Background Notes

 

I arrived at night at the chaotic Kathmandu airport and had my bags snatched and dumped into a taxi before I could say 'yea' or 'nay'.  The beat-up little Datsun -- with two cheerful men in front (why two?  did they need two to better overpower me?) -- took me down dark, pot-holed dirt streets as narrow as alleyways.  I was certain I was going to be robbed and dumped in a bad neighborhood, for this could not be the way to my hotel.  Could it?  I mean, these weren't really the roads.  Were they? 

 

It was a pleasant surprise, twenty minutes later, to find myself being deposited at the front door of a wood-panelled, marble-floored hotel, and being greeted by a young Australian woman with a pierced lip and pink hair.  She was a tour guide for the same adventure company with which I would be travelling, although she was not going to lead my specific tour -- a tour, by the way, for which only one other person, a British woman, had signed up.  Everyone else had been scared off by 9/11, the massacre of the Nepal royal family earlier in the year, and the continuing threat of Maoist rebels in the hills.

 

 

 

 

I saw no yaks.  I saw plenty of ancient buildings, but learned little history.  Instead, I headed out on a week-long trek into the foothills of the Himalaya.  "Foothills," I learned, is a relative term.  We climbed to 15,000 feet during this march, I got altitude sickness, couldn't eat, and lost about three pounds.

 

On a hike to a cave, I got leeches on my legs.

 

On a river rafting trip, I picked up the bugs that later gave me both the runs and viral laryngitis. 

 

I was once again unable to eat, lost another three pounds, and while coping with the laryngitis had to stay alone at a hotel on the edge of Chitwan National Park, a nature reserve in the lowlands near the border with India.  The rest of my small group went traipsing off overnight through the brush to a tiny village, leaving me in the care of concerned hotel employees, one of whom would follow me around with deeply worried eyes.  He made me drink hot tea with honey, and woke me from my naps if I was late for meals.  

 

I was happy enough to stay behind from the trek, and to spend part of the afternoon in a tiny, sweltering Internet cafe, watching elephants herded by outside the door, and waiting for the phone lines to connect me to the rest of the world (it took 45 minutes to get a connection, that day).  And it was while I was there, unable to speak, sweating, hoping the Imodium would hold, that I got the e-mail from my editor announcing his ideas for the BLISS line. 

 

"You can still set your next book in Nepal," he said, "just tweak it a bit.  Instead of an historical, make it a contemporary spy spoof.  Oh, and the title has to be DR YES."  Just tweak it a bit!  Sure!  That's all it will take!  But just like that, the kumari was gone, and the pink-haired Australian guide was creeping into my thoughts.

 

When we returned to Kathmandu, I saw the pink-haired guide again, and told her that she might end up a heroine in a romance novel.  She groaned in embarrassment.  Which reminds me:  I have her e-mail address hidden away in my notes.  It's about time I let her know that her fictitious self is about to hit the shelves across four countries.  Good thing she's an ocean away and can't get her hands on me...

 

Ah, but don't we all secretly want to be the heroine of a romance novel?  I do.

 

Here's a scan of the James Bond movie poster inspiration for the cover of the book: