Illicit Liaisons
Illicit Liaisons
Illicit Liaisons: Fireworks & Guy Fawkes with Annie R McEwen
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This week, we're celebrating the upcoming release of Fireworks & Flirtation by chatting with Annie R McEwen. We discuss:
- Publishers ending their historical romance lines
- The future of publishing
- Plus, we learn how Guy Fawkes inspired Annie's story in Fireworks & Flirtation, share book recommendations, and more.
A career historian, Annie R McEwen has lived in six countries and under every roof from a canvas tent to a Georgian Era manor house. She writes historical romantic suspense, paranormal romance, and historical fiction. Annie is published by Bloodhound Books (UK), Harbor Lane Books (US), The Wild Rose Press, and Rowan Prose Publishing. She lives in both the UK and US.
Winner of the 2022 Page Turners Writing Award (Romance Category), Annie garnered both a First and Second Place 2022 RTTA (Romance Through the Ages Award), the 2023 MAGGIE Award, and Finalist Status in the 2023 Daphne du Maurier Award. She was a Finalist for the 2024 Page Turners Writing Award and Shortlisted for a Writer’s Mentorship Award. Annie’s short fiction appears in numerous anthologies.
LINKS TO ANNIE
Annie's Website https://www.anniermcewen.com
Annie's Books https://amzn.to/4dwetyr
Annie on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/anniermcewen/
FIREWORKS & FLIRTATION
Fireworks & Flirtation https://amzn.to/4uacLtQ
Available in print, ebook, and in KU.
CURRENTLY READING & RECOMMENDATIONS
Austen at Sea by Natalie Jenner https://amzn.to/42G2gT1
Fantastical Foes...coming in July from Tender & Tempting Tales
The Other Bennet Sister by Janice Hadlow https://amzn.to/4wCQwhF
Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers Sain https://amzn.to/43mDZkU
Peculiar Crimes Unit Mystery (Bryant & May) by Christopher Fowler https://amzn.to/4v1ayB1
British Library Crime Classics https://amzn.to/4tMd8K3
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/
Calls for Submissions: https://tenderandtemptingtales.substack.com/p/write-for-tender-and-tempting-tales
ILLICIT LIAISONS PRODUCED & HOSTED BY
Tara Leederman Substack: https://taleederman.substack.com/
Jenna Harte: https://jennaharte.com/
Outline and Show Notes: T.A. Leederman
Editing: Jenna Harte
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 Hart, 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 romance anthology for readers who like romantic quickies.
SPEAKER_00Hi, I'm Tara Lederman, social media manager here at Tender and Tempting Tales, and Laura Maven, a main fiction writer 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, including in our upcoming new summer anthology, Fireworks and Flirtation.
SPEAKER_02And we are in the middle of celebrating the upcoming release of Fireworks and Flirtation by talking with all of our authors, and we are excited to have Annie R. McEwen back with us to talk about this release and her story in it. Annie is a career historian who has lived in six countries under every roof from a canvas tent to a Georgian-era manor house. She writes historical, romantic suspense, paranormal romance, and historical fiction. Annie is published by Bloodband Books in the UK, Harbor Lane Books in the US, Wild Rose Press, and Rowan Prose Publishing. She lives both in the UK and the US, and in fact, we'll be asking her because she's getting ready to move soon. She's also the winner of the 2022 Page Turner's Writing Award for romance category. Annie garnered both a first and second place at the 2022 RTTA Romance Throughout the Ages Award and a 2023 Maggie Award and finalist status in the 2023 Daphne DeMaurier Award. She was a finalist for the 2024 Page Turner's Writing Award and shortlisted for a Writers Membership Mentorship Award. Annie's short fiction appears in numerous anthologies, including those by Tender and Tempting Tales. So we're very excited to have her here. You can see Annie at anniermacwin.com and we'll have links to all this in our show notes. Annie, thank you so much for being with us today. Well, thank you for having me. I always love to talk with you too. We've discussed this topic a little bit before when we noticed that Harlequin was getting rid of their historical line. They started stopped taking submissions. They've reported that the last books will come out in 2027. Annie, you write a lot of historical romance and historical fiction, and even your contemporary romance books often have a lot of history in them. I'm thinking of the bound books, right? I'm just curious about your thoughts around this seeming decline of historical fiction, especially with all the historical dramas being adapted on TV.
