Illicit Liaisons: Wuthering Heights & Classic Romance Literature with author Annie R McEwen

This week, our guest host is romance author Annie R McEwen where we discuss the hubbub around the new adaptation of Wuthering Heights, classic romance novels, and more.

LINKS TO ANNIE R MCEWEN

Annie's Website: https://www.anniermcewen.com/ 

Bound Across Time https://amzn.to/4bIJ9M9

The Corset Girls Unlaced https://amzn.to/4uPC84S

Annie's Books on Amazon https://amzn.to/487lqnE

BOOKS MENTIONED ON THE SHOW

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole: https://amzn.to/4tqzdOH

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson: https://amzn.to/47VhlTx

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: https://amzn.to/4c3ZYlS

Wuthering Heights (2009 TV Serial): Masterpiece | Wuthering Heights | PBS https://amzn.to/4bMd5XI

Carmilla by Joseph Le Fanu: https://amzn.to/4swAW4U

Villette by Charlotte Brontë: https://amzn.to/4suNYjb

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Brontë: https://amzn.to/4t3Qdd9

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen: https://amzn.to/4t5ELxx

Cecilia by Frances Burney: https://amzn.to/4t7r0i1

Evelina by Frances Burney: https://amzn.to/4lOWmYb

A Simple Story by Elizabeth Inchbald: https://amzn.to/3PEec4c

Pamela by Samuel Richardson: https://amzn.to/4buMKhZ

Clarissa by Samuel Richardson: https://amzn.to/4bHNIpR

Persuasion by Jane Austen: https://amzn.to/4bSpVUu

Persuasion (2008) https://amzn.to/4dMEPxM

Persuasion (1996) https://amzn.to/488c3Ef

The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox: https://amzn.to/4dHVvqd

The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry: https://amzn.to/4v79Wuz

Castle Rackrent Maria Edgeworth: https://amzn.to/4bEE1sk

Belinda by Maria Edgeworth: https://amzn.to/4svOa1P


TENDER & TEMPTING TALES

Tender and Tempting Tales Substack: Subscribe and get a FREE story! https://tenderandtemptingtales.substack.com/

Tender and Tempting Tales on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tendertemptingtales/

ILLICIT LIAISONS PRODUCED & HOSTED BY

Tara Leederman: https://taleederman.substack.com/

Jenna Harte: https://jennaharte.com/

Outline and Shownotes: T.A. Leederman
Editing: Jenna Harte

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hello, romance readers. Welcome to Illicit Liaisons with Tender and Tempting Tales, where each week we discuss the good, the bad, and the naughty of romance fiction. I am Jenna Hard, a romance author of the Southern Heat Contemporary Romance series and the Sexy Valentine Mystery Series, as well as the managing editor of Tender and Tempting Tales, a steamy romance anthology for when you want to have a romantic quickie.

SPEAKER_03 0:25

Hi, I'm Tara Lederman, social media manager here at Tender and Tempting Tales, and Laura Maven for Starship Valkyrie, a science fiction game and story universe. I write science fiction stories, including romance, and you can often find me in our anthologies alongside these ladies.

SPEAKER_01 0:38

And today we have with us Annie R. McEwen, a historical and paranormal romance author who is a regular in our anthologies. Yay! She's in Moonlight Margaritas, Midnight Mischief and Mistletoe, and in our upcoming fireworks and flirtation. She's a career historian who has lived in six countries under every roof, from a canvas tent to a Georgian era manor house. And she's won several awards for excellence in romance authorship. Her short fiction appears in numerous anthologies. She has novels published with several presses, and we always love it when she contributes to our anthologies. Matter of fact, I think last time we begged her.

SPEAKER_00 1:22

It's true. It's true, it's true.

SPEAKER_01 1:24

When not in her 1920s bungalow in Florida, Annie writes blogs and explores castles in Wales. You can find links to Annie's website and books as well as all the other books and resources we mentioned in the show in our show notes. Annie, thank you so much for being with us today. Welcome. I'm happy to be here, of course. Now, normally Tara and I like to start the show with bookish news or hot takes and things like that. And the big topic recently has been the newest adaptation of Weathering Heights. And you too, with all your literature smarticles, are here to help me through this because um the this adaptation does have a lot of people buzzing sort of negatively around it. But for me, the big thing that always comes out about this and several other classic romances, if you were to search Google for great classic romance, this is always on it. Because in my mind, particularly Weathering Heights is not the greatest romance ever told, even though that's I think on the thing for Weathering Heights this time. Um, and I'm just wondering like, what am I missing? Do you agree? Do you disagree? What what are your thoughts on Weathering Heights with this toxic Heathcliff? Uh, we got Kathy, who doesn't even think about choosing him when money comes walking through the door. So what do you think?

SPEAKER_02 3:06

Weathering Heights is not a romance novel. Thank you by any definition of a romance novel. In fact, by any definition of romance, period, it is not a romance. What it is, is a gothic novel, and it falls absolutely squarely in the center of a of an English gothic novel trend that started with with the castle of Otranto in something, 1764, and then runs right up through, I'm gonna say Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I think that's probably the point at which we can say it it merged into a growing trend which was either science fiction or horror, or possibly horror with science fiction elements, or science fiction with horror elements. But by then uh the gothic genre had changed in into I think horror. Um that was not true in the early decades of Gothic fiction in England, and so I come down absolutely squarely on the notion that this is a gothic novel. Um, the fact that love of some sort, toxic or healthy, possessive or liberating, comes and goes in it, is that that makes no never mind. It is what it is, and just putting a love story of any sort in a novel does not make it romance. Okay, so as you can see, I am pretty adamant on that, and that's my story, and I'm sticking to it. So I'm gonna have to tear away.

SPEAKER_03 5:02

Yeah, I agree with Annie on that. I mean, I think that there, because of Anne Radcliffe, who was really, really popular at the end of the 19th century, there is this idea of the Gothic romance. She even had a book called The Romance of the Forest, for instance, and she did write gothic romances where we have a couple who get together in the midst of a gothic situation. Um, and they even had some bodice ripper qualities to them, like almost ravished kind of things in in them. Sort of proto-bro bodice ripper, proto-romance at the time. You know, we would recognize those qualities. Um, and I do think that Wuthering Heights gets confused into that can that tradition a little bit because of the Gothic romance. Uh, and of course, you know, they didn't have the same definition of what a romance was at the time. I mean, it comes from roman to some degree, the, you know, which is just means a novel. And there was a lot of female novel reading at the time, and people just sort of lumped a lot of this reading into one category. It's like women's reading for a long time. Uh, in the other thing, uh, there were a lot of romances at the end of the 19th century written by women especially with a marriage plot. Um, that so those are much more recognizable as romance than a Wuthering Heights. I think a lot of people read Wuthering Heights when they're 14. And I think that it speaks to that adolescent part of it, like this like tortured, angsty love.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 6:17

