S05.35: Trailblazer Loretta Chase
The Trailblazers conversations continue this week with the brilliantly talented Loretta Chase, who we adore, and not only because she wrote one of our favorite romances of all time. We obviously talk about Lord of Scoundrels and Jessica and Dain, but we also talk about writing, about the challenges of writer’s block, about the glorious rabbit holes of research, and yes…we ask hard hitting questions about The Mummy. We are so grateful to Loretta for making time for us, and for writing such glorious books.
If you are in New England, you can meet Loretta and Sarah at the Ashland Public Library Romance Festival this Saturday, May 20th in Ashland, MA. Attendance is free! Learn more and register at Eventbrite.
We have a Patreon now, and it comes with an extremely busy and fun Discord community! Join other magnificent firebirds to hang out, talk romance, and be cool together in a private group full of excellent people. Learn more at patreon.com.
Show Notes
Welcome author Loretta Chase, author of over 20 historical romance novels. We did a deep dive on Lord of Scoundrels back in season 2.
Authors mentioned: Jayne Ann Krentz writing as Amanda Quick, Susan Holloway Scott, Mary Jo Putney, and Caroline Linden.
Publishing Professionals: Gail Fortune at Berkley, Walker & Co. Publishers and editor Ellen Edwards
Books Mentioned This Episode
Sponsors
Desirée Niccoli, author of Called to the Deep and Song of Lorelei,
both available for $0.99 this week in celebration of MerMay
and
Avery Maxwell, author of Your Last First Kiss,
available now from Amazon, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.
Loretta Chase 00:00:00 / #: The main thing about that book was that it was in me. I did not have to find it. It was there and it was demanding to be written. The characters were in my mind very clearly from the beginning, and that never happens. I'm always struggling. I'm always fumbling. It takes me a while to get to know who they are and what do they want and what's the goal, et cetera, et cetera. In this case, it was all very clear to me. The main thing I saw in the beginning was this child who had had this horrible, horrible childhood, badly traumatized, that turned him into this person who's a sort of monstrous. And I thought, what do you do for this person, or what's needed here for some kind of a balance?
00:01:02 / #: And the heroine was there instantly. It was like, okay, she's someone who just gets it. She gets the thinking, she gets the guy thinking, she gets whatever it is. And why is she that way? Because she grew up with boys all the time, and she's just smart and paying attention. I needed someone who could see through him, and Jessica just came to my mind. So they really formed in themselves on the stage, and the rest of it, the rest of that book, I know it sounds mystical and it's like writers shouldn't wait for this to happen because it doesn't usually, but it just wrote itself. It was like a movie and all I had to do was write it.
Sarah MacLean 00:01:47 / #: That was the voice of Loretta Chase, author of Regency Romances single title Historical Romances, and as everyone knows, Lord Of Scoundrels. This is Fated Mates. I'm Sarah McLean. I read romance novels and I write them.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:08 / #: And I'm Jennifer Prokop, a romance reader and editor. You are about to hear our trailblazer episode with Loretta, where she talks about how she came to writing romance, her research process, and why she believes in historical research and folding it so well into her books and her life in romance.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:32 / #: And how it is that Lord of Sundress came to be. Without further ado, let's get into it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:02:44 / #: Here we are with the Loretta Chase. I'm just going to make words now, just they're going to flow out of me in a rush, because I'm so overwhelmed.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:52 / #: Loretta, we are so thrilled to have you.
Loretta Chase 00:02:56 / #: Oh, thank you for having me.
Sarah MacLean 00:02:58 / #: It's a delight. I don't know that you know this, but we are avowed Loretta Chase fans here at the podcast. We reference your characters all the time.
Loretta Chase 00:03:09 / #: Oh, thank you.
Sarah MacLean 00:03:11 / #: And of course, we've talked a lot about Lord of Scoundrels, so I'm sure we'll get into that as well. But in general, I'm just so thrilled to have you here. Thank you.
Loretta Chase 00:03:20 / #: I feel honored to be here, because I know about your podcast and I think it's just very cool.
Sarah MacLean 00:03:26 / #: Thank you. So we start all of these conversations the same way, and that is to say, how did you come to this genre?
Loretta Chase 00:03:36 / #: I came in a very weird way because I was never a romance reader. My mind was poisoned by my English professors, so I thought very scornfully of romance. And the way I came to it was after I had been writing professionally, and my husband said to me, "Do you want to write video scripts for the rest of your life? What do you really want to do?" And eventually, after much weeping, I admitted that I wanted to write a novel, but I had never been able to. I would write and write and write, and it just went on forever and it didn't have a story, and it didn't make any sense.
00:04:23 / #: And I realized just in that conversation, I made the connection with what I was doing in video and what could be done in a novel. And I realized all I needed was structure. So when you're writing scripts for video, you have a specific structure, you have a message that you want to get across. And I would always ask the clients, "What's the message? Can you tell me in one sentence what you want the audience to come away with?" And I realized the genre fiction does that.
Jennifer Prokop 00:04:54 / #: It sure does, bless.
Loretta Chase 00:04:55 / #: Yes. So I'm looking at mystery. I'm looking at science fiction. I'm looking at various genres, but it was like, oh, wait a minute, love stories. That's the part of the books that I really like, and maybe that's where I should be working. And yeah, love conquers all. Yes, please. Because it doesn't, in so many of the classic novels, the women are victimized. They die if they have sex. And so, I thought, oh, well, this is a great way to correct that. And I have a structure. I have a structure. I have something I like, which is a love story. And that gave me my start, and it worked nicely.
Sarah MacLean 00:05:47 / #: When you talk about the books or the parts of the books that you always love, the love story, what were you reading before you came to the genre?
Loretta Chase 00:05:59 / #: Well, a good example would be like Charles Dickens, Bleak House. All right. So there's Lady Dedlock and she's had an illegitimate child, and there's no forgiveness for her, she has to die. Anna Karenina, she has an affair, she has to die. Women who follow their sexual inclinations or fall in love outside of the norms of the time, they're punished. And I wanted to rewrite those stories. So actually, I did that with one of mine, not quite a lady, I took Lady Dedlock story as a starting point and said, "Okay, here's a person who had a child out of wedlock. It was kept a big secret, but she's going to have a happy ending."
Jennifer Prokop 00:06:52 / #: So at some point, did you read romance as research, or did you just-
Loretta Chase 00:06:57 / #: Oh, yes.
Jennifer Prokop 00:06:58 / #: Okay. So I mean, once you decided, wait, I might want to write this, did that happen concurrently or did you stop and think, okay, I'm going to give myself permission to read these books now?
Loretta Chase 00:07:09 / #: I approached it the way I would've approached a project in an English class. I started doing the research.
Sarah MacLean 00:07:15 / #: Do the reading, Loretta.
Loretta Chase 00:07:19 / #: Yes, exactly. So I read maybe hundreds of romances because I was also looking to find where would I fit. So at that time, there was Kathleen Woodiwiss and Johanna Lindsey, and they wrote those big sprawling romances, and I didn't think that was me. And then, I encountered the traditional regencies and I thought, oh, this is perfect. This is a time period I'm very interested in. I love the witty banter. And it was like there were smaller books, so I felt like I could handle that for my first thing. So that was how I ended up there. But there was a lot of research before I actually started trying to write a book.
Sarah MacLean 00:08:14 / #: Your first books are traditional regencies and they're category regencies, right?
