Recently, Writers Break had the pleasure of speaking with Eloisa James, a New York Times bestselling author. In February, James made an appearance on CNN and NPR, and March saw her at readers conventions. In addition, she's a full-time professor and a mother of two. Read what James had to tell Writer's Break.

You've stated in other interviews that the motivation for your first novel was to pay off your college loans. What continues to motivate you now?

The pure pleasure of writing. It was unexpected for me: I never took any writing classes in college. So I had no idea how characters crowd into one's mind, and how plots come out of nowhere.

Do you have a set writing schedule?

No. I admire all people who write every day, but I write only when I have to, and then very fast.

What is your favorite part about writing? Your least?

My favorite part of writing is the moment when something unexpected happens and you know it's good. My least favorite aspect is the fact that I only become imaginative/creative in the second ten pages of any given day. Which is awful! When I make myself sit down and write twenty pages a day, the second ten is much better than the first ten. I would prefer to write a leisurely two to three pages a day over a longer period, but I've discovered that I don't write as well.

You've said that you think a lot about your next book, your next characters, and let them develop in your mind for months before you ever sit down to work on them. Do you make notes on them, so that they're waiting for you months later when you sit down to write, or do you find it easy to remember all the characters, plots and situations you want to put them in?

I don't take notes on them, no. I probably should, but I'm always running somewhere (since I'm a full-time professor and a mother of two). I trust that the characters are shaping and developing as I dream about them.

When you sit down to begin a new work, how much of it do you already have?

If it's the first book of a series, I try to have a small plan of how to introduce all the characters I need to launch (enough to carry a series of four novels). Those introductions need some weaving and spacing. But other than that, I often have no more than an idea about one climactic scene. In my novel Midnight Pleasures, for example, all I knew was that the hero's best friend would break his leg, and then ask the hero to go up a ladder to the heroine's bedroom, to bring her down so that the friend and heroine can elope. But then the hero does not come out of the heroine's bedroom immediately…changing everything.

Which of your characters (out of all of your novels) do you think is the most interesting, complex and compelling, and why?

A cruel question! My heroines are like my girlfriends: so close to me that I cease to be able to judge them. Gabby (in Enchanting Pleasures) is a fibber, for example, but so was I as a young person. Tess (in Much Ado About You) is the eldest of four children, and so was I! Every one of my heroines has something of my dreams and pursuits in her, so I don't judge them well.

I would say that the most compelling of my male characters, to me, is Rees from Your Wicked Ways. My preference for him is somewhat to do with writing -- for some reason, I seemed to be able to write Rees as a true guy, not an easy thing by any means. But he's also a comic opera writer who wishes he could write waltzes. My talent, like Rees', is not for the most dignified kind of literature. Like Rees, I've come to realize that my talent for romance is a god-given gift, and shouldn't be taken lightly simply because I'm not writing War and Peace.

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