And I think that a lot of 14-year-olds, Emerald, the director of Wuthering Heights included, have a kind of dreamlike understanding of the book because they don't read it again after their freshman year of high school. Like, like Romeo and Juliet, you know, they just have this very adolescent understanding of it that they carry with them. Uh, and they want it to be a romance because it still speaks to that angsty part of them. That messy, you know, teenage, their love is in the rocks, and you really love that. And it's the same, the same person who reads dark romance and and toxic romance and feels kind of connected to it because of all the drama within. And I think that that is like a lovely part of the female experience in the United States, uh, that like I understand, but it doesn't make it a romance.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

I think you too, because you are so smart on these literary things. Would you be able to explain what you think Emily Bronte might think of how her novel has been taken and seen? I mean, when she was right, when she wrote this, and and I don't think she lived long enough to know whatever happened to it, right? But I mean, would she be like, you're missing the point? Or uh I'm just curious.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

I I um this may be a cynical viewpoint, and I don't mean it unkindly at all. I mean it from the standpoint of someone who has exactly the same concerns as all three of the Bronte women had, which is that they wrote it to make, they wrote their books to make money. And they there are a cluster of them that the three sisters wrote that are all gothic, and they were all published within just a few years of each other, you know, Jane Jane Eyre by Charlotte, uh, and the tenant of Walpha Hall by Anne, and and then of course Leathering Heights by Emily. And they were all they were all published, and this we know from their letters, this was, they were all deliberately written in order to take advantage of what they very perspicaciously saw as a fast fascination with the elements of Gothic literature. The the castles, the ruins, the the wild wind-swept moors, the difficult torture family relationships, the wind, the murderous looks in the eye, you know, these that they were, they knew these books were trending. And if they were alive now, that's the word they would use. They would say, This is trending, I'm gonna write to it. They're writing to market. Yeah. Yeah, because for them, for many writers still today, it's a matter of survival. Yeah, we we write as they wrote because that is the thing we do best. I mean, God knows if I could if I could be a trapeze artist or a real estate investment counselor, I I would be doing one of those. But this is the thing that I do best, and so um they did what they did best, they capitalized on their abilities to try to keep um candles burning. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:43

Yeah, they were in a desperate situation. They they sat down to write these novels because of the desperation of their situation was going on with their brother. And I think that Emily would be thrilled to know that her book is read by high schoolers as a matter of course, even more often than Jane Eyre, and that she beat her sister. I honestly think she'd be thrilled to know that because they were competing when they wrote. I mean, not it wasn't a competition necessarily, but I there there is definitely a sense of one-upmatch. The other thing is that Charlotte had a better sense of the market than Emily did. Emily was doing more what she wanted to do. Charlotte, the reason why Jane Eyre has a happier ending is that she wanted it to sell and she had a better sense at the time of people wanting a happy ending. That's why Jane Eyre, I would call more of a romance, does end with a happily ever after, or at least closer to one that we would recognize than Wuthering Heights does. I I think even Charlotte told Emily, like, I think maybe you should let Heathcliff and Kathy get together. And Emily was like, you don't get it, you don't know what I'm talking about, like, shut up. And like I think Emily might be a little vexed that people, when they adapt the novel, only adapt the first half and not the second half, because I think she might say, I don't feel like people get it. And that might be the one thing that vexes her, that people see just the first half in the love story, the thing that Charlotte wanted her to just do, and not the full thing that she was trying to say, which is this story about generational trauma. I think that she's talking a little bit about what's going on with her brother and the isolation that they experience, but by the same token, she was a very emotional person. She had a very emotional relationship with the Moors, and I think that she conveys that really well. I think anyone who reads Wuthering Heights really sees her understanding of the Moors and feels it in a way that I don't think that you get from reading Jane Eyre. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

But you you struck on something kind of slant-wise that speaks to my belief, my very strong belief, about what Emily was trying to say. Because you often hear people talking about what she was trying to do, what she was trying to project, and then what they do instead of really getting to that, is list a bunch of characteristics of the novel, but those are not motivating impulses at the heart of the novel. I believe and have always that the novel asks the same question, which was much asked in that era, as um as the strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. And and much earlier, the one of the books that kicked off the whole movement, um, Frankenstein in Mary Shelley. You know, Mary Shelley asked, What is a man in the generic sense? What is a human? What distinguishes a human from a lump of reanimated matter? You know, what this idea, this question was at the heart of scientific, revolutionary scientific discoveries in the era. People were questioning everything evolution, physiology, biology, um what what the Bible, it's like, well, if we're not children of God who are all created in his image, then what are we? And that's exactly what I believe Emily is asking whether or not. Because what how did Heathcliff get the way he did? I think he he's he's her Frankenstein.

SPEAKER_03 13:29

Yeah, and one thing that she shows really nicely is the way nurture can turn someone into a monster. And in and environment as well. I think that it's one of the best novels for showing that, and it shows how it reverberates through generations as well.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Yeah. So yeah, because he doesn't just torture those who robbed him, but he pushes it down to their children.

SPEAKER_03 13:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:53

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:56

Yeah. What is a man? Yes. Speaking of, I should probably. Yes, that's very true.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

They've never read it. They've seen one of the film adaptations or TV adaptations. And I'm sorry, I'm just gonna come out and tell you how I feel. I think they're all horrible. And they're just horrible. And then the best ones are redeemed only by the fact that the acting is so good. When you look at Lawrence Olivia, even though you know the the dialogue is crap in the whole concept of the film. He carries it, but he's just so wonderful. He does carry it, he acts so well, and as does all over him. And so you just go, oh, I'm just gonna, and then you think you've seen Mother and I, but you have seen a tour de force as far as acting goes. But um, yeah, so people people without having read the book, because like I say, Emily doesn't she doesn't hide her her thesis from you. I mean, if you count the number, the number of times the word murder appears in the book. I haven't done that, but when I reread it, thanks to Jenna, thank you, Jenna, because of this podcast, I went out and bought a fresh copy, read it again. And you I started looking at how many times the word murder is mentioned. It's like, wait a minute, that's a lot of mention. So why does an author do did she do that because she just lost count?

SPEAKER_01 15:43

She didn't have an editor that said you just use this word in the last. Yeah. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 15:49

My editor over, who I'd love to give a shout-out to soon. But um, Clara will say, Dina, you've used this word four times on this page alone.

SPEAKER_00 16:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:01

Okay. No, she she didn't do it unconsciously. She did it deliberately.

SPEAKER_03 16:06

Well, yeah, she has her two sisters there who are reading her draft and helping her, but she was the most resistant to changes. She was the most resistant to them giving her feedback of the three of them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

There you go.

