Writing Regency Fiction with Amita Murray

Welcome back to The Race and Regency Pod.

Today, we are joined by Amita Murray. Amita is a writer based in London, by way of Delhi and California. Her first novel, The Trouble with Rose, came out from Harper Collins in 2019, and her short fiction has won the SI Leeds Literary Prize, and has appeared in Wasafiri, SAND Berlin, the Berkeley Fiction Review and others. She's held writerly residencies with Leverhulme/University College London and Plymouth University/Literature Works, and has taught advanced fiction at the University of East Anglia and CityLit London. She was named runner-up for the 2022 CRIMEFEST scholarship for authors of color. 

We discuss her work, paying special attention to her historical romance trilogy set in Regency England, where the mixed-race Marleigh sisters each go through a journey of adventures and love. 

Amita also shares some tips for young aspiring writers on her Instagram @amitamurray

Find more of her work on www.amitamurray.com.

To learn more about the Race and Regency Lab, visit https://www.raceandregency.org/

The Race and Regency Pod works as a dynamic sonic space to lend an ear to all things Race and Regency. Using the intimacy, accessibility, and fluidity of the medium, this podcast brings together the public, artists, curators, librarians, scholars, and cultural critics who share their passion for questions of race in this period. Unlike ideas and engagements that can often stay confined behind academic paywalls, this podcast facilitates space for community members and connoisseurs of the Regency era to think together and build together. 

Listening with and to a range of people who speak in varied accents and tones, The Race and Regency Pod works as a practice in embodied scholarship. We imagine what enthusiasm and engagement sound like when directed towards sharing, community building, resistance, and self-expression. This podcast will house diverse conversations that expand the conception of the Regency era thematically, geographically, and temporally, by considering how we inherit formulations of race from this period and engage with them now.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Race in Regency Park. I am your host and producer, Shruti Jain. Today we're joined by Amita Marie. Amita is a writer based in London by way of Delhi in California. Her first novel, The Trouble with Rose, came out from HarperCollins in 2019, and her short fiction has won the S.I. Leeds Literary Prize and has appeared in Wasafari, San Berlin, The Berkeley Fiction Review, and others. She's held writerly residencies in Leverheam University College London and Plymouth University Literature Works. She's also taught advanced fiction at the University of East Anglia and City Lit London. She was named Runner Up for the 2022 Crimfest Scholarship for Authors of Colour. We discuss her work, paying special attention to her historical romance trilogy, Set in Regency, England, where the mixed-race Marley sisters each go through a journey of adventures and love. Hi Amita. I'm so happy to have you on the Race and Regency pad. Judy is so nice to meet you. Thank you for having me. Let's jump in by talking about your work. You work in um contemporary mystery and historical mystery romance genres. Why these genres and how did you arrive here?

SPEAKER_01 1:36

Oh, it's a good question. I do write in two genres. The way that I think about them is that the thing that links them is humor. I tend to write quite funny uh stories. There's a lot of banter, there's a lot of dialogue that either is sparky, you know, between the kind of the main characters. Um, even the side characters really usually have funny lines. So the humor I think holds both of those two things together. As you just notice that both of them, even though one is historical romance and one is contemporary, they both have a mystery element. That's something that I really like because it brings a kind of a darker side to novels that are also really funny. So I think, how did I get into it? Now, I think it's just what I love reading. I grew up reading both Jane Austen and Georgid Hare. They're both my, you know, all-time favourites, really. And what I really loved about Georget Hare was that she would be deeply romantic. She'd have strong female roles for her characters. And she was also really, really funny, and there was always really like there was also a lot of banter. And there's a particular thing about British kind of romance, it's there's an understated quality. You know, you kind of you you say it but you don't say it, and you show it but you don't show it. And I really like that kind of push and pull. I love friction in romance. I love it when the characters don't quite, you know, they don't get on, they're really attracted to each other, but they're also really arguing and kind of at each other. I love that, and that that idea of fighting your own feelings. That to me is like the sexiest thing. So yeah, I suppose, you know, that kind of banter, that kind of friction, that's what I really love writing. And that's in both my contemporary and my Regency novels.

