Q. What are you working on now? updated!

At last, I can give a different answer to this question! Well, not all that different, since I am, in fact, working on another Pink Carnation book. But the book in question has changed. Now that Deception of the Emerald Ring is safely off in the hands of the printers, I’m working on the fourth book in the Pink Carnation series. Pink IV took an unexpected turn. It was supposed to be about Charlotte, Henrietta’s best friend from Black Tulip. Of all my characters, Charlotte is the one to whom I feel closest, a naïve dreamer with her head in the clouds, her nose in a book, and unexpected moments of perspicacity. I had Charlotte’s story all worked out—especially her hero. Don’t even get me started on her hero. Just as I was set to begin, the book was hijacked by a ruthless band of characters intent on having their own stories told. They were determined, they were unscrupulous, and they won. The Deception of the Emerald Ring, the third book in the Pink Carnation series, involves an elopement that goes awry when Letty, the heroine, accidentally gets swept off in her older sister’s place. If anyone ever deserved to have her beau stolen, it was Letty’s older sister, Mary. Vain, scheming, and definitely not in love with Geoff (the hero of Emerald Ring), she was the very model of an anti-heroine, the sort who generally gets her comeuppance somewhere around the end of the book. In fact, I’d been setting her up as an anti-heroine since her first parenthetical appearance in the first Pink book, The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. But as I worked on Emerald Ring, I couldn’t stop thinking about Mary. How Mary would feel about being publicly humiliated in front of the ton; what it must be like to be so beautiful that every woman disliked you on sight; how it must feel to be blindsided by your bossy baby sister. Little scraps of narrative and dialogue kept me awake at night, like visitations from particularly pushy ghosts. What really clinched it was the realization that Mary’s perfect match was right there in front of me…. But that’s a topic for a future post.

Q. Will Richard and Miles ever reconcile? new!

Many of you have expressed concern about the state of Richard and Miles’ relationship. Poor Richard. He didn’t have an easy time dealing with his best friend’s defection. Used to being the center of both Henrietta’s and Miles’ attention, it was a nasty shock to him when his adoring little sister and longtime best friend decided they were more interested in each other than him. I do believe that Richard will relent over time—he and Miles were friends for too long to remain entirely estranged—but it may take a while.

Q. Are there any plans to publish the Pink Carnation books in mass market paperback? new!

Not that I’ve heard so far. Currently, the available print formats are hardcover and trade paperback. If that changes, I’ll be sure to post the news on my website.

Q. How many Pink Carnation books do you intend to write?

It’s the word “intend” that’s always the killer for me. There’s a reason that one of my favorite expressions is “the best laid plans aft gang agley,” because my plans, best-laid, worst-laid, or in-between, are constantly going agley. I usually like to blame it on my characters, who are particularly fond of waiting until I’ve finished an outline, then sticking out their tongues at me, and dashing off in completely the opposite direction. Um, not like this refers to anything in particular, like just re-outlining the last ten chapters of my latest book. Right. At any rate, if Fate and mischief-minded characters don’t intercede, I currently have plans for six Pink Carnation books. But if more side characters start demanding their own books, odds are I won’t have the strength to refuse them…. (Are there characters you think should have their own books? Email and let me know!)

Q. Do you outline your books in advance?

I outline constantly—and I save the old outlines, so I can laugh hollowly over them two months later, when they no longer bear any resemblance to what I’ve actually written. I’m always impressed by those people who can outline a book in advance and stick to it. Frequently, the bits on my original outlines I’m most pleased with are the bits that prove most unworkable in practice, and find their way into the dustbin. Despite their lack of utility as an actual blueprint, I do find outlines quite useful for organizing my thoughts, and working through plot kinks. In general, I tend to have a fairly detailed outline for whatever the next five chapters may be, and then a sketchier outline for anything that comes after that. It helps me keep track of the overall story and pacing, while still maintaining the flexibility to adjust to unexpected plot twists.

Q. When will Jane get a book of her own?

The short answer to that is… not for a while yet. Many people say they’re too busy for relationships; Jane really is. Those Napoleonic plots don’t just foil themselves, you know. But when the time comes—let’s just say it’s going to be a lot of fun coming up with a hero exceptional enough to shake Jane out of her accustomed self-possession.

Q. Will Eloise and Colin finally get together in the next book?

Like all good chick lit heroes and heroines, Colin and Eloise must undergo a suitably prolonged period of suffering before they are allowed to reach the promised land of romantic bliss. Since they only get about six chapters of their own per book, they haven’t suffered nearly enough yet. However, I have been threatened with violence by several of my friends if Eloise and Colin aren’t at least allowed a smooch sometime soon. Let’s just say, things are going to get interesting for Eloise and Colin. A possible kiss… a few rivals… who knows? Well, I do, but I’m not telling. If I did, Eloise might find out, and there’s no telling what she would do.