Loretta Chase 00:08:20 / #: Right. I wrote for Walker & Company.
Sarah MacLean 00:08:24 / #: Now, wait, that's a name we haven't talked about at all.
Jennifer Prokop 00:08:27 / #: I know. I don't don't think we've ever talked about that.
Sarah MacLean 00:08:28 / #: What is that?
Loretta Chase 00:08:30 / #: Wow. When I started writing, there were so many places that were publishing regencies. There were so many lines. I made a big list and I went with Walker because they published hard cover, and I thought that was cool, but I was not expecting to be accepted. That was my thing. And they accepted the book.
Jennifer Prokop 00:08:53 / #: So this is Isabella?
Loretta Chase 00:08:55 / #: Yes, yes. And then, I later discovered it was primarily they were publishing for libraries. And that worked out fine because my agent ended up selling the paperback rights to Avon. And it was through Avon that I met my editor, Ellen Edwards, and she was the person who got me to write historical romance, longer books.
Sarah MacLean 00:09:21 / #: How many books did you do with Walker?
Loretta Chase 00:09:24 / #: Six.
Sarah MacLean 00:09:25 / #: Okay. Walker was publishing the hardcovers, and Avon was publishing the paperbacks?
Loretta Chase 00:09:29 / #: Mostly, except for one book. I think Fawcett had published one book. The rest of it were Avon.
Sarah MacLean 00:09:35 / #: And Ellen was always your editor at Avon?
Loretta Chase 00:09:39 / #: Yes, yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:09:40 / #: So obviously Ellen Edwards is a name that we have talked about before and heard many people talk about. Can you give us a sense of what that editorial relationship was like with Ellen? Because it does feel like she had a really special eye.
Loretta Chase 00:09:57 / #: Oh, my gosh. She was amazing. I loved her so much. She would write a little note, three words in the margins, and a whole idea would open up for me, or I would see how I had gone astray. But she wouldn't say, "You've gone astray." She would just ask a little question. And she was so perceptive. When she invited me to write historical romance, I said, I don't think I can do that. I don't think I can write those big books. And she said, "It's just like what you're doing only bigger." And then she said, "Read Laura Kinsale."
Jennifer Prokop 00:10:41 / #: Oh, sure.
Sarah MacLean 00:10:44 / #: A perfect beginning for you, yeah.
Loretta Chase 00:10:46 / #: Yes. So she knew that I would connect with what Laura Kinsale was writing, and she was absolutely right. She was just so insightful. I can't say enough about her. I think she was a fabulous editor.
Sarah MacLean 00:11:02 / #: So you moved from Walker over to Avon for single titles, and that's the early '90s?
Loretta Chase 00:11:11 / #: Yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:11:11 / #: Yeah. And that's sort of what we always clock here as the heyday of there was a really, or maybe not the heyday, but there was a really remarkable sea change in historical right then in the early '90s. And it was led largely by, it seems like Ellen there. And I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what was going on during that time period. Did it feel like readers were just drawn to historicals? Now, we look back and we say, "Okay, well, Ellen, she'd acquired you and you put out Lord of Scoundrels," which we'll get to. And then she acquired Beverly Jenkins, who was doing what Bev does over there. And Lisa Kleypas' books from the early '90s really were changing the game. And was there something?
Jennifer Prokop 00:12:06 / #: Was there in the water?
Loretta Chase 00:12:10 / #: I'm not sure, but there was something else. I mean, Avon wasn't the only place. This is the interesting thing. A lot of the friends that I made early on were writing regencies for Signet, and then Signet started doing what they were calling Super Regencies, so it was like the traditional Regency, but a bigger story, more sex. And that's a lot similar to what was going on at Avon, although Avon's weren't quite so much in that Regency, not precisely in that Regency mode. So there was definitely something going on in other places. It was just that-
Sarah MacLean 00:12:45 / #: Across the board?
Loretta Chase 00:12:46 / #: Yes, yes. And that Regency sensibility, I think was, for some reason, it ebbs and flows. I've been around for so long because I'm so ancient that I see these ebbs and flows of what people are reading and what they're not reading. I really can't account for it. It's hard to account for what happens with tastes. And I'm not that analytical to begin with. I write what I write and cross my fingers. That's okay.
Jennifer Prokop 00:13:20 / #: If you had six books before, oh my God, I've already spaced on the name of that-
Loretta Chase 00:13:25 / #: Walker.
Jennifer Prokop 00:13:26 / #: Walker.
Loretta Chase 00:13:27 / #: Yes.
Jennifer Prokop 00:13:27 / #: Does that mean Lord of Scoundrels was the first Avon book? I'm sort of looking at FictionDB, but it maybe-
Sarah MacLean 00:13:35 / #: No, it was The Lion's Daughter, right?
Loretta Chase 00:13:36 / #: The Lion's Daughter, and then Captives of the Night. And I've always forgotten to tell this story about that transition, but right around the time, I think when I had written Captives of the Night, Jayne Ann Krentz started writing as Amanda Quick, and I think she sort of triggered a sea change in the way we were approaching historical romances because she came with that contemporary romance sensibility, and she was writing romantic suspense.
00:14:15 / #: And when she turned to writing these historical sort of Regency Victorian set, they had that feel to them, and they weren't quite the sprawling books that we were working on at that time. And I'm sure that fed into my thinking when I was writing Lord of Scoundrels, because it's quite a different book from Captives of the Night and The Lion's Daughter. And I think that's part of it was that influence of, wow, this is another way to do this. And there are things that you absorbed by osmosis. And it was only, I mean, actually really, the other day when I was thinking about that, that I remembered about Jayne Ann Krentz and that Amanda Quick thing and how that seemed to have changed things.
Jennifer Prokop 00:15:09 / #: I vividly remember as a reader reading Amanda Quick and feeling like this was different. I could tell it was different. And I just was so drawn to those books. And it's not that I didn't love, I of course loved it all, but I vividly remember really feeling like everything about those books was different. And so, it doesn't surprise me to know that that was apparent to the authors at the time as well. New rules almost, for what could be done.
Loretta Chase 00:15:40 / #: Yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:42 / #: It felt like heroines especially were shifting at the time.
Loretta Chase 00:15:46 / #: Yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:15:47 / #: Amanda Quick brought a very different kind of heroine to the Regency.
Loretta Chase 00:15:51 / #: Yes, absolutely. And it was more clearly feminist and more clearly aware of differences in communication between women and men, and addressed some really interesting aspects of male-female relationships that I did not feel as though we had or I was dealing with anyway, in my earlier books necessarily. And then, I started reading some other things. One of the books that was very influential was You Just Don't Understand.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:28 / #: Oh yeah, I remember that. Sure.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:30 / #: I don't remember that.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:34 / #: It was like a pop culture kind of psychology book.
Sarah MacLean 00:16:38 / #: I see. Women and men in conversation.
Jennifer Prokop 00:16:39 / #: About women and men in conversation. And it was like the first time I was ever, and this was when I was in college. I was in college from 1991 to 1995, and it was this take, I remember about topping people when you're talking and someone comes along and just talks over you, which I feel like I'm kind of doing now. Sorry, everybody. And it was really a real take at this is how people communicate differently based on how essentially they were raised in their gender identity.