SPEAKER_01Well, no, I'm gonna guess as long as everybody else is guessing why it's happening. What you're just at least be able to guess. All right, so I'm gonna guess that this is an industry decision and that it does not reflect public taste, and it does not reflect the reader's appetite for historical fiction in any of its various forms, whether it's toward the more imaginative end, uh, like Bridgerton, where or a social history take on it, or whether it it purports to display the past in extremely in extreme historically accurate detail. It doesn't really matter. Anywhere on that spectrum, um, I think the appetite remain remains very high. And um I but industry decisions affect the public's desire to consume things. I mean, if you keep pushing peanut butter over almond butter, then more people will buy peanut butter. And and for whatever reason, and I don't know why the industry, or at least some portions, some influential portions of the industry, like Harlequin, have decided uh to back away from historical fiction. Any speculation I would make about why they're doing that would be pure guesswork. I'd I'd honestly rather not go there. The appetite for historical fiction is still very high in the UK, and my principal publisher, Bloodhound Books, is in the UK. However, even in the UK, I am sensing it's it's not as prominent as it is in the US, but I am sensing uh the a decision to stress other elements of fiction rather than romance. And I I it's just a feeling, but I don't know. That's all I can say about it. I I sense it, but I don't have any understanding of why it's happening.
SPEAKER_00I feel like if I had to guess, it would probably be because historical romance readers seem to read a lot of books really quickly and don't tend to buy, you know, special edition covers quite as much, maybe, or there's a an assessment that they don't, and that it's it's judged as less merchandisable for whatever reason. Right now I see in the book industry a lot of special edition covers, a lot of like a lot of you know, new new covers, a lot of like painted edges and things like that, and a lot of like merchandise and special book boxes coming out with things, especially romanticy uh or other special features like recipes and things like that. And for whatever reason, which is strange to me because I feel like historical romance could do these things. I don't see why it couldn't. Um for whatever reason it's been judged that it's not working with historical romance or the readership for whatever reason. That is my best guess. It's just speculation. It's just what I see in marketing. But I mean, there could be many other reasons for this. It could be it could be audience, it could be demographics. Younger people could be judged to want more romanticy, less historical romance, be less interested in history. I don't know. Or it could just be some fanciful idea in a C-suite somewhere that's caught on the historical romance is dead and everyone wants hockey and romantic. I don't know.
SPEAKER_02It could just be one of the trends, you know. For a while, vampires were big and then they weren't. And now we got dragons, and those are big, and eventually the romanticy bubble might burst, right? Um B, she primarily on her booktube is historical romance, so it's sort of surprising because she has followers, she makes money doing what she does. She has a reader club, you know. So, like somebody's buying these books, but in my mind, I'm wondering if there is an underlying money issue, and maybe what Tara says is part of that in terms of they're not merchandising it the way they are with other books. And again, I do feel historical romance could fit that. You could have sprayed edges on a historical romance, but I you know it's funny. I was in the bookstore the other day and I saw I stopped because I saw fancy covers and it was Twilight. It was twilight, you know, recovered again.
SPEAKER_00Of course, yeah. I think paranormal romance can get around.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, it's an interesting thing, and I I find it surprising considering how popular historical fiction, you know, all the books that are being uh we have Bridgerton, we have new adaptations of of you know Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility coming out. So I mean the TV shows are doing it, so if people are watching it, you'd think they'd be reading it too. I don't know.
SPEAKER_00Bridgerton proves how endlessly merchandisable historical fiction can be if done right, right? Yeah, it's so merchandisable. I mean, look, you remember how many, how, how many different products there were for Bridgerton season four? I have in my bathroom Bridgerton Dove Deodorant, and I like it. It's good, it's darn good.
SPEAKER_02So you smell like Sophie, is that what you're doing? I do, I do.
SPEAKER_00I smell like gardenias and servant labor.
SPEAKER_02I like gardenias. That's funny. I also wonder his historical and fantasy, because a lot of the fantasy books seem to take place at a previous time. You know, a lot of the fantasy I watched, it feels like medieval times there just happens to be a dragon, right?
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02So again, it just seems like I just wonder if it's something that will come back around. Uh, that it's just a trend and they've decided. And when I went looking at the Harlequin website in terms of what they were taking, it seemed like they had fewer lines overall than what I remember before, anyway. I couldn't tell you, like they don't have the I didn't see the Blaze line. There was another highly spicy line. I didn't see that there. So maybe it's just a matter of them trying to call things down. Um, and it makes me miss Dawn because I might have asked, you know, Dawn would have had a take on this. She would have said, Don't send me any historical romance because they're not selling, right?
SPEAKER_01Well, I I will say that one of my publishers, I will not say whom, has suggested that um because my books already have a big and a strong suspense component that I focus more on the suspense. Um and and this publisher has made no secret of the fact that that's a marketing decision. So the question to me is I'm gonna, and I I know this will sound very cynical, and I am very cynical about the industry because it is an industry like any other, and it is far more responsive to um the matrix of capitalism than it is to any of us, or god forbid, art. So okay, you want to talk about a hot topic? Woo! We're gonna get some feedback from this. Book publishing is a dinosaur. Books as we know them are going to succumb. Not saying they won't come back, and all in that dynamic, of course, are the authors because they are the producers. However, as production is being taken out of their hands, the industry, the rest of the industry to survive will do whatever it needs to. And one of the things it will do is ruthlessly cut out lines that are not selling. It won't save the industry because its death is being driven by things that cannot be altered by cutting out romance or vampires or what have you. It's responding to forces that have absolutely nothing to do with what's in the catalog, but it's gonna happen anyway. So how are you going to respond to that as an individual? You know, or is it does it matter how you respond? It may not matter because we are so low, we are so so low in this process in terms of who's important in it, as far as the dynamic of production goes. I mean, we're we're just you know the mind ponies, a little worker beans. Yeah. And we're filling them with coal. I mean, that's about where we are in this problem do or should do.
