Erin asked Lauren Willig:

Just finished Lure of the Moonflower - what a wonderful end to the series. I'm curious, when you wrote Jack for Betrayal of the Blood Lilly, did you know that you meant him for Jane?

Lauren Willig Thank you, Erin!! I actually didn't know until the very end of the book. Jack was just part of Alex's context (although I did notice, as I was writing it, that the absent Jack was taking up a remarkable amount of air time-- everyone spent a great deal of time talking about him).

I'd had an image, for a very long time, of the man I wanted Jane to end up with. She was going to be paired with him for a mission in Portugal during the early stages of the Peninsular War. He was a battered, Han Solo, soldier of fortune type. I could picture him perfectly, sitting by a camp fire in the hills of Portugal-- but I didn't know anything more about him.

Then in Jack walked in that big show-down scene in "Blood Lily" and I had one of those "ack!" moments as I realized, OF COURSE-- that was the man I'd seen sitting by that campfire. Hello, Jane's hero!

That was in 2008. The hardest part was keeping it under wraps for the next six years....

flag