In an exclusive ExtraView, Eloisa James cheers on her hero daughter, her loyal fans, and the Harvard Romance Writing Team. Read on ...

MB: I wonder if you could tell us about the inspiration for "Kiss Me, Annabel.

EJ: In some (ways) the inspiration for "Kiss Me, Annabel" is really from Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew." It's a story of taming. Annabelle doesn't need taming but she does need to tame her husband, the earl. So I would say that's the overall inspiration.

MB: Was "The Taming of the Shrew" always a favorite work … of yours?

EJ: No, actually, I really hate that play. I don't know if you remember it from school, but it's a play all about a husband who tames his wife.

MB: Oh, yes.

EJ: Oh, I think it's so horrible. I never teach it at the University (Fordham) at all, because I'm a Shakespeare professor. I completely avoid it, but in this case the man needed taming.

MB: Interesting. Because I think one would obviously think that: oh, gee, it must be her favorite of all the Shakespeare that she teaches.

EJ: No, absolutely not.

MB: What do you like most about the novel?

EJ: What I like most about "Kiss Me, Annabel," it's the same thing that I think probably any author would say about their novel, and that's that I really fell in love with the characters. So I set myself a challenge -- I always do that -- there's got to be some moment in a romance, I think, and you're an expert ...

MB: Hardly.

EJ: . . . so maybe you think differently. But I think there has to be a moment when you really believe it's not going to work.

So you've picked up a genre novel and the promise is that it's going to end happily, and I think what makes a novel, a romance novel, really good is if there's a moment when you are like: Well, this marriage is not going to make it, these people are just too different. And in sometimes, as a romance novelist, what you do is just let those people go and just hope that it's going to work and in this one it worked very beautifully, I think, and I'm very happy with the way it turned out.

MB: Well, truly, that's very intuitive of you because I know my friends and I talk about the suspension of disbelief -- we know there's going to be a happy ending, that's why we read it -- but we're always wondering: How did the author do this? How do they make it so delicious so we do believe that it just might not work out?

EJ: But do you know what? If I didn't -- I have to be in your sense, in other words -- I have to be writing it and sort of really afraid in the back of my mind that this time it's not going to work. And it always happens, there's always a point in the novel where I'm like, "Uh-oh, I'm really in trouble." So, that point in this novel lasted about 2½ months.

MB: Who's the most heroic person you know?

EJ: You know, that's a very interesting question. I suppose it could be my husband, but in fact I would probably say, to be honest, my 7-year-old daughter.

MB: How so?

EJ: Well she has kidney disease and she was born at under a pound and she's a wonderfully cheerful, energetic, terrific kindergartner who can read and runs and plays and laughs all the time and never ever complains when she has to spend a week in the hospital. It's a very obscure kidney disease and it's chronic, so she'll have it her whole life.

MB: Well, I actually have a kidney transplant.

EJ: Oh my goodness -- because we may have to be looking at that.

MB: Well I'm wonderfully healthy and I've had it for 18 years.

EJ: She's had a tough time, but you know, you've experienced a lot of this, too. She'll go into the hospital for a week and come out and she's never become a complainer or a child who considers herself sick in any way. She makes friends with the nurses and the doctors and they love her and she's had some very painful procedures and she just kind of gets through it.

MB: Well that is truly heroic, especially when we look at (the way) children … go through those things.

Well then, going from our real life heroes into our romantic heroes ... who is your romance hero? Do you prefer a dark, brooding bad boy or do you like the white knight in shining armor kind of guy?

EJ: Well, you know I have a weakness for a bad boy. Who doesn't? A man slouching in with his handyman belt and his hair over his eyes -- you gotta love it!

But I have to say that "Kiss Me, Annabel" is interesting to me because I've written a lot of rakes, and the hero of this, Ewan is not a rake. He's really a really terrific, great guy and I've got a lot of readers who've already read it even though it's only been out a week and they're already writing me and they're just in love with him, so I think there's room for the good guys as well.

MB: Wonderful! You know, the final question in the AuthorView is just: Answer the question from me that you wish I'd asked . . .

EJ: Well, let's see, why don't you ask me what I'm doing next? That's always fun.

MB: OK, tell us.

MB: Well, I have a book coming out in April called, "The Taming of the Duke."

MB: What a clever title…

EJ: I like it. All four of the books ... they're in a series although they stand perfectly alone and they're about four sisters.

MB: Love a series.

EJ: Yeah, and they're all Shakespearian. I have "Much Ado About You," "Much Ado About Nothing," and then, "Kiss Me, Annabel," and "The Taming of the Duke."

So, "The Taming of the Duke" is a really fun story and I'm very happy about it … so it's nice when you can look forward to a book and you think, "Oh, that's a good one -- everyone's going to like it.'

MB: That's exciting, too, because those of us who just love series will be crazed to know when it's coming out -- and to look for it as well.