SPEAKER_02I feel like we're seeing this a little bit in we have publishers that are now going after independent authors who are doing very well. So instead of taking in a lot of debut authors, they're going to authors who've proven they can sell. And the authors, either they or their agents, have been savvy enough to hold on to a bunch of rights for these authors, so that maybe the publisher only has print rights and the author is able to hold on to their ebook rights. I mean, when I heard that, I was shocked. I was like, oh my gosh, what publisher allowed that? Well, I think it was like Bloom and which is source books. So we are seeing big publishers at least, sort of paying attention to the TikTok readers. They're watching all that and trying to take advantage of that because they're all about money, right? To them, it's money, it's not art, it's like they're gonna make a buck. So they're gonna go after the L. Kennedys and the and the Rachel Reeds and all those. Um, and I think that's what's what we're seeing, but we're also seeing authors who now have opportunities to have greater control over what they're doing. And so, why do they need a publisher? If I can reach my reader directly through whatever it is, TikTok, Substack, my own little website, um, I think we're gonna see that. I thought this about Barnes Noble when they were having a lot of troubles. It's like trying to turn the Titanic around. These organizations, these publishers are so old and and doing things their way for so long and not necessarily paying attention to the digital age. Uh yeah, I agree, Annie. It's gonna be interesting to see what happens with publishing. We are seeing them make changes, but it's a slow-moving boat for sure. I don't know. What are your thoughts, Tara?
SPEAKER_00Um, well, I think that what it teaches authors is that they if they if they cannot rely on traditional publishing, they need to go their own way. I mean, I think traditional publishing is sold as a bill of goods that, you know, if you sign with a a traditional publisher, that you, you know, you'll be sort of taken care of and that they'll take care of everything for you and reach your readers for you. What's happening with historical romance, from what I can tell, is basically teaching people that, you know, the publishing industry can take the rug out from under you at any time, even when there is a diet out there, there's a hunger for what you're writing. And it I think that it encourages people to go endy. I I think that it it's hastening traditional publishing's demise, not making it better for them. And I do think that there is some element of a C-suite person with a galaxy brain somewhere thinking that this is a good idea and is going to save them. And I just don't agree. You know, trends come and go. If you invest in something like Harlequin's historical romance line that people love, I think that you should keep it. You know, is if you spend all this time creating a line that people trust, that people like to read, it's it's a huge waste to just throw it away unless you really, really think that it like you can't save it. And I don't think that that's the case here. I I think, you know, go back to clinch covers or something, you know, ask people what they want and try to give it to them for a little while. I see a lot of historical romance people saying, you know, we miss clinch covers. We we don't want uh we don't want cartoons on our covers for historical romance, you know? Um do the setback covers, people love those. Like do object covers and then setback covers so that people can still read it on the train. You know, there are a lot of ideas out here that you could try instead of just cutting it all out and getting rid of all your historical.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think the version, right?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think that there's a way of keeping something like the mass paperback. I understand why that is no longer that's no longer viable. I I know what's going on there, but yeah, I mean, I I think something like that, or at least, you know, keeping that spirit alive, I think is what a lot of readers still want. A lot of readers are historical romance are uh there's a lot of older readers and they're still reading, you know, just because they're not on TikTok and they're not buying millions of collectible covers doesn't mean that they're not a viable audience that you should be selling to. This reminds me of the video game industry where it's like we can't have all the money, we don't want it at all. It's just a waste, it's wasteful.
SPEAKER_01Yes, the vulnerability of of these alternative platforms is something that frightens me. I mean, right now, as as Jenna pointed out, our alternative to traditional publishing is is indie publishing, self-publishing. But in other and I having been a dinosaur more than once, I'm not really so interested in being a dino again, but I am familiar with the process, and there is, as Jenna points out, it is all about the money, and the fact that it's all about the money means that I don't think there's any barrier to um I can't think of the right word, for for enacting certain things that would make indie publishing no longer a viable alternative, in which case we are left with nothing. And um, there are people who would argue, I'm not quite there yet, but there are people that would argue that nothing is exactly what we're being pointed toward. That um that human production of books, human authorship is an impediment. It's uh mine ponies, uh, you know, the the horse-drawn plow was only viable until tractors came around. Uh, people like McCormick made it cost-effective for farmers to have tractors instead of that nice shire horse. And there um there are a couple of breeds of draft horses that almost completely disappeared and only exist now because I'm into horses, you know, because they were, you know, they were saved. The the breed was rescued by by fanciers, but they no longer are working horses. So we we're like that Shire horse, you know, the when the when the tractor becomes widespread enough, we just won't be around. So that's one way it could go. Like I say, I'm not quite at the point where I'm willing to say, yes, that's definitely where it's going to go. But I there's something magical about human authorship. Or as I've heard people say, oh, but when you read an AI-generated novel, you can tell the difference right away. Well, that may have been true six months ago, and it may even be true today, but will it be true a year from now? Probably not.
