413. Writing Historical Romance: A Conversation With Mary Balogh

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Sarah Wendell: Hello! Thank you for inviting me into your eardrums. I’m Sarah Wendell from Smart Podcast, Trashy Books. This is episode number 413, and today I am speaking with historical romance legend Mary Balogh. Yes, my inner thirteen-year-old was really not very chill about this; I was very excited. This was recorded by phone, so the audio is a little bit different, but we are going to talk about her newest book, Someone to Romance, and her re-releases of older Regencies, including her latest, Truly, which is based on some really interesting Welsh history. We also talk about writing an ongoing series, found family, and what books she’s loving lately.

I want to thank Elyse, Claudia, Aarya, Regencyfan, and Debbie for their input, care, and questions, and to the Patreon community for being so excited about this interview.

I will have links to all of the books – all of them, do not worry – in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast.

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Hello. Thank you, Patreon community, for making this episode so much fun. If you would like to join our Patreon community, you will find out about interviews I have scheduled and be able to help me shape questions and deliver compliments to the authors I’m interviewing. If you would like to join, have a look at patreon.com/SmartBitches. Monthly pledges start at one dollar, and every pledge keeps the show going and makes sure that every episode is accessible to everyone, so thank you for your support.

I will end this book with a terrible joke. I might even end it with two, ‘cause I have two and I can’t choose, so you might get an extra bonus joke this week. Probably you will, because, well, well, I have no self-control in this department, but I don’t think that you expect me to either. [Laughs]

I will also have links to all the books and Mary’s site, where you can find all of her interconnected series.

I also want to extend a very special thank-you to Brittanie Black, who is the publicist at Penguin Random House who helped me arrange this interview. She went above and beyond and is a pleasure to work with. I don’t know if you’ve ever interacted with any of the publicists at Penguin Random House, but they’re pretty flipping fabulous, so thank you, Brittanie, for making this episode possible.

Shall we do this thing? Let’s do this thing! On with my conversation with Mary Balogh.

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Mary Balogh: Oh, I’m Mary Balogh. I grew up in Wales; I now live in Canada. I’ve been writing historical romance since, well, I was first published in 1985. I live in a small town in Saskatchewan, Canada, with my husband. I have three grown children, five grandchildren, four great-grands. Anything else? That should –

Sarah: Wow!

Mary: – cover it, I think.

Sarah: That is quite a lot! Did you say 1986?

Mary: 1985 I was first published.

Sarah: 1985!

Mary: Yes.

Sarah: So it’s been a little bit.

Mary: A long time. It has. I was still teaching at that time. I taught for twenty years.

Sarah: Oh, what did you teach?

Mary: High school English –

Sarah: Oh, well!

Mary: – surprise, surprise. [Laughs]

Sarah: Yeah, that works.

Mary: Yes.

Sarah: It’s an easy transition. Are characters a little easier than high school students?

Mary: Definitely.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Mary: – control them. Mind you, sometimes they try to take over, but it’s easier just to delete what they say if you don’t like it.

Sarah: [Laughs] I have a high-school-age son. I’m going to have to try that. I don’t think it’ll work!

[Laughter]

Mary: No, it won’t! [Laughs] Take my word for it, it won’t.

Sarah: All right. But you have so many books out this year, your website – organized by year, by the way. The books released by year is a fabulous way to organize, ‘cause I’m sure you’re aware, you have a lot of books! Congratulations!

Mary: Thank you!

Sarah: Now, I know that Someone –

Mary: There are lots of them.

Sarah: Yeah, there’s a few. I, I know that Someone to Romance is out in late August, and Truly just came out end of June, right?

Mary: Yes. Thereabouts.

Sarah: Congratulations!

Mary: Yes, thank you.

Sarah: Does releasing a new book ever get old? I’m guessing it doesn’t, but does it ever, does it ever get old?

Mary: No, it doesn’t. I suppose at the beginning the, the excitement of seeing a book with your name on it, you know, seeing a cover and, is a, you know, a real high, and, and I don’t exactly get that sort of high any longer, but it still is, you know, it still is a wonderful feeling when you see a new book and, and say, gosh, I wrote that. No, it, it never palls. No.

