Yes! I love romances like that, so I’ve written many!
My books that feature dreamy heroes and dashing heroines snowbound in gorgeous castles or cozy inns are I Adored a Lord (which is based on the board game Clue!), When a Scot Loves a Lady, and “Snowy Night with a Duke” in At the Christmas Wedding. The hero and heroine of my debut historical romance, Swept Away by a Kiss, are imprisoned together on a pirate ship while he’s disguised as a Catholic priest. In my fan-favorite The Earl, the hero and heroine – sworn enemies – are chased by an angry mob and must join forces to escape across the Scottish wilderness. And in How a Lady Weds a Rogue, a spirited lady and her gentleman-hero collect a delightful band of misfits in their flight across the Welsh countryside to evade a dangerous villain.
If you’re up for a touch of something unique in a historical romance… In my novel Again, My Lord, a flood and an astonishingly repeating day entrap a lady in a tiny village with the one man she is determined not to fall in love with – again. And in Captive Bride, old friends become new lovers when an angry ghost traps them together in his haunted castle.
I really love writing love stories, so my heart goes into every one of my books. The novel that I planned the longest (a decade!) and that was the first book to completely slay me while writing it was In the Arms of a Marquess. When How a Lady Weds a Rogue, The Earl and Again, My Lord came along, they affected me the same way. The Prince has turned out to be another novel that in the writing rocked me to my core.
The couple comes first. The hero and heroine’s romantic, emotional, and sensual dynamic are the heartbeat of every story, and they’re the reason for everything else in the book. All else follows.
Usually one comes to me before the other, but pretty quickly the other follows. For instance, for Captured by a Rogue Lord, whose hero is a Robin Hood-like pirate, I was writing the first chapter when his first lieutenant, Jin Seton, started speaking. After about two lines of Jin’s speech I knew that Jin had to have his own story. It was that clear, that quickly. And Jin told me that his heroine had to be Viola. I know it sounds kind of crazy, but that’s really how it happens most of the time! Jin and Viola’s love story became How To Be a Proper Lady.
On other occasions, the couples come to me at the same moment, as when I was planning my ghost Regency Captive Bride (which itself was a wonderfully mystical experience that happened in Wales), or with Eleanor and Taliesin in I Loved a Rogue, when I knew the moment I wrote the prologue to the first book in that series everything about their love story from the first glance onward.
The Duke offers a great example of my usual process: Amarantha said she wanted Gabriel as her hero. First I researched tons about Scotland and the Royal Navy and Jamaica and all sorts of other things (like whisky distilleries!). Then I started writing, I researched more, brainstormed with trusted friends, and finally finished a draft and shared it with friends who are romance lovers and scholars for feedback. After that I did some rewriting and editing, and–voila!–the novel was ready to publish.
I do have it planned. That amazing Scotswoman deserves a happily ever after of her own. The continuation of Fiona and Felix’s love story is coming someday too!
Kisses, She Wrote is a Christmas novella, as well as Snowy Night with a Duke (in the anthology At the Christmas Wedding). Swept Away by a Kiss and When a Scot Loves a Lady both partially take place over Christmas too.
Captive Bride is a Halloween tale in the mode of classic Gothic romances.
