When I first started writing, I was told to write what I know, and what I knew was American history. But ever since reading Austen in grade school, the books I loved to read were Regency romances. So when my editor told me she desperately needed more material for the Signet Regency imprint, I helpfully provided her with a few. That’s how the Regency Nobles started—as three small related category Regencies (they’re still available as e-books online, published by RegencyReads.com. Two characters appeared in the last of those stories who absolutely begged for their own books—the American marquess who inherits a dilapidated manor, and his mysterious “brother” Michael, who doesn’t seem to have a name of his own. My editor agreed that the American marquess deserved a bigger book, and Signet published THE MARQUESS in 1997. After a bidding war, I sold THE ENGLISH HEIRESS, Michael’s story and another sequel, to a new publisher. Except the publishing world was in turmoil then, as it is today, so THE ENGLISH HEIRESS and the sequel never made it to print. I kept the advance and walked away with two manuscripts years later, when I was contracted for too many other books to…