EJ: People are constantly writing me because all the characters in my books interweave within four books so they're writing me and they're saying, "Well, who's he gonna fall in love with?" The duke's name is Rafe. "I think he's going to be with Imogene, no I think he's going to be with Josie," and I always write back and say, "Well, I'm not telling."

MB: Of course. And, sometimes it makes us feel like, gee, we have pitiful lives because we just can't wait to learn what happens next with our favorite romance novels.

EJ: Oh, I feel the same way, though. I mean, I spent a lot of time haunting the bookstores and saying, "What do you mean? I know Susan Elizabeth Phillips' next book is here, just go in the back and get it for me."

MB: We're speaking a lot about your "outing" when James revealed to her colleagues in academia. But I wondered if you could tell me about someone in academia who maybe has come out to you about his or her love of contemporary romance novels.

EJ: Well it's interesting, I -- you know, when I announced this to my department they were, of course, completely shocked because there was Professor Bly (Mary Bly, Eloisa's given name), had been there for years and they had no idea that I had hit the New York Times list, or written any books, or been in People Magazine, or any of those things.

But the fun thing was that a bunch of my male colleagues went out and bought the books and the odd thing was that of course they hadn't had much exposure to romance, but one of them discovered he really liked them. So that for me has been one of the biggest surprises.

MB: So have you found men more accepting than women in academia?

EJ: No, the women were very accepting as well, in fact you know I think because I had sort of proved myself as a romance novelist it was very hard for somebody to say, "Oh this is just a piece of crap." They may be thinking that, but they haven't told me, which I'm very grateful about.

MB: Do you think you were more fearful than you needed to be?

EJ: Well -- I was an assistant professor and I didn't have tenure.

MB: I see.

EJ: And I think there is a level in which anyone in a business needs to prove themselves and to prove that they're actually going to do all the work if they have a second career on the side.

MB: You know lots of romance readers who are also well educated -- it really seems to be a huge cross section of them -- they endure a sense of shame as well just by like, maybe taking a romance to the bookstore checkout, especially if it's got a (cheesy) clinch cover on it or something.

What do those readers and their dilemma mean to you?

EJ: There is a way in which our culture gives us a lot of shame -- it shames us for wanting to read a book that ends with a happy, intelligent central relationship -- and it's absurd, it's frankly just absurd.

So I've gone through a lot of stages and at the moment I'm just in irritation -- don't ask me, "ow do I manage to write this crap?" I'm just gonna walk away because I'm bored by that question, and I'm bored by the person asking it.

MB: But do you feel like a sense of kinship -- I'm sure you feel a kinship with your readers -- but sharing that kind of sense of almost an embarrassment must have brought you even closer to them.

EJ: Well, it is, because there we are, we're people who love something that people say you shouldn't love. Or that you should be reading a book in which a child falls in the well and dies -- because you know that's literary fiction and you know as someone with an illness -- I mean that's not what you want to be reading all the time.

And so I feel a lot of the shaming comes from men for one thing and I feel it's completely irresponsible on their parts.

MB: Do you think that comes from their feeling of not being able to measure up to this extreme ideal that's set in romance novels?

EJ: Maybe. I don't know. I had one hero who's become a great favorite. He was in a book called "Your Wicked Ways," and he could really only manage -- you know, he was the original five-minute man there -- five-second man -- and I have to say …

MB: I think most people don't probably know that there are those wonderful differences in … romance novels and that they're all not the bodice rippers …

EJ: But I think people don't really read romance when they say these things about them, when they say they're crap. So for example, my hero in "The Taming of the Duke" next April is an alcoholic and, you know, he's going to be a recovering alcoholic, but I mean they, people don't, they don't listen. I have a heroine coming out who's plump. They think every heroine is blond and beautiful and that's not the case.

MB: Well, I sure appreciate your speaking out like you are. I find myself talking about romance and the authors and saying, "Oh well this author went to Dartmouth, and this author is a Harvard girl."

And I almost feel guilty even doing that because it almost says that that's the only way we can talk about romance authors, we can only get you to listen if we (tout authors who are Ivy League graduates).

EJ: I do think that's one way in which it makes it easier for people to simply visualize it who aren't going to read the genre -- so I say, "Yeah, well, I went to Harvard and Yale and Oxford,' and they're like, "Oh, OK, you must be different." And I say, "actually, not." I'm not different at all. You could have a basketball team, there are so many (romance authors) who went to Harvard.

MB: Is there anything else that you'd like our Romance: B(u)y the Book viewers to know?

EJ: No, just, I would like them to know what huge pleasure authors take in actually hearing from them. I think sometimes readers write me and they say, "I've never written an author," or "I didn't know to write an author," or "Gee, I suppose you won't answer this, but ..." And I have to say, it takes me awhile sometimes but I answer every letter.

And I think I speak for all romance authors in saying that we not only appreciate but actually learn a lot from those letters. I've changed the plots of books based on letters.

MB: Where can our viewers write to you?

EJ: At eloisajames.com. And, just come check out my Web site.