SPEAKER_02But I will agree that AI generated content is getting better and better, and that readers won't know, agents won't know, you know, as much as they try to go against or you know, discover it. What I what I what I believe though is that while people like us who want to write will be competing with it, nothing stops us from writing it. And so then the question is, are are we competing in the marketplace? Where are we competing? Are we uh competing against AI going to the big five and then not knowing? Um, because nothing stops me from getting my stories out to people if I want to, and that's one of the advantages of the digital age. Now I'm at an age where I'm tired of joining new platforms, I'm gonna admit it. But writer who is willing to figure out a way to reach their audience, however that is, and deliver their story. I don't I don't think AI will stop that. Um, I but I do believe we'll be competing with it. And how how hard it will be to compete with it, that I, you know, uh time will tell.
SPEAKER_00I see a lot of people comparing writing to draft horses and the loom. I've seen that. I think that I don't think that I don't I don't like that comparison because it it really depends on whether you see writing as as a means to a product, which I do think some the industry does. Um and I do see think some readers do. But I think that there's a there are alternative paradigms for considering what writing is. I think that writing is a lot more like embroidery. Uh I can get a top that has machined embroidery along here with little flowers, and it it looks cheap, it and and I don't really value the embroidery. I know that it was done by machine, it does not look very good, I do not like it. I can embroider, my friend can embroider. If I embroider a handkerchief for myself or my sister, I value that item because I made it myself, or my my friend made it for me. My sister values it because I made it for her. A human has made it. It also looks better, it's also personalized, it also has a human touch to it, it also has little quirks, weirdnesses about the way that I embroider. You can kind of tell that I did it. It's not just a product, it's not just a handkerchief that looks cool. It's not just something that I sell. I think writing is a lot more like that. And I think that people do still want that. Do all people want that? No. Some people just want a book, they want a product, they just want to read it. That's fine. But I don't think that. That is the totality of the desire. That is not the whole of the desire for the thing. People also want communication with authors. They want to see what an author has to say about things. They want human connection. I don't think that that's going away. I think that that is a really important part about writing. And I don't think that we're going to lose that. I always say that the solution to AI is human. If you want to read human authors, create relationships with human authors, and read human authors. That is the solution. Write with other people. And I think that with publishing, it's the same thing. I don't think that the answer is Simon and Schuster or publish by yourself, right? There's a middle ground of small groups of authors getting together and creating small presses and still going a kind of traditional like route together in small collectives. That's kind of what Tender and Tempting Tales is beginning to do. That's what Rowan Prose, I think, began as as well. And there are many small publishing groups like this as well. People of like minds who get together and help each other. And it's still very indie, right? It's a very small group of people, often with a lot of volunteer work and people trying to make it. But it's not you by yourself as some Yahoo on the internet either, you know? And yes, we're still Yahoos on the internet. I will not say that I am not some Yahoo on the internet as our social media manager, but I'm I'm a Yahoo with some amount of knowledge who likes to help people. As such, Annie, you are published with us in our new anthology, Fireworks and Flirtation. And we want to know about your story.
