Soooo, because I rambled so much at the actual Blue Willow event I got through even fewer questions than I usually get through. In light of this, I decided to … well, answer them as best I could, since it felt unfair to me to ask readers to take time out of their lives to ask me questions for me to then, y’know, not answer those questions. It’s pretty long so please find timestamps below so you can skip around as suits you.
0.00 – Random intro
1:00 – Frances
Have you ever had difficulty selling concepts to agents, publishers, etc. due to criticism like “there are an unrealistic amount of queer characters” or “having queer characters in this setting is anachronistic”? It’s a difficulty I’m facing in my own career right now, and I’d love to figure out how to tackle it.
8:20 – Amira
In the discussion questions at the end of the book you raised the fact that some readers challenge the historicity or believability of happy endings for queer characters in historical romance. In interviews, you’ve mentioned that you follow publishing trends to make your work more likely to find a publisher. My question is, firstly, whether you ever feel constrained by this need to take account of trends, and secondly, to what extent authors and readers can set as well as follow trends. It seems unfortunate that historic romance is still so focused on dukes and working class characters, if present at all, are marginal figures. In the interests of redressing the balance, could we start a fishwife subgenre with a novel about two fishwives from Pittenweem or something? I’m only slightly joking about the fishwives.
20.45 – Brina
You write in several genres— do you have a favorite? And what do you love most about that genre?
22:27- Lisa
To your readers delight, you’ve had a prolific few years as of late. Congratulations! Curious, do you write one book at a time or do you usually have several going at once? If it’s the latter, do you find it difficult to switch between each “universe”?
23:57 – S
Why did you pick de Vere as Gracewood’s last name? Was it a nod to the 17th Earl of Oxford?
27:47- Amanda
What is Kate Kanes favorite non alcholic drink?
27:54 – Alicia
If you only had one pair of nordic socks to share, which of all your fictional characters would you choose to give them to?
28:51 – Dobbs
1. Do you find it easier to write historicals or contemporaries? (I’m thinking mostly with regards to research and such)
2. What is your favourite type and flavour of biscuit?
30.35 – Monika
1) This is such a unique story about Waterloo and Viola faking her death to live her true self while leaving her best friend behind. What gave you the idea to write a regency romance with a Trans heroine?
2) You don’t use any modern day identity labels in the book because they didn’t exist in 1818. Was it challenging or liberating to write in language that didn’t include words like trans, queer, bi, PTSD, etc?
3) Which character in ALFAD was the most fun to write and why?
36.10 – Quimey
Where did the inspiration for writing this book come from?
37:50 – Lynsey
What was your inspiration for this book? Do you have the characters in mind before you begin developing the story?
38:44 – Becs
A few characters from your books are writers and they always have intriguing and enticing works mentioned. Are you ever tempted and/or distracted to draft these imaginary works? For example: Ardy’s Milieu articles (the Ellery rave article?); Ash Winters’ Rick Glass books?; Bridget’s publishing house books?
41:03 – Monika / Leo
Would Gracewood & Viola ever run into Valentine & Bonny, and where would that be?
41:55 – Hannah
You referenced The Castle of Otranto in your book, have you watched the 1977 short film of Castle of Otranto?
42.06 – Amanda
Which book(s) of yours have you most enjoyed writing?
42.58 – Ina
What are some of the first things you do when transitioning from coming up with a story idea to writing a first draft? Do you find that your writing process differs across genres (historical romance, contemporary, fantasy, etc.)?
44.29 – Quimey
Were there any quotes (or passages) that stood out to you from the book? If so, which ones?
45:52 – Nicole
I love all variations of your sexy grumps and manic pixies! If you had to assign yourself a percentage of pixie v. grump, what would the breakdown be?
46:27 – Melinda
Is there a trope you’d like to explore that you haven’t already?
47:50 – Aliza
I love the level of descriptive detail you put into Viola’s wardrobe – was there specific inspiration behind the clothes/accessories you wrote for her?
50.04 – Quimey
Why have you decided to make A lady for a duke a historical fiction?
51:28 – Isobel
Important question, given the platty jubes (as apparently the kids are calling it), scones: jam first or cream first?
51:54 – Aster
Are there other genres you would enjoy writing in future that you haven’t had the chance to try out yet?
52:58 – Kathleen
If you were going to a regency costume party, which monster would you be dressed as? Why? (shamelessly taken from the book discussion questions)
54:30 – Hannah
When researching this book, were you able to find some historical examples of people who were able to live as their true gender in the Regency era?
56:35 – Jackie
Can you talk about historical anachronisms? And what anachronisms were due to genre expectations (ie., the protagonist being a duke when very few aristocrats fought in the war), and which were due to your goals for writing a book with a trans heroine where being trans was not the source of conflict? Sorry, I meant men with titles, not aristocrats; younger sons did fight…
1:10:41 – Laura
Who are some of your favorite authors? Who do you find funny?