SPEAKER_03 16:17

She had a very strong sense of what the book was going to be. And even if Charlotte did tell her, I think you're using murder too much, which we don't know, but she might have. I Emily was like, I did it on purpose, no thanks. So we know she was very deliberate.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

She was right, right? I mean, the book is enduring for whatever reason, right or wrong or crazy, it's still there. So clearly, it is an interesting thing when editors get on top of something and they're saying something. If you don't change it and it goes out in the world, a lot of times readers don't notice whatever it is an editor has suggested could be problematic, right? So readers clearly editors don't read like readers.

SPEAKER_03 16:57

We talked about this in the last podcast. Like, yeah, when you're an editor, you're not reading like a reader. You have to be careful to switch between the two modes and know what's important and what isn't.

SPEAKER_01 17:06

Yeah. Speaking of it. But that wasn't important, was it, right? Like somebody said, pull pull some of your murders. Pull some of your murders. Oh, they would have been wrong.

SPEAKER_03 17:16

Yeah, exactly. So there is a huge fracas about the most recent adaptation, as we've been discussing. And I I really feel like most adaptations of this novel fall short, as Annie has said. Like, not least because they don't usually adapt the entire book and both parts. Um, but this one in particular has folks really fired up. Like, I've never seen a conversation about an adaptation of a of like a of a of a Bronte novel quite this nasty. And I was just wondering what you guys thought of the dust up.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

I haven't seen it. I it's appearing, as far as I know, only appearing in theaters. I don't look at the theaters. And after what I've read about it, I I don't really am not motivated. I don't want to see another bad adaptation. The one adaptation that I like parts of is the one that Tom Hardy film that Tom Hardy was in. And I only like it because of him, because I think he had a handle on Heathcliff. Heathcliff is not an attractive person. He's not attractive. And Tom Hardy did not try to make him attractive as so many uh people portraying Heathcliff. They try to make him like Olivier. They try to make him like a look, this brooding, handsome romantic lead. Yeah, a romantic hero. And Hardy does not do that. He makes him look coarse and unshaven and and um somebody, yeah. You go, why is she crazy for it?

SPEAKER_01 18:45

Is the tall hardy version the one that Kate Bush wrote, Wethering Heights, the music, the song? It might be 2009. I wonder if that adaptation.

SPEAKER_02 18:57

I I do remember that about his book right now.

SPEAKER_03 19:00

Have you seen the 90s one?

SPEAKER_02 19:03

Uh with um, oh, what's his face from L O T R not L O T R. Um, um, shoot, I can't think of his name right now.

SPEAKER_03 19:11

It's the one with a castle, it's really distinctive looking.

SPEAKER_02 19:14

Yeah, um, did I? Probably. I know I've seen five or six, and and every time I see one, I think, why am I punishing myself?

SPEAKER_03 19:25

Yeah, but I I feel like a lot of them are typing back.

SPEAKER_02 19:27

I have to go watch and I have to go watch Pride and Prejudice or Sense of Sensibility to wash the taste out of my brain.

SPEAKER_03 19:36

Those are easier novels to adapt to the screen, though, to be totally fair to people who try to adapt Weathering Heights. I do think it's a challenge. I don't think that most people have risen to that challenge.

SPEAKER_01 19:45

Weathering heights, like you said. I mean, that the director was very clear uh what she was after what it was to her 14-year-old self. Yes, right. So, in a lot of ways, it's sort of a fan fiction, right? Yes, yes, it's it's an adaptation that is is a fan fiction. What really has sort of surprised me about it though, where we are in time in 2026, that Heathcliff is not portrayed as he is in the book.

SPEAKER_03 20:13

Oh, the terms of his ethnicity, which in my mind is Roma, but um Yeah, he's he's called, he is, he is called the the the slower word for romani several times in the book. That is yeah, definitely there.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

And so you sort of wonder in a day and age in which of diversity and whatever, they're putting a white guy, oh yeah, because because that was part of part of what was going on, right? That was part of the prejudice against Heathcliff. So it's the story. Why not yeah, somebody who actually depends, but I guess in her 14-year-old mind, she's read over that card.

SPEAKER_03 20:50

And um Yeah, this is this is the irresponsible part of this adaptation to me. I the rest of it is very dreamlike. I've seen the costumes, and while I understand why people are irritated by that, there is a dreamlike quality to all of that, and I can see what she's trying to do, and it they are really interesting, and there's at least something there to talk about. And I don't think it's offensive to do interesting things with the costumes, there's interesting things with your choreography, interesting things with your your cinematography, all of that is fine. It could be weird, but I like weird, that's fine. But being like, well, my 14-year-old self did not see the racialized aspects, and I don't want to do that, is I think missing the point of the story. That at that point you are not talking about Wuthering Heights anymore. Like Wuthering Heights is about a racialized person, a person who is Romani and possibly an illegitimate child of the household. And to just elide that because you don't wanna, that is really irresponsible. And I think a little a little head empty, especially in this day and age. You can get a Romani actor to play Heathcliff, and you can get a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 21:55

Jane Austen did not hesitate to identify people by. my race in order to um get across certain attributes, however one that she was tagging down. But um I you know Bronte does not do that exactly though and and from my viewpoint the thing that it that it recalled always from the beginning and when I read it just recently I I checked myself to see if it still brought this to mind and it does even more strongly and that's the murders the murders in the remote um which of course is not a not a novel but I don't know if you've read it recently enough to remember this but um at the time murders in the remote was published Paris in particular was being inundated by migrant people of all sorts and there was a great um confusion and um labeling and and vilification among the Parisians because they didn't understand this influx of new and different people and so they were quick to pin things on on them. And when Poe is interviewing the the uh the other inmates of the the um apartment building where the murders took place they are all quick to try to pin it on immigrants and they all have their little say about well it's probably these people including um the the Rome. And so I saw that very strongly in Wethering Heights that that that was part of the same attention that she's getting attention to that um odious practice.

SPEAKER_03 23:50

Yeah absolutely I mean it's not well it's not it's not important what his 23andme genetic profile is like we don't actually know his parentage right like that that is purposefully kept unknown. What's important is what the people on the the moors think that he is and he is called a dark skinned jeezler in aspect and that is the sort of the the deep perspective of of of like of the characters in the story telling us what they think that he is or he is dark skinned that they think that he's Roma and that's the way that they treat him especially Catherine's brother. Yeah he's extremely abusive to him despite the fact that he might be his half brother and there's some tension there that the idea that they're related to him they would he wants to distance himself from him whereas Kathy wants to be closer.

SPEAKER_02 24:37

Yeah yeah I love the ambiguity of his birth that's one of the things I like most it would have been and might have been tempting for her to uh tie that up neatly or to pop it on the on the reader as one of those last minute um revelations in the library and you did not know that I am your secret house together did you no no letter in which her mother said it's like she must have considered that and then because that was a daring choice to she kept that ambiguity from beginning to end and it's kind of an open text so and and readers are notoriously hostile to open text they want to they want to know what actually happened even though all things made up no they still want to know and she wouldn't give it to them boy that woman had some guts.

