Goodreads asked Caro Carson:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Caro Carson My next book, THE LIEUTENANT'S ONLINE LOVE, had two inspirations. First, the story is about two young US Army officers, both military police, both stationed at Fort Hood, Texas. The heroine is a West Point graduate (the hero is a Duke ROTC grad). Given my personal history, it's easy to see the inspiration: I am a West Point grad, I became a military police officer after graduation, and I served as a lieutenant at Fort Hood, Texas.
The second inspiration, however, came from my trying to think of a way that two lieutenants could be in the same military unit and still have a "legal" romance. Fraternization regulations make that pretty much impossible. You cannot date someone in your own unit, period. So...I went to sleep one night thinking I couldn't write a romance with two officers in the same company, but I woke up with the movie "You've Got Mail" in my head. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are professional rivals, each falling in love with their anonymous pen pal...who turns out to be their professional rival. Perfect! The two lieutenants could fall in love with each other online, without having any idea that their rival platoon leader is actually their pen pal. That basic plot began as a Hungarian play, "Parfumerie," written in 1937 by Miklós László. This became the great Jimmy Stewart/Margaret Sullavan 1940 movie, "The Shop Around the Corner." That became a 1949 musical starring Judy Garland and Van Johnson, "In the Good Old Summertime." Then THAT became "You've Got Mail," released in 1998. Well! It's a plot that works in a lot of settings. I hope you'll read THE LIEUTENANT'S ONLINE LOVE to see how it works between platoon leaders in the US Army.

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