SPEAKER_00 3:35

Fantastic. All your books have been really successful. Um, one of them is the Marley Sisters trilogy, in the first, which I've been reading right now and immensely enjoying. In the first book of this trilogy, the protagonist, Leela Marley, um, knows what it's like to be on the margins. She's a mixed-race child to an English earl and an Indian mistress. Can you talk to us about the vantage point of the outsider or the one on the margins, and that how that helps you write a new kind of regency fiction? And you just mentioned humor, right? So, how maybe that vantage point informs your humor? Does it alter how you do any of the traditional romance drops?

SPEAKER_01 4:17

It's such an intelligent question because the funny thing is, even in my contemporary mystery series, Aria Winters is also kind of an outsider. She's neurodivergent, uh, she's also mixed race, she is very blunt and awkward in social situations. She has a lot of social anxiety. So, what you've pointed out about Leela Marley being on the margins and being an outsider, it just struck me when you were saying that that actually, even in my contemporary series, Aria Winters is exactly like that. So I just thought, yeah, you've you've got, you've touched that. Uh, you know, you something that's quite important in my books. I love the outsider vantage point. I think it gives you something that I feel, first of all, that I identify with it. Um, I like, you know, I I have to say, I mean, I when I when I was growing up, um, I I had friends, and right now I have loads of friends, but when I was growing up, I was quite lonely. I was quite um like the the relationship with me and my parents was quite a difficult one. So, in that sense, that loneliness I think informs everything I write. And when I'm writing a character, to me, their loneliness from their childhood and their uh whatever their childhood baggage is is really important. So for Leela, uh, you know, uh, as you know, there was difficult, there was a difficult childhood. Um, she and her sisters they lose their parents when they're quite young, and then they when they're very little, they move from India to where these books are set, which is in London and uh in other cities in England. So to me, there's a lot of childhood baggage and it's lots of unresolved stuff there, which then impacts their relationships. So for Leela, this uh you know, the way that she deals with her loneliness and her longing and the emotions that are difficult is by getting this is this is funny because my editor totally caught this and she was like, This is just like you, isn't it? Because I do this and Leela does this, that when she's feeling extra vulnerable, she'll get like extra chatty and extra chirpy and extra animated, and it's all just like I'm so confident, and it's totally okay. And I that's exactly how I wrote Leela. Uh, you know, she she's very sociable, seemingly very confident, and then the inside, what you know, the longing, the feeling of kind of being an outsider and having to navigate that all the time is very uh prominent in her. That's her personality. But you know, the other thing is we're looking at race, and one thing that I would think, you know, you can't say this person is Indian, so they must be like this, or this person is Chinese, they must be like this. I don't do types like that. You can't do types, people aren't types. But what you can say is that if you're a racialized minority in any place, you know, you've you're minoritized, um, what happens is that you have an experience of otherness, you have an experience of not quite belonging. So even someone as sociable as Leela uh is, you know, she's she's really sociable. She's got this successful business that she's built from scratch, but she does have that kind of uh kind of that lingering loneliness or that feeling of not quite belonging. And I love exploring that.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Not quite fitting in. Um that that feels like um, I'm gonna bring in Bridgetan now. That feels like something that's um standard to our Bridgetan protagonist, Simon in the first season, doesn't quite feel like he belongs because of his childhood package. Kate in the second season, I mean she's much more self-assured, uh, but she is an outsider in a different sort of way. Penelope has spent so much of her life feeling like she's on the margins and invisible, and now in the um in the latest season, Sophie Beck is the daughter of an English lord and an Asian maid. Um, I mean, like I've said in the Bridgetan universe, Asia, India, Caribbean, etc., have a different Latin sort of place. Um, what did you think of her if you watched the new season, Sophie Back? Um, and if you haven't, then all of these characters, how do they speak to um the work that you are doing? How do you feel about the show altogether?