1:12:58 – Deborah
I love the epilogue and want to live there. Can you talk about your process in crafting this HEA? POV choice?
1:18:52 – Bess
On the historical romance genre side, what were some of the things that you found were important beats to create the sort of story you had in mind? Like, at the outset did you know the story would absolutely require, say, a midnight rescue or ballroom scene or intimate moment in a garden, etc?
1:23:11 – Juli
Who are your favorite histrom authors?
“A duke and a fishwife”! 🤣🤣🤣 OMG you are slaying me!
Just needs a good duke/fish pun in the title and I’ll be sellin’ that to Avon.
The Duke’s piscine bride
Gurnard, your Grace
His Lady Lamprey
The mackerel Duke
Wild moonlight herrings
Mrs Flounder, my love
The Duke of Halibut’s saltiness
Lady Barramundi’s secret spawn
Coronets and catfish
Marrying for the mullet
(Sorry. Irresistible.)
I always very much enjoy listening to you, I love the way your words come tumbling out as if you’re trying to get the words out as fast as you can while your brain goes dancing ahead. Sometimes a bit of a challenge for my aging ears. (I’m getting on for 80 – sometimes I wonder if I am your oldest fan. Surely not.)
Oh God, I’m working so hard to try and not just blurt all my words out – but I get nervous so then my brain starts racing and I realise I’m incomprehensible. I always feel incredibly sorry for anyone trying to interview me.
Also definitely not my oldest reader – not that I’m keeping score. One of the understated pleasures of being a writer is discovering just how diverse a reader base can be in all kinds of ways 🙂
I TOTALLY predicted your Nordic Sock answer. Although Ardy would rock them with one of his hundred pairs of very skinny jeans.
On purely practical grounds, maybe they should go to Alfie Bell.
I think I’d also have to vote for Ardy as the (occasional) northernmost dweller on these isles. Plus you’re so right about them going with skinny jeans.
Ardybean is also a good pick – I can definitely see him rocking some Nordic socks, maybe with some cartoon print pjs. Probably Caspian would buy them for him and Ellery would steal them and then deny it.
Ok well I wouldn’t want the space-time continuum to collapse, so best to keep each Duke Universe separate. Fair! 😉
What a fab Q&A, love the format. Thank you so much for taking the time to answer all of our questions! (Sorry I think I may have asked too many, I wasn’t sure they would all make it in! Oops.)
Omg, totally fine – normally I actually answer more at the, y’know, event. But I’d started babbling about other things and then I feel super bad.
Aww you’re all good. Love your rambly babbling, or babbly rambling. 😉
Seriously though you gave so much thoughtful and insightful information about the book, your process and research, I love hearing all about that stuff. And it’s been a pleasure learning new things. Everyone had such great questions! xoxo
Not that this is really your point, but I think you may be better at the small-town America tropes than you think, because viewed from the right angle Pansies is a lot like a really awesome early Springsteen song. Springsteen makes a joke in his Broadway show about how he now lives ten minutes from his home town – “but ‘Born to Come Back?’ Who would have bought that?” At some point when I was reading Pansies – which I loved, btw – my brain put together “gritty beach town” + “semi-suicidal car rides” + “deserted midnight fairground” + “constant struggle to live up to your father’s unreachable standards of masculinity” and went “Eeeeee it’s ‘Born to Come Back!'”
I have no idea if you intended any of that resonance, but for me it worked really well – both as a book on its own, obviously, but also as a way of engaging with a lot of those tropes where the struggle w/masculinity and gender roles is often on the surface but the stuff about sexuality and sexual identity is more buried and subtextual. Like, Springsteen has a lot of arguably very queer songs, but also has a lot of fans who will firmly deny that there’s anything remotely queer about his work, so it was cool to see those tropes used in an explicitly queer story.
Oh gosh thank you. Weirdly, I did actually write Pansies to try and reframe the American small town romance into a UK setting (just because the publisher I was working with at the time strongly felt that the only LGBTQ+ books that sold were small town books and BDSM stories, usually about cis gay men, and yeah that publisher was not … ideal) but it feels like the sort of thing you can only do once? Especially because I kind of saw that particular kind of setting as inextricably linked to the themes you mention and wringing some kind of HEA from them felt weirdly satisfying.
Whereas, obviously, with the trend being romcoms, I just keep cheerfully writing different romcoms.
Also I was actually listening to lot of Springsteen when I was writing Pansies. I totally agree there’s something resonantly queer about the themes he explores in his music, which is not to make broader comments about his sexual identity. There’s actually a really interesting, err, academic paper about it if that’s the sort of thing you dig: Beyond Blood Brothers: Qeeer Bruce Springsteen by Rosalie Zdzienicka Fanshel. Again, it makes no inappropriate incursions upon Springsteen’s own identity but discusses homosocial bonding/desire as an integral part of his artistic vision.