Q. How much of the modern story is autobiographical?

Hmm, a handsome Englishman, a cache of never-before-seen papers…. If only. I did loan Eloise my basement flat in Bayswater, as well as a rather bizarre party featuring models and glo-sticks, but the rest is pure imagination. And, no, no boyfriend of mine ever smooched another woman in the cloakroom of the Faculty Club, nor did I go abroad because I was thwarted in love. (Believe it or not, I’ve actually been asked that several times since the book came out—including by an old family friend!). It’s called fiction for a reason.

Q. Where do you get your ideas?

Every now and again, the Good Plot Fairy will wave her magic wand over my head. When I fail to pay attention, the Good Plot Fairy will then bash me over the head several times until I sit up, stick a bookmark in whatever novel I’ve been reading, and take notice. At least, that’s what happened with The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. “What if…” a little voice whispered in my ear (most of my bouts of demented pacing and muttering to myself usually start with those fatal words, “what if”). “What if you paired a know-it-all English spy with a stubborn royalist heroine?” And once the idea appeared, it wouldn’t go away. That darned spy kept dashing back and forth through my head (sometimes swinging on a rope, just for variety), until I finally had to do something about him. But that initial, comet-blazing-across-the-sky, Big Idea is only the beginning. Each book is composed of a mosaic of thousands of little ideas, ideas that invariably come to me at two in the morning when my alarm is set for seven. Ideas like, “What if Amy sees Georges Marston standing outside the house in a black cloak?” In fact, the bigger the initial idea, the more problems it causes, and the more mini-ideas it takes to sort everything out. For example, for the book I’m working on right now, the Big Idea, the idea that clunked me over the head—repeatedly—and wouldn’t leave me alone for nights on end, was “What if my hero were to accidentally elope with the wrong woman?” This seemed like a great idea. Until I started working on it. At which point I had to start answering questions like, “How in the hell do two sensible individuals get themselves into that sort of situation?” and “What was I drinking—er, thinking?”

Q. Who are your favorite authors?

It’s always impossible to answer that without leaving scads of people out, since my favorite authors list stretches to an alarming length. But I do have a shelf of books that has traveled with me from my childhood room… to college… to various apartments in Cambridge… and even England. The Security Shelf basics are L.M. Montgomery’s The Blue Castle, Robin McKinley’s Beauty, M.M. Kaye’s Trade Wind, Judith McNaught’s Almost Heaven, Paradise Lost, a complete Shakespeare, the collected poems of John Donne (featuring a rather cocky courtier glowering from the cover), ditto Yeats, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Stoppard’s Arcadia, C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces, and revolving selections by Nancy Mitford, Elizabeth Peters, Judith Merkle Riley, and Julia Quinn. Other favorites (which didn’t make it onto the Security Shelf, but are beloved nonetheless) include Karleen Koen’s Through a Glass Darkly, Diane Gabaldon’s Outlander, and anything by Georgette Heyer. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. My dream in life is to someday have an apartment with enough bookshelves to house all my books, without involving large piles in front of my couch and next to my bed and under my kitchen table….

Q. I’m just starting my historical novel—do you have any research tips?

Lots and lots! I gave a talk on the subject at a conference last spring, and one of these days I really will get around to posting my workshop outline on the website. In the meantime, here are a few research strategies that have worked for me. Start with biographies. Biographies often contain wonderful details about physical culture (clothing, food, architecture) that more straightforward political histories lack. They give you an excellent sense of what the time period was like as it was actually lived—and they also usually have excellent footnotes you can pounce on to locate other scholarly works and primary sources. For example, for my research on Napoleon’s court, I originally started with Theo Aronson’s The Golden Bees, Andre Castelot’s Napoleon, and Evangeline Bruce’s Napoleon and Josephine, and then tracked down the contemporary memoirs they had used as sources. Don’t neglect museums. Some museums have wonderful collections of furniture and other everyday objects, and many (like my personal favorite, the V&A in London), have posted substantial numbers of images on-line. Not quite as good as getting to go in person, but still a wonderful source of ideas for furnishing your heroine’s boudoir. I’m also a big fan of glossy coffee-table books about antiques with lots of pictures and diagrams—and, fortunately, there always seem to be lots of those available, for a fraction of their proper price, at used books stores. And then there are writers’ groups. I’m a member of the Beau Monde, the Regency chapter of Romance Writers of America. The sheer amount of esoteric information possessed by the members of the group could fill several libraries and quite a few history departments.