FROM LORETTA CHASE

answer to comment # 5 (MarchRose)

Hello, MarchRose!  Thank you so much.  If I’m making you laugh, I’m doing my job.  Olivia was writing those kinds of letters when she was much younger, in Lord Perfect.  In the very early stages of that book, when my agent & I were talking about characters, the agent said she could imagine Olivia using a lot of Capital Letters—and then I instantly saw in my mind the kinds of letters she’d write, very dramatic and, as you say, ominous, with underlines and double underlines and cross-outs.  I think I used to write letters like that when I was very young—maybe that’s why the idea took hold so strongly, and why her letters were so easy to write!

answer to comment # 6 (Maet)

Hello, Maet.  Thank you.  I do feel very welcome here.  I did hope that readers would want to see more of Peregrine & Olivia after Lord Perfect.  I can see how you’d view him as more likable (he’s stubborn and argumentative, but he wants to do the Right Thing—even when she’s driving him crazy) and her as bossy, but that wasn’t quite the way I saw her.  To me, Olivia was someone who had dreams (sometimes crazy, yes) of what she wanted to do, and she simply wouldn’t let anything get in the way of her making those dreams come true.  But, you see, I loved her from the beginning, with all her faults, just as I loved Peregrine.  And so, when she grows into a woman, she still has those faults, but her struggle to be herself—when everybody else wants her to conform to Society’s rules—this, I think might make her a little more sympathetic.  And I knew, of course, from the beginning, that she loved him—and even when she seemed to be leading him around by the nose in Lord Perfect, she was really listening to him, and understanding him, better than anybody else did.  There are a couple of places in that book where he explains honorable and dishonorable behavior to her—and it makes an impression on her.   Meanwhile, she shows him a whole new world.  To me, there has always been a balance of power between them, but I think this balance becomes clearer in Last Night’s Scandal.  And no, I could never imagine him with anybody else. Egypt is his life and his destiny, and not too many other women could endure the dangers of Egypt in the 1800s—but I know Olivia would be a match for any snakes, bandits, and cutthroats.