I remember meeting Eloisa for the first time. It was in Chicago, I think, and I was just planning to start writing a Regency set historical. I was at the RWA National Conference and I was introduced to Eloisa whose first book, Potent Pleasures, was coming out in hardback. Needless to say, I was very impressed!

Eloisa, in addition to being a wonderful author of great books, is also very generous to other authors, sharing her expertise in all parts of the publishing process. I never met anyone who was so smart at the business side of writing. She is also a terrific speaker and very generous to New Jersey Romance Writers, of which I am a long distance member.

I’m thrilled that we Riskies have had the opportunity to sing the praises of Eloisa’s Pleasure for Pleasure and to have her visit with us!

And I am sure Eloisa’s work habits are a lot better than mine!

I generally allot myself four to five months to write a book. I come up with an idea, usually based on a character. My characters generally appear in a previous book, but when I write that book, I never know what their story will be. The next step in the process is to write a synopsis, because my editors want to approve the story before I write it. This means I have to at least figure out the main plot of the story and I have to dip into the research books enough to make sure I can fit the history in correctly. I also write them the first chapter, which is usually an easy chapter for me. I like to start out my books with something very exciting and that sort of scene is fun to write.

When I sit down to write the book, I never really know how I’m going to bring the book to the end. I usually know the hero and heroine fairly well, though – I could probably sit for hours and tell you incidents from their lives before the book starts, but I really have not figured out “what’s next.” I also have to think up secondary characters and subplots, otherwise it is going to be a short story, not a book!

I always write on a laptop, usually in my den on my couch, although I also might sit on the top of my bed, spreading research books around me. I try to start writing by 9 am and I pretty much continue until about 4. If I am very good, I will go to Curves at noon for a break. If I’m not worried about my deadline, I try to take weekends off.

I’m making myself sound very virtuous. I also check my email, play scrabbleblast, see what’s for sale on ebay…..there are a bunch of ways I can waste time when I should be writing. Blogging, the reading of it or the writing of it, is not a waste of time, however!

I research as I go along. I mostly research online (one favorite site www.answers.com), but I have a brazillion research books up in my “book room” a bedroom turned into a …book room, lined with bookshelves. My bookshelves have only cursory organization. Someday I’ll figure out how to arrange them so I can find things in an instant. Name a research book you like and I either own it or my fingers are tapping out abebooks.com and I’m going to buy it (right, Kalen???)

I have two lovely critique groups who read my stuff as I write and my favorite way of doing things is to take their suggestions and fix the chapters we’ve discussed before moving on to write a new chapter. This last book (I’m almost finished!!) I had to write in only 2 1/2 months so I tried something new. Just write and fix later. That works pretty well, actually. I may do things this way from now on. So I wrote the whole thing and then went back and revised that draft.

I am definitely not someone who plots out everything ahead of time, but I stopped worrying about that when Nora Roberts said she also does not plot ahead of time.

So with this book, I am finishing the revision of my first draft and should turn it in by Thursday. Make that will turn it in…

Ask me questions about what else you might want to know! And, those of you who are writers, tell us how you do it, too, this week.

Cheers!
Diane

New York Times bestselling author Eloisa James writes historical romances for HarperCollins Publishers. Her latest book, Pleasure For Pleasure, completes the Four Sisters series. It comes out next Tuesday, November 28! You can order it here. And get a chance to win a copy of Pleasure For Pleasure by leaving a pertinent comment or question on today’s post! The winner will be announced Tuesday.

After graduating from Harvard University, Eloisa got an M.Phil. from Oxford University, a Ph.D. from Yale and eventually became a Shakespeare professor, publishing an academic book with Oxford University Press. Currently she is an associate professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the English Department at Fordham University in New York City. Her “double life” is a source of fascination to the media and her readers. In her professorial guise, she’s written a New York Times op-ed defending romance, as well as articles published everywhere from women’s magazines such as More to writers’ journals such as the Romance Writers’ Report. She, along with five other bestselling authors, posts to the hugely successful SquawkRadio blog

Welcome to the Riskies, Eloisa. Thanks for joining us.

1. You started out writing as a diversion from your academic interests and writing; can you talk a little bit about your background, and what made you decide to write in the Regency period rather than your area of expertise?

