On Rhy's Royal Flush!

HALLIE: Sound the trumpets! Cue cornets! Lady Georgiana -- great granddaughter of Queen Victoria and 34th in line to the English thrown -- is back!

Join us in welcoming "Royal Flush," the third in Rhys Bowen's Royal Spyness series. In which Georgiana fails to grasp the difference between Escort Service and High Class Girls." Banished to a drafty Scottish castle, what ensues is a romp. As our Royal Rhysness told "Hollywood Today," “Picture Georgie at a royal wedding in Transylvania in a castle like Dracula’s where there may or may not be vampires! Plenty of dead bodies, anyway."

So, Rhys, I know you're signing books all over California, Texas, Oregon, Arizona, Florida and beyond.

What's up today with the big launch?

RHYS: Today is one of those big days in any writer's life--the birthday of a new book. It doesn't matter how many books we have written or how successful they have been, each new one feels rather like the birth of a new child (a little less uncomfortable, I have to admit). Will readers like it? Will reviewers like it? Will anyone come to my signings? So I'm pacing and worrying when I should be packing sensibly for my book tour that starts on Thursday. Summer book tours are hard. I can't wear my staple black pants and different jackets when the temperature in Houston was 101 yesterday and in Scottsdale was 108. But cotton and linen crease so badly on the plane.

I have an event tonight and a big launch party tomorrow, with champagne, strawberries and chocolate--what more could I add to bribe people to come? Waiters who are also body builders?

ROYAL FLUSH is my third Lady Georgiana mystery and it takes place in 1930s Britain. As usual it is full of madcap adventures as it takes Georgie back to her ancestral castle in Scotland, complete with ghosts, haggis and a monster in the loch.

My signing schedule is up on my website, www.rhysbowen.com and click on Rhys on the Road. I'd love to see friendly faces!

HANK: Rhys! We're all so proud of you--you are truly the royalty in our little group. And it's very comforting, actually, to see that even you still have qualms and worries...! But of course, it will all be marvelous!
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A Most Distinguished Guest

Rhys: Today I'm honored to be in the presence of royalty as I interview Lady Victoria Georgiana Charlotte Eugenie. Welcome your ladyship, it's so good of you to take time off from your busy schedule to talk with me.

Lady Georgie: Actually, Rhys, I'm not royalty. I'm only second cousin to King George V and only thirty fourth in line to the throne which makes me a royal also-ran.

Rhys: But you must live a fascinating life among the glitter of palaces and balls and royal tours.

Lady Georgie: LOL. You see I have picked up some of your current speech. The fact is that my branch of the family has no money at all. We are flat broke. It's alright for my brother because he has all that land in Scotland to grow things, but I'm alone in London and I'm not doing too well.

Rhys: Surely someone young and attractive and well educated like you can find a job.

Lady Georgie: In case you haven't noticed there is a Great Depression crippling world economy. Every street corner has poor men standing on it, begging for work. But don't think I haven't tried to find a job. I did work in Harrods once for all of four hours before my mother got me sacked. I even tried cleaning houses. And I recently came up with a spiffing idea for making money that turned out to be horribly embarrassing. How was I to know that the words Escort Service and High Class Girls had a different connotation?

Rhys: (trying not to laugh) Oh dear. So what happened?

Lady Georgie: I got whisked home to Scotland before the press could learn of my little gaffe. And I was given a job of a kind, I suppose, although nobody has offered to pay me for it. You see it was suspected that someone was trying to kill off the heirs to the throne and a certain branch of the government wanted me, as an insider, to find out who was doing this.

Rhys: And did you manage to succeed?

Lady Georgie: Yes, but only just. I was lucky to come away with my life. I owe a lot to someone called Darcy O'Mara. Essentially he saved me.

Rhys: I've heard that name before, mentioned in the same breath as yours, I believe.

Lady Georgie (blushes) Oh golly. Well yes, we are ,I mean I am rather keen on him, and I think he's keen on me too. Could we change the subject please. I'm finding it rather hot in here.

Rhys: I heard that a certain American woman called Mrs. Simpson was staying at your Scottish castle to be near the Prince of Wales at Balmoral.

Lady Georgie: She brought a whole houseparty of Americans with her too. My sister-in-law the current duchess was livid. They wanted baths and showers all the time and were eating us out of house and home.

Rhys: How long did they stay

Lady Georgie: Not as long as they planned. We did sort of exaggerate the hardships of living in a centuries old castle--the howling gales, the ghosts, the bagpipes at dawn, and haggis for dinner.

Rhys: Did that drive them away..

Lady Georgie: No, it was actually the flying lavatory that did it.
Rhys: Do we understand that this story is about to be told in a new book?

Lady Georgie: Quite right. It's called Royal Flush and it comes out on July 7th

Rhys: Thank you, Lady Georgie. We look forward to reading about your latest exploits. Can you give us a hint of what you'll be doing next?

Lady Georgie: Well, actually I've been asked to represent the royal family at a royal wedding in Transylvania at a castle on the Borgo Pass. I don't think any of those silly rumors about vampires are true, do you?