I enjoyed the Blue Willow talk and these answers. Thank you for taking the time.💜
Oh my pleasure, thank you so much for coming <3
Thanks so much for this Alexis! I loved your response to Jackie’s question, I could listen to a lot more rambling about historical accuracy, anachronisms, specificity etc. The concept of historical setting as metaphor is one that had never fully entered my head, so that’s going to give me something to chew on.
Ah, thank you – glad you enjoyed. As you can probably tell from just how rambly I got, it’s the sort of thing I’m super interested in.
This is the case when you turn on the record to listen before going to work, and shamelessly late, because it is very difficult to break away from listening! 🙂
really. sorry not sorry 🙂❤️
Omg, that’s so sweet – thank you so much. Hope you didn’t get in trouble at work.
Oh my goodness what a treat it was to listen to you both at the event as well as this bonus content. I found it all fascinating but am especially musing on the delight that was giving the castle and Anglo-Saxon name whilst locating the family roots into the ancient French lineages. You called it a pixie brain, I call it an associative mind but I love these layers of Easter eggs in your stories. Even when I don’t pick them all up because, you know, my being civilised is a more recent thing than that of the De Veres’ 😁 I had very much been curious about the name Morgencald as I read. My mind went to language and meaning instead of history, and delighted in the idea that morning warmth (in the cold halls of the castle) very much fitted in the lovely awakening of Viola and Gracewood’s relationship but also the old Welsh meaning for Morgen/Morgan (seaborn) and the Shakespearean layers. I should also add that I thought you finally broke me with this book: I wasn’t able to read anything for a week after. I wandered listlessly from book to book and nothing stuck. Am now healing and reading again so thank you.
Thank you so much for the kind words about the book – and, you know me and death of the author, I definitely don’t think the associations you brought to the text or the name of the castle were, like, wrong or anything. I think it literally means “Cold Morning” in Anglo Saxon (or in a bastardisation of Anglo Saxon at any rate) but I love the Old Welsh associations as well, because obviously the sea plays a major thematic role in the book. And, obviously, a lot of Gracewood’s yearnings revolve around bringing warmth to this terrible cold castle, which I like to think he and Viola (and their children) have managed by the end of the book.
It’s all super interesting and different language groups (and brain access to these) give a different but equally evocative meaning. I went more with the German cald means warm which struck me as the opposite to how I imagined the place. An aspirational name if you will 😁
I just had a thought. Maybe Regency romance should be considered a form of alternate universe fiction, rather than historical fiction.
I’ve honestly always thought of it as being a kind of AU – specifically because of the social dynamics involved. After all, you can’t really a posit any sort of meaningful HEA for a modern reader where the heroine loses what few legal rights she possesses after getting married. I think what sort of troubles me about an over-focus on historical accuracy (or lack thereof) is that there’s a tendency to dismiss/overlook elements of anachronism that support our personal fantasies (anyone can marry a duke, nobody has syphilis, as long as you marry the right man it doesn’t matter you have no legal identity) but condemn those that render the fantasy inclusive (yes, Black people existed, queer people can get HEAs too).
Excellent point. It reminds me of how in the U.S. you can have a TV show set in NYC without Black people, but you can’t have one set in a prison without Black people, because that would be unrealistic.
Thank you for taking the time to do this, and the Blue Willow Talk, and the reading recommendations. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to everything. Your discussion of the de Vere name and that historical context was particularly fascinating, and I loved getting to hear your thoughts about the (gorgeous, moving) epilogue.
Also: Moby Dick in space!! I would read that in a heartbeat.
Thank you so much – it was such a pleasure, and I was really grateful to everyone for their interesting, insightful questions.
As for Moby Dick in space, I just need to make sure I get the right amount of space whale penis in there…
Omg, pleasure. And I am definitely not expecting anyone to give up an hour of their lives just to listen to me pondering and going back on myself. But picking and choosing the questions seemed kind of rude somehow. Hence I did all of them.
Thank you so much for being so generous with your time for the BW event and 2 bonus follow up posts – blowing up my TBR list with book recs and answering all the questions (including mine, thank you). Your answers were fascinating and funny and moving – particularly about A Lady for a Duke’s epilogue coming from Jack’s POV. It is just the loveliest conclusion with hope and affirmation.
Olivia Waite (whom I think Alexis listed in a long list of recommended authors) has queer historical romances about, not fishwives, but everyday people –beekeepers, piano-repairers, etc. The Feminine Pursuits series. I think there is one countess, but just one. Maybe that’s a rung on the fishwife ladder?
Also Sarah Waters (though I can’t call them romances) writes queer historicals about pickpockets etc. They’re not *without* romance!
This was just delightful! Thank you so much for taking time to answer all these questions.
YES YES YES ALEXIS PLEASE I NEED THAT SECOND CHANGE SECRET BABY ROMANCE FROM YOU, that’s my favorite trope ever and i’d so read that in a heartbeat.