SPEAKER_01 8:48

Great. Okay, so I'm going to confess that I haven't watched the latest series. Normally I devour them as soon as they come out, but this time partly because of just not having the time, and also because um usually my book is always coming out um, you know, around the same time, and so I'm devouring it. Uh just this didn't happen this time. Um, but Bridgetton actually had a major impact on uh me writing the Marley series because, like I said, because I had grown up reading Georgia Teare and Jane Austen and other 19th century authors, I also had this misunderstanding of the 19th century in England that there were just white people, and there weren't brown or black people. That is that was my conception, because that's you know, that's what I understood, that's what I'd read. And then when I watched Bridgerton, I thought, well, what a fantastic thing to do. You just bring in black and brown characters, and all of a sudden, this problem of um, you know, making an all-white cast um for a for a show just goes away because what you've done is you've cleverly inserted um black and brown characters. So I thought that was the Shonda Rhimes just did such a fantastic thing with that. But then I thought, well, let me look it up and see, you know, what it was actually like. And it turns out the funny thing is that when you start looking into it, there were thousands of black and brown people in London, you know, at that time. So even in Regency Times, which we think of as quite sort of quite a long time ago, there were all sorts of uh black and brown people. So I started kind of looking into that, and it turned out that they could be mixed-race kids. So uh, you know, people had gone out to the Caribbean and to the Indian subcontinent, especially um white British men. And in the 1700s, they would actually go there and they would find a wife or a mistress and would have kids, and some of those kids would then come to England and uh grow up here. So there was that. Um, however, there were also uh nannies that would travel with kids from India or the Caribbean, uh, they were called Amas and Ayas, and they would travel with the with the kids and then they would basically live here. There were also sailors, so sailors from India, for example, would um, you know, come on ships, and you know, there are tragic stories as well, because some of these uh Ayas and some of these sailors, they would have been promised uh a ticket back, um, and they'd have been promised that they would get a uh whatever the living wage was at that time, very low, but they would get it, but then they wouldn't, they'd just be kind of abandoned uh as soon as they uh arrived here or otherwise mistreated. And so it there are poignant stories there to be found, they're not all happy stories. Um, but I then realized that there were like loads of people here that um I could put in my books, and I thought, wow, you know, how great that a genre that I love so much and that I find I love writing because all that, you know, that funny banter thing is just my thing, is just once I get into it and I find the right characters. But if I could then add what uh you know, it's stories that are to me more meaningful, more more realistic to that time, because that part of history has just been erased from uh commercial novels, you get it in literary novels, uh and in, you know, but they're literary contemporary novels. In the novels written from that time and written for from the Regency, you don't you don't get black and brown characters. So this was an opportunity. So Bridgeton really kind of allowed me a door, a kind of a doorway into thinking actually there's some potential here that I could I could explore. So, in that sense, I feel like you know what what Shonda Rhimes has done is just um opened a door into a different side of the genre.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

Yeah, which has um maybe contributed to an increase in the interest in historical fiction, particularly of the Regency. And like you're saying, you're bringing into the space um an intentional conversation about race, colonialism, sexuality. How are you walking this tight rope of juicy romance, sweetie banter, and and like you said, the tragedy and the gruesome violence of empire? How do you walk that rope?