Loretta Chase 00:17:12 / #: So that was very enlightening. And then, that also led to my having conversations with my husband about that, about communication styles. So I think that also influenced the way I dealt with the relationships in my stories.
Jennifer Prokop 00:17:27 / #: This week's episode of Faded Mates is sponsored by Desirée Niccoli, author of the Haven Cove duology, Called to the Deep, book one, and the Song of Lorelei, book two.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:39 / #: Jen, did you know that in many circles, it is not in fact the month of May. It's the month of Mermay.
Jennifer Prokop 00:17:47 / #: Amazing. I feel better for knowing this.
Sarah MacLean 00:17:50 / #: Listen, if you're out there and you are enjoying all the drawings of mermaids that are being posted on social media and all the talk about mermaids that's happening, and you're just cannot wait for this new live action Disney movie, we have the series for you. This one is pretty delicious. And I use that word intentionally because it features Killian Quinn, the captain of an offshore fishing boat that receives a distress call from a sailing ship in a terrible storm early in the book in the Duology. He and his crew head out. They make a big save, they save the crew. And a woman who does not know who she is and has no knowledge of how she got on the boat, turns out this is Lorelei Roth who is not just a normal woman, she is actually a mermaid. And in the world building of this series, mermaids eat people.
Jennifer Prokop 00:18:49 / #: I'm not even mad about it.
Sarah MacLean 00:18:50 / #: Listen, at one point in the blurb it says, "The handsome captain begins to look like a tasty snack in more ways than one."
Jennifer Prokop 00:18:59 / #: Perfect. No notes.
Sarah MacLean 00:19:00 / #: Are they going to get together? What happens when he finds out she's a flesh eating mermaid? Does she eat him and not, I mean, I'm sure-
Jennifer Prokop 00:19:09 / #: Sure. We all know what you're about to say. Here's the thing, everybody, in celebration of Mermay, you can get both books in the Haven Cove duology between May 15th and May 22nd for only 99 cents wherever you buy your eBooks. It's also available in print. Thanks to Desiree for sponsoring this week's episode.
Sarah MacLean 00:19:29 / #: And happy Mermay to all who celebrate. So Ellen brings you over to do these kind of single titles for Avon. You write two, and then you write Lord of Scoundrels, and let's get into it. I mean, because we have to. Tell us about the writing of it, the conception of it, and then because you say, "Well, they weren't like these big sprawling books from before," but Lord of Scoundrels is a epic store. I mean, it covers a lot of ground. So I wonder if you could talk a little bit about how it came to be.
Loretta Chase 00:20:15 / #: Okay, I had to make myself some notes about this because-
Jennifer Prokop 00:20:19 / #: Long time ago.
Loretta Chase 00:20:22 / #: Well, yes, long time ago, and I write intuitively, so I'm not quite sure what I'm doing most of the time. There were some things that fed into that, but the main thing about that book was that it was in me. I did not have to find it. It was there and it was demanding to be written. The characters were in my mind very clearly from the beginning, and that never happens. I'm always struggling. I'm always fumbling. It takes me a while to get to know who they are and what do they want and what's the goal, et cetera, et cetera. In this case, it was all very clear to me.
00:21:08 / #: The main thing I saw in the beginning was this child who had had this horrible, horrible childhood, badly traumatized, that turned him into this person who's sort of monstrous. And I thought, what do you do for this person or what's needed here for some kind of a balance? And the heroine was there instantly. It was like, okay, she's someone who just gets it. She gets the thinking, she gets the guy thinking, she gets whatever it is, and why is she that way? Because she grew up with boys all the time, and she's just smart and paying attention. So I needed someone who could see through him, and Jessica just came to my mind as... So they really formed in themselves on the stage. And the rest of that book, I know it sounds mystical, and it's like writers shouldn't wait for this to happen because it doesn't usually, but it just wrote itself. It was like a movie, and all I had to do was write it.
Sarah MacLean 00:22:22 / #: That's how it feels.
Jennifer Prokop 00:22:24 / #: It is how it feels reading it.
Sarah MacLean 00:22:25 / #: When you read it, you just feel like it's just perfection.
Loretta Chase 00:22:29 / #: Thank you. But I consider it a gift. I got a gift from the writing gods with that book.
Jennifer Prokop 00:22:38 / #: You were talking about Dain's like trauma, right?
Loretta Chase 00:22:41 / #: Right.
Jennifer Prokop 00:22:41 / #: So what's interesting to me about that is I think a lot of people kind of, I don't know, write about trauma without doing a lot of research on trauma. And at one point, we have a friend who is an expert on trauma, and she was like, "This book does it so perfectly." I mean, was that part also intuitive, or was that something where you really did think like how can I write about his trauma? I mean, I don't know, maybe it all was mystical, but it's hard, I think, to write about traumatized characters without feeling like you're taking advantage of traumatized people. I don't know if that makes sense.
Loretta Chase 00:23:22 / #: It's an empathetic thing, and it's also, if you look back at your own childhood and the way children treat one another, that wasn't so hard for me. I knew quite a bit, I had done quite a bit of research, so I understood about the bullying at Eton, and it wasn't that hard to imagine a child who's been rejected by his family and has dealt with abandonment. I think it was just, I don't know, this is something that writers do. You try to put yourself in the other person's shoes, or you think back to your own childhood and maybe your friends, what happened to them or things you saw in the playground. You're drawing on all of that. So it wasn't as though I studied trauma, I was just imagining, trying to imagine what kind of torturous childhood would make a person just shut everything off.
Sarah MacLean 00:24:32 / #: So obviously, this book struck a chord across romance. I mean, it is a book that was talked about then, it continues to be talked about. It is on every list. It is a book that is held up by so many of us, including us as the best of it, the best of the genre. And I wonder if you could speak to the reception at the time, and it sounds like it was electric for you in the writing, but what happened after?
Loretta Chase 00:25:08 / #: Well, that's what's so funny, it's like when I wrote it, I felt, and I said this to Ellen, I said, "I think this is a pretty strong book."
Sarah MacLean 00:25:19 / #: Sure. That sounds exactly right. I mean, writers are always like, "I think it's okay."
Loretta Chase 00:25:25 / #: And the thing about Ellen-
Sarah MacLean 00:25:27 / #: Oh God, I loved her so much.
Loretta Chase 00:25:29 / #: She used to write 40-page notes on your books, which no one has time to do anymore.
Sarah MacLean 00:25:37 / #: Whoa.
Loretta Chase 00:25:37 / #: But they were so wonderful. Well, she had two little notes on this book. That was it. For Ellen, that never happened, that never happened. So I felt like, okay, this book really holds together, so that was great. But in terms of reception, they sent it out for blurbs, and I got really nice blurbs from various writers, but the book didn't take off or anything. It was just, it did okay. And then, it did win an RWA RITA, but that book took 12 years to earn out its advance.
Jennifer Prokop 00:26:19 / #: Oh, wow.
Sarah MacLean 00:26:19 / #: Wow. Really?
Loretta Chase 00:26:21 / #: Yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:26:23 / #: And it just was the little engine that could, or did something happen that-
Loretta Chase 00:26:28 / #: I don't know. It started appearing on that All About Romance List as a top book. And then, I think that it might've been really, a lot of word of mouth started so more and more people started reading the book and then it built up momentum. But initially, it was no big deal.
Sarah MacLean 00:26:51 / #: It was just a very good book.
