A Kiss at Midnight »

Author of eleven award-winning romances, Eloisa James is a professor of English literature who lives with her family in New Jersey. All her books must have been written in her sleep, because her days are taken up by caring for two children with advanced degrees in whining, a demanding guinea pig, a smelly frog, and a tumbledown house. Letters from readers provide a great escape!

Miss Kate Daltry doesn't believe in fairy tales…or happily ever after.

Forced by her stepmother to attend a ball, Kate meets a prince…and decides he's anything but charming. A clash of wits and wills ensues, but they both know their irresistible attraction will lead nowhere. For Gabriel is promised to another woman—a princess whose hand in marriage will fulfill his ruthless ambitions.

Gabriel likes his fiancée, which is a welcome turn of events, but he doesn't love her. Obviously, he should be wooing his bride-to-be, not the witty, impoverished beauty who refuses to fawn over him.

Godmothers and glass slippers notwithstanding, this is one fairy tale in which destiny conspires to destroy any chance that Kate and Gabriel might have a happily ever after.

Unless a prince throws away everything that makes him noble…

Unless a dowry of an unruly heart trumps a fortune…

Unless one kiss at the stroke of midnight changes everything.

The Barnes & Noble Review

A favorite game of authors from Shakespeare to Christopher Moore is to steal a plot and transform it in their own image. Think of Hamlet: Shakespeare picked up a play about a revengeful prince and made the poor bloke fat, short of breath, and unable to make up his mind. Hamlet's girth may well reflect that of Shakespeare's lead actor rather than the Bard's own, but the prince's pesky habit of over-thinking things is reflective, I would argue, of the fact there was only one wicked uncle and five long acts to get rid of him. In short: Hamlet's famous uncertainty stemmed, at least partially, from a problem in the original plot the playwright needed to solve.

When I decided to write A Kiss at Midnight, my own version of Cinderella, I too had a major problem to tackle: why on earth did Cinderella hang around the fireplace, taking abuse from her stepmother? Either she was severely emotionally abused in which case she needed a therapist, not a prince or I had to change up the main character, à la Hamlet (who also needed a therapist, but enough about him). Kate, the heroine of A Kiss at Midnight, is no wilting lily, waiting to be rescued by a shoe-obsessed royal. Instead, she's a woman who made difficult choices for all the right reasons. And the prince needed some work, too: I expect more of my heroes than a rash decision to marry some girl any girl he meets at a ball. So in my tale, the prince is betrothed to a Russian princess with a hefty dowry; in fact, in order to win Cinderella's tiny foot in marriage, he'll have to sacrifice everything that makes him royal including, perhaps, his castle. Rewriting a classic, well-known plot is like an elaborate game of chess. While each piece has certain restrictions, the game turns out differently every single time. The pleasure for an author is discovering changes that speak to concerns of her own time, while still resonating with the most crucial themes of the original.

--Eloisa James