SPEAKER_01 13:20

Oh, um, gosh, yeah. You know, the funny thing is writing it, I'm I'm gonna talk about writing in a second because writing it is very easy, but I'll tell you why. But it's the it's sometimes explaining it to uh readers, you know, what what are you trying to do? Because you I am doing that layered thing where you have that funny banter and you have all of that, but then you have a layer of mystery that normally is connected to something uh in the colonial past, like you said. So, for example, in the third book, you haven't got to that, so I I won't I won't give spoilers, but in the third book, there is a connection where the hero, uh, you know, he was actually born to an Englishman and his mistress who was an enslaved woman in the Caribbean, and so he is mixed in that sense, but he was also born into slavery. His dad had to buy him out of slavery, which is what you know fathers had to do at that time because you were uh you were an enslaved person because you were born to one parent who was enslaved. So to me, you know, that just gives the story uh nuance and uh layers and texture that uh is it was it was there anyway, because for example, if you look at somebody like Charles Dickens, he's not obviously a Regency writer, but he's a he's a later 19th century writer, but he would have uh what what would what we now call working class characters. Uh at that time they wouldn't be called that, but working class characters, uh, you know, people that were of lower socioeconomic levels. You had uh and then Regency writers, some of them like Mary Balogue, she looks at uh uh characters who've gone through some trauma, uh, potentially in war uh or in in childhood or some kind of physical abuse. So she also has that layering. So you can have that layering. I think what's unusual about mine is that you normally wouldn't have the colonial past and the transatlantic slave trade be mentioned quite so casually. Because I do mention them as if they're everyday things because they were. You know, they weren't things that we need to be squeamish about talking about because they're history. Uh they happened, and it's okay to mention them just as much as it's okay to mention the Napoleon Wars. You can't say, actually, I can talk about Napoleon, but I can't talk about colonialism. It doesn't work like that. So to miss out all this kind of rich, though dark history to me is kind of tragic. Uh so it just means now I can, you know, I can look at histories that to tell you the truth, I didn't know as much about those histories until I started looking into uh into it because of because of writing these novels. And then the more I look, the more fascinating it is. Uh yeah, so I I I love that. I and it is a tightrope, but it's to me real life. You know, even the even the best of romances, the most fun of romances, are that they happen in real life, they happen in a real world. And the world, if we look at it now, it's full of war, it's full of many grim things that are happening all around us all the time. So you can't take away the kind of the dark side of things. Um, and and I do think that fiction relies on the kind of the juxtaposition of dark and light, you know, it needs beauty and humor, but it also needs that tension. Uh so to me, it's very natural to write like that, and I love doing it. And in fact, if I didn't do the darker side, it would feel very frivolous, too frivolous. It would feel like, oh, but what did I add that was of value, that was something new, um, you know, that was bringing back stories that are missing from the canon. So that kind of motivation is there for me underneath it. Uh, I have to just do a little shout out to Carol Bell, who um has read all of the Regency books, and she's just so fantastic. She's a writer, she's a book reviewer, uh, you know, she's just a wonderful human being, and she always she always kind of takes the time to look at how the books are what she calls deeply romantic, but also uh astute about politics. And I just love when she says that, I just go, oh my god, I'm just gonna memorize everything she she writes. Um, you know, so I think it's that is it's it's touching on things that are extremely important, but also that doesn't mean they're not romantic, they're extremely romantic and funny.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Yeah, shout out to Carol Bell. She was on our last episode talking about um Wuthering Heights, the Emerald Funnel adaptation with Adriana Herrera. Um I don't know if you watched it, maybe we could talk about that as well. Um I haven't watched it yet. I'm so mad at the moment.

SPEAKER_01 18:17

Clearly, I'm not paying enough attention to popular culture. Um, I have to say though, uh, you know, obviously Wuthering Heights, I just think it's probably one of my all-time favorite novels. When I read them, I thought Jane Eyre uh ranked higher for me, but I over time I've just realized my God, the obsessiveness of Wuthering Heights is a whole other thing. And I like that kind of hyperfixated obsessive love. Like that's just so appealing to read about. Um, what I did do a couple of years ago, this is uh a few years before the film, was I went to Haworth, which is the where the Bronte sisters lived, and visited the town, and then there was apparently everyone kept saying there's this there's this area with waterfalls, and they called the Bronte Falls, which was the favourite of Emily Bronte, who wrote the Wuthering Heights, and I thought, okay, of course we'll go there. So we walked and walked and walked in the rain. It was of course it was raining, it was it's Yorkshire. Um, and we walked and walked for hours and through the town, across the fields, across the moors, and came to this magical place. Like it was really, really beautiful. It's all lush green, waterfall, everything. Turns out it's Emily Bronte's birthday. Uh so everyone who's who's there, so us, we didn't know, but we found out when we got there, and all the other tourists that happened to be there. We all then started singing happy birthday to Emily Bronte, you know, 200 years after. So that was um, yeah, that was really special.

SPEAKER_00 19:42

That's lovely. That sounds so special. That's really nice. I I wonder how much of um um traveling um Britain and looking at these things inspires um the work that you end up doing, also, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:58