SPEAKER_01A scarlet woman blows up the village, came from research that was surplus to requirements. And those of us who research in any field, but definitely in history, end up with these huge mental rollodexes, where we just have, you know, file after file after file tucked away in there somewhere of stuff that we've researched. And then for whatever reason, we may not have used or may not have used all of it. And I presented a lecture demonstration at a conference a year before last in Lancashire, England, and it was on Jacobean dress, but it was on the social or on the material culture aspects of Jacobean dress and uh you know what it meant when people dressed a certain way, because it does. Clothing indicates a lot besides just I'm gonna cover my body in all right. So I I ended up doing a lot of research on things that I just had always been interested in that happened to fall in that time period, even though I knew I wasn't going to use them in this lecture. And one of them was the gunpowder plot. And this was a plot that matured in in 1605, and it was a group of Catholic conspirators who were unhappy with the fact that James I had promised that Catholicism would not be persecuted in England, even though Protestantism by then had become the state religion, you know. So he had made this promise, and then it was promptly broken in many, many ways. And Catholics in England found themselves very much persecuted. And a group of powerful Catholics got together and hatched this plot that they were going to blow up Parliament on the opening day of its annual session, which is always traditionally attended by the king. And he gives a little speech and then sort of kicks off, you know, the Parliament's session for that year. And so they surreptitiously, of course, stowed a whole lot of gunpowder, I mean, barrels and barrels and barrels of gunpowder under um under the House of Lords in a cellar. Obviously, they had people helping them, you know. And the plot was uncovered, which is in itself a fascinating story, because it was uncovered by spying, by espionage, which by the 1600s was actually in Elizabeth I's reign, espionage as state-sponsored spying, really sort of hit the ground running. And so by 1605, you know, that the government had had a good sense of how to use spies. So they uncovered this plot, and of course, all the conspirators were executed. But to commemorate, the Protestant majority to commemorate this event established an annual holiday that they called Guy Fawkes Day, because Guy Fawkes was one of the principal, certainly not the only, but one of the principal conspirators. And on this day, starting that year, basically, the populace would get together and they would have all these commemorations, and they were they were supposed to be somewhat sober, you know, because this was a very serious thing. This was regicide, you know. This was the attempted assassination of the monarch, you know. But people very quickly turned it into a complete Mardi Gras free-for-all. And there were bonfires were a big part of it. Hanging the Pope in effigy, hanging Guy Fox in effigy, but nighttime was the most raucous, and it was called um bonfire night. So I had all this stuff in my head, and when Jenna announced the theme, fireworks and flirtation, like all authors who heard that, you know, we go through all our possible themes that are connected to fireworks. So after I went through and dismissed all of those as just being not really that interesting to me, I remembered the file. And I remembered Guy Fox Day and these out of control bonfires and fireworks, and I thought, there's a story in there. And I pegged 1926 is the year, just off the top of my head, because I hadn't yet written a story for you set in the 20s, and I thought readers might enjoy that, and you might enjoy that. And it's a decade I really like a lot. It's it's just a wonderful decade for every reason. And so there we have it. I came up with my male and female main characters, and away we went.
SPEAKER_00I like that you both did Guy Fawkes Day in the 1920s, and that you also did Shell Shock. You know, yeah, you have a main male character who has shell shock, and he's reacting negatively to the fireworks. I thought that that was really cool. Like you're blending in two aspects of history, and I thought that that was great.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. As soon as, you know, and one of the things that appealed to me about the 20s, um I have done a lot of research on World War I and especially, well, Britain in both World Wars I and II, and we hear a lot about PTSD and and um what became known as you know, post-traumatic um syndrome, and and what in in the Vietnam era and actually in the World War II era was called combat fatigue. But as a cultural historian, it was the era right before that awareness that was most interesting to me. Because once something is well established as a cultural or a social phenomenon, then you have a whole lot of information to choose from. But the narrative has already developed a direction, and to deviate from that direction is going to be difficult, yeah, because then you're swimming upstream. But I looked at the period right after World War I, and and oddly enough, many years ago I used to read in my early metaphysical studies. I used to read a lot by a woman named uh Beon Fortune was her gnome gnome de plume, I guess she would call it. Um, Diane Firth was her her given name. She had been a nurse in in uh World War I, and she became a psychiatrist, which was quite unusual at that period of time, like in the late teens and and early 20s, for a woman to be a psychiatrist. And she did a lot of work on combat veterans who came back from World War I. And so I recalled that, and I recalled reading books and things that she had written as she was actually in that period of her life where she was dealing with patients who had all these this array of symptoms. And I remember how she was grappling with an approach to that as a psychiatrist, and I thought, man, that's really interesting. I want to go there because there's Simon Arundel, the the um the combat veteran who is my male main character, he wouldn't have had much available to him to cope with what was happening to him. He he would have really been on his own, and it was still a phenomenon that not only was not understood, but it was despised by many people. Boy, talk about some stakes. Yeah, yeah. How is a man in that situation going to handle not only his you know his problems, but then then a woman that he's fallen in love with, and what's he gonna do? Come out and tell her, Oh, I have this today, maybe a man could come out and say that, but not then.
SPEAKER_02Today, while we might understand it better, and there are some treatments, it's it's not undoable, right? You cannot undo the way the brain is wired uh once they've experienced uh those those horrific things of war. And of course, uh anybody who suffers something horrific can have this happen to them. The brain is such a fascinating thing to me that it can rewire itself as a way to protect you. My my stepfather had PTSD, he was a Vietnam vet. 50 years later, it's still there. He he's lived a good life, happy, safe, loved. It was always there, it it never got undone. And to me, that it that was a fascinating how how in a short period of time the brain can be completely re redone in a way that can't be undone. But uh, anyways, Annie, talking about England, I know you love this place and you are getting ready to move there. You're gonna be closer to your publisher, and just how's the move going? And what are your plans when you get there?