Sarah: No, I’m sure. I know that Truly was just re-released, and first, when I looked it up online, the print copies were like three hundred dollars!

Mary: Oh, well, yes. I, I can’t imagine anyone ever pays those amounts, I’m sure.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Mary: But yes, I see that myself. Yes.

Sarah: That must be really shocking!

Mary: It is, yes, but I guess it shows how people who want to complete a library of a favorite author will go to any lengths when the books are out of print!

Sarah: Wow. Now, I know that Truly was originally released in 1996, and it was probably written prior to that, but do you remember what led you into that story, and could you tell people a little bit about it?

Mary: I was moving from just writing Regency romances into writing other types of historicals. I was experimenting at the time, and I really wanted to set a few books in, in my native Wales. And there, there were a couple of historical events in the 19th century in Wales that particularly spoke to my heart. They were the Welsh, the downtrodden Welsh people fighting against the English oppressors. The one movement was in the 1830s, and that was the Chartist movement, which really affected the industrial workers and the coal miners –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: – of South Wales, and so I set one book there; it’s a book called Longing, one of my favorites. And then the other movement was what’s known as the Rebecca Riots of Welsh Wales, and they centered around the, the oppression of the Welsh, and it, it came to a real head with the erection of lots of toll gates that really affected people’s income and ability to travel around, and so there were, there were groups of people who got together – it’s very topical, actually, for what’s happening right now with the protesters. But they went around at night pulling down the toll gates, and they were led by a sort of mythical character, each group was led by a mythical character who was a man dressed up as a woman called Rebecca. And it’s, it’s a very romantic sort of notion, and also it dealt with a, a history I could get really passionate about. So those two books are amongst my favorites and really show my Welshness and my, my passion for my Welshness, I think.

Sarah: When you re-release the, the books that are coming out digitally, do you edit them? Do you read through them and do you make changes? One of my writers, one of my reviewers, Aarya, was very curious about that.

Mary: I don’t make many changes, and there are a few reasons. One is that I think people who try to revise books that they wrote twenty, thirty years ago don’t generally improve them – quite the opposite. It’s like the old Bible story about trying to patch up an old wine bottle with new material; the wine bottle ends up bursting. It just doesn’t work, and so that’s, that’s one reason. And another reason is that I want to spend my time writing new books –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: – and I don’t want to spend a lot of time rewriting old books. So I, I do make a few changes, you know, if I’ve, if I’ve learned an historical fact that I got wrong in a book, well, I’ll make that correction, and a few other little touches. Perhaps I’ll omit something or change something, but it, it never involves more than a word or a sentence or two. Basically, the books are as I wrote them. They, they have to stand for themselves, even if they’re not quite the book I would write now, if I were writing that book.

Sarah: It must be quite an experience to look over the, the older material and sort of see your past writing self, and, and I imagine you –

Mary: Yes.

Sarah: – see changes.

Mary: I do, yes. I was actually surprised; my very old books I hadn’t read for years and years before they started to come out as e-books again, and I really thought I hadn’t changed, but I have, and I think my earlier books were much more wordy – [laughs] – is the word that comes to mind. A lot of introspection with the characters and long paragraphs. Right now, when I’m writing and revising, I’ll spot those sections and cut them up and cut them out, cut a lot. I call it verbiage, you know, cut the verbiage –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: – I tell myself, but the old books have it, and sometimes I get impatient with my old self and I think, oh, come on, get on with the story!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Mary: But I leave it as it is.

Sarah: How do you decide which ones you’re going to release? Both Debbie and Claudia asked me to ask you about this. I have so many people who are so excited for this interview, and I have questions from lots of different people, but Debbie and Claudia specifically –

Mary: All right!

Sarah: – were so curious! What’s the process like for you to decide which ones you’re going to reissue?

