzzle to Dain. You’ve already told us something about how you dressed Jessica (http://wordwenches.typepad.com/word_wenches/2007/10/dressing-jessic.html) Why did you make the delightfully extreme women’s dress so crucial to the story?
Loretta: Here's another link. It's for 1829, but it’s gives a good sense of what Jessica wears in 1828. The time period was predetermined, since this book was part of a series. But it worked out beautifully, because to me Dain is the Extreme Male & Jessica’s love of fashionable (and very expensive) clothes makes her look like the Extreme Female. I liked having her clothes be a fun contrast to her very level-headed outlook and behavior. She wears the frills and furbelows but she’s not a sissy girl. Her clothes give Dain a chance to exercise his caustic wit. Yet he enjoys the excess.
He’s an expensive man, and as I point out in the book, “his attire, unlike his character, was always comme il faut.” He’s used his brains to make himself very, very rich, and he likes spending the money on nice things. It was clear to me that he’d take pride in spending money on an elegantly expensive wife. He’d like being one of the few men in the world who could afford her.
Susan/Miranda: During the (very hot!) love scenes between Dain and Jessica, you’ve spent as much care on documenting his undergarments and their removal as hers. Men’s underwear is notoriously hard to document. What’s the story behind your research?
Loretta: I’ve always said that if you’re going to describe clothing in a story it has to serve a purpose: character or plot development, preferably. This is why, in so many books, I don’t get into details until people are dressing or undressing. Because Jessica’s being a fashion plate was a crucial part of her character, and because Dain is so observant and articulate as he makes fun of it, there are reasons to describe her clothes. In his case, it was important to communicate that he, too, dressed in the height of masculine fashion, down to his undergarments. Still, as you note, men’s underwear is very difficult--and it was more so when I wrote this book. My main sources were the Cunnington books and, IIRC, some museum visits.
Susan/Miranda: Most heroines reform their wayward heroes, but Jessica embraces Dain’s past, even his illegitimate son –– definitely not a typical saccharine romance-child, but a scruffy, ill-mannered, very real little boy. How did you decide to include him in your story?
Loretta: Dominic was there when I first developed the story. He had to be part of it, and I could write a dissertation about what he symbolizes and the role he plays. But to keep it simple: Love in my stories is usually about a second chance of one kind or another. In one sense, the boy is Dain: looks like him, acts like him. Once Dain can let himself accept and love the child, he can truly accept and love himself. (The child in this picture is wearing a skeleton suit. This is what Dominic dons after his bath at the inn.)
As to Jessica’s accepting the illegitimate son, it’s an interesting situation. Today we’re more likely to see a single mother raising her children. In those days--at least among the upper classes--the child was more likely to be with the father. After all, it was no disgrace for a man to sire bastards; it was the woman who was disgraced. Since a man “owned” his offspring--while the mother had no rights to them--bastards were often part of his household, or that of one of his relatives. Lord Byron, for example, took charge of his daughter by Claire Clairmont. So Jessica is not behaving strangely at all. As she points out, Lady Granville brought up her husband’s two illegitimate sons by her aunt.
Thank you so much, Loretta!
Now, Dear Readers, here's your second chance to ask a question or post a comment, and be eligible to win an autographed copy of the new Lord of Scoundrels. The winner will be drawn later this week, so post (and enter) now!