SPEAKER_01Well, my my publisher, Bloodhound Books, is very excited, I think, because I mean they're happy that they'll have me, it'll be easier for them to bully more books out instead of doing it across the Atlantic and waiting, you know, waiting for the right little because you know, the time difference is great enough that they only have a couple hours every day when they can really reach me and get hold of me and that I'll be right there. So they can pretty much grab me and take me anytime they want. I right now I'm calling it an extended stay abroad. I have applied for a visa. It's a long, complicated process, as visas usual are. And uh, since I haven't applied for any other visas, I don't know how this one compares to others, but it's really been tough. And I haven't got word on that yet. I mean, it's it's gonna take a little while to work out. So in the meantime, I will be there and I will certainly stay there as long as my passport allows, which is six months, uh, with the in with the hope and intention that the visa will come through and then I will prove myself to Arts Council England. Um, because yes, I for many, many reasons, I and I have been, it's worth saying that, because some people assume that I just made this decision recently, or or they that they'll point to some particular thing that's happening in the American political scene, or the economy, or I don't know, the environment, whatever, and say, oh, well, they've been forth for 13 years. You know, that gets old. And and I don't have anything to hold me here in the US. I I don't have uh family left, I don't have any immediate family left alive, and I don't have uh close relatives, I have cousins, but they're scattered as far away as British Columbia and you know California. I mean, we're not really close. Whereas in the UK, because of my repeated trips, I have friends, I have people that I'm very close to, I have my work, I have my research, I mean, just tons of research just there. I mean, I'm just so excited about that. I can walk the streets, I can, I can roam the castles, I can, you know, get stuck in a bog. But but it'll be a British castle and a British bottom. And and then I have family ancestry there that I also want to learn more about. So yeah, that's my thing. And I'm leaving very soon. I just sold my my property in Florida, and the closing is June 7th, and I am booking transport on July 7th. So um yeah, it's um it's happening fast. After after a long time, it's happening fast. So I hope to see you both over there.
SPEAKER_00I love England, that would be fun. Yeah, you have family history over there.
SPEAKER_01I have a lot, actually, one entire side of my family is from there. I I am a Mayflower descendant, and my Mayflower ancestor was English, but another uh side of the same branch of the family um was my third great-grandfather, who was a hazar. He was uh in the Fourth Lights, which is the Queen's Own, now called the Queen's Own Regiment, which was later was Winston Churchill's regiment. He served 25 years in India. God bless him. Wow. Came back broken in health and died in Bristol. So I've never seen his grave nor the grave of his wife. They they died within months of each other in the 1840s. And then and then I just have a whole line, you know, just going in England all the way up into Scotland. And I I know I know what I've gleaned about those people from Ancestry.com and stuff like that. But a lot of that research still, even in the digital age, needs to be done on the ground. Parish record, grave markers, and not everything is on find a grave.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Especially in Europe when you know the graves are 2,000 years old practically, right?
SPEAKER_00Like now, Annie, you've also got uh a series called The Corset Girls, and I am endlessly curious about it, and I was wondering if you could tell our readers more about it as well. Sounds spicy.
SPEAKER_01I'm very chuffed that I just got a review in Historical Novels Society, a monthly journal, which unfortunately is only accessible to members, but I'm I'm going to be able to pull some portions of it out to post on social. Uh the historical novel society is one of the foremost. First of all, there aren't very many societies who focus entirely on historical fiction. There are very few. And of them, the Historical Novel Society is probably foremost. They're in the UK, they're headquartered in Devon. And so I was very fortunate in that I just got a review of the second book of the Corsic Girls series, which is called Unbound. And um the third book is coming out in November, and um they wanted to bring it out in November because they thought their largely British readership would really be ready for some nice warm tropical rose with lots of palm trees and you know, papayas and mangoes and lemons and limes, and yeah, which I I found very coming from Florida, I found that at first a little confusing, and then I went, oh yeah. There are four books in that series, and I'm I love writing them. I just love writing them because that's my favorite era, the Victorian era, and the books thus far have been have been set in 1892, 1894, then 1895, and then the next one actually I'm gonna push a little closer toward um earth-shaking event of um Queen Victoria's death and and the sort of crashing into the industrial revolution, which had actually been happening, you know, for for a long time, but um all of a sudden it just sort of reached a break point. And so the the last book will take place there. I love writing those books. I can't tell you. I just love disappearing into the Victorian age.
SPEAKER_02I remember watching Bridgerton and trying to figure out Queen Charlotte and then how we got to Victoria. Oh, oh well.
SPEAKER_00I can start reciting Kings at you if you like. It's King George III, then it's King George IV, who's the son, he was in the Regency, and then we have like a little assortment of like brothers of the king. Um basically one of the brothers held on long enough so that Victoria's mother would not become regent because he hated her, absolutely hated her guys. Um, and then Victoria became queen right at 18. Like he made it, he barely made it, but he made it. No, that's hating a sister-in-law.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. One of the things that Tara and I like to do is share either what we're reading or a book recommendation. So I'm just curious. I know you're busy. Are you reading, or do you just have a book recommendation for us?