Mary: Well, I want them all to come out again as fast as possible, every last one of them, so it’s not really a question of just picking out which ones I want to see published again; it’s just the order in which they’re to be published. And sometimes it’s random, and sometimes I’ll try to have a, a shorter Regency romance and a longer historical released in the same year perhaps for a bit of variety, or if books are connected in any way, even if they’re not literally a series, if they have some overlapping characters, I’ll perhaps try to put those together so that that’s more obvious to readers. Some favorites I suppose I put first, and perhaps ones that I, that, that are no longer real favorites of mine I left until last.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Mary: But, you know, generally speaking, it was fairly random, because I want them all to get out there sooner or later.

Sarah: Yes. You have quite a backlist! What were –

Mary: Yes, yes.

Sarah: – what were some of your favorites that you, that you wanted to re-release? I have such fond memories of reading A Certain Magic on an airplane and forgetting that I was on an airplane while I read it –

Mary: Oh!

Sarah: – so (a) thank you for that!

Mary: Oh, that’s good!

[Laughter]

Mary: Thank you!

Sarah: It is one of my favorites! What are some of your favorites?

Mary: Oh, right! I al-, I always liked The First Snowdrop, and then that’s related to the Christmas book Christmas Belle. I, I was, I’ve always been very fond of those two. And then I’ve liked the series, liked the series that starts with Dark Angel, and it went through Lord Carew’s Bride, which tends to be a reader favorite, and The Plumed Bonnet and, oh, there’s a Christmas one – I get the Christmas titles mixed up – A Christmas Bride I think it is. So that’s, that’s, that’s a favorite.

Sarah: When you look over the older titles, do-, does your, do, do you recognize your writing? Do you remember the story, or are you sort of surprised by your, by your past writing sometimes?

Mary: Well, in most cases I remember the story, or at least in outline, even if I’ve forgotten details, but I must confess that I have read one or two of my older books, and they’re completely new to me.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Mary: I have, you know, I’m reading them, and I have no idea what’s going to happen, and sometimes I get a bit anxious, thinking, oh dear, I hope she’s not going to do this! I hope she won’t do that! And it’s such a relief if I discover that she didn’t do this or that, ‘cause I can’t remember! That doesn’t happen too often, but there are one or two titles that are completely new to me, yes. It’s a horrible thing to admit – real elder moments.

Sarah: Oh no! I, I don’t recognize my own writing a lot of the time, and –

Mary: Ah, okay.

Sarah: – I’m routinely surprised by my own writing. Like, oh, Past Sarah, well done! [Laughs]

Mary: Yes, yes! It’s a nice feeling isn’t it?

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Mary: – you can look back and think, ooh! Did I write that? How nice!

Sarah: [Laughs] Yes, exactly! So you mentioned, can you tell, talk a little bit about Someone to Romance and what, what that book is about?

Mary: For anyone who’s familiar with the Westcott series, it’s book number eight –

Sarah: Woohoo!

Mary: – and the, and the heroine is Jessica, Jessica Archer, Lady Jessica Archer, who is the daughter of a Duke of Netherby, but the present Duke of Netherby is her half-brother, and he’s the hero of the first book, Someone to Love. Jessica is the daughter of, of a Westcott who married the Duke of Netherby. She’s connected with all the Westcotts, and from the start I intended her to have her own book, and this is it.

Sarah: I know that from your blog you do a lot of research into the historical details that are happening around the characters, although you said, of course, not everything makes it into the book, because that would be – what was the term you used? It would be a lot of verbiage?

Mary: [Laughs] Yes, it would!

Sarah: If all that research got in there?

Mary: Yes. Yes.

Sarah: With Someone to Romance, were there any details or historical bits that you learned that you didn’t include or that you really liked including?

