Spotlight & Giveaway: I’M ONLY WICKED WITH YOU by Julie Anne Long

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Julie Anne Long to HJ!

Hi Julie and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, I’m Only Wicked with You!

 
So delighted to join you all here at the fabulous HJ!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

I’M ONLY WICKED WITH YOU is the third book in the Palace of Rogues series—the series begins with LADY DERRING TAKES A LOVER, in which Lady Derring (now Mrs. Hardy) discovers her perfidious husband, the Earl of Derring, left her destitute— apart from a single old building near the East India docks. When Delilah discovers he also left behind a penniless mistress (Angelique), the two form an unlikely alliance, pawn their jewelry and turn the old building into a boarding house, which they promptly fill with found family. Mr. Hugh Cassidy, an American, moves into the building at the end of the book.

Hugh and Lillias’s worlds collide at The Grand Palace on the Thames—and a battle between them begins when Hugh catches her smoking a cheroot and tattles on her to the Earl of Vaughn, her father. Their mutual attraction is incendiary and unwelcome…but they’re absolutely at its mercy. Little by little, spark by spark, they begin to uncover truths and vulnerabilities in each other that no one else in their lives have ever suspected. And when their inevitable soul-searing (read: smoking hot) indiscretion threatens to destroy their futures, Hugh comes up with a plan to unravel their entanglement and give Lillias everything she ever wanted…but the brutal truth is that best way to do this means breaking his own heart.
 

Please share the opening lines of this book:

The kitchen of The Grand Palace on the Thames was usually a soothing oasis of feminine gossip, camaraderie, and industry, and one of Mrs. Angelique Breedlove Durand’s favorite places in the world. Today, however, a chilling snatch of overheard conversation froze her just as she was about to cross the threshold.

She pressed herself against the wall outside the door and surreptitiously listened.

“Two succulent hams, I should think.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

— The story is angsty and intense and passionate, but it’s threaded through with comedy, too, and I have such a blast writing the recurring characters. Dot and Mr. Delacorte seem to have captured the hearts of readers, in particular. I love giving dialogue to Dot.

Here’s possibly my favorite sentence in the book:

“I should LOVE to go to a donkey wedding!” Dot breathed.

Please tell us a little about the characters in your book. As you wrote your protagonist was there anything about them that surprised you?

Hugh Cassidy is the battle-hardened son of a bastard raised in the wilds of New York—he began life with almost nothing, and he won’t rest until he’s built an American business empire. Lady Lillias Vaughn is the blue-blooded daughter of an earl, a diamond of the first water, and the ton—and her family— assumes she’ll marry a duke. But even as Lillias has a rather cozy vision for her life, she only fully realizes how the narrow confines of the expectations for her have begun to chafe when that American brute Hugh Cassidy, he of the devastating blue eyes, brings her inner conflicts into stark relief. She has depths and intelligence restless desires that no one else has ever seen or mined, because they only see what they want to see.

Hugh’s innate charm and grace are shot through with a sometimes almost ruthless directness and wit, and he has an ironclad sense of honor. But he’s known great love and much loss, and it has made him insightful and guarded—and capable of knee-buckling tenderness and sacrifice.

On the surface, the war is with each other and an attraction that is both forbidden and unshakable. But the real war is within each of them—with their own assumptions and with whom and what they believe they’ve always wanted.

If your book was optioned for a movie, what scene would you use for the audition of the main characters and why?

Oohhh, great question! The scene were Hugh and Lillias finally succumb to temptation would test the full range of our actors’ emotions, I think—humor and banter, tension with emotional subtext, longing, and a bit of despair and anger, and burning, forbidden desire. There’s a kiss, and in its aftermath, here’s what Hugh says:

“Their breathing mingled in a little storm, their lips still inches apart. She was as dazed as if she’d been trapped in an opium den.

“Do you see the trouble now?” He said this quietly, ironically, almost kindly next to her ear. His voice was still hoarse; the words staccato. “Now you will lie awake and think of nothing but this. You will desperately want what can never be. You will wonder about what awaits at the end of a kiss like this and yet I assure you, your imagination will never be able to do it justice. It is glorious. That is the curse of playing a game like this.”

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

Well, my fondest dream is for readers to laugh, cry, and feel simultaneously sort of emotionally exhausted and replete and uplifted when they read that last page. I want them to stay up all night reading I’M ONLY WICKED WITH YOU and then walk around in a happy, sleepy book hangover haze the following day. I want them to feel excited about reading the next book in The Palace of Rogues series, and when they’ve read the final page, I want them to miss all the characters in the book as if they’re old friends.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

Next up is AFTER DARK WITH THE DUKE , coming November 30th, and then the next book in The Palace of Rogues will be out in June of 2022!