Loretta Chase 00:26:55 / #: Right.
Jennifer Prokop 00:26:56 / #: I'm not surprised by it, because I think one of the fascinating things about romance readers, and we've talked about this before, is there are books I love when I read them, but I never want to revisit them. And then, there are books that grow on me over time, and I think that maybe there's something special about romance in that way. And so, it doesn't necessarily surprise me because there are books that when I first read them, I'm like, "It was okay." And then I'm like, "Wait, why have I reread that book now seven times?"
00:27:29 / #: So it surprises me the way things have a hold. I don't know, like a romance, the keeper shelf is no joke. And I think that the cumulative effect of it being on the keeper shelf for so many people, that word of mouth is really powerful. I mean, when I first started talking to people openly about liking romance, I would say to them, they would ask for recommendations. And I'll be like, "I have two for you. And one's historical, one's contemporary. And if you don't like either of them, then you don't like romance." Which you guys, that seems dramatic, but that's what I would tell people. And it was Lord of Scoundrels and Bet Me by Jenny Crusie.
Loretta Chase 00:28:11 / #: Oh, that book. Yes, yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:28:14 / #: Just like terrific.
Jennifer Prokop 00:28:15 / #: These books are what romance is all about. And if you don't like them, then you don't like romance. And that's okay, more for me.
Sarah MacLean 00:28:23 / #: But I also think there's something too, Jessica, I mean, not to keep coming back to the heroines, but I feel like Jessica Trent holds up however many years later, we don't need to count them, Loretta, but I feel like we read Lord of Scoundrels for one of our deep dive episodes a couple of years ago, and did a big episode on it. And if Jessica walked off the page of Lord of Scoundrels right now and walked into a modern historical written this year, she remains as relevant, as amazing, as aspirational as any heroine ever. And I think that is a hallmark of a book that just will forever be one that we hold up. But I'm fascinated to hear that it took 12 years to earn out. Wow.
Loretta Chase 00:29:32 / #: Yep.
Sarah MacLean 00:29:32 / #: Okay. So you've written what is arguably, I mean, not here arguably, but arguably the greatest romance of all time, but we still have to, it hasn't earned out, so you still have to make a living. And I want to talk a little bit here. I think this is a good place to talk about it, because one of the things that we have loved, or that I have loved about your books over the years forever is how much research goes into them, how much love and care you give the worlds that you create. You used to have a blog that I loved very much called Two Nerdy History Girls, which you had with your friend, whose name is now escaping me.
Loretta Chase 00:30:14 / #: Susan Holloway Scott.
Sarah MacLean 00:30:16 / #: Yes. And in that blog, you used to tell these great stories about how dark the ballrooms would actually be in romance novels, or the legendary scene from Lord of Scoundrels is that is the glove scene with the button hook. There's so much discussion where a fan, right, or remember the dueling book with the bird pistols?
Loretta Chase 00:30:45 / #: Yes. Yeah, the bird pistols.
Jennifer Prokop 00:30:47 / #: Right. Which has like, wait, this is a real thing. This is fascinating.
Sarah MacLean 00:30:51 / #: And then, my other favorite, Mr. Impossible, all the Egypt stuff. And I do want to know if that came from The Mummy or not, because that is a discussion that comes.
Loretta Chase 00:31:01 / #: Yes. No, it did.
Sarah MacLean 00:31:04 / #: You heard it here.
Loretta Chase 00:31:05 / #: The Mummy absolutely inspired that book, yes.
Sarah MacLean 00:31:09 / #: You just made a lot of people really happy.
Jennifer Prokop 00:31:11 / #: Exactly. This has been speculation for a long time, and now we have confirmation. Amazing.
Loretta Chase 00:31:18 / #: Oh, yeah. I was like, oh, wait, I can do this. And I always wanted to write about Egypt. I had been so fascinated by that, particularly what happened in the early 19th century and the discoveries that were made then. But I mean, there were these intrepid women who were involved in that discovery. So yeah, I loved doing the research for that. I have way more books than I ever needed to write that book, something like 50 books on Egypt. And no, having them in the library wasn't enough. I had to own them.
Jennifer Prokop 00:31:55 / #: We support you. Everyone just buy the books they want.
Sarah MacLean 00:31:59 / #: So talk about the research, because I do think that that is one thing that often historical romance novelists get. People don't realize quite how much research goes into the books because it does feel so invisible a lot of the time.
Loretta Chase 00:32:14 / #: Well, the goal is to make it invisible. You read books and books and make tons and tons of notes and look at all these images, and you're digging into historical newspapers and two lines appear on the page that have to do with that topic. But as Susan and I have often said, we really have to understand it. We have to be able to visualize. We have to feel like we're there in order to make the reader feel as though she's there.
00:32:45 / #: And I love it. I love reading the old newspapers, and it's like, this has been one of the fascinating and positive aspects of technology from the time when I first started writing, when we had no access to anything, and trying to find information on the Regency. We're so dependent on what Georgette Heyer wrote and a limited selection of books and memoirs that were not very accurate. And now, we can get primary sources. And I just love that. I love reading the newspaper and finding an event that happened, say, "Oh, wait a minute, I'm going to use that in a story." It's like, I did that in the last book, Ten Things I Hate About The Duke. I read about this fancy fair that was so crowded with people, and people were fainting because it was crowded. I said, "Oh, I have to set a scene there."
Sarah MacLean 00:33:48 / #: So tell us about the research process. As you said, you're an intuitive writer. Are you researching as you go? Do you sort of have a sense of what you're going to tackle in the book? Do you have a file? How does it work?
Loretta Chase 00:34:04 / #: Initially, what I was doing, I was taking, I think it was Stephen King's advice, and I was, or maybe it was Lawrence Block, somebody. I was researching what I needed to know for the scene. But now, and over the last maybe 20 years, I feel as though I need to get some sense of where I'm going to be with the story, what's the location? And then, I sort of build from there. And I kind of like that method better. I like going through the newspapers and looking at what's happening, say in May of 1832, and thinking about what can I do with that, because there are tons of ideas there for me. So now, it's a little more of a little bit some of the work in advance, but then most of the work as I'm writing.
Sarah MacLean 00:35:04 / #: At some point, Mr. Impossible, that series is not with Avon, that is with Berkeley.
Loretta Chase 00:35:12 / #: Right.
Sarah MacLean 00:35:12 / #: Right. So what happens in that world? How does the shift happen?
Loretta Chase 00:35:21 / #: Well, what happened was I finished The Last Hellion, and I had writer's block. My father had died, and I didn't realize that that was what was going on. It was grief. And I had very bad writer's block, and I couldn't write. And I bought back my contract, and I did not think I was going to write another novel.
Sarah MacLean 00:35:48 / #: Oh, my gosh.
Loretta Chase 00:35:50 / #: And then, what I did, I went back to writing video scripts and that sort of thing for a few years. And then, things change in our personal circumstances, and it became necessary for me to actually get a real job. And I've got myself a new agent, and she put me in with Berkeley. There had been an editor there who had been courting me all during my mental block period, because I was still going to conferences, Gail... Oh, I can't remember her name. Anyway, she had been courting me. She said, "Whatever you write, just can I look at it." And so, she ended up being the editor. So I was at Berkeley for a few years, but then she left Berkeley and my agent wasn't really thrilled with how the books were being sold. And so she-
Sarah MacLean 00:36:46 / #: When was that? That had to have been-
Jennifer Prokop 00:36:49 / #: Early 2000s, yeah?
