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Dear Reader,

What is it about the nineteen twenties?

For me, the fascination began with my first viewing of the movie Chicago, starring Catherine Zeta-Jones. Before then, I’d never given the decade much thought. I knew about Prohibition, of course, and flappers, but it all came alive when Ms Zeta-Jones performed “All That Jazz.” I was hooked.

The Roaring Twenties was a remarkable period. It was the time when the old rules of Victorian America gave way to the new rules of the twentieth century. It was the age when women first began to vote, when the “working girl” came into her own, when music and art were undergoing startling transformations. The West was still recovering from the trauma of the Great War, finding its way into a strange new world. In New York and Chicago and the other great cities, mobsters made fortunes from bootlegging. There was a flourishing underworld of clubs and speakeasies where the daring and fashionable could quench their thirst for alcohol and excitement.

What better place to set a story about werewolves and vampires in conflict but Prohibition-era New York, where the mobs of three very different races compete for dominance? The first image that immediately sprang into my head was one of a vampire flapper with a Louise Brooks bob, dressed in a short skirt and highheel pumps…a young woman who couldn’t be bothered with the restrictions of either human society or her own vampire clan. And who should her romantic interest be but a rather old-fashioned and chivalrous werewolf who has his own issues with the loups-garous of New York…and who finds himself falling for a girl who seems to be doing everything possible to drive him crazy?

With those characters and situations firmly in my mind, Chasing Midnight was born. I’ve seldom had so much fun writing a book. I hope you’ll give the Roaring Twenties a try; I’ll be revisiting them in my next paranormal romance novel for Mills & Boon^® Super Nocturne™, which will be arriving on book shop shelves in December 2009.

Susan Krinard