Gail Dayton & her men

So Gail, what did you have to promise the cover artist to get that awesome cover?

LOL! Nothing! Well, I did appease the cover gods with a little moonlight ritual that involved... no, let's not go into details.;) I did ask for the same guy who did The Compass Rose, and got him. Isn't he fabulous?

How many heroes does your heroine have again?

Um... (wait, have to count) well, she has four by the end of The Compass Rose. There will be more (but you'll have to wait and see how many, nyah, nyah) by the end of The Barbed Rose. (evil, wicked grin) Oh, and she doesn't have them all to herself. There's another woman in the ilian, and will be more of those too.

Let me get this straight, your heroine has four gorgeous hunks almost all to herself and still counting? Can I have one?

Sure! I share. ;)

I knew there was a reason I liked you! Heading off the subject of your men (don't worry, we'll get back to it), where did you get the idea of a military heroine?

Okay. The story grew out of thinking through world history. I didn't want to do an extrapolation of Celtic or European mythology, didn't really want to have to do a bunch of research, and I was just sort of mentally flipping through my history files (I have a degree in history, so I have a pretty good basic knowledge of timelines and such) and thought about the conquest of the Americas. The Europeans won because their technology was better than the tech of the Aztecs and Incas. So I thought--what if it was tech vs. magic (since I was trying to write a book for Luna which is fantasy which thusly requires magic in the story)?

Which became the germ that sparked the story. An attempted conquest with a technology based society invading a magic-based society. And if that's going to be the beginning of the story, then it seemed to me to be easier to throw my heroine into the middle of the action if she's there to begin with, because it's her duty. Because she's one of those defending against the invaders. And if one of the heros is going to be from the other side, it would make for greater conflict if they're Both soldiers... So that's where it all began. Long answer, I know.

You mean you actually did research? (Note to self: research is good.)

Well, sort of. I didn't WANT to do research, so it was more--research I'd already done (I'm one of those weird people who reads history books for fun), that I remembered from before. I did have to dig one of the books out--the tactics in the opening battle scene are from research I did a couple of years ago on Napoleonic era warfare (which were established up to 100 years previously)--and look up a couple of specific words that referred to the approach to the city walls, etc. But mostly, I just made stuff up, and used research I'd already done.

One final question (I told you we'd return to your men) - which hero is your favorite and why? Feel free to provide a physical description.

Torchay is my favorite. He wasn't supposed to be. He wasn't actually supposed to be as important a character as he turned out to be. I figured he'd just be part of a minor subplot. Instead, the minute the man walked onto the page--and he turns up on page one (or maybe the top of page 2)--he informed me that he wasn't going to take a back seat to anybody, and I had just better deal with it. How can you not love a guy like that? He had feelings he wasn't going to let me ignore.

Physical description: Tall. A little over 6 feet, if Adarans measured in feet and inches. Red hair, deep, bright, true red, and it's curly. Or maybe just seriously wavy. He wears it in a queue most of the time. Military regs, you know. Blue eyes, rather hooked nose, full mouth. Red-head's skin, pale but not many freckles. And he has his military rank tattooed on both upper arms for when the army goes into sleeveless summer uniforms. :) Honestly, he's the sort of man you may not see as handsome right off. He requires another look or two, but he's still quite the hunk.

There you have it, folks. Gail Dayton does several handsome hunks of male. And she does them well. *g*