SPEAKER_03 25:35

Yeah they all had gut it was that the same was sort of in Jane Eyre too right Remy Rochester had a a ward and we were sort of like unsure if he was father yeah at least I was I think that was common in the era to have these kind of ambiguous people around you don't know whose children they are and there's a certain we were talking about this when we were discussing Bridgerton we were talking about the ward like you never really know who the ward is but often they are an illegitimate child so you want to be careful about how you treat them you know and it was it was pretty scandalous to like suddenly turn them into a servant and and disregard somebody's wishes about them you know because it they could be their children. So this is the thing that happens in Wuthering Heights their father dies and the brother is horrific to him absolutely horrific. And that is I mean I think meant to be seen as monstrous like this is the monstrous person at first like not Heathcliff.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

He's made into a monster for the way he's treated yeah well going on speaking of adaptations we've had a lot of them and we've been pretty spoiled by a lot of them I mean Outlander's coming out tomorrow with its final season. Bridgerton and and you know I was thinking Bridgerton has made changes but somehow you go with them. You're okay. The music sounds old timey but it's current day music right so there there are fun things that directors can do and you'll be like okay I'll go along with that the other side of that is sometimes they go horribly wrong which we've been talking about weathering heights for me it was last year's persuasion I got about 20 minutes in I had to turn it off I was like that is not Anne Elliott to me it was blasphemous. I I was just like whoever came up with the idea of doing that should be fired. And of course this year we have several Austin adaptations coming out so we have um I guess that will be a six six or eight part series of Pride and Prejudice. So going to the long format which I'm excited about because Olivia Coleman's playing Mrs. Bennett and I love her. But then Netflix also did Persuasion and I'm really afraid right they also did Bridgerton right like they they're very hit or miss. And of course there's going to be a new Sense and Sensibility which I think is going to be a movie and then there is the other Bennett sister which is not Austin but it's based on Pride and Prejudice but like Mary's point of view is my understanding haven't read it. So there is some sort of like golly do we really need another adaptation of weathery heights or pride and prejudice or sense and sensibility I'm just curious what are your thoughts is there is it too much are you happy for more do you worry about what might happen or Annie what are your thoughts I I am sick and tired of seeing the same the same books being regurgitated in 500 different ways each each regurgitation being uglier in my view than the last one.

SPEAKER_02 28:35

It's people I think are struggling because the the earth is so trampled people are struggling to find novels that may are may not even be legitimate I mean may not be well thought through as you point out I can't really think think this through I mean um but they're they're novel and so when when there's just too much too much repetition the same books being done over and over and over and over you can't help that that's going to happen. People will look for novelty for its own sake. And some viewers may be happy with that but the thing is there's such a rich field from which they could pull and um your your question as I understood it from the notes you sent me was is there an overlooked novel that should be done I can think of a and I'm sure Tara can too I mean we can probably suggest 50 right off the top of our head I would love if we stick in the in the even in the gothic genre or somewhat gothic if if we go to Villette let's stick with the Grandi Oh yes yes stay out of my brain I was gonna say that is one of my very favorite favorite novels and and my graduate school mentor was just crazy for it and so we dissected it line by line. Madame Bovary I think yes it's been done and done but not as much as um some of these other books have been done and I think there is room for another fine Madame Bovary another novel I I love very much. Yeah I'd like to see something better done with the tenants of Wildfeld Hall I'd like to see Carmilla I mean let's get vampire here Carmilla is a much underrated novel I remember reading it as an undergraduate and going whoa where did this come from and uh just drippingly gothic and and horror yes but in a very deadly subtle way and it's like why hasn't anyone discovered this gym I mean there was a a film bad badly done in the 70s I think I've not seen anything unless I'm missing something has anyone seen anything I've got a graphic novel called Carmilla and Laura that is a really lovely adaptation of Carmilla but that's the only thing I've seen done with it beyond that.

SPEAKER_03 31:12

I mean of course Carmilla there's like a Carmilla that shows up in the the god what's it called the uh uh there's a there's like an anime cartoon universe uh we won't get into here but like you see like a Carmilla but she's not like in the book but we see her play around with yeah but or even if we we want to go way back I mean the Castle of Otronto I don't know that someone probably did a Castle of Otronto as film but I've never seen it is there yeah I interestingly my uh my um again my grad school mentor Dr.

SPEAKER_02 31:49

Paula Lee who is herself a many published author and academic brilliant brilliant woman absolutely expert in this whole in the whole 19th century literature field not only British but German but she had never read the Castle of Otonto and I actually brought it into class one day and said I would you like to talk about this because I was so certain she had read it I mean my god she's read everything and she said oh I've never read it and I went oh man when you can I know when you get something over on somebody that elevated and uh she adored it. Why hasn't somebody done something with that?

SPEAKER_03 32:32

I think it's lack of knowledge not just amongst people who are writing movies but also the general pup public you know uh for instance like I would really love to see Evelina people will go watch right yeah today books that are adapted are books that are popular. Nobody knows if they've already been adapted and people are already interested that's that base is there, right? I would love to see Evelyn you know I'd love to see more Fanny birds I would love to see Cecilia of course I love Cecilia that would make a great mini series gosh there are so many of them I would love to see a simple story by Inch Ball that would be amazing. Yeah the female Quixote would be hilarious. I would watch the heck out of that yeah there's a lot there's a lot out there Pamela gosh we we love Cinderella's stories from the enlightenment let's do it oh it's it's basically like season four of Bridgerton but more there's so much that could be done with it. I think that it of course it would be it's they did one adaptation of Clarissa and it was really difficult. And it's not a romance of course but I it's a real it's a it's the longest novel in English language so it's hard to harder not Tom Jones. All right let's we don't want to get me started on Tom Jones and and and that man every fielding is on my list.

SPEAKER_02 33:43

All right let's have let's have some more fielding yeah let's because you know that's simple with Swift I mean we don't have to just go for obscure novels to find really viable properties that people aren't doing.

SPEAKER_01 33:57

Yeah and go back to Jane Austen they're redoing Pride and Prejudice and sense and sensibility all the time I've only seen I don't know how many persuasions were done. I I know the one in the 90s is the one that I love there may have been one before that. Of course the one a year ago like I said no that's not persuasion. Northanger Abbey or I mean there's several books in there and nobody goes back and really looks at at those and I think it has to do with well everybody's heard of Pride and Prejudice right so let's do that one again. I don't know it's really it's yeah because we have especially today with so much media in terms of TV and movies are adapting books. So historically there's so many they could do so it's yeah maybe they don't aren't as well read or maybe they're just focusing on the ones they think oh people will have heard of that they'll come see it.