Mary: There was very little in that book, and in fact, most of the research I’ve done is in the past, because all my books are set in the same historical period, so unless I’m doing something specific, like the Battle of Waterloo, for example –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: – I don’t have to do a great deal of research. But the hero of Someone to Romance has spent thirteen years of his life, I believe it is, in America, in Boston –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: – and he’s only just returned, or just returning at the start of this book, and he was a, he was a merchant, businessman, got very wealthy in Boston, and I thought, well, if I’m using that detail, I’d better know a little bit about Boston and make sure that what he was doing there is, seems authentic for the place. So I can’t say I delved hugely, you know, in great depth into the history of Boston, but I, I did a little bit, enough; I did a bit, enough to, to feel confident that, yes, what he says about his life there and what happened there is, is believable. But I didn’t include much of it in the book. I didn’t have to, but I always like to think that if people question it I could say, well, yes, I researched this, and such and such did happen, or whatever.

Sarah: So no one, like, walks around and gives you a quiz on your characters, what were they doing on this date, or anything like that?

Mary: Not very often.

Sarah: Well, that’s good. [Laughs]

Mary: And if people do question, question details – something happened recently; something’s niggling at my mind, but it won’t come, it won’t step up. It was something to do with the Battle of Waterloo, actually. But a, a reader questioned it and said, this is wrong, so I went back to my history books and proved to her, to her that in fact it was not wrong; it was right; I was right. So it’s nice to be able to do that; it’s reassuring.

Sarah: Yes!

Mary: But mind you, sometimes readers are correct!

Sarah: Oh, of course!

Mary: Sometimes they come at me with a, with a detail I got wrong, and I look it up and admit to them, yes, you’re right; I was wrong! I’ll correct it and won’t, it won’t happen again!

[Laughter]

Sarah: I know that one of the most poignant parts of, of Someone to Romance is how much Jessica misses her best friend and how much that motivates a, a lot of her actions. She just wants to be with her friend Abigail. Like, she misses her friend –

Mary: Yes.

Sarah: – deeply. What do you think are some of the elements to, to writing a really emotionally resonant friendship like that in a story?

Mary: Being a writer of romance, my instinct is to concentrate on the love story between the hero and heroine –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: – but that, I’ve learned, you know, through time and experience, that makes for a very what I call thin book, just a thin thread. And I do believe, and I talk about this quite a few times in my blogs and any talks I give, love is such a rich emotion, it pervades everything, and I try to get as much of it into my books as I possibly can, not just the romantic love, and friendship is an obvious one –

Sarah: Of course.

Mary: – and, and in this case, it’s not just a friendship, but the, the two of them, Abigail and Jessica, are first cousins. Jessica grew up almost as an only child because her half-brother was already just about grown up when she was born. Abigail does have a sister and brother, but Jessica loved being with them so much, and Abigail was close to her in age, so they were very, very close friends, and it carried through their lives. It was family love, and it was, it was friendship at the same time. And because love is so, love in all its manifestations is so important to me, I think it’s easy for me to get passionate about even friendships, not just the romantic relationships.

Sarah: And it’s not as if, you know, humans only have one relationship in their life.

Mary: No! No!

Sarah: We have lots of different ones!

Mary: Yes. That’s right.

Sarah: Do you have advice for anyone who’s thinking of writing a romance and wants to include not just the romantic relationship but friendships for the characters as well?

Mary: Well, I think that for me, writing is all about character. Plot –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: – and all the rest of it are, you know, just what you hang the, the love story on.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: And, and to, to write believable characters, you have to get deep, deep, deep, deep into them. You have to become them. You have to know what it feels like to be that person; you have to know everything about them, right down to the level of their soul. And if you’re doing that for your main characters, your hero and heroine, it, it somehow rubs off on minor characters as well. You can’t have these really deep, rich main characters and just little cardboard cutouts to fill the rest of the scene. Gradually, you get to know the other characters more and more, and, and then the relationships of the main characters to their family and friends and parents and grandparents and their pets – [laughs] –

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Mary: – it, it all, it all gains enrichment as the story grows, and I think that would, that would be my, my main advice to writers, is to, to write a rich tapestry. Don’t be content with just, with just a sort of light romance against a stage background. That’s, that’s to create the sort of story I write.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: There can be all sorts of stories of, of other types – we’re all different – but to write my type of book, you have to get into character and then spread it around through the book, but at the same time make sure the main focus is on the hero and heroine; otherwise, you lose that romantic connection with your reader.