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One signed copy of the first book in the series, LADY DERRING TAKES A LOVER!

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: I like to think of each book in the Palace of Rogues series as an intense love story wrapped in a larger love story—one of friendship, found family, kindness and connection. Like the furniture at The Grand Palace on the Thames, no one who lives there seems to “match” and yet for that reason they all fit together perfectly. Do you have friends you consider family?

 
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Excerpt from I’m Only Wicked with You:

This scene begins with Lillias stumbling across Hugh in a little garden. A conversation ensues while they sit across from each other on benches. Hugh is waiting on a cart full of lumber, which clatters into the courtyard, and when it does…

They both shot to their feet.

And just like that, they found themselves standing mere inches apart, just about a single exhale away from touching. In seconds, those inches evolved into a trap. Dense as velvet. Subject to its own natural laws.

Because surely this was the only reason that. neither of them seemed able to move even as the elapsing time . . . five seconds . . . ten seconds . . . twenty . . . became officially unseemly.

And then undeniably a contest.

It was long enough for the heat radiating from his body to join the heat radiating from hers until her eyelids felt weighted and she yearned to close them. Long enough for her breathing to go shallow, and rather spiky.

She was close enough to see herself reflected in his coat buttons.

And to see that reflection rise . . . and fall. Rise . . . and fall.

One inch. A slight forward tilt of her head. And then her cheek would be against his chest. She could feel the beat of his heart. This seemed an eminently reasonable thing to do.

And she knew, too, that his view from where he stood was the pale swell of the tops of her breasts, and the little shadowy divide between them.

And so she continued standing absolutely motionless. It might have been the most wanton thing she’d ever deliberately done.

He would not win this.

Suddenly there was his voice. Low, slow, far too intimately close. “I imagine it’s maddening when something comes along to disturb those centuries of peace you described, Lady Lillias. Something that causes you to lose sleep. To toss and turn . . . toss and turn. Something over which you’ve no . . . control . . . at all.”

He no doubt noticed how the breath she took shuddered.

She needed it in order to get the last word. She knew she would.

“I wouldn’t know, Mr. Cassidy. But Odysseus lashed himself to the mast, if you’re looking for a solution to your current dilemma.” She addressed this to his waistcoat buttons.

“Adorable suggestion. You’ll be disappointed to learn that I have greater trust in my powers of resistance than that poor bastard did.”

And then she mustered all of her courage—which was in truth considerable—to tip her head back. The sudden sight of the sensual curve of his mouth so close caused a jolt right between her legs. She found his eyes were heavy-lidded. Inscrutable. And as hot as the lit ends of two cheroots.

“Perhaps that’s only because they haven’t yet been sufficiently tested, Mr. Cassidy.”

She stepped back just as his expression changed to something more fierce.

And the only thing that kept her from turning around as she walked away was the certainty that he would watch her, helpless not to, until she was no longer in view.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

He’s the battle-hardened son of a bastard, raised in the wilds of New York. She’s the sheltered, blue-blooded darling of the London broadsheets, destined to marry a duke. Their worlds could only collide in a boardinghouse by the London docks…and when they do, the sparks would ignite all of England.

Nothing can stop Hugh Cassidy’s drive to build an American empire…unless it’s his new nemesis, the arrogant, beautiful, too-clever-by-half Lady Lillias Vaughn. The fascination is mutual. The temptation is merciless. And the inevitable indiscretion? Soul-searing—and the ruination of them both. Hugh’s proposal salvages Lillias’s honor but kills their dreams for their futures…until they arrive at a plan that could honorably set them free.

But unraveling their entanglement inadvertently uncovers enthralling truths: about Lillias’s wounded, tender heart and fierce spirit. About Hugh’s stunning gentleness, depth, and courage. Soon Hugh knows that as surely as he’d fight a thousand battles to win her…the best way to love Lillias means breaking his own heart.

Meet the Author:

USA Today Bestselling author and Rita Award winner Anne Long’s books have been translated into fourteen languages and nominated for numerous awards, including the Romance Writers of America Rita and Romantic Times Reviewer’s choice, and reviewers have called them “dazzling,” “brilliant” and “impossible to put down.” HOT IN HELLCAT CANYON, named by Amazon.com as one of the Best books of 2016, was nominated for a 2016 Rita Award, and Kirkus Reviews named WILD AT WHISKEY CREEK one of the best books of 2016. She lives in California.