SPEAKER_03 34:57

Maybe it's a recession indicator how many Pride and Prejudice adaptations we suddenly like I said though I am looking forward to Olivia Coleman.

SPEAKER_01 35:07

I mean they have a good cast the woman from the crown that played Diana will be Elizabeth the guy from Slow Horses is going to be Darcy.

SPEAKER_03 35:14

That'll be interesting because I don't know that I've ever seen a blonde Darcy so actually wait a minute I said this blithely but now that I think about it BBC did do a raft of new Jane Austen adaptations in 2008 and 2009.

SPEAKER_01 35:29

So maybe it is a recession well yeah there was a persuasion then actually I did that I like that one.

SPEAKER_03 35:35

Yeah except for when she's running through the street I was like that's dumb yeah that was dumb if it rushed in some places but I did like it I I I I thought that they were tender about it. You could tell they loved persuasion I did like that Mansfield Park I thought that was a good Mansfield park.

SPEAKER_01 35:50

Yeah I don't know anyway let's move on listen you are obviously you are well versed in British literature British ways of life British history all that kind of stuff I know you're getting ready to move there. I'm just curious how did that come about how did you decide okay British history and and the castles and all that kind of stuff was what you wanted to write the the British history that I'm most interested in has nothing to do with castles interestingly enough but I have wanted to live in Britain since I was 13 and I read National Velvet four times in a row without a break in it.

SPEAKER_02 36:46

I would get to the last page and start at the beginning and um I was so immersed and so happy being immersed in that environment that I went out of my way to read British literature on every level. I very early my my mother foisted I think there were 11 it was a complete match set of James Fenimore Cooper and I made it through the the last of the Mohicans and I think the leather stocking and then I said the heck with these and I actually this is horrifying I actually hollowed out one of the books to hide secret things in when I was a teacher I know I should learn to the state but this this was a book produced set they weren't first editions or anything but I hated Cooper and I hated all the American authors I mean they were always being forced down our throats in school and then I just hated them I just had to suffer through them and then every time then we had an opportunity to read Dickens or hardly back or anybody anybody but an American I would lose myself again in this alternative universe that that was so necessary to I just couldn't live without that daily fusion of grit. And I kept that and kept it and kept it and started scheming for ways to live abroad and as an adult then of course actually my first experience living in the UK briefly visiting the UK was when I was 14 and my mother in law who was an Italian immigrant wanted to go visit her family well we suffered six weeks she and I suffered six weeks in Italy and I hated every foot of it. Oh no and then because I feigned illness so convincingly that she thought she had to wrap it up with the Italians who was going to take me home and we couldn't get a flight so oh poor us we had to book a first class cabin on the Queen Mary. Oh my gosh this was the original Queen Mary and so we came back under Queen Mary but in order to make the boat we ended up spending two weeks in in London. Cool the minute the minute I got out of Italy and put my foot down on British soil I was home. I I I was just a kid but I felt it in my bone and so ever since then I've been trying to get back and for the last 13 years I have been going back and forth and back and forth. I mean I've lived in other countries but nowhere that affected me as strongly and so the last 13 years I have been going back and forth to Wales primarily um where I established a whole life I have a whole life over there and and my principal publisher is in London Bloodhound books as you remember very clearly Jenna because you were my agent who sent that series which they took literally overnight.

SPEAKER_00 40:20

Yeah do you remember that?

SPEAKER_01 40:22

Yeah it was quick but the thing that always stands out to me is reading bound set in a castle in Wales.

SPEAKER_02 40:28

Set in a castle in Wales based on my experience my first few years of going over there spending up to up to what my passport allowed which was six months.

SPEAKER_03 40:38

I just got such a giggle out of reading that when she's a serious she's serious historian and they're like are there ghosts she's like yeah that was me that was me yeah and then her bosses are like you should do a ghost tour's yes the money and then of course she meets Patrick right so yeah love that book love that book and also one of your biggest historical romance series that you have is also the Corsic Girls series and I was wondering if you'd tell us a bit more about it because I don't know too much. I might follow you on social media but no I I still don't know as much about it as I'd like um and also if you've ever had a reader or reviewer react in a way to it that shocked you shocked me pleasantly but the Corsic Girls is I call it Victorian noir it is it's it's about as far as you can imagine from the mainstream of historical romance which I call um crisis in the ballroom it's about as my God and everyone's on my topic at the disco cover band now in the upper round of my focus I am a cultural historian and my focus both the undergraduate graduate level was on material culture stuff stuff people make and why they make it why they make it the way they so a rich ground for research for me has always been Victorian England which was the pinnacle of production in the industrial the industrial revolution as it took place in that part of the world.

SPEAKER_02 42:32

And so I decided I wanted to write a series about four working class women and because I know an awful lot about the history of corseting I decided they would be corset makers because you know write what you know and I didn't know that much about muscles but I knew an awful lot about corset. So I made them corset makers and they um one by one though all the characters appear in all the books but uh it's a four book series and one by one they become embroiled with four men who come from not just working class well three of them were below working class they came from London slums and those three men were all members of London's most notorious street gang and the fourth even though he was raised in what we would now call an upper middle class background he totally went off the rail he ended up being a deserter from the Royal Navy and a spy so these are the four men and then the four women all have their own interesting history one of them at the start of book one is actually wanted for murder so you can you see where it goes from there. She said that it's an accident it was an accident I didn't mean to and the other maid who has fled from this house where she has just

SPEAKER_01 44:00

kill her her master uh says you know dump a tea on the master's lap that's an accident i said all day night i know i that's how the books are yeah that's great oh that is great so did you have a way that that reviewer reacted to you that shocked you yeah i i was people have said very nice things about about the book but the thing that was nicest came from my editor so i will definitely bring her in clara law is my editor at um bloodhound books and i love her so much and we have such a good relationship that i had like on this this current book that she's gonna start editing in a couple of months i waited six months for her to be available i could have gotten the book out sooner with another editor but i i said no i and they gave me this is one of the things i love about them they they always defer to the author always and they said well what do you want to do you want to wait for her and i said yeah please declare i in reading my my the second book of the series which is uh unbound she said somehow we were exchanging emails and i i said something about pulp i said you don't think this is too pulpy and she said i'll tell you what i think about that the pulpiest genre can be raised can be elevated she said to the level of fine literature by good writing which she did and i went i can die now i love that you have to print it out and hang it up yeah like holes you should you should cross stitch it and paste it and tuck it away where and file like having like imposter syndrome that's right those moments when you're like what am I doing what made me think I could do this right yeah she's seen it all so if she says I can do it then by gum I can do it you can do it you can do it that's great well you also have book three uh the bound trilogy coming out yeah um soon and how are are there there are four books total in that do I remember we sold three unless they decide to extend the franchise um which I I honestly am gonna throw all my eggs into the Bloodhound books basket I've enjoyed working with three other publishers but Bloodhound is there and I know I know I've confronted the fact that um there it's a very unstable business and publishers do put authors aside and I may be one of them I won't I'll try not to take it personally if they decide that I'm just not selling enough I don't know yeah I don't know I don't know I'm not sure we're sure that publishers know exactly whether they're doing the right thing if they do what they can it's such a vicious business such a hard business publishers are all suffering very greatly I understand that and they don't want to reduce everything to the bottom line they don't want to do that they're not gleefully telling authors I'm really sorry but we can't use you anymore there's no happiness yeah if they have to do it with me then I will look for another publisher in the UK. It's all global it happens with people who've been around a lot I have a friend who I've I know several people who write cozy and they might have written two or three series and then all of a sudden they're pitching the next and they're like nope you just you never you just never know who they're gonna decide this is not what we're doing anymore. And yeah you I I've I had I've had publishers reject books and when they give me the reason I'm thinking this is not the book I sent you sometimes I'm like you didn't the reason they've rejected it is like not a part of the book I sent. So it's very strange the industry. Yeah so it's exciting that Bloodhound Books has been so great to you and I know you you want to be there and be closer. I think that's great.