SPEAKER_01I have just finished a book that is the second book I've read by Natalie Jenner. And I'm gonna give it a kind of equivocal assessment. Her first book was set in the late 1940s, early 1950s, actually, early 1950s, very early. So, and it was set in London. So London is still recovering in many respects from the Second World War. And and it's set in a in a bookshop, a struggling bookshop. It I don't know what it was, I I enjoyed it very much. It was a book that stuck with me. So I then went on to find another book of hers that attracted me, and it was called Austin at Sea. And it was a book about uh, oh golly, it was sort of a secret, hidden or hidden plot um that explains what happened. I mean, we all know the story of how Cassandra Austin burned Jane's letters because she didn't want people knowing their private affairs. But um, this book posits that there were letters that were not burned, and an aging member of the Austin family had them and had been keeping them secret for fear other members of the family, including his own daughter, would would burn them also. And a group of Austin fanatic fanatical readers in the US, including two two women, discover or or they don't discover the letters, but they discover him, and they very boldly decide to write him. Now, this takes place in the 1880s, and they write him, and he invites them to come there uh to England and meet with him, and he doesn't say he has the letters, but he says he has a collection. of artifacts. He's quite old by the way, he's in his 90s, and he wants to share them with people who also love Jane before he passes away. And so they go and uh and they're on they're on board a ship which takes a lot longer than the seven days that I plan to spend on a sea in a transatlantic voyage in July. But they they're on the ship and of course a newspaperman, an American newspaperman sent, you know, he sniffs out the story. But there's also a love, you know, a love subtext in which the newspaperman is in love with one. Louisa May Alcott appears in it. She's on the same ship and I don't know it it's um it's an interesting blend of supposition well researched and well you know um substantiated supposition and uh documentary style it's a bit it's hard to describe it. It's sort of like a fictionalized documentary. So if you like that sort of thing I can recommend her Natalie Jenner J-E-N-N-E-R and the book I just finished is called Austin at the what about you Tara I've been reading Fantastical Foe submissions been helping Parish with just assessing stuff for copy copy edit and for the like for guidelines and using my jaundiced eye to make sure things aren't AI very jaundiced at this point.
SPEAKER_00But yeah it's been a it's been a it's been a good set. We actually we got quite a few submissions for this one. So you know I've been reading a lot of romanticy and I know I need to read some like you know big name romanticy because I'm gonna be writing our article about romanticy and fantasy romance and speculative romance and stuff for the uh for the zine uh Parish has handed that off to me graciously very graciously to save him from reading Akotar I'm gonna go do it.
SPEAKER_02Now I've read Akotar. Well I've only read one book I've only read one yeah did you like it?
SPEAKER_00Should I am I am I gonna like this?
SPEAKER_02I you know I enjoyed it for what it was I didn't read on the I didn't really feel the chemistry between the two and but then it was a YA at that point. Yeah yeah right then it moved on. Now my daughter has told me to read the second book and the first half of or the first part of the third book and then I can stop if I want she said so it's on my shelf. Quite a recipe so what about you Jenna what are you reading I I did finish the other Bennett sister about Mary Bennett. I finished that finally and the show drops today yeah I enjoyed it in some ways I could picture the Austin world in other ways it felt very different and I kept having to remind myself this is Mary Bennett of how everything went down which was very different because you know she wasn't Jane or Lizzie or any of the others but then I picked up is a YA I don't know what to call it it but it is it's set in Louisiana so there's some woo-woo in it um there's a there's some belief of the Rougarou um but there's also a mystery there's been a murder and it's out on the bayou very nice yeah you know what I do like and I haven't read in in a long time I love Irish detective modern Irish detective novels and there's also a series oh and I'm gonna forget the author how could I do that a series of uh extremely quirky wonderful British detective novels set more or less in the current era and the detectives or it's the series is the Bryant and May series which is a joke in itself because Bryant and May is the name of a popular biscuit cookie in the UK and these two are crazy cookies they really are they have this bizarre detective agency that relies on magic and you know strange sorts of things so yeah I may try to find the one or I think I've probably read 11 of those but there might be a a couple I've missed. He read all sorts of British mysteries the Cadfill files of you know Anne Cleves all her books and yeah all of them MCB you know she just read them all to this day she still loves them she also likes Louise Penny who's a Canadian writer who has um Inspector Gamosh like Inspector Gamache I I have some issues with Louise Penny though I read a bunch of those and I think we discussed her you and I discussed her and I said I had seen her speak I'd seen her lecture she's a fabulous speaker.