It was a tough decision – I teach Renaissance drama, so that’s the field I know best. But I was reading (and loving) Regency romance, and I decided to place a story there. Plus, there was the fact that Regency romances are readers’ favorites, and while there are a few Renaissance romances, they’re far and few between. I wanted to write – but I also wanted to get published and read.

2.Which of your books is your favorite?

At any given time, my latest book is always my favorite because it’s still clear to me. I wake up wondering whether I did the right thing here or there. Plus, I love them most before they’re published because at that point they are all potential. I have a clear memory of thinking before Potent Pleasures (my very first book) was published that no one could possibly dislike it (ha). I loved my characters so much that I thought they were insulated from criticism (and yes, there’s a lot of parallels to motherhood here). In the years since, I’ve come to know that every book will be loved by some people and hated by others. Before a book is published, though, it’s like a baby whom everyone calls beautiful and whose mother can’t see a fault in it.

3. You’re completing the Four Sisters series with your book, Pleasure For Pleasure, that comes out November 28. What was the spark that inspired the Four Sisters series? Did it start with a character, a setting, or some other element?

It was a combination of things. I like writing about women’s friendship, but I wanted to write about a relationship between women that wasn’t quite as easy as friendship: sisterhood, in other words. My sister and I are very close – and in fact, live about a mile apart – but our relationship is complex and far more nuanced than that I share with my girlfriends. Another aspect was my abiding love for the work of Louisa May Alcott. I wanted to walk in her steps, at least a little bit.

4. Was Pleasure For Pleasure an easy or difficult book to write?

They’re all difficult. It’s one of the cruel facts of life – the first book is difficult, and you think: “the next will be easier!” and then the next is more difficult. And the book after that, more difficult still. They just get harder as I learn more about writing.

5. How do you do your research?

Well, a great deal of it comes to me through my scholarship in the early modern period. For example, Desperate Duchesses features a series of chess games – the idea for that came through scholarship that’s being done on the chess game in Shakespeare’s Tempest. Once I have a vague idea of the areas I’d like to know more about (say, chess in the Georgian period), I ask my research assistant to start scaring up some material for me. One of the consequences of being a full-time professor and director of the graduate program in English is that I don’t have time for much research myself; instead I hire brilliant people to find out interesting facts for me.

6. What are you working on now? Tell us a little bit about the Desperate Duchesses series.

Desperate Duchesses is set in the Georgian period, so that’s a change for me. I wanted a wilder, more sensual period than the Regency for the story I had in mind. It’s a series of four books, focusing around a group of duchesses whose marriages are in trouble, for various reasons. Jemma, the Duchess of Beaumont, is the best female chess player in England or Paris – and now she’s embarked on two matches. One is with the Duke of Villiers, a chess master. And the second is with her own husband, a master of strategy in Pitt’s government. The games are conducted one move a day….and if either survives to the third game, that game will be conducted blind-folded, and in bed.

This is a really sexy, fun series…I’m hugely enjoying writing it!

7. In your writing, do you feel as if you are taking risks? How?

I do it all the time – in fact, I don’t think there’s any point in writing unless you take risks. To write a story without risks would be to write a story about a perfect hero and perfect heroine, sweetly matched and perfect in bed. Where’s the story? The story only comes in the risks you take in deviating from that “perfect” formula – in creating a hero who is crap in bed, or a heroine who lies, or a marriage that’s a disaster. Pleasure for Pleasure is the story of a very curvy woman – and she doesn’t lose weight either. I take risks, but for me, that’s where all the pleasure of the story lies.

8. You are very good at writing female characters, and women’s relationships with each other. What or who inspires your fabulous heroines?

OK, don’t laugh – usually myself. What I mean is that while I’m not wildly witty and incredibly beautiful, like some of my heroines, I have to give each of them a bit of myself or they are lifeless. So when I think about my heroines, that’s what I see in them. Gabby fibs because I fibbed relentlessly when I was a child. Sophie gives birth to a child at 24 weeks and so did I. Josie (the heroine of Pleasure for Pleasure) goes through some harrowing experiences due to being plump on the marriage market – I was plump in high school and I channeled my experience straight onto the page.

