It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of The Survivors’ Club series by Mary Balogh. I devoured Only Beloved the minute it hit my hot little hands. The final book in the series features The Survivors’ Club founder, The Duke of Stanbrook. Stanbrook has suffered some serious losses in his life–his son died at war and his wife committed suicide. Now at the age of 48, he realizes how lonely he is, and he asks the one women he can imagine spending his life with, Dora Debbins, to marry him. Dora is a 39-year-old music teacher and spinster who never expects a duke to come calling.
This book was all the Elyse-nip. It’s a Cinderella story, it involves a castle in Cornwall, it pays homage to the gothic I love so much while never veering into broody, scary hero territory, and the hero needs some serious comfort to overcome his emotional wounds.
I was able to talk to Mary Balogh about Only Beloved, The Survivors’ Club series, and of course, what she’s reading right now.
The Survivors’ Club series centers around a group of men and women who suffer from physical and psychological trauma and come together to heal. What inspired you to write a series based around PTSD as a common element?
It’s always hard as a writer to say where ideas come from. I like a tough challenge and I like heroes and heroines who are wounded in some way. Internal conflict is as important to me as external conflict. There must be both if the book is to have meat on its bones. Characters who have no real, deep-seated problems to keep them from love and happiness would be incredibly difficult to make into dynamic heroes and heroines.
My books are almost always set during the Regency period, during and a little after the Napoleonic Wars, so using people who have been involved in war is a natural. I can’t remember by what exact steps I came to envisage a type of hospital/convalescent center for wounded officers, but I do know that the idea greatly appealed to me. That hospital is the stately home of a duke, one member of the club. I had to think of all different sorts of wounds for the other six so that each book and each challenge was very different from the others—one is blind, for example, one has been driven mad by survivor’s guilt, another has had both legs crushed but not amputated. And one is a woman, who was in Spain and Portugal with her husband and witnessed his torture and death in captivity. PTSD was not known then, of course, but that is nevertheless what they are all suffering from in addition to their other injuries. I think I loved writing those seven books more than any other series I have written (and I have enjoyed them all!).
One of the things that really intrigued me about Only Beloved was that the hero is 48 and the heroine is 39. A lot of historical romance focuses on very young characters. Did you deliberately set out to write a book about an older couple?
I knew it was coming from the start. The Duke of Stanbrook, who opened his home as a hospital, needed to be an older man. Otherwise readers might have asked why he was not off fighting as the others had been. He did, however, have a son who fought and died in the Peninsula at the age of 17, and the boy’s mother committed suicide a few months later. So he is every bit as wounded as the rest of them. He is very much a part of the Club all through the series. He has given a great deal of himself to the other Survivors and so of course had to have his own story and chance at happiness.
His heroine, Dora Debbins, is first introduced in the second book of the series, The Arrangement, as the spinster music teacher of the blind hero. She has a larger part in Only Enchanting as sister of the heroine. She had given up all her own hopes and dreams as a young woman in order to raise her younger sister after their mother ran away with a lover. Now she is 39 and alone. Putting her together with the duke made sense. Having an older hero and heroine was just another challenge to be faced, and remember—I love a challenge. They could not think or behave as very young people behave, but their story still had to be wondrously romantic (I hope it is!). Readers often ask me for romances about older people. A very large number of readers are older, after all, as am I!
Many of your books feature a marriage of convenience trope, which is totally my catnip. Can you tell me what appeals to you about writing that trope?
Oh, I love writing marriages of convenience. When one writes historicals, the problem (or challenge!) often is to get the two people alone together often enough for a romance to develop, and if they are to have sex, then again they have to be able to get away alone together and there has to be a very good reason for it to happen. Ladies were set about by chaperones and rules. People did not fall into bed together as freely as they do now. In a marriage of convenience everything is made easy. The couple is in an intimate relationship almost from the start. They live together and can have sex with each other whenever they want. Perhaps more important, though, I like this theme because it gives a perfect opportunity to have a relationship grow from indifference or even open hostility through all the stages that lead through acceptance, tolerance, friendship, attraction, falling in love and so on to being deeply in love. It gives all sorts of opportunity for conflict and misunderstanding and passion and all the other forces that drive a plot forward to the inevitable happy ending.
How did you get started writing? Did you always want to write regencies or have you ever thought of dabbling in another genre?
