The WINNER of a copy of The Price of Temptation was Jeanne Miro. I've emailed her.

I love discovering new authors and sharing them with my romance-reading friends so I'm doubly delighted to introduce you to Lecia Cornwall, an author who has made a big splash in the world of historical romance.  Secrets of a Proper Countess, Lecia's debut novel from Avon in 2011,  was quickly followed up with The Price of Temptation  and in January this year she released, All The Pleasures of the Season.  If you haven't heard of Lecia or her books yet, you don't know what you are missing!  They have all received rave reviews! I thorough recommend them.

Welcome Lecia, tell us a bit about yourself and your books.

When Bronwen asked me to write a guest blog, she suggested I might consider writing an interview with myself. Now, there are questions that everyone always asks the moment they find out I’m a writer, and the questions I wish people would ask, the in-depth things that make you the writer (and the person) you are. This is, after all, the hardest, craziest, most wonderful profession in the world. So, here is my interview with myself, Lecia Cornwall, starting with the questions that everyone asks first.

Is that your real name?

Yes. I have enough book characters living in my head without having an alias to keep track of too! It is pronounced Lee-sha, and Cornwall is my married name.

Where do you get your ideas?

The world is filled with inspiration, from watching people at the mall or the airport, and imagining stories about them, to real life events in history that are too good not to build a story around. I find that ideas will wake me up at night. Unfortunately, if I get up and write them down, I sometimes discover they aren’t all that wonderful in the hard light of day, but the seed is there, and the muse is speaking to me, making me think, opening up possibilities. I watch. I imagine. I daydream a lot.

How long does it take to write a book?

Once you’re published, how long it takes is often determined by how long you’ve got! Contracts come with deadlines. Usually, the process of writing a new book begins with a bit of daydreaming (okay, a lot). Then come story outlines, the basic plot, character studies, and research. Then the writing begins, five or six hours per day on average, sometimes more to meet that deadline. Rewriting follows, along with editing and polishing. After that, there’s time allotted for coming to grips with that terrible feeling that this book is, beyond a doubt, absolutely the worst thing any human in history has ever written. In the end, most of my books, which are about 380 pages long, take about five months. That said, I did write a shorter Christmas novella in two weeks last summer.

When are you going to write a real book?

This question usually comes from relatives at the annual family reunion (aunts and uncles, those kings and queens of embarrassing personal questions). Don’t worry—they aren’t your market. These are the people who don’t understand that the reason why romances look simple and feel good to read is because a lot of hard work, plotting, character development, research, and creativity go into every single sentence. It is SO a real book! But the ones who ask this question just won’t ever understand that you are indeed a real writer. I was an advertising copywriter for many years. My father didn’t understand what that meant. To him, putting words on a typewriter meant you were a typist or a secretary. My mom wanted to know why I couldn’t write books like the ones Oprah likes. It was very frustrating, but then my first fan letter arrived, an e-mail from a man in Japan just after the earthquake last year. He and his wife were safe, but without electricity or water, and he was waiting for surgery. They’d been reading my debut novel to each other by candlelight, and wanted to tell me they loved it. That letter meant the world to me, and that’s what I think of when someone asks me when I’m going to write a real book.

And now, for the questions I wish people would ask, and the ones I often ask myself (beyond what’s for dinner?)

Why do you write books, and romance books in particular?

I have always been an avid reader. I have always loved history. What better way to combine those two passions?

As for romance, there is something innately satisfying to us as human beings when people find their soul mate among the billions of others living on this planet. Every good story out there has a romantic element. Think of the romance in Star Wars, or Titanic, or even Lord of The Rings, filmed, of course, in magnificent New Zealand, and in almost every Disney movie ever made, or even the most enduring world myths and legends we love, like Tristan and Iseult, Antony and Cleopatra, and the fairy tales we were bought up on.

Romance stories always end happily ever after. We know that on the last page, the hero will sweep the heroine into his arms and carry her off into the sunset for eternal happiness. But the reason a romance novel is worth reading comes from the journey to that ending. A good love story takes two people with conflicts and personal baggage and brings them together. They share adventure, growth, sweeping changes, and finally arrive at love. What better journey is there than that? What better story to tell? And, of course, I get to tell it with historical detail, suspense and juicy plot twists.

Isn’t it nice to read a story where everything turns out well in the end? It certainly is nice to write one after fighting traffic and teen angst, and enduring the evening news. You can count on happily ever after here—it’s the hallmark of the genre.

What’s the process involved in writing a book?

I wish I could say I put on a feather boa, pour a glass of champagne and have the butler untie the satin ribbon on a fresh box of chocolates before I take up my quill, but this is my job. It isn’t pretty most days. Like any job, there are parts I love, and parts I hate. I am at my desk every morning, whether I feel like it or not, whether the ideas are flowing, or the muse is pointedly ignoring me. I love the process of writing the story, but I’m still learning how to use social media well (that’s hard, since technology and I really haven’t been on polite speaking terms since it was invented!). There’s bookkeeping, filing, research, background, and plot snags that must be untangled. I spend about six hours a day writing, longer if necessary. In the evening, I take the time to plan out what I am going to write the next day, just a rough outline to keep me on track.

How much research do you do?