SPEAKER_02 48:48

I do I I am gonna make a stop at a this little push for a new book I'm gonna have coming out very shortly like within weeks I hope I've I'm going to make a little foray into self-publishing and I've written a World War II spy novel for kids. It's set in Britain of course for Bloodhouse I write entirely in British English so no I can't do that. But it's set in a in a small town in World War II where some it's it's for little middle school readers and what we call middle school readers and they've um found themselves in a situation where they end up spying on a neighbor and they start out doing it for fun. I was just behind you know he just looks a little suspicious and nobody likes him anyway saying we'll just keep an eye on him and lo and behold they determine that he's he may be committing treason.

SPEAKER_03 49:43

And so they get pulled deep into this business sounds like a great adventure when you're adventure yeah 12 years old series of it but right now I'm just trying to figure out self-publishing which is making my yeah there's a need for more middle grade books you know this is something that Robb talks about a lot where I actually agree with them um like that I do think that there is a need for more middle grade books that are that are smart uh and they get kids thinking about STEM or history that especially that are useful for like home homeschooled kids and stuff like that as well. So this is this is a good spot to get into especially because you know so much about history.

SPEAKER_02 50:19

I hope so and I loved writing it it was it was actually a release from writing so much romance and don't get me wrong I love romance I I love romantic suspense historical anything but I don't know and this was historical but there was it was a release in some ways not to have that overarching romantic um what's the word framework I guess that you know you have to sit into it and it's both liberating and confining but that's a conversation.

SPEAKER_01 50:57

Yeah I mean romance has very specific beats and if you can pull if you don't have to do when I wrote my cozy it was the same thing. It was like okay I don't have to hit these beats I just have to solve a murder just have to solve a murder I just have to hit those beats right yeah yes yeah it has its own beats you know you gotta have your red herring and then your second red herring.

SPEAKER_02 51:19

Yeah yeah your sesame microphone yeah yeah all right so normally we like to talk about what we're reading or give book recommendations but today I'd like to ask instead uh what's an underrated romance you wish more people talked about well Jess heard this before but I I am the world's well all right but I won't talk about her again she knows my favorite um romantic historical romantic suspense author so I will not bring her up again though her name is Julian Bourne but anyway um I recently read the Essex Serpent and I loved it in part because I do believe it is a sort of romance it is a romance. I will defend it I believe it's a romance but it is not a typical genre romance it it breaks several rules and yet at the end of it I was so moved by the the love in it the tender and the sort of desperate realistic long I was very moved by that book um it's a wonderful book and I forgot the author's surname Sarah Sarah whatever but he's got a phone there why don't you look at it the Essex Serpent Serpent it has definitely it definitely has gothic elements now there was a really execrable terrible sort of adaptation of it made uh I think even by might have even been by somebody big like PBS or BBC or something but it was awful I couldn't get I couldn't get past the first episode it was just like it's like doing a different book.

SPEAKER_03 53:26

Oh it's Sarah Perry is the author.

SPEAKER_01 53:28

Sarah Perry thank you I was yeah I was thinking Ann Perry and then I could well Anne Perry is another one who I know I think very highly of but yeah that book is definitely worth a read it's it will leave you changed in some subtle way even though when you're reading it when you're in the middle of it you sort of you will ask yourself what the heck is going on like did I lose the plot or did the characters lose the plot it's like sometimes you wonder why people are doing what they're doing but it all hangs together in in a in a wonderful quirky way it's dark without being depressing does that make sense definitely worth reading the Essex I love that Jenna yeah I I've been racking my brain because there's a lot of books I've read that I've enjoyed and I recommend but when we're looking at what's the one underrated oh my god you know I always kind of go back to Austin's persuasion I just oh everybody focuses on pride and prejudice and since it's a Billy which are great books persuasion at the end it's like Pride and Prejudice has grown up it's second chance I love how subtle it is in a lot of ways it's why I liked that 96 is it 96 adaptation because I thought the actors got that really well like you're seeing somehow you see the tension on the screen even though most of the time they're not talking to each other for through part of that film. Yeah I just I really liked that's one I wish people paid more attention to um yeah yeah it feels like it should be like the the most popular of the Austin novels and that it should be the thing that gets adapted over and over again and yet it's not and I feel people say what's your favorite everybody's like well Pride and Prejudice usually usually that's their favorite maybe since it's disability and I sometimes I'm like well those are great but I think persuasion's mine and they look at me like I'm fucked it's like have you not read it but maybe it's like um Annie was saying earlier a lot of people have opinions about things and they didn't read it they've only seen the movie or whatever. So they watch the Colin Firth adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and they love it and it's I I suppose if they talk about it I love when he walked out of the lake with his shirt all what it'd be like you did not read that book.

SPEAKER_03 56:06

Imagine Jade Austin writing about his whatever you did not read that book you know yeah I I do think that people have things in their mind it has more mind share right if it's got lots of adaptations I actually don't think that sensibility as a book is very good. It's it's almost juvenilia for Jade Austin. Yeah yeah compared with her later books I think that it's not as well written I mean like when I rank them things like Mansfield Park and Northangar Abbey which is kind of more juvenile as well but still more subtle and more interesting in a lot of ways because it's kind of a satire with making fun of gothic novels and gothic novel readings. It's got a lot going on and then of course Persuasion which is I think a masterpiece and even Emma which is like it's huge. It's grandiose it's got it's got amazing like depth of character to it.

SPEAKER_01 56:52

These are all better written to me than Sins and Sensibility I think Simpsons Sensibility she did actually write first that Pride and Prejudice was published first.