I always wanted to write. As a child, whenever anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I used to answer that I wanted to be an author. I wrote long, long stories. I wish I had kept a few! The trouble was when I grew up that I didn’t know what I wanted to write and my need to eat drove me into a busy teaching career, during which I got married and had three children. Finally, though, the need to write reasserted itself. I tried my hand at Harlequin romances, mainly because I thought they would be easy and lucrative. Ha! Deservedly, the two I sent in were rejected. I discovered the wonderful Regency and Georgian romances of Georgette Heyer during a maternity leave (how I missed them up until that point I have no idea since I had always been a voracious reader) and knew immediately that THAT was the sort of book I wanted to write myself. It took me a while, of course, to discover my own voice and style, but that is indeed the sort of book I have been writing ever since. I read numerous other genres, but I have no wish to try any other myself. I think my voice and vision are perfectly suited to the era in which I set my stories.
Do you have a favorite character or couple that you’ve written?
My favorites are usually the ones in the book I am currently writing. It makes sense, doesn’t it? If I am creating a hero and heroine and can say to myself that I like them but not as much as so-and-so and so-and-so, then I had jolly well better stop writing to discover what is wrong with the ones I am in the process of creating.
However, looking back, I suppose there are some who stand out in my mind more than others. But then the trouble with that is that I keep remembering others I could add to the list. I suppose if I must single out one couple, I would go with the obvious—Wulfric, Duke of Bewcastle and his eventual wife, Christine. Wulfric seems to be the all-time favorite hero of mine with readers. I think it’s because his story (Slightly Dangerous) was the last of the Bedwyn series and his character was built gradually through the other five. He was powerful, cold, aloof, a bit mysterious in those books and was characterized largely by his ever-present quizzing glass and his silver eyes. But he always had his brothers’ and sisters’ backs. I loved writing his book, especially after getting past the difficult task of finding just the right heroine for him. The ever-cheerful, klutzy Christine was so obviously wrong for him when she popped into my mind that I knew she was perfect.
Now that The Survivor’s Club is finished, what are you working on?
I am working on a new eight-part series, the Westcott Family Series. The first book begins after the death of Humphrey Westcott, Earl of Riverdale. He left no will, but that poses no problem. His 20-year-old son becomes the new earl, who will make sure his two sisters and his mother are well looked after and receive their portions of his vast fortune. His guardian is the very toplofty, very indolent Duke of Netherby. The widow, however, knows of a young woman her husband had long supported at an orphanage in Bath, presumably his daughter with a mistress. The widow charges her late husband’s solicitor with finding the woman and making a final settlement on her. A few weeks later the bombshell falls at a family meeting the solicitor has called at the duke’s house. The orphan is actually the earl’s daughter with his secret first wife, who died shortly after his marriage to the countess. That bigamous second marriage, then, is void, and his three children are illegitimate. A second cousin inherits the title and the only legitimate daughter inherits the unentailed properties and vast fortune. The whole Westcott family is thrown into turmoil and must reassess their relationships and their whole concept of family as eight of them deal with the new reality in stories of their own. The first book, Someone to Love (due out in November, 2016), is the story of Anna (the orphan) and the Duke of Netherby. I have also written the second book, Someone to Hold, the story of Camille Westcott, the elder of the dispossessed daughters.
What have you read lately that you’ve loved?
Ooh, let’s see. Probably my most recent favorite is a non-fiction book—Eighty Days, by Matthew Goodman, the story of the race around the world of Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland in the 1880s. I rarely read non-fiction but this was a birthday present and I found it quite riveting. I have just finished reading Robert Galbraith’s (J. K. Rowling) The Silkworm ( A | BN | K | G | AB ), second in the Cormoran Strike series. She really is incomparable as a writer. After a certain point I could not put it down. I am reading my way through C. S. Forester’s Hornblower series. The books are set in roughly the same historical era as my books, and I am enjoying the contrast with a romance. His books are wall-to-wall fast and exciting action and quite irresistible. I recently re-read Georgette Heyer’s Devil’s Cub and was reminded why I love her more than any of my other favorite romance authors. Donna Leon’s A Question of Belief ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) is another recent read. I discovered her Commissario Brunetti books late and am eking them out. I don’t want to get to the end too soon and have to wait endlessly for her to publish another. I could go on and on—I am doing a gradual re-read of Sue Grafton, for example.
Thank you to Mary Balogh for her time. Have you read one of her books? Do you have a favorite?
Thanks to Elyse for the interesting interview with one of my all-time favorite authors! And most of all – !!!HUGE THANKS!!! to Mrs. Balogh for writing all this wonderful books <3333 I am a big fan of the Bedwyn family and the Survivors Club. I also would like to call to your attention, the less known books of Mrs. Balogh, from the Georgian period: "Heartless" and "Silent Melody".