100% because so in the first book, in Unladylike Lessons in Love, we stay pretty much in London, other than there's a there is a there is a race at one point that that's heading down to Brighton, but we don't we don't really see other other parts, but we see some parts of London that you wouldn't normally have seen. So for example, uh this is it sounds really grim, and I don't describe it in the book, but I just kind of touch on it. Uh there used to be rat baiting. Uh so they they used to have pits like in in a tavern where they would they would like do rat baiting as a sport, so it sounds really, really horrible, and it I'm sure it was. Um, but I touch on these slightly more quite a quirky bits of London, which in a regular Regency novel you wouldn't go to because you'd go to the balls and the soirees. So I tried to do that. But in the second book, so we do go down to Folkestone a little bit, but in the third book is where I really I felt like I really explored a different town than London, and that's Devon. And um, I went I went a bit mad um doing that because I love Devon, it's really beautiful, it's got red cliffs, and you know, the sea is absolutely beautiful, and it's like this crashing kind of sea rather than kind of a sedate sea. I love that. And so I have been to Devon a few times, near Exeter, I would say, is where it's set. And I just I just loved exploring it and describing it and you know all of that. Um there is a fourth book in the series which hasn't, it's not, it's not come out yet, and we go a little bit into Yorkshire in that one. So I try, even though a lot of it might be based in London, because that's just where you'd normally, you know, you'd see all kinds of cool things happening in Regency novels, but then I always try and add one other place in England because I just think the sort of the natural element that it provides and the the quieter element, also the more countryside element, is just it's quite a nice concept. Trust to London.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

Yeah, you said the fourth part hasn't come out yet. So is that something you're working on now? If if what are some projects you're working on now?

SPEAKER_01 22:09

Yeah, so this is a good question. Um there's the fourth now, the fourth one, you could call it the fourth one. I tend to also call it the first one of the triplets series, because of course we need to bring the triplets in. So for just a recap, the first three books are about Leela, Anya, and Mira. And the three sisters grew up together, though they, you know, they they they weren't uh they were kind of estranged, but then they had really lost touch with their three tiny triplet sisters who were really little, um, you know, when they when they moved to England, because they've they've not only lost touch with them, the three triplets were separated, they weren't kept together. And so the so it's really the triplets trilogy, I I would I would call it now. So it's a whole new trilogy rather than uh, you know, I sometimes in my head call it the fourth book, but really the first book of the next trilogy. So that one, yeah. So that one I have written, so it's just the next step now, you know, where it lands. We need to kind of uh think about that. So that's one project. The contemporary series, Aria Winters, the one with the neurodivergent amateur sleuth. I love her. I she's just so close to my heart. She's just, you know, quirky and funny and so blunt and gets into trouble because she just always says the wrong thing at the wrong time. Uh, she just doesn't have a filter, you know, she's neurodivergent. She's just, you know, she's very blunt. She really believes in radical honesty. So she kind of just says things. She thinks that when you're being really super polite, sometimes you're telling a lie. It's not, it's not radically honest. And she really then it hurts her when she tells a lie. So she doesn't, she doesn't lie, but this means that she's always at odds with the people around her. Uh so Ara Winters, the first one had come out a couple of years ago with Polis Books, but since they closed down, they these books now as a trilogy are going to come out. Um, the first one later this year in 2026. So that's going to come out, but they've all they've all been written. I am working on a top secret Regency project, which I can't tell you about yet. Um, but it's it's quirky, it's funny. I I've fallen in love with it. I was for the last several months uh last year. I mean, I just couldn't write. This is very unusual for me. I I can always write. And I always say to people, there's no such thing as writer's blog. You can just write, it's fine. Um, and sure enough, for months, all I could do was I could edit old projects. I just couldn't do get into a new one. So I came back in January uh after uh you know winter break, and I just thought I I have to I have to do something about this, I have to sort this out. So I started a couple of projects that didn't go anywhere, and then this project that I am now talking about came out of a conversation where I misunderstood what that person was saying. I can't give you any details at the moment, but I misunderstood what they were saying, and I thought, what an interesting idea. And then I realized that they were actually not even talking about that interesting idea. They they had talked about it in a slightly different way, and I thought, but that other misunderstanding that I had, that was more interesting, so I just thought, why don't I try it? So that one is top secret, but I think that it has great potential to add something weird and quirky to the Regency genre, which hopefully um once I know more about what's happening with it and land where it's landing, maybe you can be one of the first to know, and then we can talk again.