SPEAKER_03 57:01

I think Pride and Prejudice was really successful in its time it was the one that she had probably had the most success on she had trouble with the later books.

SPEAKER_01 57:08

Yeah although sensibility the thing that always cracked me up is when um one of the girls is talking about how Colonel Brandon he's so old he's infirm and then you realize he's 36.

SPEAKER_03 57:24

He's on the wrong side of 35 I just thought that was so funny.

SPEAKER_01 57:32

And of course Alan Rickman plays him masterfully in the in the movie.

SPEAKER_03 57:37

So I'm a little spooked by it the older I get the more it kind of spooks me watching sense and sensibility with the 15 year old and the 36 year old. I've never been super into that but I get less into that the more time at the time so true but I mean it's like that but the story is that she's 15 right I I see her as 15. Yeah yeah well less so when it's Kate Winslow Kate Winslit seems very like womanish but there's an adaptation that I really like that the BBC did. Again I think it's one of the 2008 ones and she looks 15. She acts 15 and he looks 36 maybe 40 and it's just kind of spooky.

SPEAKER_01 58:12

That would be creepy.

SPEAKER_03 58:13

Yeah I I'm not into that age difference. So many differences are fine when one's a 15 year old less into that okay I should probably give mine here I noticed I noticed I I no I noted this for adaptations but I actually wish more people read Cecilia. This is a Fannie Birdie novel. I really love it. Even in academia I wish more people would talk about it. People really prefer Evelina as academics to talk about uh which is a shorter novel and is kind of less troubled kind of a more straightforward almost Austinian sort of love story. And Cecilia has all this stuff going on about being an heiress and feminism with such proto-feminism right but it's still really interesting and and it almost doesn't end happily like it's a it's really cuts it close. You know you're like oh God I can't see how this is going to turn out well and there's still kind of a bittersweet aspect to it but it does get to that happily ever after and it's really good. And both the the our our main male character and our main female character are really interesting and there's a lot there about what you give up to be in love you know what you have to sacrifice especially in this time period. And even the side characters are so vivid it has a suicide in it. It's really it's it's a really interesting book and I wish more people talked about it.

SPEAKER_02 59:25

Sometimes I don't want to start this conversation here because we'll again this is one of the conversations you and I need to have that will take up a whole day but I'm gonna talk about Maria Edgeworth with oh Edgeworth yes yeah I'm I'm very very I plump for Maria Edgeworth any day of the week and it's a shame and a pity that she's been so overlooked so overshadowed by Austin not that Austin is a genius but just the the sheer volume of Maria Edgeworth and her forthrightness in the way when people complain about slogging through an Austin novel I say when you need to read Maria Edgeworth not everyone wrote the way Austin wrote she had a stylistic thing. I mean that she was it it was it was mannered writing she wrote the way Austin wrote when you read Maria Edgeworth it sounds like it was written last week very forthright very straightforward and and and highly engaged with social issues and political issues and I I would just love to live long enough to see somebody do a good adaptation of Castle Rackland. Yes yeah yeah I would just love to see that so there's another one Maria Edgeworth yeah I I love to I love to play devil's advocate and go to Austin events and carry around a copy of Castle Rackland with me. Just because people start coming people say oh which Austin is that like it's not Austin there it is Castle Rack Rent Yeah or Belinda which is I I think a very recognizable sort of almost Austinian like romance novel with a lot going on in it it is it has some gothic aspects to it and it is one that we know that Austin read.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:21

Yeah yeah oh yeah well there's this not too many books. Yeah yeah seriously well no and of course we were talking adaptations we were talking British history and of course Bridgerton season four part two dropped last week do you watch Bridgerton Annie at all?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:38

I dislike um you don't like them like the books or the show or both or both both oh no Julia Quinn I I don't Bridgerton I'm not on ship Bridgerton or Timmy Bridget. Well I want to hear it I want to hear why you don't like it let's go I'm curious I simply do not uh I don't have hatred for it I don't have I'm not on a campaign I'm not vindictive what people write is their own business if people want to write historical fantasy God bless them three down bless your heart go forth and write it um I it's not what I write it's not what I care to do I have tremendous reverence for history even though I know and have written as you know from the first bound across time novel I have written very almost sarcastically about the fallibility of the historical record I mean it's more full of holes than spaghetti strainer um but uh I think because I put so much into authenticity and because I revere getting it right so much I would never write historical fantasy. For those who want to write it or read it more power to their elbow but I don't care to either read it or write it. And so that's it. That's all I have to say about Bridgerton. Julia Quinn if we talk about Julia Quinn as an author she is a wonderful author but even in her non Richerton books she plays fast and we with the historical record with historical authenticity and that does not entertain I don't enjoy it. Some people do I don't some people wouldn't know right like I wouldn't know well then that's up to them but I'm just in a different world that's all it's just yeah yeah I can completely see how professionally you would have have issues with it.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:49

I also when I'm watching the show there are certain things that will bug me. It depends on what it is. No I've never had a problem with the costumes because it was all very fun but the moments they started doing servants and they started showing the servants in Victorian style like livery the female servants in the like the Victorian uh like ladies ladies maids outfits I got mad right because I do know a lot about that and then I was like well this is social history right like in the 18th century in the Regency you didn't have people dressing in in uniforms and someone pointed out to me like well this is just visually to help people distinguish who is a maid from which household which I totally get like practically speaking but also there is a really important social history there and certain things if you align to them and or you don't want to deal with them there are ramifications to that and it can it can be it can be grading.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:35

This is this is where ignorance is bliss because I wouldn't know and I enjoyed it right what I really liked about this season was it it wasn't just Benedict and the fact that he had fallen for a woman that he if he marries her his other sisters won't be able to get married it's gonna ruin the family because she's illegitimate she's a whatever but they played on there was a lot of talk about society has these we have these rules because it gives us order and that this is good and good but it really was sort of showing how they were hurting right so we saw it hurting Benedict he's finally in love with a woman he can't have unless she agrees to to be a mistress she's not gonna do that she's not gonna relive her mother's life but then we also saw it in when Francesca's uh spoiler alert Francesca's husband passes she believes she's pregnant in the book she is pregnant uh and they do they do that invasive procedure they have to verify it in order to have the succession of of killmartin's line so this very evasive thing and that scene where Benedict is really trying to stop it like he is seeing My sister's just lost her husband. She already is someone who struggles in social things, right? Yeah. I mean, that was a painful, and then the scene where we watch it happen, where she is being physically, and there was another situation where we're seeing society where they we have all these rules and stuff that we abide by and aren't they good, but they're actually causing a great deal of pain. So I I was glad to see that part because all the other Bridgertons, these are all rich people with rich people just having to get past whatever. But this really sort of had we were able to see a lot of um darker aspects of that world. So I didn't I enjoyed that element. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, his brother is telling him you can't do this, and I was just like, poor Benedict. And then even at his mother, he's like, You have spent our whole life telling us to marry for love. Now you're telling me I can't, just because, right? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:08

