An Interview with Eloisa James

Desperately seeking Duchesses

An Interview with Eloisa James

One of the benefits of having a very good friend who runs a library is that she is very good at filtering books I might like. Every time I see her she'll have put a couple of titles onto my account, and these cover everything from hardcore scifi right through to historical romance. Like all good booky friends, she has introduced me to new authors and occasionally picks me up something in a genre I wouldn't look at on my own. Now I don't like everything she gives me, but that's okay because she doesn't like everything I give her to read, either. That's what booky friends are for, and booky friends still working in libraries are the best.

That's how I discovered Eloisa James. I have a soft spot for Regency romance, but having been raised on Georgette Heyer, I am a choosy (or just plain fussy, according to my friend) about the books I spend my limited leisure time reading. Eloisa James hasn't disappointed.

Writing primarily in both Georgian and Regency England, her books are witty, heartwarming and all-round great romances. However, I was just as intrigued by the person as I was the books. Not only is she the author of over 18 Romance novels, but she is also a highly respected professor of Shakespeare. The idea that a distinguished academic was also a successful writer in the much-maligned genre of Romance was too delicious a prospect to ignore. So when she agreed to be interviewed, I was practically giddy.


Hello Eloisa, welcome to the Literary Project! What got you started writing, and why Romance?

I always loved reading romance. If you don't love reading it, don't try it. Various people have encouraged me to write historical fiction (with a PhD, this is inevitable) -- but I don't enjoy reading it, so I don't plan to. If I did, it would have to be a hybrid historical fiction/pop fiction.


At any rate, I really got seriously to work writing when I was a junior professor with big student loans. We had one child, and my husband was dead set against having another baby because of those loans. So I wrote my second novel; it went up for auction; the final advance was just over my student loans. We had another baby the next year, but to get the money, I had to write 3 books. By the time I finished, I was hooked.


Can you talk us through your path to publication?

My first book went nowhere. I had no idea what I was doing, so I mailed the whole thing (over 400 pages!) to a load of publishers and they all turned it down -- this was the 80s. When I tried the next time, I sent one chapter and a query letter to 5 agents. I bought a book of literary agents, and I decided to start from the back (figuring other people start from the front).One of those five letters was to Kim Witherspoon at Witherspoon Associates. Years later, I'm still with Kim. Now she's one of three partners at a huge literary agency called Inkwell Management. I owe a lot of my career success to her.


Kim put that first book up for auction, and two publishers got in a bidding war: Delacorte (now Bantam/Dell) and Avon. I published my first three books in hardcover with Delacorte, and then decided to move publishers. I bought back the contract for my 4th book and moved to Avon, where I've been ever since. I have a terrific editor, Carrie Feron, who also edits Susan Elizabeth Philips -- she keeps my writing at its very best.


You are often described as having a double life – that of a Shakespeare Professor with some seriously impressive academic qualifications going on, and another as a romance writer. Do you see it as a double life? What is it that separates them so clearly?

It is something of a double life. What separates them, really, is writing. I teach in both fields, if more sporadically, obviously, in romance, and that feels the same. I have great female friends from both sides, and that feels the same. But the writing experience is very different. It can take me months to write a 25 page academic article, and that's working on it consistently. I give about 4-5 months thought to a novel, and after that I write the whole thing in a couple of months, not counting revisions. They are both deeply pleasurable writing experiences, but very different.


The Romance genre is often looked down on, and consequently so are those that write in it, despite the genre selling well and consistently. Why do you think it has a poor reputation? Considering your academic credentials, do you still encounter negative opinions of your writing simply for being “romance”?

Yes. All the time. That goes with the territory of writing romance. It's getting marginally better in pop culture, but academics are slow to change.

One of the accusations levelled at Historical Romance as a genre is that the heroine often thinks and acts like a modern day woman, only in a posh frock. Why do you think this is? Is it a fair complaint?