Sarah: Have you always wanted to write romance?

Mary: Well, right from the time I was a small child, I wanted to be a writer. When people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I used to say I wanted to be an author, and I wrote long, long stories as a child. Now, obviously they weren’t romances – I didn’t know anything about romance in those days – but they are what would be known as romantic comedy. You know, they were stories of adventure and friendship, and everything ended happily ever after, so I think, you know, even then, before I knew about romantic love, that’s what I wanted to write. I wanted to make readers happy in what I wrote, so I think the, it was a natural progression to end up writing romance.

Sarah: Do you ever think about finding some of the stories you wrote as a child and releasing those as e-books?

Mary: Ohhh, I wish!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Mary: I wish I had kept some of them, I, I really do. They were long, long stories.

Sarah: Readers don’t mind, I promise. [Laughs]

Mary: No, no, but they, they didn’t survive my childhood, unfortunately.

Sarah: Ah!

Mary: I’m not a packrat, and my mother obviously wasn’t either, so no, they didn’t survive.

Sarah: Oh!

Mary: Yes, I know; I would love to read them.

Sarah: [Laughs] Elyse asked me to ask you that, about how many of your heroines are a little older, and they have a little bit more life and world experience, both good and not so great, by the time their stories begin. Is that something you gravitate towards as, as, as you develop a character?

Mary: Well, certainly now it is, because I’m older myself. In fact, I find it very difficult to write young characters. I do! Some of my characters are very young –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: – but I find it difficult, and very often I find that they are a bit wise beyond their years? You know, trying to make them believable as young characters I find trickier, because, as I was saying a little while ago, I like to have rich characters –

Sarah: Yes.

Mary: – and, you know, rich, a rich character comes from experience, which, which doesn’t mean that you’re, you’re empty-headed and just all fluff when you’re eighteen years old, but by the time you’re thirty-six or forty-six or fifty-six, then you, you’ve gained experience and wisdom and, to me, are much more interesting and believable to write about.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: So yes, I do gravitate to older characters, although I, I like variety. I don’t ever want to be accused of writing the same character over and over again. I want them all to be different.

Sarah: I don’t, I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen!

Mary: That’s good!

Sarah: [Laughs] I was talking to someone recently about how as a, as a parent of teenagers, you know, their emotional experiences are much more limited. They haven’t been alive long enough, and so when something happens it creates big gigantic emotions sometimes!

Mary: Yes, yes.

Sarah: Whereas for adults, well, I have a lot more emotional experience, so my waves of emotional, the pool of my emotional experience has smaller waves, and so with a character who’s had a number of really wide-reaching experiences and has seen the world, both internal and external, to fall in love creates a bunch of different waves that must be difficult for some characters to grapple with, even when they’ve experienced a lot, because it’s still, you know, love is still so incredibly big and complicated and scary, no matter when you encounter it.

Mary: Yes. Yes, I, I do – the one thing I, I always try to emphasize when I’m writing young characters is that even though they lack experience, nevertheless their feelings are very, very real and, and should never be belittled. You know, puppy love –

Sarah: Yes.

Mary: – is a terrible insult –

Sarah: Yes.

Mary: – to a young person. You know, you’ll get over it. [Laughs] That’s a terrible insult to a young person, and so I do try to keep that in mind when I’m writing a young per-, a young character, that their feelings are just as real, just as powerful as the feelings of an older person.

Sarah: Yes.

Mary: More so, in many ways, because as, as you would say, they lack the experience to realize that life is like this!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Mary: Ups and downs and all the way through, and you’re, you just learn to go with the flow or at least to, you learn better how to –

Sarah: Yes.

Mary: – go with the flow. Yes.

Sarah: And in your books, your characters often have relationships with people who are older or younger than them. They don’t exist, exist in solitude. So they, they interact with characters who have their own depth of experience as well.

Mary: Yes! And this is especially true of a family series where the family spans, you know, newborn babies right up to aged grandparents. Yes.