Much, much more than ever shows up in the book! Readers would get bored if there was a heavy history lecture in a romance novel. If you wanted to know the gritty details of a battle, for example, you’d be reading a non-fiction account. What readers want is the feeling of being at the battle, the sensations, the sights and sounds and smells as seen through the protagonist’s eyes. That means reading absolutely every account I can get my hands on, and distilling the emotions from the details. But I love history, and always have. It’s not a hardship for me to read non-fiction. It’s one of the parts of my job I love, and I want to make sure my historical details are as accurate and error free as possible. We can’t have a Regency hero unzipping the heroine’s gown and ripping us all out of that lovely historical world we were enjoying up till that moment!

What kind of books do you like to read?

I am a very diverse reader. My guilty secret (well, one of them) is that I don’t read very much romance any more. For several years, I didn’t read fiction at all while I was working on my own books, because I worried the other author’s voice and style would get absorbed into mine, and show up on the page. Last year, I gave up that theory. I read a dozen novels, and still managed to write my own stories my way. I am a much happier, better-balanced person when I ‘m reading for pleasure! Much of the fiction I read is historical. I also read biographies. I love (and here comes my second guilty secret) books about World War II from the German perspective. No, I’m not a Nazi. I’m just interested in why they were. Shocked? Perhaps, but you should see the looks I get when I tell some people I write romance, and there’s sex in it!

What do you do when you aren’t writing?

Laundry. Just kidding. Though laundry certainly happens, as it must in life. I do my own housework, and bless my family for being patient with the dust and mess when deadlines loom. I have a chocolate lab and five cats, and two teenage children, one in university, and one finishing high school. My son was recently diagnosed with adult-onset Tourette’s syndrome. My daughter is in four of her school’s five bands. My husband is self-employed as a technical editor and consultant in Calgary’s oil industry, so chaos reigns in the Cornwall household!

I love to cook, which is a passion I share with my son. He loves trying new dishes from around the world. Last year he spent six months studying in Russia, and visited several other countries on his way home to Canada. We’ve been eating well ever since.

I volunteer at my daughter’s high school with the music program.

When there’s time, I hook rugs the old fashioned way, planning the pattern, buying old wool sweaters, cutting them into strips and looping them in.

I love foreign films. I hate ironing. I love Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit. One of my favorite movies is the 1968 musical Camelot.

I love to garden, though Calgary has proven to be a daunting place to do that. It’s semi-arid with cold, very dry winters with little snow cover to protect the plants, and sudden winter warm spells that fool the garden into waking up just before a blizzard. Blizzards can happen in June in Calgary, too. In eight years here, I haven’t grown a single decent crop of vegetables the way I could when I lived in Ottawa.

And, above all I love spending time with my family. My rule is that family and living things come first over any other concern, and since they are growing up so fast, every moment counts! Fortunately, I love the people my children have become, and I am a very proud mother.

What do you plan to write next?

So many, many books, so little time to write them all! I have a heavy schedule this year. I am finishing my second contract for Avon, with two books to be completed by December. I am writing a novella on spec, and I’m planning to try something completely new with a non-Regency romance, and a World War II set story that isn’t a romance at all. That’s the best thing about being a writer—the endless variety, though coping with it takes massive organizational powers and the ability to concentrate on just one story at a time.

I will also be posting excerpts from a follow-on story to the Secrets of A Proper Countess storyline on my website (www.leciacornwall.com) from time to time over the next year for those readers who want to know more about Adam and Marianne’s love story. [REPEAT OF CLUE THIRTEEN: HE]

And, my next Regency historical from Avon, How to Deceive A Duke, will be released in December 2012. It tells the story of a man who inherits his title after his brother’s mysterious death. Forced to marry, he discovers that his lovely new bride is an imposter. What’s a poor duke to do?  Watch my website for more details appearing soon!

So those are my questions. Do you have any more? I would be delighted to answer them here!

Leave a comment and I will check throughout the day. It’s lovely to spend time with you! And don’t forget, Bronwen will be making a draw for a copy of my second novel, THE PRICE OF TEMPATION.

Once wed to England’s most notorious turncoat . . .

Lady Evelyn Renshaw can ignore the disgrace her former husband has brought down upon her. She can even disregard the accusations. But when her life is threatened because of his actions, she realizes a stiff upper lip won’t be enough to keep her safe. So she hires a new footman powerful enough to protect her . . . only to find herself shamelessly intoxicated by his breathtaking masculinity.

Captain Sinjon Rutherford is no footman . . . but there are those who believe him a traitor. The only way to prove his innocence is by playing the part of elegant Lady Evelyn’s servant in order to infiltrate her home and uncover the truth about her suspicious relations. Yet what seems at first an easy deception is anything but, once he meets his alluring new employer and discovers just how tempting a woman in charge can be . . .

Because sometimes passion hides in plain sight.

About Lecia

Lecia says she longs for the elegance, grace and adventures of the past and has been writing historical stories since fourth grade.  A former direct marketing copywriter, she now lives in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies and writes full-time while taking care of her family of "four cats, two teenagers, a crazy chocolate lab and one very patient husband."  You can learn more about Lecia at her website, "like" her on facebook and follow her on twitter.

Thanks for stopping by. Don't forget to collect the clues on my INVITATION TO ROMANCE Blog Tour.