Celeste: I'm a forty-one year old woman with a sports-fan husband, two active and creative daughters, a rather silly little dog, various fishy-froggy-reptiley beasties, several extra pounds, an addiction to art projects and an aversion to housework. You can imagine what that translates into.

Although I have always been into natural foods and lifestyle (I'm a second generation hippie chick), somehow we have become a household of media junkies, with more computers than you can count on one hand and more TVs than I want to admit to. I blame my movie addiction. Yay, TiVo!

Debbie: What made you decide writing was going to be your future? Did you pick it or did it pick you?

Celeste: Hmm. I'm still not sure I've decided that writing is going to be my future ... I've never gotten around to deciding what I want to be when I grow up.

Mostly I'm a reader, as in psychotic-obsessive-ignore-a-raging-housefire reader. I still feel like I'm primarily a reader, I'm just writing them down as I watch them in my mind.

Which sounds disturbed, I know, but that's what I do. I started writing because I thought of a beginning. I kept writing because I wanted to know what happened next! Writing definitely picked me--although it was more like a car-jacking, if you want to know the truth!

Debbie: I LOVE your sex scenes. Do you have trouble writing such descriptive scenes? Does knowing that others will read them ever embarrass you?

Celeste: I don't have any more trouble writing good sex than I do having good sex. Sometimes I'm not in the mood. Sometimes I can't quite seem to get where I want to go. Sometimes it sweeps me up and takes me away all by itself. Again, I'm just writing down what I see.

As for embarrassment, I don't seem to have that gene. Except when I forget to contribute to the elementary school bake sale because I was writing about dildos ... and even then I mostly think it's funny.

Debbie: What is your personal favorite of all the stories you have written? Why? Do you have a favorite character?

Celeste: When I think personal favorite, the first one that pops to mind is THE IMPOSTOR. I worked really hard on that one - it was so complicated and I feel like I did a pretty good job with it. Mostly I like the way the secret romance between "Rose" and "Monty" set Clara and Dalton free to fall in love. Imagine what would happen if you could walk away from everything that you are and have to be, just long enough to meet the perfect someone you would never have met otherwise?

Favorite character ... honestly, if I had to pick one, it would be gambler and reluctant Liar, Ethan Damont. And here I've always advised my daughters against the Bad Boy Syndrome ...

Favorite secondary character would be Pearson the butler, hands-down!

Debbie: Your Liar's Club and Royal Four books are all related. Did you start out the Liar's Club knowing it was going to be an ongoing series? I love getting to revisit characters - it's one of the many reasons I have enjoyed the series. How many more books do we have to look forward in the Liar's Club?

Celeste: The Liar's Club was intended to be a series from the get go. I THINK in series. Even FALLEN, my first book, was intended to be trilogy (and might still be someday). I'm not sure I could write a completely stand-alone book and NEVER revisit that setting and characters again.

I have no idea how many books there are left in the Liar's Club. I still have Ren Porter, who is currently resting and recovering at his new estate, plus there is Lord Walter Cheltenham without a true love of his own, and what about poor Elliot?

I have the feeling this could get out of hand ...

Debbie: How did Lord Liverpool, who is a continuing presence in all these books, come about? He has certainly gotten my attention throughout your books - I have wanted to strangle him on more than one occasion.

Celeste: This is an interesting question, because Robert Jenkins, Lord Liverpool, Prime Minister of England, was entirely and completely real. Along with George IV, I have brought him into the stories and portrayed him as closely as possible to his reality. He was powerful, conservative, ruthlessly loyal and different in every way to George. I even describe his appearance accurately.

I don't actually like Liverpool--apparently not many people did--but I cannot help but respect him. And I really like the juxtaposition of such a fanatically principled man against the flamboyant, irrepressible Prince Regent--whom I adore. Liverpool is not so much a villain as he is an obstacle.

I have received many emails asking when Liverpool is going to fall in love, but he is already in love. Lady Liverpool was a sweet, shy, somewhat sickly woman who Liverpool was deeply and profoundly devoted to and protective of.

Kind of makes you like him a little better, doesn't it?

Debbie: You write great alpha males, and your heroines are wonderful strong women and not always ladies, but often women who, through no fault of their own, have to fend for themselves the best they can. I think that is part of what makes your books so wonderful - your characters aren't the usual Regency fare. Was this a deliberate decision not to make them titled "ladies"?

Celeste: Actually, I think my ladies are very much Regency fare. Think of Elizabeth Bennett, or Jane Eyre. Their adventures might have been somewhat tamer (although Jane went through plenty) but the women themselves were independent thinkers, rebels-- insightful people with a great deal of inner strength. They dared to do things that defied their times. We should all be so powerful.

I don't really think much about titles, yea-or-nay. People are titled or not as the story requires. I tend to think people aren't all that different beneath the labels. The ladies (and lords) in the Royal Four are all titled because I wanted to bring the stories up into another social level, which presents yet more difficulties for the characters. I do like to cause trouble ...

Debbie: Your most recent book, SURRENDER TO A WICKED SPY, is about one of the Royal Four. Would you tell us something about it - and about how the Royal Four relate to the Liar's Club?

Celeste: SURRENDER began as a primarily funny story that became darker as it went. It was originally conceived as a response (a rather irritated one) to my lovely editor and friend, Monique Patterson, who kept saying a hero should be "larger than life." So I gave her one who was--and was still a virgin because of it! Yet as the story progressed, that aspect became part of a larger, more sinister plot that I really love. I was writing so fast I forgot to put in punctuation!

I put a lot of myself into Olivia as well. I'm a tall, sturdy woman who has longed all my life to be "cute" or to have a man sweep me up into his arms (my husband would be in traction!), and I spent many years trying to get used to taking up my own space in the world. Olivia's insecurities and klutziness are straight-up Celeste.

The Royal Four are to the Liar's Club as the NBA is to the Pistons. A secret elite who crowns kings--or destroys them if necessary. The Liars are constantly in the action and the Four are supposed to be watching from on high--except when things get personal or the matter is of very high security. Then they willingly use their brains, status and training to get their hands dirty.

This is a new generation of the Four. They are all young, brilliant, powerful men who refuse to sit back and watch like their elderly predecessors did In their way, the new Four are as rebellious as the ladies who confound all their plans.

In the first book, TO WED A SCANDALOUS SPY, Nathaniel is feeling pretty personal about finding the man who caused him to live in disgrace forever as "Lord Treason." Getting accidentally married to pretty country miss, Willa Trent, is most definitely not in his plans!

In SURRENDER TO A WICKED SPY, Dane is enacting a plan to gain control of the rebellious Prince Regent. His impersonal Society marriage is supposed to help him, not throw his life into chaos when he gets far more than he bargained for in sexy, enthusiastic Lady Olivia Cheltenham!

In the upcoming ONE NIGHT WITH A SPY, Marcus is trying to get to the bottom (unintentional pun!) of the woman who claims that she has a rightful place in the Royal Four. Brilliant, lovely Lady Barrowby isn't about to let some man take away everything she has been working for so long--not even if he's the embodiment of her darkest fantasies!

In the final book of the Four, SEDUCING THE SPY (working title), Stanton is trying to untangle the threads of an intricate plot against the Crown by plunging himself in the middle of it. When he orders--er, requests-- the help of ruined Lady Alicia, he has no idea he has found a woman who never does as she's told--ever!

Enjoy!