USA Today bestselling historical romance author Erica Monroe is here on the blog today! She writes dark, action-packed romances that take readers to the back alleys and dark street corners of Regency England. She’s here to share with us five things we probably don’t know about her…

1) Since romance authors always write about falling in love, when and how did you discover you were in love? I met my now-husband when we were both juniors in high school. We had similar social circles, but we had never really spent time together until he started to hang out with our mutual friend in the morning. There was something about him that drew me in. He was so quiet and unassuming, but when he’d smile it changed his entire face. I am a very outgoing person, and I made it my new mission to make him smile. But I didn’t really realize that I loved him until a few months into our relationship. We’d had a big fight, and not only did he apologize, but he made sure that all my anger was smoothed over. He was always doing things like that, making sure I was absolutely taken care of, going out of his way to do something special for us, etc. It was then that I understood that I’d found my soul mate (yes, even at sixteen!). We’ve been together now going on twelve years and we’ve been married seven.

2) If you could time travel, what time period would you most like to visit? I’d like to visit romantic era England in 1832, and I’d specifically like to go to London. I would track down all the various rookeries (ie, the poorer neighborhoods) that I write about. While I’ve been to a few, like Whitechapel when I went on a Jack the Ripper tour, I haven’t seen them with the eye of someone who has done research. I’d particularly like to see Spitalfields, the setting of my last novel, Secrets in Scarlet.

3) If you could be a superhero, whatpower would you choose and why? My favorite superhero is Batgirl/Oracle (for Barbara Gordon has been both of these heroes). Batgirl’s power is her eidetic memory, which would certainly be nice considering I’m incredibly scatterbrained. She has the ability to look at great amounts of information and find patterns in them. But if I couldn’t have her incredible analytic skills, I’d really like to be able to teleport places.

4) If you could have only 3 electrical appliances in your house, what would they be and why? The coffee maker, because I am very scary without coffee. The microwave, because while I do like to cook now I don’t think I could survive without the microwave. My laptop, so that I could still write!

5) Where do you go for inspiration when the creativity well is running a little dry? My tastes are pretty eclectic

, and that is definitely reflected in how I brainstorm ideas. I watch a massive amount of television, from soap operas to crime shows, comic book-based shows, and sci-fi. I tend to create characters from certain archetypes that I like, and I adapt them to my version of late regency England. I also listen to music (Taylor Swift really helps me), or take a long walk with my dogs.

You can find Erica on her website, Twitter, Facebook (as a person or as a fan page), and on Pinterest! Thanks for visiting with us, Erica…