I find that I just have to like watch it as a sort of character piece and not worry about historical stuff. And then I do have a good time. Like as a character piece, it almost it's it's like living inside of a dream world, an internal kind of world, especially watching it. I think that works quite well a lot of the time, you know, and and not trying to worry too much about historical stuff. But like I could totally see professionally if someone wrote historical fiction being extremely annoyed by it. Just like I would be if someone was like writing something that was like science fiction fantasy, but that was just sort of aesthetically that, but not really doing science fiction, I would get annoyed super quickly.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:40

So I could see I've been in critique groups where somebody would they were writing historical romance and they said something, and somebody in the group says, those aren't the kind of lights they had then, or that's the candle they used, or I don't know, it was something minute, like I would have just ride over, right? I mean, I wouldn't have known, but they knew, and so I'm wondering, did you know, back when um historical romance was really starting to pick up? I want to say it's in the 90s or something, Julia Quinn and all them, did maybe it really didn't matter. You could play fast and loose and nobody really paid attention.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:17

Oh no, there they weren't. So the history police were not were not out at that point. I mean, I'm sure there there were people reading it and going, oh, this is awful. But what little, I hardly read romance at all before I started writing it. It's a deliberate decision to write it. It was not based on, oh, I've been reading romance since I was 16. I'm just so I love it. I love the genre. No, I just never read it. But what little I then did read as an adult was sort of the Barbara Cartland. And she was a very work, I call her workman-like. I mean, she was a very capable writer. Um she wrote a hundred books. But um, but it no, there was not a lot of attention, and and people make jokes about the covers at the same time that there's sort of a bone, you know. I mean, there are people who like on Instagram just post all these vintage covers and they say, well, they're not, you know, they they bear no resemblance to what an interior would look like. But when you look at them closely, they actually do. I mean, the elements are there, just like they were there in Cartland and early, uh, what's her name? Joanna. One of that family. The women all wrote that they all wrote romance. Uh but the the elements are there, they're just treated stylistically in a way that speaks to book buyers in the 60s or 70s. And so you look at it and you go, well, that's not right. But then you're examining it, and it actually is right, it's just not developed to any high degree, and that's true of the writing as well. And then sometimes it really is just a blatant bodice ripper with no redeeming literary value what so it's trash and it's huge fun. I was seduced into romance because I I was slugging away writing serious historical fiction. I went, I'm not getting anywhere with this. This is never gonna sell. And I looked at romance and looking at it from those books, and I thought, well, shoot, I can write that. And then I got into it and went, damn, it's hard.

unknown 1:10:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:37

I can't tell you how many authors I've heard start out with, well, I could write that, and then they get into it, and you're like, that is a little bit trickier.

SPEAKER_03 1:10:45

Yeah, it's it's a genre and you have to learn it, you have to understand it. There's a lot there, and there's a lot of expectations from the readers. But so historical fantasy, I not historical fantasy, historical writing generally. I mean, one I remember Diana Gabblin was getting a lot of heat in the 90s when she first started writing Outlander. And one thing she's talked about was how hard it was to get information at the time. You had to go to the library and you had to find the right books, and they didn't have them, you had to order them. You know, it was a lot, it was a lot more difficult for her to just even do the research that she needed to do to write those books. So it's it's a heavier lift than it is now. Plus, the people who are reading them, they had less access to information as well. So it was harder for them to check something. Now we all have the internet you can look up and be sort of like, that's not the Gaelic word for na-na-na-na-da. And you know, but also the authors have more access to information, the bar is higher. And also, academics are more allowed to write in genre now than we used to be, right? It is more acceptable for Annie and I to write genre without everyone in our field looking down on us, right? Like I I have switched over, but like Annie is still a historian, and like I think 30 years ago it would have been looked down upon much more so. So you had this like silo of historians who knew the information that would make really good historical fiction, but a lot of them weren't really allowed to step outside of their box and write that without people looking down on them. Yeah, especially to write historical romance.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:08

She's a parents or like at Harvard or something.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:12

She is a full English professor at all, I forgot where. But yeah, she was a full professor and she started writing romance and she caught some black for it.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:25

Yeah, she had to hide, I think, a little bit. I mean, it's a pen name, right? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:29

But I think she recently made some decision that for want of a better word, I would say she's um I don't want to use dumbing down, but she's writing in a way that is, she probably believes it's more accessible. It's certainly, which I'm sure it is, but it is far less worthy of her ability. The thing that I love most about her, and I used to be one of her number one fans, is that she brought this very solid scholarly background in history. She brought enormous historical detail and authenticity to really, really good romance novels. They they ticked every box for romance, everyone, and yet they were beautifully researched. And then her more recent novels are not. And they're still taking the romance boxes, but the rest of it is not there, so I unfortunately stopped reading. I don't I I I don't want to ever make that decision. Ever. That's not a decision I want to make. I I I don't care. And there are people that have advised me that I should do that because my work will sell better. It probably would.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:50

You never know. I mean, a book, a book catching fire is you just you don't know it. And I I mean a lot of things that we see catching fire are things that did have something different, right? There was something that so I I I you do you, Annie. And I want to thank you for chatting with us today. It's so good to see your face again and chat with you because it has been a while. Um, and I just want to remind everybody that we will have links to all of Annie's wonderful books, uh, as well as the others we've mentioned on the show. I've been madly trying to write them down.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:29

Oh, I've been writing them down.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:31

Thank you. Because I'm sure I missed some. You knew some that I didn't know, so you know I'll need your help. But Annie, thank you again. I really, really appreciate it. My pleasure.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:43

All right. So we are tender intending tales. It's been illicit liaisons. If you go on Substack, you'll find us Tender Intending Tales at Substack. Um, you can go on there, and if you are a writer, you will see that we have a call for Fantastical Foes, which is our next zine that's going to be Romanticy Enemies to Lovers. That call opens April 1st and ends at the end of April. We have our homework now posted. You can take a look at what we're looking for. Um, the next thing that's going to be coming up is that we have the publication of Pause and Peril on March 30th. That is our first zine. That's romantic suspense, and we really hope that you'll join us for that. That was edited by Rachel Young. It includes Jenna, myself, and Marissa Marinello. It's going to be a lot of fun. Our next publication of an anthology will be fireworks and flirtation. That's coming out May 18th. And we have another call that is going to be Starlit and Spellbound from May 1st to May 30th. So get ready. Start your engines. You can also find us on Instagram. That's TenderTemptingTales at Instagram. And thank you so much, Annie, for joining us. Jenna.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:39

Yeah, and don't forget Annie's in fireworks and flirtation coming in May. So you're gonna want to check that out. And until next time, this is Jenna Hart wishing you peace, love, and happily ever after.