Sarah: Of course! Claudia wanted to know, you did a recent post on secondary characters speaking to you, and you mentioned earlier that, you know, you, you intend for certain characters to, to have their own stories, and then another character will appear and, and develop, and you’ll want to write a book for them as well! And so a series –

Mary: Yes.

Sarah: – gets bigger and bigger –

Mary: Yes. Mm-hmm.

Sarah: – and she really wanted to know more about that. How does that happen? What moves that? How do those stories take shape? Is it different every time?

Mary: Yes, it is different every time. Just to give you one recent example, my, my, the last book that was out was a summer – not a summer – Someone to Remember.

Sarah: Mm-hmm!

Mary: It was actually a novella, but it was published as, as a full book, and the heroine of that is fifty-six years old. So is the hero; they’re both fifty-six. Now, when she was created at the beginning of the Westcott series, she was created as a, a sort of cardboard character. She was the stereotypical aging spinster, the one who had stayed single in order to look after her mother into her old age. She was fussy, always fussing over her mother and driving her crazy. She was always going into her bag to get her smelling salts and worrying about drafts coming through doors. She was a stereotype, a, a cardboard figure. I should have been ashamed of myself to create her, but, I mean, some characters have to be that way. But the, the series has grown, and she’s in each book, and as the books –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Mary: – went along, she became more of a person to me, and particularly in the book, mm, Someone to – which one would it have been where – Someone to Honor! Where she meets the, the man she had been in love with as a young girl and had not married him because her parents disapproved, and he’d married and had children and had mistresses and had an illegitimate son who was the hero of Someone to Honor, and she meets him again in that book, and then of course it was too late for me. I mean, obviously I couldn’t leave her as this fussy old spinster. She had to have a story of her own, which she got in, in Someone to Remember, so that’s how it happened with her. It just grew on me.

And another book in the series, Someone to Care, the hero of that book has two, has twin children, a boy and a girl. They’re seventeen years old in his book, but of course the book, they get older as the books go on. They’re not Westcotts, they’re not part of the series, but by the time I came to the end of the series I really, really wanted to tell their stories, and I’ve actually started on one of them now. It’s not literally part of the Westcott series, but it’s, it’s a spinoff, and her brother, her twin brother will get his story too if I should live so long.

So, so that’s how it’s, comes with minor characters: they are created for a, a specific purpose in one book with no intention of being, of having stories of their own, but they grow, and I get interested in them and want to know, I want to know and grow their stories.

Sarah: And it sounds like you create people in your, in your characters that you come to care about.

Mary: Yes! And come to know. I come to know them not just as characters who’ve been put in there for a reason but as people. Yes, and then I want to continue with them.

Sarah: Claudia also noticed that there’s a, a, a theme of found family that makes its way through this series, particularly in the, within the Westcotts. Is there something unique about the Westcotts that has created so many books and so many characters?

Mary: Well, I did create it as an, an eight-part series, which has now developed into a nine-part series with, with the writing of Someone to Remember. Be-, I think because it’s family and involves so many people, and each time one of them meets someone and marries them, more characters come into the story, like the, like the twins, for example. And then I think it grows. I’ll tell you another reason – [laughs] – which I have never mentioned before, but I’ll mention it now: I’ve come more or less to the end of, of the series, and normally I would be starting to think of a new series, but I’m not young any longer. I’m an elderly person. I, I really don’t want to contemplate planning another lengthy series. I would much rather write spinoffs of a series already in existence, and since I’ve got interesting characters that I want to continue with anyway, those are my plans for the next while, rather than say, okay, that’s the end of that; now I’m going to start something totally new. I don’t know if I ever will, but, you know, that’s one, one reason I’m reluctant to –

Sarah: Well, that makes a lot of sense. I –

Mary: Yes, I’m reluctant to plan something new and not have a chance to finish it, finish this, finish another series.

Sarah: I can understand that, and I also know that right now, readers want to spend time in familiar worlds, because the world that we live in –

Mary: Yes.

Sarah: – is, is mentally exhausting every day –

Mary: Yes.

Sarah: – and –

Mary: Very true.