SPEAKER_00 25:38

That sounds fantastic and so extremely exciting. Congratulations and also congratulations on the um fourth or the first um book in the Marley universe, I guess, now that you're building it like that coming out um this year, later.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Um the no, the Ari Winters one is gonna come out this year. So the triplets first one, I don't know yet. So I'll just congratulations.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

This is just so much work. I feel like I would be remiss if I didn't ask you this, um, ask you advice for writers because you do um a wonderful series on your Instagram um where you um give advice to writers about so many different kinds of things, right? If you could speak to some aspiring writers, what would you tell them?

SPEAKER_01 26:25

That's a great question as well. You you're full of such great, thoughtful, intelligent questions. Thank you for that. I appreciate that. Um yeah, so I do I have my at Amita Murray Instagram and Creative Hunger Substack, and I tend to do different sorts of things. You know, I'm a very um, I'm not a very good planner or strategist. I'm I'm not a like a I will do this X number of times, and I will, you know, I don't do that. Um maybe I should, but I don't. Um so I'm much more of a spontaneous, oh, this is where I my head is at, so this is what I'll do. So I would say, um, you know, Instagram, my my Insta, what I tend to do is I do lots of craft uh advice. So do look there because I tend to go, oh, what about plotting? What about setting? What about character? But the advice that I would probably give is something that I probably need to tell myself many times, and that's don't be in a hurry, don't be in a rush, because what happens is that when you find something like writing that you absolutely love, oh you just you know, you want to get obsessed with this and you want to do it all the time, and you think, oh, it should be my full-time job, I should be really successful, I should be this and that. The the thing the reality is though that 90%, 80% of writers, theirs is a long game. It isn't the oh, that huge big debut that became really, really big. That's very, very rare, and increasingly that happens to people who are already celebrities. So instead of thinking it of it like that, think of it as a long game. Even when you think your writing is ready, question that and go, actually, maybe I have more to learn. And learning is a good thing because it means I can practice, and practice is the craft, it's the job. So I would say slow it down, be sort of a bit more generous and patient. I know that's so hard because it's hard for me. Um, because there will be rejections that's just built into the job. You can't not have that. There will be times where you go, oh, I just can't bear to do it anymore because hey, here we go, another rejection, here we go, another thing that didn't work out. And that's just normal. That is just what happens. And so if you really are passionate about it, if it's your calling, slow it down in your head and go, okay, what can I learn? What can I do this time? That might be a bit different, that might, you know, um, that might work. What what what what is it that needs to develop in my craft so that it really opens up? That's the long game for lot for uh lots of writers, and it takes time to build, you know, yourself as a writer. So just kind of I think that's my actual advice um because that's one of the hardest things. It's just such a long game.

SPEAKER_00 29:07

Yeah, that's such great advice. And um, we'll have your Instagram linked in our bio for um our listeners to follow on the more craft chips. Um, I want to ask you one last question about readers. Um, you've given us advice for writers, but um, could you leave us maybe with some recommendations for our readers who are just getting into historical fiction, Regency Fiction?

SPEAKER_01 29:32

Yeah, I mean, you know, there are just so many good Regency novelists. I will still say Georgia Hare, because of course people will know Julia Quinn, uh, you know, Tessa Dare, uh Mary Belogue, those those people that they're great writers, but if you really want to know, because of course Jane Austen is, you know, the big Regency writer, but Georgia Hare sometimes is not as recognizable a name as Jane Austen. And I say to everyone, you know, if you really want to know where the Regency genre comes from, where the quirkiness of it and the humour of it, um, that comes from, you've got to read Georgia Hare, and she's just a wealth, you know, there's a wealth of uh stuff in there. I once found in a second-hand bookshop, I found about 20 Georgia Hare's, and they were 20p each, and I just went a bit crazy and I just kind of took the whole stack up to they were just like, nobody's bought these. What are you doing? And I just go, Can I have all 20 of them? And um, you know, she's just funny, she's so funny, and she's she's a comfort breed. So that is that would be my recommendation to find her and um just learn what the beautiful, funny Regency genre is.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Fantastic! Thank you so much. Thank you so much for all of the tips, all of the advice, and sharing so much about your work.

SPEAKER_01 30:54

Oh, thank you, Shruti. It was so nice to talk to you, and you just had such thoughtful questions and you really thought about them, and that's always really just a pleasure when someone does that. So, thank you so much for doing that.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Thank you for being here, really appreciate it.