Today's Special - - Eloisa James

I'm delighted to welcome one of our favorite people back to the Dish to help us celebrate our first anniversary.  Besides being one of the nicest, smartest (Harvard Grad, M.Phil. from Oxford University, Ph.D. from Yale) and most giving women I've had the pleasure of meeting, Eloisa James is also one heck of a good writer!  The New York Times Bestselling author has published eighteen books (most of which are on my keeper shelves) and two novellas.  

Eloisa's current book, A Kiss at Midnight, is in my top 10 books of 2010...

...and her next book, a "novel in three parts" collaboration with Julia Quinn and Connie Brockway titled The Lady Most Likely..., will be released December 28th.  (I've read it and it's terrific!)

For more information about Eloisa, visit her website and to follow her fascinating life adventures, "like" her facebook fan page and follow her at twitter!  Please give Eloisa a warm welcome to The Romance Dish as she blogs about one of my favorite topics: those quirky dogs that bring a special something extra to the romances we love!
~PJ


Call of the (not so) Wild
by Eloisa James


I love dogs in books. Jennifer Crusie’s Tell Me Lies comes to mind: I adored the heroine, Quinn, for rescuing a neglected, nervous dog. Of course, I also loathed her former boyfriend/stalker, but even more so after he kicked the poor dog. I was just surprised that the man didn’t have a little brush mustache and the ability to bark things in German. In fact, as the stalker’s mental state continues to break down, the dog became the tool that Jenny used to reveal his innate cruelty and instability.

I did something like that in A Duke of Her Own. My heroine had a little dog, a pug named Oyster. The Duke of Villiers had to choose between two women: one who appeared to be extremely maternal (but hated dogs), and one who made no pretense to know anything about babies (but loved her dog). I crafted the climactic scene so that the villainess’s cruelty to a dog was expressive of her disturbed mental state.

I tripled the dogs in A Kiss at Midnight, my version of Cinderella. Since I wanted a parallel to the Disney rats, I ended up with a trio of tiny dogs. True, they couldn’t sing, but they did serve as a mirror for my heroine’s underlying sweet nature. She didn’t like dogs particularly, and these were notorious for biting her stepsister’s lip. But Kate gamely took on their care. In the end of the novel, a terrified little scrap of fur named Freddie has taken possession of her heart as firmly as the prince himself did.

So I suppose you’re wondering whether I put a dog into my February novel, When Beauty Tamed the Beast. As a matter of fact…I did! I happen to be a huge fan of the Fox TV show, House, M.D., the story of a brilliant, irascible doctor at the Princeton-Plainsboro hospital. I found a similarly brilliant, grumpy doctor in the Regency period, and used the Regency doctor plus Dr. House as my inspiration for Piers Yelverton, Earl of Marchant, who was a brilliant diagnostician and a Beast. (But not doggishly so.)

You can imagine how sarcastic Piers gets when his father shows up at the castle with beautiful Linnet in tow. Enter a little boy, Gavan, who’s been confined to bed for months, at least until Linnet has Gavan carried out to the stable so he can meet a dog. Not a fancy dog, or a tiny dog, but a scruffy dog named Rufus. Linnet is a counterbalance to Piers, not merely in her beauty, but in her bone-deep kindness (though she tops his sarcastic wit word-for-word). And Rufus, with his lopped off ear and fleas, is the signal for just how wonderful Linnet is—and how much Piers needs her to heal his wounded heart.

So—what’s your favorite romance-with-an-animal? And, if you were writing a romance, which animal would you include? (Be specific as to the breed, if relevant!)

One randomly selected commenter will receive an Eloisa tote bag and a signed copy of the UK edition of When the Duke Returns.