Yvonne Daniels asked Erica Ridley:

How do you choose your characters? Is it a idea in your head or you write a story and one of the supporting characters just begs for their own story?

Erica Ridley Both! If I'm starting a new series, most likely the idea is in my head. For the Dukes of War series, I wanted to explore the idea of coming home from war, when "return to normal" means Regency England.

I wanted to show all sides of being a soldier. Some men feel they did the right thing and others don't. Some soldiers don't make it home with all their pieces intact (physically or emotionally), and some do make it home whole only to find out home is no longer how they left it. Other men wanted to enlist, but cannot.

In this series, the heroines arise organically from the story world. When I started to write The Earl's Defiant Wallflower, I had no idea what role, if any, Jane and Xavier would play in that plot. But by the end of the book, they had clearly defined personalities, and like you said—they fairly begged for their story to be told next!

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