9. Did you run across anything new and unusual while researching this book?

I found out some fascinating information about the early publishing world…I read a bunch of 19th century memoirs (each chapter opens with a parody of a memoir)…I learned a great deal about corsets. More than I needed to know!

10. Is there anything you wanted to include in the book that you (or your CPs or editor) felt was too controversial and left out?

Nope! My editor has pretty much given up trying to cut bits of my books: I’m horribly pig-headed.

11. SquawkRadio is a hugely successful authors’ blog; what is your favorite part of participating there?

Blogging asks for a different kind of creativity than writing books, and I find I like it immensely! To sit down and just make something up and then slap it up on the web, and then get cheerful responses from all over the world – what a high! And what a tonic to the usual writer’s day, sitting in your pajamas at home.

Is there anything else you’d like the Risky Regencies readers to know about you?

I love Regencies and I’m so happy that you’re holding up the torch for all of us!

Thank you!

Thank you, Eloisa!

Turkey.
No, not that sort of turkey.
Turkey in the Regency period and the late eighteenth-century was a place quite recently “discovered” by travelers and tourists. It came to represent all things exotic and naughty such as

Even Ingres got in on the act.

Mozart liked the idea so much he wrote The Abduction from the Seraglio and introduced Turkish characters in Cosi fan tutte. And he, Haydn, and Beethoven changed the sound of the orchestra by introducing such exotic imports as the kettledrum.

Click here and listen to the famous Ronda alla turca from Mozart’s piano sonata no. 11, K. 331.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving Day!

Janet

Well, tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I don’t actually subscribe to the notion that one should think about the positive only once a year. Experts would probably recommend we do it more often than that, but as my Risky friends and our more frequent visitors know, I’m one to stress and obsess and worry about everything. So once year seems a lot!

However, I have a blog post to do, so I will force myself to think on the bright side. It is probably good for me. 🙂

Here they are, in no particular order, just 10 of the many things I have to be thankful for.

1. That I’m in a good marriage which has only gotten better over 18 years.

2. That I have healthy and happy children who actually enjoy scrambled egg dinners when I’m too busy writing to prepare anything fancier.

3. That there’s a DSW (Designer Shoe Warehouse) within two hours of where I live. (Sometime after I turned forty a latent shoe gene kicked in.)

4. That Jane Austen lived and wrote her stories. Ditto for Georgette Heyer and every modern romance writer whose stories I treasure.

5. That I have seen 6 of my own stories reach publication.

6. That I have already written over 30,000 words during this year’s National Novel Writing Month. See the nifty bar graph on the Nano website!

7. That the processes for creating wine and real ale were invented. (How could one celebrate or deal with relatives over the holidays without them?)

8. That I have a couple of critique partners whom I can trust to give me their honest, intelligent opinions of my stories and who believe in me even when I don’t.

9. That chocolate was invented. (This picture is of The Chocolate Girl, by Jean-Etienne Liotard, c.1743-45.)

10. That I have found such good and talented friends in this Risky Regency community of ours. (Sorry, can’t help getting just a little gushy here.)

So what are you thankful for?

Elena
LADY DEARING’S MASQUERADE, RT Reviewers’ Choice, Best Regency Romance of 2005
www.elenagreene.com

In honor of Thanksgiving, I thought I’d let you all in on part of the reason I’m thankful for the job of writing Regency Romance. In my current Work In Progress, which you may recall is a road story, I have spent my days wandering around the north of England and the south of Scotland. Through the magic of the Internet I have visited many places and discovered wonderful things.

I can’t really share the visual images I’ve used to create my story, because most of the images are copyrighted, so I went into my own photographs from my 2005 trip to England and Scotland for some similar visual images.

My characters wound up in Liverpool which might have looked a little like this:

They rode over the countryside. Imagine these hills in the Autumn with all different colors:

They might have passed through villages like this one:

Or stayed in a castle ruin like this one:

My heroine may have gazed upon the home of her childhood:

And, finally, my hero and heroine may have shared a bed similar to this one:

Do I have the greatest job in the world or what?

For a wonderful virtual adventure, immerse yourself in this website!
http://www.undiscoveredscotland.co.uk/index.html

Is part of what you like to read about the Regency imagining what it looked like?
How much setting do you like in our books?

Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody!

Diane

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