Sure. I think it's a fair complaint. I also think it's an uninteresting complaint because it presumes that the author of a popular romance novel is trying to write historical fiction. We're not. We write a very different kind of fiction, with different tools. I think a genre is a genre: historical fiction is no better or harder than romance fiction. But the requirements, the space the genre fills in terms of readers' experience, is quite different. A romance reader wants to find herself at some point in the novel. A reader of historical fiction is looking for a historical character.

Getting the balance between historical fact and a great story can be tricky, and one authors approach differently. If forced at gunpoint to choose one or the other, which would win for you both as a writer and as a reader?

Choose the story, every single time. See above -- you're not writing historical fiction, nor an academic essay on a given time-period. This is romance and its primary goal is entertainment rather than instruction. If a writer gets into the exact details of what panes of glass looked like in 1817, she'll lose the momentum of the story. That said, one of my favorite things is to weave historical facts into the actual plot -- so using the uncertain state of the new water closets in When the Duke Returns (he returns to a sewer smell in his house), or the allergic possibilities involved in the Georgian penchant for high-dressed hair in Affair before Christmas.

When reading books by other romance writers – both historical and otherwise – do you have any pet peeves that are enough to make you throw a book across the room?

I don't throw books -- but I find sloppy writing annoying. That's the grammarian/professor in me coming out.

Your books cover both the Georgian and the Regency periods, which were quite different in attitude despite being close in time. Do you have a preference for period, or is it that the stories more naturally fit into one or the other?

The stories I had in mind for the Desperate Duchesses series would never have fit in the Regency. As you say, the Georgian is a very different period, in terms of morality and marriage. I wanted to write about broken marriages, and so I needed a period in which such breaks were flaunted. Also, frankly, I'm fascinated by Georgian hair and clothing. I came back to the Regency for the books I'm writing (my versions of fairy tales) because I needed a break from all those wigs!


Series of novels following the intertwined lives of a group of characters seem increasingly popular in Romance – why do you think this is? What is the appeal to the readers?

Romance follows pop culture, and programs such as House, for example, have viewers coming back every week not merely for the medical story, but for the character subplots. That said, I'm writing my first novels that are stand-alones: my Cinderella (A Kiss at Midnight, coming July 27), which will be followed by Beauty & the Beast (no title yet). It's a challenge to write intertwined novels, and it's been great to focus more closely on one group of characters. I'm hoping readers don't mind.

What are you working on right now?

I just finished writing my version of Beauty and the Beast-- I actually submitted it yesterday. So now I'm just biting my nails while I wait to see what my editor thinks.

In terms of your writing, what has been your career high to date?

Hitting the New York Times bestseller list.

What is your ultimate goal as a writer?

To be #5 or above on the New York Time Bestseller list.

What is the best piece of advice that you were given about your writing – and did you follow it?

Julia Quinn told me to ignore all the (truly vicious) reviews of my first book that accused me of head-hopping, and write exactly as I like. That was extremely helpful to me!

And finally, can you sum up a key piece of advice for aspiring historical romance writers in just one sentence?

You need to keep the pace of the story in mind -- don't let yourself get bogged down, by historical details, by back story, by subplots. Just make sure the story races on, so the readers simply can't put it down.


Huge thanks to Eloisa for sharing her experiences with us. Eloisa's books can be purchased here (I recommend the Essex Sisters books), her lovely website is here, and she also tweets.

Personally, I think Romance is one of those genres that will always ignite a debate amongst the writing and reading community. I can't say I agree 100% with Eloisa's opinions regarding historical detail, but she is certainly right about the importance of a story that readers just can't put down, and it is an art I can safely say she has mastered.

Having said all that, maybe the real attraction of Romance as a genre is the diversity it offers both writers and readers alike. This particular sandpit is big enough for those for whom story trumps historical fact, and also for those fussy, nit-picking readers like me, who get annoyed when the writer confuses a barouche with a high perch phaeton.