Interview and Giveaway with Courtney Milan!

Thanks so much for stopping by UTC to talk to our maidens and being a part of A Scandalous Affair. We are very excited to have you here today!!   Please give a warm welcome to Courtney Milan!

Your next release, A Governess Affair will release in April 2012. Can you tell us a bit about it?

It's about a man of business whose employer asks him to take care of a governess who is making a pest of herself, only to discover that she's rather too intriguing for his peace of mind.

What's behind the saying "Wolf meets Bear" as it pertains to this book?

I give everyone of my books code names as I'm writing them. In this series, the hero, Hugo Marshall, is also named as the Wolf of Clermont--because he's relatively ruthless. But I wanted to write a heroine who was more than his match. And what's the only creature that I can imagine taking on a savage wolf? A bear--generally happy creatures when well-fed, and perfectly content to subsist on blueberries. But threaten them or the ones they love, and they're unstoppable.

That's my heroine.

Your Turners series is a hit! Congrats! For those readers who haven't had the chance to read or discover these books yet, can you tell us a bit about them?

The Turner series is about three brothers whose lives have been shaped--in very, very different ways--by a mother who was insane. I wanted it to be a chance to explore what happens when good people have a lot of baggage.

If you could create your own panel and choose which authors you'd like to have a conference with, which authors would you pick and why? What would you talk about?

Oh, gosh. That's a hard one. There are a lot of authors that I would like to put on that list. But here's a panel that would be just plain fun: Ann Aguirre, Tessa Dare, Victoria Dahl, and Zoe Archer. What would we talk about? I'm not sure, but I'm guessing it would not be safe for work. :)

What does a typical day for you look like?

I don't have typical days. I work a day job (for now), and it takes up a lot of time and in irregular amounts. I write when I can. I try to get an hour of writing in in the mornings; if I take a lunch break, I write over lunch, and then I spend a good amount of time in the evenings writing, editing, and taking care of the business aspects of things.

I wish I had typical days.

What does your writing workspace look like? Clean and orderly? Scattered with notes? Any visual would be nice.

It's a complete mess. I cannot express how utterly messy my workspace is. To give you some idea: right now, my laptop is placed on top of a big stack of paper. There is no non-papered part of my desk, and so I do not find this distressing. This particular stack is about an inch deep--20 pages of stuff for the day job, two pages of notes that I scribbled to myself when I was stuck on a scene, a napkin from a restaurant on which I have written "more mutual weaseling!" (that was a reminder about something to do in a book), some notes from a telephone conference, some notes from a meeting, a to-do list from (this shows you how old the geological strata are on my desk) January, 2011--and by the way, there are three items on that list that I have not yet done--all over a stack of notecards. The top notecard, by the way, contains the word "peanut butter."

Kind of a mess.

What draws you to do historical romances, have any particular authors inspired you?

I like writing historical romances because it allows me to look at historical patterns of change. I write in a time of great social and economic upheaval, a time when everything that people knew was changing, and when steamships and railways made the world small. I think that many of the changes that happened then are like what is happening to us now, and in some ways, writing in a historical period allows me to explore what change means to us today, but in a safe space.

There are a lot of authors who inspire me and who I admire--more than I can possibly list, but here are a handful:

* Lois McMaster Bujold
* Sherry Thomas
* Julia Quinn
* Eloisa James
* Lisa Kleypas

I could go on and on--I just finished reading everything that Ilona Andrews was ever written, for instance--but suffice it to say it's a long list. :)

What kind of hero do you like to read the most, a virgin/inexperience hero, or a rake? Which is the best to write, since you've written both?

I think variety is the spice of life. I like everything.

If there's anything I like to write, it's people who are slightly off kilter--maybe just a little different than the norm. Just about every hero I've written has been a little...odd, all in different ways. I often don't set out to write people that way, but as I write, my characters acquire quirks that I never intended them to have.

Coffee or tea?
Tea.

Hardcover or paperback?
No.

What kind of ereader do you own?
Two kindles, two Sony readers, a nook, and an old iRex tablet. Not counting multipurpose devices here.

Sunrise or sunset?
Sunrise.

Sun or snow?
Yes.

Heels or flipflops?
Flipflops.

Tattoos or piercings?
For me? Piercings.
On a guy? Tattoos.

As a special treat, Ms. Milan has a very generous giveaway to one lucky follower.  You will get the three full-length books in her Turners series.

Read our reviews of Unveiled, Unclaimed and Unraveled.

To enter:

1. Be a follower
2. Fill out the form below