Loretta Chase 00:36:52 / #: It was early 2000s when I went to Berkeley. And then, let's see, so I wrote Miss Wonderful, Mr. Impossible, and Lord Perfect. Oh, and then I had breast cancer.
Jennifer Prokop 00:37:05 / #: Oh, it's a small other thing.
Loretta Chase 00:37:09 / #: Oh, yeah. So I was finishing that book. I was finishing Lord Perfect when I had breast cancer, and I had to take a little time off from writing. And then, by that time I was getting ready to go back to work, that was when my agent was saying, "I think we can do better at Avon." And Avon welcomed me back. And the last couple of books in that series were through Avon. Some of these things, it's like your personal life messes things up for you or makes them better or whatever, but that's what happened.
Sarah MacLean 00:37:46 / #: Yeah. I want to go back to this intuitive writing piece too, because it feels like we've known each other for a while, and it feels like one of the magical things about your books is that you write them and you write until you're done, and then the book comes out. It feels like you really do honor the text and the story in a way that many of us, because of the way romance works, don't do. So I wonder when you sort of come to a new series or to a new book, are you waiting for inspiration to strike before you start?
Loretta Chase 00:38:31 / #: No. I start writing, and this has to do with my training in art, which my art professor always said, "If you wait for your inspiration to start, you might be waiting forever. Just start doing the work." So I start doing the work, and I find my way in the course of doing the work. So sometimes, I've been able to write a nice long outline, and that works beautifully, and that did work beautifully for me for a number of books. Other times, I just have to do it by the seat of my pants, because that's the way the book wants to be written, so I have to do whatever. It's hard to say, again, intuitive. I'm doing whatever is working at the time.
00:39:21 / #: And lately, it seems to be sit down, start writing, see where it goes, figure out the things as you go along, and then it's like go back and make it come together. So it's a construction process. It's not linear at all. And I don't think my mind really is linear. And I don't think even my earlier books were all that linear, but I was able to work out plots in advance in a way that made my life much easier. But I just can't do that lately.
Jennifer Prokop 00:39:54 / #: No. I mean-
Loretta Chase 00:39:55 / #: I wish I could.
Jennifer Prokop 00:39:55 / #: I'm the same way.
Loretta Chase 00:39:56 / #: But I can't.
Jennifer Prokop 00:39:57 / #: Have to.
Loretta Chase 00:39:59 / #: Yeah, you have a vague idea of what you want to do. It was like when I did The Dressmaker Series, for instance, I thought, all right, I'd like to have three sisters. I have some idea of what they're trying to accomplish. I know what they want to do. They want to rule the world. And then, it would be a matter of figuring out, okay, who are they? What are the differences between them? And then, the plots start coming together, but they arise very much out of the characters. So if I don't know the characters, I can't get a story. I would love to be able to write a plot and have the story go with it. Never.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:44 / #: Does that happen for anyone?
Loretta Chase 00:40:46 / #: Never.
Sarah MacLean 00:40:46 / #: I don't believe it.
Jennifer Prokop 00:40:49 / #: I think character is really king in romance. I think that's, for me, at least as a reader, I feel like when people start with a plot, sometimes I'm like, yeah, but why are these characters here? Right. Wait, yeah, that's not enough. I need to really believe that how they got there.
Loretta Chase 00:41:10 / #: Yeah, they're not puppets.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:13 / #: This week's episode of Fated Mates is sponsored by Avery Maxwell, author of Your Last First Kiss.
Jennifer Prokop 00:41:20 / #: Penny Mulligan is a mess. She has had a disastrous first marriage. She's basically the single mother to three perfect but rowdy boys and an ex-husband who is a bunch of trouble. The only thing she has going for her is the perfect eye candy who shows up bringing coffee to her boss every Wednesday, Dillon Henry. He is just perfect fantasy material, handsome, charming, thoughtful. But she's just not in a place for this.
Sarah MacLean 00:41:51 / #: No. She has three boys and an ex-husband. Nobody has time for new people.
Jennifer Prokop 00:41:55 / #: So she is just like, "I'm going to have fantasies about Mr. Wednesday." But then Dillon freaking Henry shows up at her doorstep, and he's totally into her, and he is ready to just figure out a way to take the perfect chaos of her life and turn it into HEA.
Sarah MacLean 00:42:16 / #: Oh, I love it. This is great for anybody who loves a small town romance, for people who are interested in single moms as heroines, friends to lovers, second chance, found family. If you want to read Your Last First Kiss, what a title, you can find it in print or in eBook, or with a monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited. Thanks as always to Avery Maxwell for sponsoring the episode.
Jennifer Prokop 00:42:49 / #: We talk a lot. I think I know Sarah experiences at a deep level that romance readers connect with the books in such a way that almost everyone we've had on talks about letters they've received from readers. So what do readers tell you about your books?
Loretta Chase 00:43:13 / #: Oh, my gosh. Particularly during COVID, but before, I have had so many messages from people telling me the books help them get through cancer. The books help them get through grief. The books help them get through COVID. And I mean, from the time I started writing romance, I really understood the value. But I think it's had much more of an impact in the last few years of what we do when we write romance. What we're doing for other people when we write romance is we're giving them a place to be where things are, okay, you know it's going to come out right in the end.
00:44:08 / #: And the more difficult the world around you is, the more important it is to have this place where you can go. And I'm all for escapism, and I'm never going to hesitate to say that my books are escapist because they are. And I feel like they should be. Yeah, I've had messages that just made me cry. And I think the last couple of years have been so hard on people that it makes, in my view, romance more important than ever because we're giving them that safe place to be for the time of reading the book.
Sarah MacLean 00:44:52 / #: So you have people who have inspired you over the years, and it sounds like you've had a group of other writers who you've connected with and who love research as much as you. But I wonder if you could talk about who are the people who you have spent who have really kept you going? Because I know that this isn't always an easy job, right?
Loretta Chase 00:45:23 / #: Yeah. Well, Susan Holloway Scott and I have been friends for a million years now, and we talk on the phone a lot. We go to Colonial Williamsburg. We meet up at Colonial Williamsburg almost every year, and she's really important part. She's just been, well, a really good friend, and we can talk. And that's part of the thing too. It was one of the great things I discovered when I started writing romance and I started going to conferences. It's like, oh, wow, I found my tribe. We're talking to other women mostly who are writers, and we're living in that same environment and we're having the same struggles. And that's not something I'm going to be finding in my everyday life. I love my husband, I love my sisters, and I can talk to them about stuff, but not the way you can talk to other writers. So Susan's important.
00:46:27 / #: There have been a lot of people over the years. When I was first starting out, Mary Jo Putney was very, very encouraging to me. She reached out to me, sent me a letter early in my career with my first or second book. There was a little cabal of writers sign, Regency Writers with whom I was friends, and we would get together at conferences. And then, over the years, I've met more people. It's like now I chit-chat with Caroline Linden, so it's evolving. But yeah, that's one of the great things that the great discoveries for me, when I started writing romance, it was finding all these women and they were feminists like me, and we had similar goals, and same kind of fights and the same kinds of... People don't understand what I'm doing, that sort of thing.
Sarah MacLean 00:47:30 / #: Do you feel like that's thing shifting now, or do you feel like we're still getting the same kind of response?
