There’s a wonderful quote from L.P. Hartley: “The past is another country; they do things differently there.” Mr. Hartley didn’t just have a deft hand with a semicolon, he also spoke true!
When people hear the word “alien,” they usually think of little green men, but in fact writing about the past means immersing yourself in a world with different mores and behaviors. The trick is making stories about people who lived 200 years ago relevant and hopefully compelling for a modern reader, while still keeping the characters true to themselves.
That challenge is one of the many things that keeps me dedicated to my genre. I grew up in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s and while it was a wonderful, happy childhood, glamorous, exciting things always seemed to happen elsewhere.
I fell in love with European, specifically British, history when I was not much more than a toddler. My parents used to read to me from gorgeous editions of fairy tales with spectacular illustrations. I remember poring over Cinderella’s gown, which I now realize was vaguely late 17th-century French, or Sleeping Beauty’s dress, which was Norman. I’ll confess – pretty dresses were my gateway to a lifetime of fascination with historical personages and events.
My interest in my wonderful, larger-than-life genre grew when I started watching swashbuckling films on TV. Even then, they were were old movies! I still can’t resist Errol Flynn swinging in to charm Maid Marion or Maureen O’Hara flashing those magnificent green eyes at John Wayne or Burt Lancaster. You just knew you were in for a fun ride with these stories. By the way, my latest heroine, Bonny Mhairi Drummond from The Highlander’s Defiant Captive, is very much based on Maureen at her fiery best.
Both the fairy tales and the Golden Age of Hollywood movies took liberties with history, but they had such verve and style, I didn’t mind. And that introduction to the rich tapestry of European history encouraged me to find out more about the real people and places behind the adventurous and romantic stories I loved.
I decided fairly early that I wanted to be a writer. Another childhood obsession was Enid Blyton. My mother kept a composition I wrote in grade two where I proclaimed to the world, or at least to my class at Redland Bay State School, that I was going to grow up to be the next E.B.
I started my first novel, a racy little number about horse-napping, the following year. I kept writing through the years that followed, although I didn’t get a publishing contract until 2006 when I sold Claiming the Courtesan to Avon HarperCollins in New York.
That’s a long time to be in the aspiring writer category, but all those years of toiling away in obscurity turned out to offer a stack of unexpected advantages. One was that I’d developed my writing voice when I sold. The only way you do that is by doing a lot of writing and believe me, by then, I’d done a LOT of writing. The long wait also gave me time to experiment with genres and realize that my first love turned out to be my strongest love.
So, I decided I’d write historical romance. It took me a while to settle on Regency as my sub-genre of choice. I tried to write contemporaries in both romance and women’s fiction. I tried historical fiction and historical romances set in a variety of times and places, the research for which have made me a killer Trivial Pursuit player.
I even gave up for about 18 months when I told myself that my dream of wanting to be a writer was like my childhood dream of wanting to dance for the Bolshoi Ballet. A silly idea that should be put away in favor of sensible grown-up ambitions like getting a proper job.
That didn’t work out too well at all! I don’t think I’ve ever been so miserable.
When I came back, I realized that I needed to be smarter about what I was writing if I wanted to be a published author. If those 18 months taught me anything, it was that I wanted to be a published author!
I studied the market, instead of following my flibbertigibbet interest to obscure places (at least in historical romance terms!) like 18th-century Hungary or Renaissance Ferrara. It was clear that books set in Britain in the first quarter of the 19th century were king. The actual Regency period only lasted from 1811 to 1820, when Prince George stepped in to take over the sovereign’s duties after George III was declared incapable of ruling. But in historical romance terms, the period extends from the late 18th century through to the accession of Victoria in 1837.
Readers can’t get enough of books set in this time. There are a couple of reasons for this. I think many people grew up reading Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer. I know I did. There have also been some fantastic authors writing about this era since historical romance became a major commercial genre with Kathleen Woodiwiss’s The Flame and the Flower in the early 1970's.
In the early 2000's, I wrote a Regency romantic comedy set in London which I still hope to publish one day. I read it recently and it stands up pretty well! Then out of nowhere an idea arrived for a dark, intense, emotional, and very steamy story about a Regency duke wanting to marry his notorious mistress which I called “No Ordinary Duchess.” As Claiming the Courtesan, this is the book that got me my first publishing contract. I’ve been a full-time writer ever since!
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| Author Anna Campbell |
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Anna, such a pleasure hosting you today. Thank you for sharing with us how you came to write in this beloved genre that is making a comeback.
ReplyDeleteHi Grace! Thanks so much for inviting me to come onto this wonderful blog. I really enjoyed my trip down memory lane.
DeleteAnna, I loved reading about your journey to publication. Nearly as good as reading one of your books.
ReplyDeleteShelagh, aren't you lovely? Thank you. Glad you enjoyed hearing about my path.
DeleteAnna, I so agree about the work needed to find your voice as an author. I have so many books that I wrote when I first started writing that will never, ever be published. But I started in contemporary and, besides one pure women's fiction novel, have stayed there ever since. It's so clearly the only time that suits my particular voice! I wish I could write historical romance, though, since almost all my writer friends do!
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