Please welcome Louisa Edwards to the blog today. We’re chatting about, amongst other things, her latest release in her Recipe for Love series, JUST ONE TASTE and she’s coming bearing gifts.

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Please tell us about your Recipe for Love series and more specifically your new book, JUST ONE TASTE?
The Recipe for Love novels are all contemporary romances with a strong culinary theme. I have lots of hot chefs, restaurant critics, servers, and food writers! If you love “Top Chef” and the Food Network shows, and think Anthony Bourdain, Gordon Ramsay, and Tom Colicchio are weirdly sexy, this is the series for you!

JUST ONE TASTE is the third installment in the series, and it returns us to trendy Manhattan eatery, Market. The hero is Wes Murphy, ex-con artist, who left culinary school after falling for one of his professors, food chemistry genius Dr. Rosemary Wilkins. But Rosemary’s not through with him yet, and tracks him down at Market to enlist his help on the project they’d started together . . . a study of the sensual properties of foods reputed to be aphrodisiacs!

What is so sexy about a man who knows his way around the kitchen, like all of your heroes do?
They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but I think that’s actually true for all of us. The sense of taste is one of the strongest for evoking emotion and memory . . . and there’s just something about the time and care it takes to produce something delicious. It’s a tangible outpouring of love. What could be sexier?

I loooove your website. Does it mean that your stories will always have something to do with professional cooking? If you haven’t yet been to Louisa’s website click here to check it out. It’s très gorgeous!
Thank you! I have a lot of fun with that site, posting excerpts and free reads, contests and giveaways. There’s always something going on! And I’ll keep writing culinary romances as long as people keep wanting to read them—I absolutely love it. Food and romance are the perfect combo for me!

You worked for Berkley as an assistant editor. How well (and in which way) did that prepare you for writing your own book?

Editing books was great experience, and I think it gave me some good insights into the craft of storytelling, and how to construct a novel. Mostly, I received great mentoring from the more experienced editors there, and a good foundation of understanding the parts of the industry that lots of authors never see.

When did you decide you’d rather write your own stories than edit them? Was there a trigger? Perhaps a scandalously horrible manuscript? Or were you inspired by some of the greats you worked with like Nora Roberts and Jayne Ann Krentz?
I actually always had it in the back of my head that I’d like to write my own stories. I’m a reader, first and foremost, and have been in love with romance since I was 11 and discovered The Shadow & the Star by Laura Kinsale. Getting to read early drafts of Nora and Jayne’s wonderful books, and seeing how their editor (my boss) worked with them to come to the even more wonderful final product only cemented my desire to write. I loved editing, but writing is stimulating and challenging in a whole different way.

Can you give us your “Call Story”?
My fantastic agent, Deidre Knight, called me at the nonprofit kids’ nutrition program where I was working, and I shrieked so loudly, I scared all the other ladies in the office! I had to take my cell phone out back so I could dance around and jump for joy and not get hauled away by the guys with the white coats. Such a great, unexpected-but-very-anticipated moment! And the fact that it was St. Martin’s making the offer was just the butter on the popcorn. They were and are my dream publisher.

You obviously have a passion for cooking. When and/or how did this come about? Is this a love from childhood?

My parents both love to cook, and are very adventurous eaters, so they brought my sister and me up to try anything and everything. I’ve always loved eating, but I didn’t really cook on a regular basis until we moved away from New York (where my kitchen was approximately the size of an airplane bathroom) to a small town in northern Ohio, where I quickly realized that if I wanted something exciting and interesting for dinner, I had to make it myself. So I did!

Can readers expect more books in your Recipe for Love series? If so when is the next book set to appear?

CAN’T STAND THE HEAT, ON THE STEAMY SIDE, and JUST ONE TASTE make up the Market trilogy, and while the next trilogy will be set in the same world (readers can expect to see some familiar faces!) it will have a slightly different bent.

The newly titled  TOO HOT TO TOUCH will kick off the new trilogy in August 2011, followed quickly by SOME LIKE IT HOT and HOT UNDER PRESSURE. They follow a team of talented chefs in a high-stakes culinary competition!

What do you have planned after you’ve completed this series? Can you tell us anything about your next book?
I’m in the middle of TOO HOT TO TOUCH right now, and it’s shaping up to be one of my favorites. The hero, Max Lunden, left home after culinary school to wander exotic locales and learn obscure cooking techniques, but he’s forced to come home to NYC when his family’s restaurant enters a high-stakes culinary competition. The team is run by Juliet Cavanaugh, a self-taught chef with a lot to prove, and a deep desire to repay the generosity of the Lunden family. She and Max strike sparks right away, and the tension of the competition ignites the passion between them in a way that’s been tons of fun to write!

Will your next trilogy feature recipes, like the Market trilogy does?

Yes! All of my books have three recipes from the story in the back, and it’s one of my favorite things about writing this series. Even if the process of developing and testing the recipes is lengthy and time-consuming, it’s usually a lot of fun, too. And my husband is very sweet about eating the mistakes and failures without complaining. : )

Thanks so much for having me on The Season for Romance—I have a complete set of my Recipe for Love novels (autographed, of course) for one of your readers!