Loretta Chase 00:47:41 / #: I'll tell you, I missed the conferences.
Jennifer Prokop 00:47:43 / #: Yeah, me too.
Loretta Chase 00:47:48 / #: It's like, yeah, Zoom is nice, but it's not person to person sitting in the bar or outside a meeting place and hanging out with your friends and talking or meeting new people that way. The personal direct conversations are something I miss very much. I mean, my local writers group, it's like they haven't been able to have a conference because well, once COVID simmered down, and it was possible, it's like, well, we need volunteers and people don't have time and people are overworked. So that's something I... I miss that community, in other words. And with the crash and burn of RWA, that was bad, and romantic times for all the craziness, that was a great way to connect, wasn't it?
Sarah MacLean 00:49:00 / #: It really was. Jen never experienced it. It was a whole ride.
Loretta Chase 00:49:07 / #: So I only did it once, but it was such a trip. I was exhausted afterwards. But it was really wonderful. It was fun.
Sarah MacLean 00:49:15 / #: So this is one of the hard questions, I think, but what do you think is the mark that your books have left on the genre or are continuing to leave on the genre?
Loretta Chase 00:49:35 / #: I don't know.
Sarah MacLean 00:49:36 / #: Maybe.
Loretta Chase 00:49:38 / #: I don't know. Someone else would have to tell me what mark they're leaving, because I-
Sarah MacLean 00:49:43 / #: Well, maybe we can try it this way. What do you think is the hallmark of a Loretta Chase novel?
Loretta Chase 00:49:52 / #: Okay. When I first started writing, the one thing that was very, very clear in my mind was that my heroines were going to be strong. They were not going to be victims, so there was that. The second thing was I was never going to write down to my readers. I was always going to assume everyone was smarter than I was. So that's informed what I've done. And then, the other thing is, but the other thing has evolved, which is the research. And I feel as though it's possible for historical romance to get closer to that historical novel approach to research and ground people in the world that you're writing about. But that doesn't mean that it has to be, but that's what I need to do.
00:50:56 / #: So I think it's that the three things is the very strong heroin, the not talking down to people, and the world, trying to create a historical world as close to accurate as I can, but still without violating the trust my readers have that I'm going to keep them in a safe place where things are going to come out right. So I might touch on some ugly aspects of history, but I'm not going to force my readers to live in that because things are crappy enough around them for most people, and that's not what they come to my books for. It's the escape. I want them to have a lovely escape, feel like they're time traveling and dig the heroine the most.
Jennifer Prokop 00:52:01 / #: I mean, Sarah and I have both been readers. She's been writing now for-
Sarah MacLean 00:52:05 / #: We don't have to count them.
Jennifer Prokop 00:52:05 / #: ... however, 20 years, whatever it is. Okay, sorry. We've been reading for a long time. One of our questions is sort of about the ebb and flow of the genre. So how do you think you've seen romance change over time, or do you have thoughts about where you see romance going in the future?
Loretta Chase 00:52:27 / #: There has been ebb and flow for sure, starting out in a world where traditional Regency romances were a big thing, and there are dozens and dozens of lines, and then they kind of lose their popularity. And then, every few years we hear historical romance is dead. So I've heard that a bunch of times, and in fact, I'm hearing it lately.
Sarah MacLean 00:52:53 / #: Me too. But it doesn't die, right?
Loretta Chase 00:52:59 / #: Yeah. It doesn't seem to die. And the readers say they like going there. They want to go there. They want to be transported. They want that time travel aspect. They want to be taken farther away from current reality, and that's what historical romance does. I mean, contemporary romance also takes you away, but there's still that element of the real world's there, and there's some real world things we have to deal with. Whereas my people are going around in their little carriages and they don't know anything about cell phones and YouTube or Facebook or TikTok or any of those things. So it feels like it's an escape to a quieter time.
00:53:49 / #: And I think that, I believe that will continue to be something that people like, people have always read historical books for hundreds of years. They don't always read books that are set in their own time period. So I think that's a continuing interest, but I really am not sure what's going to happen. Things are in an uproar right now. There's a lot of upheaval in the publishing industry, so it's a little puzzling.
00:54:24 / #: In terms of other changes that I have seen, well, there's definitely been one big change for the better, which is when I started out almost pretty much like 99% of the books were by white authors and they were about white people. And now, we have books that have different cultural slants, and we have books that are dealing with different kinds of sexuality. Early in my career, one of my gay friends said to me, "Are there any gay romances?" And I said, "I don't know about any." But now, that's there. So I think those things are great that we have evolved to that point.
Sarah MacLean 00:55:12 / #: So we always like to ask two questions to wrap up. And the first is, which of your books do you hear the most about? Which is the book that readers come to you the most to discuss? And the second is, which is the book that you as the writer feel the most connection to, whatever way that means?
Loretta Chase 00:55:46 / #: Obviously the one I hear the most about is Lord of Scoundrels.
Sarah MacLean 00:55:48 / #: That was an easy, that's a softball.
Loretta Chase 00:55:54 / #: Right. So if we do an in-person thing, and we have a bookstore there and they want to order books, I always have to have Lord of Scoundrels there because people want it. Which is, I mean, that's a gift that people still want to read my book that I wrote a long time ago, particularly in a genre that seems to have such a short shelf life. And in terms of what books I feel the best about or strongest about or love the most or whatever, incredibly proud of Lord of Scoundrels. How can I not be? On the other hand, my favorite book is always the latest book, the one I most recently finished, because I like to feel that I'm getting better as a writer. So I felt very proud of the last two books. I especially felt very proud of Ten Things I Hate About the Duke, and I hope I'm going to feel even better about this next book if I ever get it finished. So my favorite-
Jennifer Prokop 00:57:08 / #: Would you care to talk about that one at all? No pressure.
Loretta Chase 00:57:11 / #: I'm happy to talk about. No, no, it's good.
Sarah MacLean 00:57:13 / #: Jen knows already.
Loretta Chase 00:57:14 / #: People ask.
Sarah MacLean 00:57:15 / #: She's been around me long enough, Loretta. I know I'm like, she knows that these are sticky questions.
Jennifer Prokop 00:57:23 / #: I know, exactly. I would never have brought it up if you had not mentioned it first. I just want to put that-
Loretta Chase 00:57:28 / #: Thank you. I appreciate that. But I've done a couple of blog posts because I just get so many. "When's the third book coming out? Is there a third book? What happened to the Blackwoods?" So I had writer's block again. And it started, let's just say there was a political situation going on in the world.
Sarah MacLean 00:57:54 / #: Gosh.
Loretta Chase 00:57:55 / #: That just depressed the daylights out of me and made me crazy, and it was just so incomprehensible, so there was that. And then, in the middle of that comes COVID. And you're thinking, oh wow, this is such a great opportunity. I'm isolated, I can't go anywhere.
Jennifer Prokop 00:58:17 / #: No, seems wrong.
Loretta Chase 00:58:17 / #: I'll write a book. Nothing, blank. So I'm sitting in front of the computer every day dutifully, because you don't wait for inspiration, you start writing. And I'm writing every single day, and I'm writing complete garbage, just boring crap day after day after day after day after day. So yeah, that's what happened. And I had to tell my publisher and my agent, I thought, "I'm sorry, I can't deliver. The book's way over." It's like over a year overdue. And I'm just now starting to make it get together, but it's still a struggle. I feel like I'm emerging from the writer's block, but it's not coming the way it should be. So it's been hard. This has been a really tough time. It's not any comfort to know I'm not the only one either. That's no comfort.