Sarah: – and so being able to re-enter a family and have a new story with characters that they know and they care about is incredibly comforting right now. I, I wrote an article for the Washington Post about how many people are rereading familiar books because –

Mary: Yes.

Sarah: – they just, they don’t have the cognitive energy to reconstruct a whole new world in their brains, and so for readers, having a familiar community to re-enter and be with is deeply comforting, and I can imagine among your readership, very much appreciated, so, you know, you can make up new children, as many as you need! We give – go for it!

[Laughter]

Mary: Yes. I don’t want to go into a next generation, because I don’t really want to go into a wholly new historical period, but any, anything that arises out of this particular generation is, is probably what I’ll be dealing with for a while anyway.

Sarah: So do you have themes that you notice as you’ve reread some of your older books and are writing new ones? Do you notice themes that work in your writing that you didn’t recognize when they were being composed initially?

Mary: Ahhh!

Sarah: It’s a tough question. I apologize.

Mary: I, I tend to, I’d have to think about it, but I would tend to say no. What does happen I find with my books, and it happens with almost all my books, is that I discover a theme as I’m going along, and sometimes it’s, it’s very close to the end of a book. I realize close to the end of a book what this book has been all about, and it’s only now becoming clear to me, and sometimes it means going back and re-, reshaping a little bit so that it’s a bit more smooth and perhaps obvious.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: But it tends to be book by book, and I, I can’t remember looking back on books, I don’t think, and realizing themes that I hadn’t recognized at the time. That’s an interesting question, though; I’ll have to think about that now afterwards.

Sarah: [Laughs] I imagine it’s very common to get to the end of the book and realize, oh, that’s what this book is about! That’s –

Mary: Yes!

Sarah: – what you people are doing! Oh! Well. Well, thank you –

Mary: Yes.

Sarah: – for telling me now!

[Laughter]

Mary: Yes, that’s, that’s right. It’s, it’s actually a nice moment; I call it the eureka moment when everything clicks together and – doesn’t happen with every book, but it happens quite frequently towards the end. I suddenly realize what, what it’s all about.

Sarah: So what are you working on now, if I may ask, if you can talk about it?

Mary: Well, I’ve just started a book. I just started on July the 1st, and it is the book about the, the, the, one of these twins from the Westcott story. Brother and sister, they are. They were seventeen when, when they first appeared in the Westcott series. They’re twenty-five now, so I’m telling her story first. She’s, twenty-five is quite an advanced age for a, for a woman in those days. It’s not for a man, so he can wait for a while, but I’m telling her story first.

Sarah: You have a, a writing schedule that you keep?

Mary: I do; when I work on a book, I work mornings every day, seven days a week –

Sarah: Wow!

Mary: – until it’s finished. I, I used to work five days a week and take the weekends off, but then I found more and more, Monday mornings were hell –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Mary: – because I’d have to think my way all the way back into that book, and it wasn’t easy. I find it a lot easier if I write every day, and I, I, I aim for two thousand words a day. But that’s only when I’m actually writing. A lot of the time I’m going back and revising and rewriting. By the time I come to the end of a book, I’ve probably read it through about two hundred times and changed and rewritten it and smoothed it out as I go. So it’s either two thou-, two thousand words a day or it’s revising, and I try to write about thirty thousand words a month so that I can finish a book in just a little over three months and finish it completely within four months. That’s my, the general pattern.

Sarah: Do you always write in the same place, or do you have any rituals around your writing, or is it, the writing is happening now, and here’s where I am, so let’s do this?

Mary: I like to write in the summer – we, we have two homes, one in the city and one out in the, a country town, and I like to write in the summer out in the country town, because we have a, we have a, a porch, a veranda, a deck –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: – outside, and it’s screened in – no mosquitoes.

Sarah: Very important.

