My fellow Brava and historical author, Maggie Robinson, and I are swapping blogs on the 28th June. She’s on mine and I’m on her blog, Vauxhall Vixens, talking about unusual heroes and heroines. If you haven’t read Maggie’s latest release, Master of Sin, I urge you to pick it up. It’s a fabulously written book with a very unusual, but totally to die for, hero.

Writing the Unusual Hero
By Maggie Robinson

Bron, thank you for the chance to talk about my most Unusual Hero to date! I’ll never claim to be a trail blazer or a revolutionary in real life, or, as they say in Regency romances, an Original. I was always a good girl, graduating from high school and college early, teaching, marrying, having four kids in the suburbs. Pretty bland, yes? So how did I come to create the one and only Master of Sin, twisted hero Andrew Rossiter?

 Andrew is no angel, even though he looks like one, with his curly golden hair and bright blue eyes. He is kind of a villain in the book that introduces him, Mistress by Marriage. I needed a “bad man” for the heroine Caroline’s past, and it just wasn’t good enough that she have had a youthful affair with the Usual Regency rake hero—that archetype we’ve all come to know and love, the guy who for whatever reason (Cold father? Evil fiancée? Wounded at Waterloo?) buckles his swash through the ton until the love of a good woman makes him keep it zipped except when he’s with her.

Caroline would never have fallen for a guy like that. But she could—and did—fall for Andrew, the victim of a child predator. The son of a whore. A bisexual. A gigolo before there were gigolos. (The Oxford English Dictionary places the date of usage in 1922, about 100 years too late for Master of Sin.) He is, in short, a male prostitute who’s building a fortune and doesn’t much mind where the money comes from.

I could not have given him more baggage if I tried. The Usual Regency rake hero started to look pretty tame in comparison. So imagine my surprise when I finished writing Mistress by Marriage and Andrew was not content to remain in Italy where I’d sent him. He wanted to be the hero of my next book, and I was frankly terrified.

But he was even more terrified than I—he had the sudden responsibility for the child he’d fathered. He wanted so much to be good, to change, to bury his past and deny his desires. And since I’d dug such a deep hole for him, he depended on me to get him out in a sympathetic, realistic way. That required an Unusual Heroine, and Gemma Peartree sprang to life.

 As I wrote the book, I kept asking myself whether I was sadistic or really masochistic, since torturing them both made quite a writing challenge for me. But giving them their well-deserved happily-ever-after has been one of the true joys of my writing life.

Here's an excerpt from Master of Sin:

He was hungry. Judging from the pale yellow sun in the sky, it might be closer to lunch time than breakfast. He’d dress and eat and go for his walk. Exercise his arm as he was supposed to do, squeezing and unsqueezing the hard ball that the doctor he’d consulted in Paris had given him. Andrew had once been fond of exercise—boxing and fencing and riding—it had kept his instrument in perfect tune. His body had been his fortune. Even if those days were over, there was no reason to let his fitness lapse.

He washed and fumbled with his clothing, cursing the buttons. The house seemed still, thank goodness. No caterwauling child or banging of pot tops. No arguing shrew. Perhaps they’d all taken advantage of the break in the weather and gone off to the village. Andrew hoped something had been left for him in the kitchen to eat. He took the back stairs and pushed the door open.

 Steam was rising from an enamel tub, as was Miss Peartree. She had been reaching for a towel draped on a kitchen chair, but at the sight of Andrew had paused for one fatal second. Her wet hair was slicked back from her scrubbed little face and snaked past her waist to rest on her pert backside. Her skin was the color of coffee with far too much cream added, her nipples large and flat and brown, her breasts just the slightest swell over her rib cage. His eyes fixed upon her thatch of curls, mink-brown over slender thighs. She looked like a woodland nymph. A clean woodland nymph.

 “Not bloody again!”

 She clasped her arms around her body. She didn’t have quite enough hands to cover herself, not that there was an extra ounce of flesh on her. Andrew stepped forward and handed her the towel. She hastily wrapped it around herself, missing one breast entirely.

 Andrew had been mistaken yesterday. What little she had under her clothes was strangely, sinfully appealing. He felt a tug to his groin, which startled him. He hadn’t felt real desire in years.

 “How dare you?”

 She blinked. Her eyelashes were wet. Spiky, Tangled. Andrew blinked back but couldn’t move any other part of him.

 “Don’t just stand there! Go away! Go away!” she screamed.

 Andrew woke from his trance. What was wrong with him? His feet seemed glued to the floor. He couldn’t even find his tongue to say he was sorry.

 Because he wasn’t sorry. Not one bit.

 But he did go away, without breakfast. Without a taste of what seemed like the most delicious skin he’d ever seen.

Who’s your favorite Unusual Hero? I have a signed copy of Master of Sin for one commenter!

Thanks Maggie, that's really generous. Maggie Robinson is a former teacher, library clerk and mother of four who woke up in the middle of the night, absolutely compelled to create the perfect man and use as many adverbs as possible doing so. A transplanted New Yorker, she lives with her not-quite perfect husband in Maine, where the cold winters are ideal for staying inside and writing hot historical romances.

Don't forget to collect the last clue in the Invitation to Romance tour over at Vauxhall Vixens blog. Entries must be in by the 30th June 11.59pm EST time.