Greetings, dear readers!

I am writing this on April 1. No one has played any jokes on me yet. If someone does I won’t mind because the temperature has finally topped 60 and that puts me in a wonderful mood. I have spent March freezing, either here at home or when I travel. Those of you in southern climates don’t have this problem, but we northerners think winter should be done now, thank you very much, and I am thrilled to finally open my windows.

It was a hard winter in some ways, not just with the climate. My mother passed away on December 26. She had been ailing for a long time, and failing fast during her last few months. I was able to spend a lot of time with her, for which I was grateful, but it is one reason this site has not been updated much since the fall. Her name was Anna, and the book dedicated to her, The Protector, has just been reissued this month, which is a nice unintended tribute.

The heroine in The Protector is also named Anna, and in her strength and independence she embodied my nonfiction Anna’s character. Morvan, the hero, was one of those characters that readers discovered in another book and wrote to me about immediately, wanting his story. He was my very first hero and The Protector, in an earlier form, was my very first romance manuscript. I am still in love with him. (The story about how The Protector was written, and how it was published after books written later, can be found in my first ever letter, available in the archives of this page.)

The other reissue is Lord of a Thousand Nights. This is my Scottish medieval romance, set in the borderlands and revolving around a contested estate. The hero is Ian, a bad boy masking a deep inner wound, who finds purpose and direction and redemption through his protection of the lovely Reyna.

Other than dealing with “life happening” I have been writing these last months. My next book, Secrets of Surrender, will be released on May 20. It is the third book in the Rothwell series, and it is Roselyn Longworth’s story.

Roselyn was Alexia’s cousin in Rules of Seduction, the one who blamed Hayden Rothwell for her family’s ruin. In Secrets of Surrender she has learned the truth about that sorry episode, and that thread finds its final resolution. She has also embarked on a disastrous love affair that will alter the course of her life. An excerpt is up, and in it you will meet Kyle Bradwell, the self-made man who helps Roselyn rediscover herself and her true worth. This is a marriage of convenience story with a twist, and with conflicts both obvious and secret.

I am currently writing the fourth and (probably) final book in the series. Yes, it is Christian’s book! Readers have been writing to me about the unusual and compelling Marquess of Easterbrook since first meeting him. He has been an important secondary character in every story, and now he is getting his own. The tentative title has been chosen: The Sins of Lord Easterbrook. I can give a hint to readers of prior books— In Rules of Seduction, Alexia observes that it seems Easterbrook is “waiting for something.” As Sins opens, the waiting ends.

As always, the books in my series can be read out of order. I give away no secrets from earlier books when I write the later ones. That can get tricky, but I think that I pulled it off in Secrets of Surrender. Those of you reading the series in order will understand what I mean if you read it.

I hope that the season of renewal holds only good things for you. Thank you for visiting!

Madeline Hunter

I get a lot of emails from readers asking how I choose stories and characters. I also get quite a few asking for stories for certain characters or suggesting plots or partners. All of these letters made me think about something that I just took for granted. They made this “go with the flow” writer analyze how she does her thing. I couldn’t answer those readers’ emails without picking through the process a little.

I wish the result of this analysis had been a clear and simple answer. It would have been nice to end up with a chart that I could use when I get stuck. Instead I had to acknowledge that there is no process at all.

The truth is that I am a very intuitive writer. Since I always thought of myself as very analytical person, this surprises me. Evidently I put aside that Madeline when I sit down to write, and instead I trust my gut more than my head.

On some other pages of this website I have described how sometimes I just know that a character will star in a later book. I love when that happens. I get high on that crystal clear moment when a secondary character walks on the scene and takes form so vividly that I am totally won over. It is all I can do not to stop writing the work in progress and start another book right away.

This happened with David in By Arrangement. It happened with Julian Hampton whose book is The Romantic. In my current series, it has happened with several characters, which is one reason I am enjoying this series so much. The eldest Rothwell brother, Christian—oh, yes, he needs a book and will get one. What I found interesting was that as I wrote The Rules of Seduction, two women arrived who also had this effect on me. Normally in the past it has always been men.