SPEAKER_01Yeah she is some issues that prevent me from wanting to read any more of her books but I did read you know by the time I decided you know I had already read like a bunch of them I don't know and I found them very entertaining. Petey James you know I think I've read most of those and then I go back to the and Tara and I talked about the British classic crime library. I think that's how it's I always get the words turned around British crime classic library anyway um some that's always gambling when you buy one of those because some of them are fabulous and some of them are real dogs. I don't just because it was written in 1935 doesn't mean it's great. But there are a few authors that I really like you know that I have to sort of scrounge for from the past in the detective or mystery genre like Edgar Box.
SPEAKER_00Well you've given us a big list here Annie and we haven't given you any there is something relieving to know actually that there are markets in the English speaking world outside of the American market. Like I of course you know that right but it is like nice to encounter somebody who's writing for those markets and to know how different they are like you know when you're stuck in a bubble it's it's just relieving to know how different other bubbles are and that they are they're out there for you to you know to investigate.
SPEAKER_02I just saw a video with Sally Field and I I don't remember the actor's name but they have a movie coming out it's a short eight minute video where they're talking about books because they made a movie based on a book and they were talking about whether it was okay to DNF a book and the young man was saying he used to be a janitor in a bookstore and the owner would give him books but what the owner had told him is that there's so many books in the world not every book is for everybody and he there's too many books in the world to read them all. So if you're reading one that isn't for you it's for somebody else you put it down and you find the ones for you and I I loved that yeah I think that's true.
SPEAKER_01Yeah life's too short to read a book you don't like this unless you're an English major that's very true and and and you know Tara you you triggered memory in my head when you're talking about different bubbles the British market reading market is completely different than the American market. Don't ever I hope no publishers are silly enough to assume they're the same market. They're radically different a comment was made in a review about Unbound the Corset Girl book that was recently reviewed by the Historical Novel Society that that that they didn't like the all the French expressions in the book. Well the the male main character is French and they had trouble they struggled they said they struggled with the French expressions. Well in the UK French is almost the second language I mean that's fading a little bit but still educated people I mean if they're educated to any degree they're they they're they're conversant enough with French that they're not going to be astounded by. But I remember I gave um a manuscript to be edited to a British editor some years ago and that novel was set in Ybor City Tampa in 1910. It's a police procedural mystery police procedural and he was saying I I think this will do really well in the American market. I'm not sure about the British market because the the Spanish expressions are are going to be really chant. And I thought this is just the opposite you know like in America they would have problems with the French but not with the Spanish but in in the UK it's just the other way. So you I mean people talk about it being a global marketplace for publishing but it's it sort of is and it sort of isn't you know pockets them.
SPEAKER_00How interesting I remember reading Vanity Fair for my PhD program and my one of the the professors reading it out loud she would read because for whatever reason she didn't read French which was strange because you to be an English major and read 19th century literature especially you have to be able to muddle your way through French. She would get to a French expression in Vanity Fair which as you know has a gajillion of them and she would she would be reading da-da-da and then she would just go French keep going in the English oh my goodness but yeah we had to be able to muddle our way through it like you had to know enough French to just be like okay I know kind of what you're saying here. If you're gonna read 19th century literature in 18th century literature like late 18th century literature like you just have to be able to do that. I but I still I don't know enough French to like do anything other than find the bathroom order in France really my husband's a lot better at it than I am. Annie I really want to thank you for being here with us and for writing for fireworks and flirtation and for writing for our anthologies and for supporting us as much as you have your like knowledgeable hand keeps our hands at the at the rudder keeps us moving forward in a straight line and we like really appreciate you. I appreciate having you as like an advisor every once in a while you know I reach out to you at five in the morning with a panic attack over something and you always have good advice for me which I really appreciate. We are Tender and Tempting Tales. You can find us on Substack that's TendertivityTales at Substack you can find us on Instagram we are TenderTemptingTales on Instagram. You can also find us on Facebook with our readers group that's Tendertivity Tales Readers group there. We'd love for you to join us find out all about our authors if you are an author and you like to write romance and you like to write steamy bits especially just be aware that we have uh calls open right now Starlit and spellbound call is open for you that is going to be for our fall anthology we're looking for three chili pepper romances with a little bit of something extra something otherworldly if you are a contemporary or historical author that does not exclude you just make sure that you've got something in it a bit spooky and you're you're all good.
SPEAKER_02Annie I want to repeat everything thank you so much for spending time with us today. I know you got a ton going on but I always enjoy chatting with you and I wish you all the best on your trip to England. I'm so excited for you that's gonna be amazing.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_02I will keep everybody updated yes absolutely editing Jenna hair I just realized I did not actually share the name of the book that I was reading it is Dark and Shallow Lies by Ginny Myers I will obviously have a link to it along with all the other books that we have mentioned on the show in our show notes. Also just a quick apology we did have some audio tech issues but hopefully that doesn't take away from the show. And until next time all of us at Tender and Tempting Tales wish you peace, love and happily ever after.