Sarah MacLean 00:59:16 / #: I mean, one of the questions, this is a question we get so often, I mean, we writers, and I'm sure you've gotten it a million times, but this question of writer's block, what do you do? How do you come out from underneath it? And now, because you sort of feel like maybe the shroud is being lifted, is there some piece of advice that you have for those of us out here who are also feeling weighted down by the world?
Loretta Chase 00:59:54 / #: I've done a couple of approaches. So the first time I had writer's block, I just walked away and did something completely different, which was writing video scripts. It wasn't all that satisfying, but boy, it pays really well.
Sarah MacLean 01:00:13 / #: Sure, good.
Loretta Chase 01:00:15 / #: But this time, I just felt like I had to keep writing because then I felt like if I didn't keep writing, I would succumb to despair, and I didn't want to go there. So I kept writing. A couple of times, I said, "Okay, I'm going to just stop for two weeks and see if that refreshes my brain. I'm going to go do this. I'm going to go do that." And we have traveled, so refresh the brain. But this time, I've just kept at it. I just keep writing it in the hopes that things will start becoming clear and it's actually working.
01:01:01 / #: The hero and the heroine have very gradually and reluctantly started letting me know who they are and what they want. And so, that's incredibly encouraging to me. And also, it helps if you have someone to talk to that's a trusted professional. And I am very fortunate in my agent and editor, so I can talk to them about things and bounce ideas off them, show the material, and have them come back and give me little bits of inspiration here and there. I think we each have to find our own way out of this. I've heard of people say, "Well, I just walk away for a couple of days and it comes back."
Sarah MacLean 01:01:47 / #: Days?
Loretta Chase 01:01:48 / #: It's like, oh, I'm [inaudible 01:01:50 / #] what happened.
Jennifer Prokop 01:01:51 / #: Is that writer's block or is that just like a writer's burp? I mean.
Loretta Chase 01:01:54 / #: Exactly. That's a good analogy. So I think for me right now, what's been working is to just keep writing, just keep writing because I'm a writer. Even if it's crap, it's something, and you never know what's going to come out of it. And that's happened a few times. It was like, I'm writing crap, I'm writing crap, I'm writing... Oh, okay, I can work with this. So that's been the approach. I would not wish this on anybody. It sucks, but there is going to be a book.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:28 / #: Great, we're ready when you are.
Loretta Chase 01:02:30 / #: It's like a terminate. No. I told my agent, I said, "I'm going to write this book. I have to write this book. I need to write this book. I want to write this book." It's going to get written one way or another.
Jennifer Prokop 01:02:44 / #: I just want to say this was amazing because I tried to keep my cool the entire time. I want everyone to appreciate that.
Sarah MacLean 01:02:54 / #: If you live in New England or feel like coming to New England, Loretta is going to be at the Ashland Public Library in Massachusetts on Saturday, May 20, 2023, for the RomCon up there. The Ashland Public Library has a great romantic romance novelist event, and it's outdoors, and it's a whole day long, and I'll be there too, and so will Megan Frampton and Caroline Linden, so historical writers. And Sandra Kitt will be there too, who was also a trailblazer. So you can join us there. We'll put ticket information in show notes for everyone, but you can get your copies of all your favorite Loretta Chase books signed.
Loretta Chase 01:03:40 / #: Yes, I'm looking forward to that. I did it last fall and it was so fabulous.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:44 / #: I'm looking forward to it too.
Loretta Chase 01:03:46 / #: So Sarah, you're going to have a great time. You're going to have a great time.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:50 / #: I will hopefully not have COVID this year.
Loretta Chase 01:03:51 / #: Don't have that again.
Sarah MacLean 01:03:53 / #: I'm going to try my best. Loretta, this was amazing. You are always amazing. I love hearing you talk.
Loretta Chase 01:04:03 / #: It's wonderful talking to you both. It really is. You have just such a great sensibility and sensitivity about the genre and about the authors. It's really a pleasure. Thank you.
Sarah MacLean 01:04:20 / #: Listen, it was special. It just came to her fully formed like Athena.
Jennifer Prokop 01:04:27 / #: Or like J.R. Ward. I'm also fascinated by the dichotomy between the way Lord of Scoundrels came to her, and then she didn't say it, but I would imagine that then struggling with writer's block would be all that more painful if you'd had that kind of experience, right?
Sarah MacLean 01:04:45 / #: Yeah, presumably. I mean, I was really grateful to hear her talk about writer's block, actually. I mean, a lot of this, for those of you listening, you probably got the sense that this was more about the writing this conversation than really I think any of them have been, which was obviously really wonderful for me and for probably every writer out there who's listening. But listening to somebody talk about how they struggle with writer's block is really interesting because as I said in the conversation, we get a lot of questions as writers about writer's block, and the instinct is always to just sort of wave it away and say, "Oh, I don't believe in writer's block. Writer's block isn't real. Just keep pushing." It's not a fun job. It's not that you're blocked, it's just that you have to sit your ass in the chair. And so, it was really good to hear her say, "No, it is real". And for those of us who have gone through serious issues, serious grief, anxiety about the world, it can be debilitating.
Jennifer Prokop 01:05:54 / #: Yeah. Well, and I was also really fascinated to hear that she's essentially grappled with it twice and that it presented in a different way both times, because I think that's the other, what I feel like is sort of that writer's block is just its own thing. It's a thing, and it's like, no, just like anything, it can manifest itself in lots of different ways. And so, one time she just kind of put everything down and walked away from it and just did something totally different. And then, this time, she really is taking the put your butt in the chair and move through it. And I think that that is also probably really great to, because how you have to be able to say to yourself, "This is what I'm struggling with." It's that it looks different than someone else's block, for example, or it looks different the last time I struggled with this. And I think that's got to be really powerful.
Sarah MacLean 01:06:50 / #: Think about the kind of bravery it takes to say, "I am experiencing this thing. It is related to my, in the original case, grief, and to solve this problem, I'm going to walk away, and buy my contract back." I mean, we haven't talked about that. Nobody has talked to us about that, but that does happen. You can't finish. And so, to get out from under it, you pay the publisher back.
Jennifer Prokop 01:07:21 / #: Right, your advance. Right.
Sarah MacLean 01:07:22 / #: And take the book away. But what also just brilliant person she is, I mean, just somebody who clearly thinks so much about the writing. I was not at all surprised when Ellen Edwards said, "Go read Kinsale."
Jennifer Prokop 01:07:44 / #: Of course, we've all, many of us have experienced the way the genre is sort of shamed and the way that people allow themselves to say like, "Oh, I like this." I have a friend who's a reader who mostly read fantasy, and then when she finally said to me, "I like romance too," it came in a very similar way, which was like, I always like those subplots in books, the love story part. So what would it be like to just allow myself to read that part, or write that part.
Sarah MacLean 01:08:23 / #: In Loretta's case, to rewrite those stories and provide them with happily ever afters. Also, what a cool way of coming to it and thinking, I want to write a novel, but I know my brain requires limitations and scope and a strategy, and therefore I'm going to turn to genre.
