Wickedly saucy and candid, New York Times bestselling author Christina Dodd dishes with Michelle like a best girlfriend in this week's AuthorView.

MB: What or who inspired your novel?

CD: "My Fair Temptress" is the seventh in the Governess Brides series, inspired by a desire to create a historical "Sex and the City female-bonding type group who starts a business (The Distinguished Academy of Governesses) that sends them out into the world one by one to find work and romance. I thought, "What if a woman comes to them who needs employment but has no marketable skills?" So I created Miss Caroline Ritter, proficient in one thing only -- flirting.

But who would need to be tutored in flirting? A man who is really really bad at it. And why would a hero be really really bad with women? Because Jude wants to appear harmless so he can pursue a secret mission to gain revenge against the villains who murdered his brother. "My Fair Temptress" is "The Scarlet Pimpernel Learns to Flirt."

MB: What do you like most about your novel?

CD: Jude needs revenge and nothing can distract him. If Caroline gets him engaged to an acceptable female -- and that's not her -- she's been promised a large bonus which she needs desperately. They both have huge, life-changing goals which hold them apart, yet the more she teaches him to flirt the more the simmering sexual tension between them intensifies. It's an explosive situation that comes to an explosive climax.

So to speak.

MB: Who is the most heroic person you know?

CD: My mother. My father died unexpectedly while she was pregnant with me, my sisters were 8 and 10, and since this was the 50s , she was the typical unemployed housewife. Yet she managed to deal with some really grinding poverty, get a job, put food on the table, and raise her three daughters. She's the reason I wanted to write -- she read to me all the time when I was a kid. She's the reason I was so persistent (10 years!) in trying to get published -- by example, she taught me to keep fighting no matter what the odds and sooner or later, you will succeed. And she's the basis for my heroines -- the impoverished yet determined woman who, in spite of adversity, fights to take control of her life and always wins.

My husband gets honorable mention as heroic. He supported me through those 10 years and only once said, "If you don't get published soon, you're going to have to get a job." I would have said it after a week.

MB: Who's your romance hero: dark, brooding bad boy or white knight in shining armor?

CD: All I want in a romance hero is a guy who's intelligent, a sense of humor, a fortune, a great body, who possesses in abundance that enormous aphrodisiac -- power, who knows how to fight and always win, then make love until I'm … I mean, the heroine is overwhelmed with passion. Is that so much to ask?

MB: Answer the question you wish an interviewer would ask.

CD: What's your next project? Thank you for asking! The second in the Lost Princess series, "The Barefoot Princess," is out in February. Happy Valentine's Day!