Witty and brainy author Nita Abrams chats about cross-dressing heroes, Nobel laureates, and the many benefits of wine and chocolate. Read on …

MB: What or who inspired your novel?

NA: One summer day about seven years ago a scene from a British spy story set during the Napoleonic wars popped into my head. (I had not written fiction since high school, although I am a historical fiction addict as a reader.) I sat down and typed a few paragraphs. Next thing I knew I had 300 pages and an entire Anglo-Jewish family from Regency London living in my computer.

"The Spy's Reward" is the fifth book in the series and it features the widowed father of the family, the enigmatic Nathan Meyer. One of the things I loved about working with my editor, Kate Duffy, is that she liked Nathan as much as I did and let me do crazy things with him as a secondary character in the earlier books. For example, he spent an entire book -- "The Exiles" -- disguised as a woman.

MB: What do you like most about your novel?

NA: I liked writing about an older hero and heroine. In classic regencies, if both mother and child are involved in a romantic relationship, the son or daughter is usually the centerpiece and the mother's romance is comic relief.

This story is my answer to all the patronizing tales of widows with frilly caps married off to some aging bachelor so that the poor hero and heroine don't have to have Mama living with them after they marry.

Abigail, my heroine, is a widow with a beautiful 18-year-old daughter. When my hero is manipulated into courting the teenaged Diana, however, it doesn't take him long to decide that he prefers mother to daughter. As the parent of a teenager, I especially enjoyed writing the scenes where Diana has temper tantrums or leaves her clothes strewn all over the floor.

MB: Who is the most heroic person you know?

NA: The hero of my current manuscript, of course.

In the real world it's much harder to identify heroes. When I ask my students to give me examples they come up with a huge range of possibilities: Gandhi, Lance Armstrong, a firefighter from 9/11, their grandmother.

What do we value? Physical courage? Self-sacrifice? Scientific discoveries? Artistic or athletic talent? Patience and love? Perseverance against the odds?

I'm a teacher and writer, so my admire-them-from-a-distance heroes would be people like Solzhenitsyn and Pasternak, who wrote even though they knew they would be punished for doing so.

MB: Who's your romance hero: dark, brooding bad boy or white knight in shining armor?

NA: Definitely the dark, brooding bad boy. I suspect they aren't much fun to deal with in everyday life, but in novels they fascinate me. Physically, the "dark" hero can be blond and angelic (think of Francis Crawford in Dunnett's "Lymond Chronicles" series); the darkness is inside, and the story is as much about the hero's relationship with his past as it is about his relationship with the heroine.

MB: Answer the question you wish an interviewer would ask.

NA: Romance: B(u)y the Book: What wine do you recommend with this book?

MB: NKA: If you are not having chocolate, I would go for a Chardonnay, or, if you prefer something lighter, a nice Italian white like a Gavi.

With chocolate, red works better -- perhaps a Merlot.

Port also goes well with chocolate, and has that Regency-gentlemen-after-dinner image for extra atmosphere.