Jennifer Prokop 01:08:50 / #: Because it's going to give me that structure. Yeah. I thought that was fascinating.
Sarah MacLean 01:08:53 / #: We are releasing this episode much later in time than when we recorded it, but it made me think about what, there was a sort of silly article that floated by and social media yesterday about a person who decided they going to write romance, because clearly that's where the money was. Spoiler alert, there was no money for this particular person because they weren't very good at the job. But what's fascinating is the difference between those two avenues. This was Loretta saying, "I have creativity in me. I have the chops to write a novel, but I just need guidelines because if I don't, I'll never tell a story." And what a cool way of coming to romance, and then dominating it. I mean, also what was wrong with readers in 1995, the Lord of Scoundrels was amazing.
Jennifer Prokop 01:09:57 / #: That also was a year where there were not, I mean now with the rise of self-publishing, literally thousands of books being released a year more than that. Thousands a week, it feels like, a month. So I'm fascinated to think too, what are the books that are coming out now that it's going to take everybody 10 or 12 years to discover? I mean, that's also what I think of as being the best part about romance is things... Don't get me wrong, I think we all know that things can be dated, or you can read an older book that feels dated in a way. But there is something magical about picking up a book from 25 years ago in romance and having it be just as sort of powerfully moving as it was what the year was published.
01:10:49 / #: And I think that could be true of all of genre fiction. People have heard me talk about Jack Reacher. I've been re-listening to Jack Reacher when I drive, and the biggest change is about technology. And so, it's really fascinating to sort of think, well, what are the things that date a book, and when it's historical, especially when it's rooted in historical research, that doesn't get triggered the same way often.
Sarah MacLean 01:11:19 / #: You're absolutely right. I loved a lot of this conversation. I love that she clocked Jayne Ann Krentz's powerful impact on historicals, which we talked a little bit about in the Jayne Ann Krentz Trailblazer episode. But hearing it from the mouth of Loretta Chase, Jayne Ann Krentz became Amanda Quick and gave us all a blueprint for how to write these books differently. It just makes me smile. It makes me really happy that it was all interconnected in such a powerful way.
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:00 / #: Those first Amanda Quicks were late '80s, '88 or '89 maybe.
Sarah MacLean 01:12:07 / #: Yeah, sounds right.
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:08 / #: And Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women was 1992.
Sarah MacLean 01:12:15 / #: Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:16 / #: It was both the books and the explicit naming of what romance was trying to achieve.
Sarah MacLean 01:12:25 / #: Yes.
Jennifer Prokop 01:12:26 / #: And I was also really fascinated here to talk about that kind of pop culture book. I can't remember the name of it now, but talking, like the way people talk to each other. I remember reading that book. I remember it wasn't quite like Men Are From Mars, Women or from Venus, like that old dumb thing. And it was really fascinating I think also to think too just about, and we say this all the time, romance is so responsive to what is going on in society, and it was really interesting to hear Loretta name some of those things really explicitly.
Sarah MacLean 01:13:01 / #: She's remarkable. If you have not read a Loretta Chase book, now is your chance. You should read Lord of Scoundrels and then go back and listen to the Deep dive episode that we did. We'll put links in show notes, or go off and read Mr. Impossible set in Egypt. And then, do yourself a favor, give yourself a treat, and watch Brendan Frazier's Mummy and know why romance Twitter.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:28 / #: Sarah, can I confess something?
Sarah MacLean 01:13:31 / #: Yeah.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:31 / #: I've never seen that movie.
Sarah MacLean 01:13:34 / #: Jennifer.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:36 / #: Wait, what year did it come out? Could someone-
Sarah MacLean 01:13:38 / #: 1999.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:41 / #: Okay.
Sarah MacLean 01:13:41 / #: I know you and I have a little thing coming, a little thing that actually might have already been announced, but if it has not already been announced, we have this little thing happening and maybe a rewatch of The Mummy is a thing that we can do.
Jennifer Prokop 01:13:54 / #: A rewatch for you, a watch-watch for me.
Sarah MacLean 01:13:56 / #: A watch-watch for you. Maybe we should have B and her books join us.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:02 / #: I'm writing this down on my... Look, I have a little pad of paper everybody, and it says bad ideas. And I write things down that are good ideas.
Sarah MacLean 01:14:10 / #: Oh, it's ironic.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:11 / #: It is. This note paper does not boss me around. The Mummy. That's a great idea.
Sarah MacLean 01:14:19 / #: You will delight in it because it is part of our mutual favorite genre, beautiful people blowing things up.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:28 / #: I mean, yeah, hello. I mean, I'm sorry, we should be talking about Loretta Chase, but she wouldn't mind. Loretta would understand, I think.
Sarah MacLean 01:14:36 / #: I mean, she wrote a whole book based on it. So I think she's okay.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:39 / #: God, I love those Brennan Frazier movies. I love the one where he's trapped underground with his fusty parents because they think nuclear war is coming.
Sarah MacLean 01:14:48 / #: I know that one.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:49 / #: And then he pops out onto the surface in modern times and it is hilarious. It's so good.
Sarah MacLean 01:14:56 / #: I mean, he was a treat.
Jennifer Prokop 01:14:59 / #: Yeah. And he's like a great swing dancer, but you know what I mean? And that was like when swing was really popular.
Sarah MacLean 01:15:04 / #: Cutie pie.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:06 / #: It was, oh my God, I can't remember the title. It's great.
Sarah MacLean 01:15:08 / #: The way I wept when he won the Oscar this year and gave a speech that was just about still being here, just still being here along with the guy from Everything Everywhere All At Once, who was also in Indiana Jones and Goonies. These are, look, our childhood.
Jennifer Prokop 01:15:27 / #: Yeah, I think I loved listening to Loretta Chase. I especially really like one of my favorite questions is what is the hallmark of your books. And I loved her answer. In particular, the answer about, I always assume my readers are smarter than me. I pledge to never write down to them. And I think romance readers know. I think we know when that's the case because we are so fine-tuned, so calibrated to hear that those discordant notes of when someone is trying, as you said at the beginning, right to market, I can make money here. These people I can make money off of versus these people have a similar interest in the same stories as me, and I want to write books for them.
Sarah MacLean 01:16:18 / #: And also, when she said that it made me realize that, I mean, and this is not just a hallmark of historicals, but it is a hallmark of historicals that often historical writer, that is something that happens in historicals, where we sort of trust the reader to come along with us on this ride, and we're going to show you the world, and you're going to know the history, and you're going to know what's happening. And if you don't, it's going to be okay. God, she just made me, every time I talk to Loretta, I just feel good about writing historicals. I feel like it's nice to be sort of even remotely in the room breathing the air of someone like her.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:01 / #: Yeah. Well, it sounds like you guys are going to have a great time.
Sarah MacLean 01:17:04 / #: Oh, yeah. So come see us in... Oh, gosh. We have to make sure this gets out before then.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:10 / #: It's on my bad ideas list, don't you worry.
Sarah MacLean 01:17:12 / #: Oh, all right. Good. So this will be out, it will probably be in the next couple of weeks, this event in Boston. And we hope that you'll join us.
Jennifer Prokop 01:17:24 / #: Thanks for having us, everybody. Thanks for having us in your ear holes. And thanks to Loretta Chase for just being... That was a really inspiring conversation. I loved it.
Sarah MacLean 01:17:33 / #: God, for making me just want to put on a murder dress every day.