After 25 years as a published writer of romantic suspense, Anne Stuart (A.K.A. Sister Krissie the Impeccably Demure) admits to delusions of grandeur. She's pretty sure she could fly if she put her mind to it. But chances are the mode of transportation would have nothing to do with a nun's habit or angelic appendages. 

Now Dracula's cape or the leathern wings of some particularly handsome devil -- either one would work quite nicely. The prop's original owner would probably find himself cast in Stuart's next novel too. Stuart specializes in turning heroes who are "mad, bad and dangerous to know" into "love slaves on the page." And in keeping her readers clamoring for more. 

Crescent Blues: Describe the ultimate Anne Stuart hero. 

Anne Stuart: Evil evil evil. 

Crescent Blues: OK, now that we've got that out of the way, please, describe the hero you wouldn't kick out of bed for eating crackers. 

Anne Stuart: My typical hero? Well, he's always intelligent -- almost too much so for his own good. Intelligent and clever -- two different things. He's cynical rather than idealistic, capable of being completely ruthless, quite often capable of killing. He's usually elegant rather than earthy -- though sexually speaking he can be very down-to-earth indeed. My very first book, published a glorious 25 years ago (Barrett's Hill, Beagle Greatgothic -- part of Ballantine -- March 1974) had copy calling the hero "a dark but compelling man who was either trying to murder her -- or seduce her. Or perhaps both…" 

Obviously I haven't changed much in 25 years. 

Crescent Blues: What inspired you to write Barrett's Hill? 

Anne Stuart: I'd written all through my life -- novels scrawled in black marble notebooks about the Beatles or Troy Donahue (I'm that old). When I wasn't reading I was writing, and I adored gothics (dark, dangerous man, feisty heroine, strong setting). They weren't publishing enough to keep me busy, so I decided to quit my job in New York (at the Rockefeller Foundation), move to the family vacation home in Vermont and write one. I was 22 at the time. 

Crescent Blues: How much do you feel you were influenced by the era in which you started writing romance? 

Anne Stuart: I was completely influenced by the era in which I started writing. Gothics and romantic suspense were what I read and adored. A plain love story was too one-dimensional for me back then -- I wanted danger to spice it up. (A mystery or suspense novel was similarly too limited -- I wanted love and a happy ending.) I like having a hero you can't trust -- after all, if you trust the hero where's the conflict? Any woman with a brain would go off with a luscious, handsome, sexy man who also happened to be trustworthy. 

Crescent Blues: How have you changed since then -- as a writer and in terms of the types of characters and plots that draw you? 

Anne Stuart: I've changed a bit since the beginning, branched out into more complex plots and characters. When you're 25, you see things in fairly black and white terms -- by the time you're 50, you know better. I write stuff that's more bittersweet quite often. I fully believe the hero and heroine will live together happily for the rest of their lives, but everything else doesn't always work out as well, and some readers find that distressing. 

Crescent Blues: Where does Alex MacDowell, the hero of your new suspense novel Shadow Lover, fit in the continuum of Anne Stuart heroes? Given the circumstances of his "second coming," do you consider him more Lex Luthor or Superman? 

Anne Stuart: Alex MacDowell is wicked, elegant, naughty, but without the ruthless streak many of my heroes have. He's capable of sin but not treachery. But he's a charming cheat and a liar, so he'd have to be good ol' Lex Luthor rather than Superman. Bless Christopher Reeve, but ol' Sup was just too bland. 

Crescent Blues: How have changes in the market changed the stories you tell? Can readers anticipate more of your delightful "supernormal" romances, such as One More Valentine and Cinderman, anytime soon?  

Anne Stuart: Market changes have an effect on what people write no matter how much they fight it. I've had a World War II story floating around in my head for a good twenty years now. Some day I'll write it, but the time has never been right. 

However, I'm fairly lucky in that editors give me a lot of freedom. I've been around long enough, written enough for the editors to know they can trust me to carry something off. What they might turn down in another writer they'll let me do (though not always). My most recent Harlequin American, The Right Man. for instance, is a time travel, which is a major no-no right now in popular fiction and in series romances. But they let me do it, and I love how it worked out. 

Crescent Blues: Lately, most of your books have been historicals, like Prince of Magic, or suspense, like Shadow Lover. What do you like best about writing historicals and suspense? What do you feel are your greatest challenges in these areas? 

Anne Stuart: I mainly write in three genres: historical, romantic suspense and series romance. The intertwining thread is that they're really all romantic suspense, with a dangerous man and a woman in jeopardy. It's what I do. 

But I love the variety. I've been told that it's slowed my career by writing both historical and suspense, that I should concentrate on one until I've really made a place for myself, but I can't. Historicals are fun, colorful, fast-moving, fantasy. They give me relief when I've been in the darkness too long. The suspense books are torn from my heart, which is as painful as it sounds. Gotta do it, but then I gotta have a break and write about cross-dressing Georgians and mad Druids or cat burglars. 

Crescent Blues: What's different about your approach to research when you're writing a historical versus a topical suspense novel like Ritual Sins? 

Anne Stuart: As for research, I tend to be pretty casual about it. I'm not a wonk -- academia gives me the willies, probably because it was the family business. (My grandfather was head of the Classics Department at Princeton; my uncles were headmasters and professors.)  

I tend to pick settings and eras I'm already familiar with. I'm more likely to go ahead and write and guess at details, and when I go back and check, I'm right about 90 percent of the time. My head is stuffed with trivia and arcane bits of knowledge, which comes in very handy for a writer. I do have extensive research books on the medieval era and England, and a few on more recent stuff (spies, police work, etc.) But I'm more interested in the big picture, not in details. The details have to be accurate, but they're not that crucial to the way I write. 

Crescent Blues: When you're writing a darker novel like Ritual Sins, how do you keep "Sister Krissie the Impeccably Demure" in check? How did you get the nickname, by the way? And however did you manage to make it stick? 

Anne Stuart - Continued