I’d just read a pair of holiday novels — A CHRISTMAS BRIDE/ A CHRISTMAS BEAU and was gobsmacked by how layered it was — all of the loveliness of the holiday layered in with the darkness of very real, and very human people — it was unexpectedly deep, and so good, and I don’t usually read holiday novels (except nowhere near the holidays, for some odd reason)… but it was the type of book I’ve come to expect from this author, because I’m halfway through the Survivor’s Club (and reading them slooooowly so I don’t use them all up) and just loving the layering of darkness and war and society and all the froofiness of that. Thanks for an excellent interview!
One of my all time favorite authors! Mary Balogh writes with such depth and I don’t know how to put it — sincerity?The characters seem so real. There’s so much depth to the storytelling. I’m very much looking forward to this new book and this new series.
Great interview. I’m a huge fan of Mary Balogh. I’d vote for Wulfric and Christine as my favorite couple too. Love, love, love that book. Looking forward to the new series!
This was just what I needed, being home sick! I adore Mary Balogh and am among the legions who loved the Bedwyns, especially Wulfric. I was over the moon to find the story of his sister-in-law, in Once Upon a Dream because it meant a glimpse of the Duke himself. What an amazing writer. Wonderful interview!
I am a huge fan of Mary Balogh, thank you so much for the interview! Add me to the list of people who adored Slightly Dangerous, I loved Christine, and laughed out loud in several places 🙂 Very excited to read the last book in the Survivors’ Club series-I know what I will be doing today, forget about the housework I had planned.
Squee! More fangirling here. I have been a Balogh fan since I discovered historical romance, way back in the 1980s. Haven’t read them all, must confess, but “The Last Waltz” is on my keeper shelf (and I had a bunch more before Kindle happened). “The Ideal Wife” and “The Secret Pearl” were also favorites. I think the Survivor’s Club series is exceptionally strong and will have real staying power.
I have never read a Mary Balogh book that I didn’t love, but I think (so far) that Longing is my favorite. I truly felt that I was in the Welsh mining country and I could hear the music that she described so beautifully.
I’m not one to cry while reading romances, but the Survivors’ Club series made me verklempt each and every book. So good! And so happy George got his own gothic HEA along with the rest of the Survivors. Good-romance-HEA-SIGH.
Selfishly, wish this interview had been this week’s podcast.
I’ve not read any other of Balogh’s titles, so thanks for the reader recommends in the comments/the “Slightly Dangerous” mention in the interview.
I just picked up “The Proposal” from the library yesterday and after reading this interview I’m even more excited to start on the series than I already was!
I love Balogh’s romances and have very much enjoyed this series. So glad for George and his HEA.
I’ve been a Mary Balogh fan from way way back… my favorite of her though isn’t available electronically, and I’ve never found it in used stores: A Gift of Daisies… I love that one.
Mary Balogh squee! My favorites are Red Rose and Longing. Mary is an autobuy for me. Thank you for posting your interview.
What a wonderful interview. One thread in all Ms Balogh’s books is the humanity of her characters.
I will tease out my enjoyment of this last story of the Survivors’ Club by beginning at the beginning with a re-read of the entire series.
She is my absolute fav Regency writer. I clicked this article so fast! <3
A new Mary Balogh and a new Jo Goodman in the same week. What more can I ask for?
I will be sorry to see the Survivors’ Club end. I loved this series, but have absolute faith the next series will be just as great. Thank you Ms Balogh.
“Have you read one of her books? Do you have a favorite?” The better question would be have I read fifty or sixty of her books?! The answer to which is yes. My favorites include Slightly Dangerous, The Secret Pearl, Simply Love, and Silent Melody (one of the Georgian period romances that Konst mentioned above).
Someone To Love: A Westcott Novel sounds wonderful. I’m already looking forward to it. Thanks so much for this interview, Elyse.
Can’t say enough of my excitement about reading this.
Balogh is a wonderful writer and has given me so much pleasure over many years.
I’ve spent a fortune tracking down her old titles – mainly because of postage – and am ecstatic that they are gradually (too slowly, actually) being released on Kindle.
I agree with Balogh – Wulfric is the bees’ knees.
And her Christmas stories rank amongs my absolute favourites of her work – although The Anniversary is stupendous, as well.
Thank you to her so much for the Survivor Series, which kept getting better and better. Only Beloved is gorgeous.
I can’t keep listing my favourites, as this post would treble in length.
This is the first interview with Balogh that I’ve ever read. Thank you for it.. Thank you.
I meant to say
Thank you Elyse
I have been reading and loving Mary Balogh’s books for decades. “Slightly Married” is one of my favorites(that marriage of convenience trope again). I also love the Huxtable family books, and “The Arrangement” is my favorite so far of the Survivor series.
My first Balogh, and still one of my favorites, is “More Than A Mistress”. That and “Slightly Dangerous” remain favorite rereads from one of my favorite authors. Thank you for the interview!