Eloisa James on Loving your MCs | Authors at a Glance

We had the absolute pleasure of interviewing historial romance author Eloisa James this week! Her latest book Hardly a Gentleman is out now. By day she's a fancy Professor at Fordham University, and by night she's an even fancier historical romance lead author! We chatted all about her very impressive educational background, creating heros you love and heroines you want to be your best friend, how she writes and researches her stories, how to stay engaged in new stories and banter after writing so long and more. Bridget surprised Shani with this interview and couldn't be prouder of herself :) About Eloisa JamesI'm a writer, a professor, a mother - and a wife. My husband Alessandro is Italian, born in Florence. We spend the lazy summer months with his mother and sister in Italy. It always strikes me as a huge irony that as a romance writer I find myself married to a knight, a cavaliere, as you say in Italian.I write novels as Eloisa James and Mary Bly, but when I’m not writing, I'm Professor Bly, who teaches Shakespeare at Fordham. It's rather like having two lives. The other day I bought a delicious pink suit to tape a television segment on romance; I'll never wear that suit to teach in, nor even to give a paper at the Shakespeare Association of America conference. It's like being Superman, with power suits for both lives. Yet the literature professor in me certainly plays into my romances. The Taming of the Duke (April 2006) has obvious Shakespearean resonances, as do many of my novels. I often weave early modern poetry into my work; the same novel might contain bits of Catullus, Shakespeare and anonymous bawdy ballads from the 16th century.After graduating from Harvard University, Eloisa got an M.Phil. from Oxford University, a Ph.D. from Yale and eventually became a Shakespeare professor, publishing an academic book with Oxford University Press. Her "double life” as a professor and romance writer is a source of fascination to the media and her readers. In her professorial guise, she's written a New York Times op-ed defending romance, as well as articles published everywhere from women's magazines such as More to writers' journals such as the Romance Writers' Report.Eloisa has published over 30 historical romances, many of which have hit the bestseller lists. She also wrote a bestselling memoir, Paris in Love, as well as a contemporary novel, Lizzie and Dante. Her books are published in 28 languages and 30 countries, from Slovakia to Sweden. Worldwide, she has approximately 7 million books published in print or electronically. She lives in New York City and Florence, Italy.About Hardly a GentlemanBook 2 in the Accidental Brides Series, a romance about a forced marriage between a feisty heroine and a Scottish laird… neither of whom have plans to marry, let alone fall in love.Desperate after her Season comes to a spectacularly disastrous end, the Honorable Miss Clara Vetry jumps into a carriage hired to take a housekeeper to Scotland.The laird of Castle CaerLaven...