One was Phaedra Blair, the unconventional friend of Alexia. I began writing a scene and “snap”—there she was—Unusual. A bit mouthy, um, I mean outspoken. Totally at ease with who and what she was. Completely indifferent to anyone’s opinion of her. She was in many ways the direct opposite of so many woman of her historical period, who spent their waking hours worrying about social acceptance and conforming in behavior, appearance and aspirations.

Of course I needed to learn more about her. The only way to do that thoroughly was to write her book. Lessons of Desire is that book. (Release date: September 25, 2007)

She deepened for me as the book took form. The layers and nuances, the insecurities and questions, the sorrows and hurts—they became clear as she spoke in my head. Not so indifferent after all. Aware, very aware, of what she has given up in choosing to be who she is.

As she matches wits and wills with Elliot Rothwell, youngest of the brothers in this series, she has to question the person she has chosen to become. That engenders other questions. What is love worth? Does compromise destroy a belief? Can one love without also needing to possess? What do we owe our lovers, in terms of surrendering our pure freedom and giving them parts of ourselves?

Elliot ponders these questions too. Elliot, with his more traditional views, knows that falling in love changes everything. A celebrated historian and charming man about town, Elliot is no fusty, monkish scholar. He is as confident as Phaedra is, and as independent, as smart and as self-aware.

Desire crackles between these two from the moment they meet, fueled in part by their frank acknowledgment of how much they want each other. Lessons wait within that desire, about themselves as individuals and as a couple, and about the ways that deep passion contains the seeds of deep love.

Lessons of Desire is very much the story of these two characters’ journey toward love. It also has an intrigue and a mystery, as the lessons of their parents’s desires also affect their understanding of their own. There is action and humor too. I hope that you will give it a look.

Madeline

I am a new writer again. I became one about a year ago. That was when I made the decision to start the Rothwell series. It would be totally new, with no connections to any characters or events I had written about before.

As I sat down to build that world in The Rules of Seduction, something peculiar happened. Starting the book reawoke in me the feelings that I had when I began my first novel ever. The excitement, the fear, the sense of flying into the mist—it was all there again, creating a little internal buzz. I literally held my breath while I typed the first words of the first chapter.

The book found its rhythm after a few chapters. The characters emerged and found their voices. The flutters in my heart calmed and I forged ahead. I finished the book and turned to the next story in the series, Lessons of Desire.

Now the new world was not so new. I had mapped out its shape and main roads. The characters were familiar. However, while I mentally sought the place to begin my story, the same thing happened.

Once more my heart fluttered. The feeling that I was about to embark on something daring and audacious simmered in me yet again. I had thought it happened with Rules because it was the beginning of a series, but here I was experiencing it with the second book too.

I am now writing the first chapters of the third book in the series and once again it is happening.

The sensation is seductive. So seductive that I can understand if writers who experience it hesitate pushing beyond the beginning of a story. There is something to be said for those deadlines! They keep us from dwelling too long in the heady creative stimulation that comes with starting a new work.

Eventually, of course, it literally becomes work. My heart may be palpitating now, but eventually I will get frustrated and think the creative well is dry. I have never had a book write itself and all of them hit snags. Finishing the journey can be arduous. But, oh my, what a thrill it is at the beginning with all the choices still to be made. For a month I get to be a new writer, alive with that glorious buzz.

It is also during this period, after a book is finished and while the new one is just beginning that I come out of my cave and notice things, such as the need to update my website. You will find some new entries here under my History Page and my Author page. I have finally uploaded some photographs of places I have been visiting, and they are accessible off the Author button (go to the Off Topic Stuff dropdown).

Lessons of Desire will be published in October 2007. Readers of Rules have already met the main characters, Elliot Rothwell and the very unconventional Phaedra Blair. I expect the copyedits any day, and once they are done I will post an excerpt and an introductory page for it, so stop by again soon!

And for all the readers who have been writing to me and wondering—yes, Christian will get his own book!

Madeline