Describe your book in one sentence.
Fortunately, I am an experienced Twitterer and can do this. I think. I hope.

A hot demon assassin meets a punk ballerina and together they kick butt.

Name one book you think everyone should read.
Uh, the California State driver’s manual? Because if you come here, I want you to be a better driver than we Californians are.

What book are you embarrassed NOT to have read?
I’m well beyond the embarrassment stage in my Have Not Read list. I knocked off a lot of them while I was in grad school where I realized it’s not possible to read all the books you’re supposed to have read. So, I freely and without embarrassment admit to the holes in my Life List of books. But here’s one: The Old Man and the Sea. (Except I’m not embarrassed by that. Possibly a bit sheepish, but not embarrassed.)

What was the proudest moment of your career so far?
So far, it’s being a RITA finalist for two books in 2010 (my historical Scandal and my paranormal My Forbidden Desire). It took a while to sink in, but it was, and remains, a personal validation that my writing probably doesn’t suck too badly.

If you weren't a writer, how would you earn a living?
The way I earn most of my living now. I’m a SQL Server database administrator in my day job.

What's your favorite movie based on a book?
Oh, unfair that you restrict me to one movie! I will cheat and say, Harry Potter.

If you had to be stranded on a desert island with one fictional character, who would you want it to be?
At first the answer to this seemed obvious: MacGyver, because we wouldn’t be stranded for very long since he would quickly build a submersible canoe from coconuts, woodshavings, a rubberband and some kelp. However, an alternate answer occurs: Eric Northman from the Sookie Stackhouse series. He can fly and I would immediately trade a small amount of blood and dry but witty jokes for a ride.

With 40 New York Times bestsellers and 60 million copies of her books in print worldwide, romance author Jude Deveraux is a force to be reckoned with. She took time out of her busy schedule to talk with BookPage about inspiration, her writing process and whom she’d like to be stranded with on a desert island.

You are the best-selling author of both historical and contemporary romances. Where do you find your inspiration? How do you decide what type of novel you want to write next?
Everything I do, hear, see—I think, how can I use that in a book? Sometimes an event will inspire me, sometimes a personality trait will make me think of building a character around it. I often think, I’d like to write a book about . . . fill in the blank. As for time period, that’s chosen by the idea. When I find something I want to write about, it always has a time period attached to it. I read something about a man going into the wilds of Florida to paint the flora and fauna. That interested me so I thought I’d use it in a book. That it was to be historical was a given. It turned out to be The Scent of Jasmine.

What kind of research do you do for your historical novels? How do you keep all the characters in your Edilean Series straight? There are so many!
Whenever I do an historical, I usually spend about a month doing specific research on whatever is the basis for the novel. I buy several books about the subject and read them with note cards in my hands. I use a genealogy software to keep my Edilean characters straight. Since I’m not good with numbers, it’s difficult for me to figure out the dates of when people were born and had babies. But the software checks me on my dates and tells me when I have a couple of 10-year-olds as parents. I realized right away that unless my characters were to marry cousins I had to bring in newcomers. It’s nice for me to know about things like who owns the local grocery, whose ancestor was devious and whose was a hero.

In Scarlet Nights, an undercover investigator climbs through the trapdoor of Sara Shaw’s apartment—and sparks begin to fly. If you could choose any hero to show up at your house, who would it be?
Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton. He was a Victorian explorer. I’ve read umpteen bios about him and am deeply in love with him. Just the mention of his name makes my heart flutter. That he lived over 100 years ago has never seemed to matter to me. A wonderful, intelligent, heroic man!

Do you have a favorite couple from literature, movies or life?
I like all the real-life couples I meet who have been married 30-some years and still like each other. I envy them so very much!

If you had to be stranded on a desert island with one fictional character, who would you want it to be?
I’m tempted to say, “A boat builder,” but that’s too easy. I recently wrote a book called The End of Summer, and the hero of it, Dr. Tristan Aldredge, is the nicest, sweetest man I’ve ever written about. I usually start out with people who have been hurt in some way. Working through their problems gives me a plot. But Tristan was just plain sweet. He inspired love in people wherever he went. It didn’t hurt that he was so beautiful that women drew in their breath when they saw him, but that was beside the point. Dr. Tris was funny, creative and gentle. I could stand to spend some time with him in real life.

What’s next for you?
I have a bit more to write on the second book of a trilogy set in Edilean. When these are finished, I’m going to start a new series. Funny things have happened with these three books. The father of my first heroine was just supposed to move the story forward, but Joe Layton turned out to be bigger than life. I’ve taken him into Book Two and given him someone to love. I had the hero for Book Three planned from the beginning, but the brother of the heroine of Book Two is so angry that I may give him Sophie to straighten him out. I would love to give the titles to these books but I don’t have any. I can write a book much, much easier than I can come up with a title. If any of you have title ideas, please go onto my website and tell me. If I use it, I’ll dedicate the book to you.

The October 2011 Romance of the Month tells the story of a love that transcends space and time. Reviewer Christie Ridgway picked The Rose Garden for its “understated sensuality,” aching romance and complex emotional dilemmas.

We chatted with author Susanna Kearsley about great books and what it means to be a writer.

Describe your book in one sentence.
The Rose Garden is the story of a woman who returns to the old house in Cornwall where she spent her childhood summers, and finds herself sharing the rooms—and becoming involved—with a man living there nearly 300 years before her own time.

If you had to be stranded on a desert island with one fictional character, who would you want it to be?
Barney Snaith, from Lucy Maud Montgomery’s The Blue Castle. I’ve always had a thing for Barney, and he has a thing for living on uninhabited islands.

If you could travel back in time to any decade in history, what would you choose and why?
If I could, I’d head directly for the first decade of the 19^th century, for a purely self-serving reason: for years now my father and I have been trying to pin down the birthplace and birthdate of one of my ancestors who keeps eluding us, so like a good amateur genealogist I’d go back to London and follow his father and mother around till their son was born!

What are the sexiest scenes to write?
For me, the scene where the heroine first becomes aware of the hero, really aware of him, because there’s such a jumble of sensation and emotion in those moments. And also the first time they kiss, because, well, there’s just something incredibly sexy about the first kiss.

What was your favorite book as a child?
Beautiful Joe, by Marshall Saunders, a late-Victorian “autobiographical” novel of a dog’s life that I loved with a passion, because of my own love of dogs (and all animals, really).

What are you reading now?
Just at the moment I’m finishing an advance copy of a book called The Haunting of Maddy Clare, by debut author Simone St. James. It’s a chilling romantic suspense story set in the 1920s, and Deanna Raybourn and I were actually just talking on Twitter this morning about how unique it is, sort of like Peter Straub meets Shirley Jackson meets Dorothy L. Sayers. It’s very good.

If you weren’t a writer, how would you earn a living?
See now, this is a tricky question, because being a writer and earning a living at being a writer are two different things. I’ve always been a writer, from the time I was a child—it’s just the way my brain was formed and how I process things: I shape them into stories. Before I could earn my living by just writing, I was a museum curator and a waitress, in that order, and I suppose that if my ability to pay the bills with my writing ever disappeared, I’d do both again, in the opposite order: waitressing first, because it got me out in the company of people and gave me flexible hours and was a job I could leave at the workplace when I took that apron off, and museum work second, because I truly loved that hands-on connection to the past and the chance to preserve something special for future generations to enjoy. But published or not, I would still be a writer.