Author Interview with Lauren Willig
Lauren Willig is the author of the New York Times bestselling Pink
Carnation series, which has captured the hearts and imaginations of readers across the globe. Recently, we managed to steal a few moments of
our favourite historical romance writer's time. Here's what she had to
say... Bookarmy: Firstly, welcome to Bookarmy. You say you have been hooked on writing romance since the age of 6. What is it about the genre that has continued to inspire you?Lauren Willig: Thanks so much for having me to Bookarmy! When I was little, I loved the costume drama aspect of historical romance. I wanted to sweep about in a huge hoop-skirt, whapping men with my fan for taking imagined liberties (note: this does not work well in real life; fans tend to break more easily than one would assume). I thrilled to all those breathless ingénues who, like me, were just setting out in the world.
As I grew older, I realized that the costumes were just the tip of the iceberg. The mind boggles at the incredible breath of character types, relationships, and human experiences represented in the broad tent we roughly term “romance”. Romance gives us a chance to explore more than just the male/female relationship, although that in itself has infinite variations. We also get to parse out the workings of the relationships between all those other sticky interrelations that inform our lives: parents, siblings, friends, colleagues, with all the affection, mixed emotions and rivalries those entail.
When it comes down to it, the romance genre provides us with a safe space to explore the
universal question: what is the nature of man? Why do people behave the way they do? What makes us all tick? We tackle the question anecdotally, character by character, story by story, just as Shakespeare did in his plays or Austen in her novels. I find that incredibly inspiring. And, hey, it’s much more fun than reading Hume (sorry, Hume).
BA: At one point you were juggling writing with your full time career as a lawyer, both of which are incredibly demanding jobs. How did you manage to do both?LW: Too much caffeine? A full year after quitting my job from the firm, I’m still reeling from the residual buzz. Aside from prodigious amounts of coffee, it all comes down to something I like to call my Theory of Productive Procrastination. Lean in close; I have a confession to make: I am a shirker. If I had world enough and time, I would never get anything done. The only way I manage to make myself do anything is by avoiding other things that I’m meant to be doing even more urgently. (This interview, for example, is being written while I’m meant to be working on Chapter Seventeen of the next Pink book). I wrote my first book,
The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, while avoiding working on my doctoral dissertation and my next two while avoiding law school homework.
I’ve never written anything quite so quickly or efficiently as
The Seduction of the Crimson Rose, the book I wrote while working full time at a large New York law firm. I knew my time was finite (and the threat of breach of contract concentrates the mind wonderfully), and my blackberry had a tendency to start buzzing at inconvenient moments, so, whenever I could steal a weekend away from the office, I would lock myself up in my apartment, set the alarm for six in the morning, and work straight through the weekend. Of course, my apartment didn’t get vacuumed; my hair grew so long that I looked like I’d been vacationing in the Chateau d’If; and friends started sending “are you dead?” emails, but the book got done. I’m still not quite sure how Crimson Rose got written—it happened in about five or six weekends, spread out over six months—but I’m terribly proud of it. Since leaving the firm, I am ashamed to admit that I have reverted to my old, slothful ways— and my apartment still has not been vacuumed.
BA: Your first book The Secret History of the Pink Carnation switches between 19th century and present day England. What was the inspiration behind this novel?
LW: In 2001, I was a second year grad student pursuing a PhD in English history. That April, I staggered home from my General Exams, tripped over a pile of library books, and vowed, as the microwave was my witness, that I wasn’t going to so much look at a seventeenth century manuscript until the following fall. I was sick of footnotes, sick of the basement of Widener Library, sick of… well, you get the idea. I settled down with a big pile of Julia Quinn novels and BBC costume dramas and decided it was an excellent time to write a romance novel.
I toyed with the idea of a novel set around Luddite unrest in 1811 (since electronics break down as soon as I enter a room, I’d always felt a sneaking sympathy for the Luddites). But Fate stepped in, in the form of my DVD pile. I was watching the Anthony Andrews Scarlet Pimpernel, an old, old favorite of mine, while eating one of those miracles of haute grad school cuisine—a microwave hot dog adorned with squirty cheese. I watched with a connoisseur’s detachment as Sir Percy dispatched yet another round of gullible French guards. There was something wrong there. Not with Anthony Andrews (how can one not love Anthony Andrews as that dammed elusive Pimpernel?), but with the whole scenario. He had it too easy. His men all followed his commands without question; his wife mostly stayed out of the way; and the evil French spies all did exactly what evil French spies were supposed to do. Someone, I decided, needed to mix things up a bit. What if you had a super-dashing English spy bedeviled, not by the French (they’re always so easy to thwart), but by a young lady set on tracking him down—so she can help him? Every spy’s worst nightmare! I bolted for my computer and thus the original Pink Carnation book was born.
The modern storyline, a Harvard grad student pursuing her dissertation research in England, emerged partly as a sop to all those teachers who had always told me to write what I knew; partly to provide a contrast with my historical heroines (who are, in their own ways, much more confident and adventurous than my modern narrator); and partly to provide me with an excuse for rampant anachronism. Since the story is technically filtered through Eloise’s imagination as she pages through the old documents, I had a lot of fun with Blackadder-type historical spin-offs, such as the Cosmopolitan Lady’s Book (Ten Tips to a Flirtier Fan!). All complaints to be directed to Eloise Kelly, London W2….
BA: Most of us like to relax and forget about work by reading our favourite author. When writing is your job, is this a hard thing to do?LW: That is a very insightful question. Yes! It’s a bit like being a chocolate taster for a living; you find yourself becoming extremely critical of the very thing you love. I find it hard to read any kind of historical fiction while I’m deep in the midst of working on one of my own books. But I’m still a compulsive reader (I can’t start the day without a large cup of tea and at least half an hour with a novel), so I wind up reading a lot of mysteries, contemporary romance, chick lit, and fantasy while I’m in hard-core writing mode. Some of my favourite go-to authors when I’m in work mode include Elizabeth Peters, Dorothy Cannell, Elizabeth George, Melissa Nathan, and Liz Young. When I’m in between books, or taking a mid-book break, I go on historical fiction binges to catch up on all the stories I’ve been missing.
BA: And finally, what’s in store for us in the next UK release The Masque of the Black Tulip
(out in hardback Sept 2009) – any surprises?LW: The next book,
The Masque of the Black Tulip, belongs to Henrietta Selwick and Miles Dorrington, the Purple Gentian’s little sister and best friend. When Eloise follows Colin back to Selwick Hall to plunder the family archives, she discovers that there’s a new French spy on the loose: the Black Tulip. (My apologies to Alexandre Dumas for stealing the name!) The Black Tulip is under orders to find and eliminate the Pink Carnation—which means, naturally, that someone will have to find and eliminate the Black Tulip. And who better to do so than Miles? Of course, Henrietta, the girl whose earliest words were “me, too!” insists on pursuing her own investigations. Over the course of writing
The Secret History of the Pink Carnation, it became gloriously clear that Henrietta and Miles were perfectly suited—and equally clear that they were sure to fight it every step of the way. I’m happy to say they have proved me right on both counts.
The Masque of the Black Tulip
is published by Allison & Busby in February 2010. Order now
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