Mary: And we practically live out there in the summer, and I like to do my writing out there. If the weather is chilly or it’s not suitable to be out there, I write inside in a, in an armchair looking out a picture window at the front of the house. I like to, I like to see the outdoors when I’m writing. I like to feel that connection. I don’t write very much, I don’t like writing in the winter. We, we have a, a condo in the winter, and I, it’s, for some reason it’s not quite conducive to writing, as far as I’m concerned, so I’m a summer writer, including a bit of the spring and a bit of the fall, but generally a summer writer, not a winter writer.

Sarah: That is really interesting. Do you have specific tools that you always use?

Mary: Not really. I just, I just have my little laptop and my day calendar beside me and my yellow pad where, on which I list names and place names of characters and, and places as I go, and that’s about it.

Sarah: With the Westcotts, have you developed a sort of a, a, a series guide for yourself so you keep everyone straight?

Mary: I have a, a, a book in which, when I’ve finished a book, I write all the character and place names, and I do have a couple of sheets of paper stuck in there which I made when I started the series really with some vague character and place descriptions, but most of it is carried around in my head, which gets a little crowded at times, but –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Mary: And if, if I do need details, then I just go back to the relevant book and find them. ‘Cause sometimes I forget their eye color or, you know, some, some essential information like that and have to go back and find out. But no, it’s, it’s a very uncomfortable way to write; I wouldn’t recommend it to any other writer –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Mary: – but it’s just, it’s just what works for me.

Sarah: Oh, whatever works is what you go with, right?

Mary: Yes, yes.

Sarah: My window in my office overlooks my neighbor’s house, and they recently had their siding power-washed, and so I sat down to work, and I realized  that they had power-washed all of the interesting dirt patterns that I used to stare at –

Mary: Ohhh, oh, right!

Sarah: – and I was like, you took away my, my designs, y’all! [Laughs]

Mary: [Laughs]

Sarah: I was really inspired by the moss and the mold and all these swirls, and now they’re gone!

Mary: Ohhh!

Sarah: I hadn’t even realized how much what I look at, you know, just sort of calms my brain a little bit. [Laughs]

Mary: Yeah! Yes, and just the familiarity of it sometimes more than anything else.

Sarah: Yes! [Laughs]

Mary: Mm-hmm, it grounds you.

Sarah: Yes, and it’s that, always that view from your veranda with the screens that, that, you know, you, you –

Mary: Yes.

Sarah: – you’re seeing the, the seasons and nature change, but it’s still the same trees and the same view.

Mary: That’s right. Yes.

Sarah: Now, Regencyfan on my Patreon asked me to tell you a, a, a compliment, that you were the first romance author where they realized, this book that I like was written by the same person who wrote this other book that I like, and you became her first auto-borrow from the library and then an auto-buy author. And I, I love that as a compliment, and I know so many readers who, the minute they see your name, are like, oh, well, I’m buying this. Do you still hear from, from readers that are auto-buy for your, for your books, that are excited to see your name on, on a new cover?

Mary: Yes, yes, there are lots of readers like that. It’s always really a thrill if I hear from readers who say, I’ve just discovered you, or, you know, I’ve read this book and I love it, and I’m going to find another one! And I think –

Sarah: Well! [Laughs]

Mary: – yay! I hope you enjoy that too. But that is a lovely compliment. I know as a reader that I love to discover a new author, you know, to read a book by someone I haven’t read before and absolutely love the book, and then I almost hold my breath when I find another book by that same author, saying, please, please, please be as good as the last one so that I can say I love this author, and sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes it’s just that one book –

Sarah: Yep.

Mary: – from the author that I like and nothing else, and that’s very disappointing. But it is lovely to dis-, to discover an author and realize that you’re, you will enjoy just about everything that they’ve written. It’s a lovely feeling –

Sarah: It really is.

Mary: – and I love that as a compliment. I’m very glad to hear that from, from your reader.

Sarah: Oh, it, it is, it is my favorite thing to introduce someone to an author and then know that there’s so many books by that writer –

Mary: Yes!

Sarah: – that they can go enjoy. I mean –

Mary: I know.

Sarah: – you, you do have quite a backlist; you probably could fill a swimming pool and people could jump into it with all of your books.

Mary: [Laughs] Don’t do that; don’t throw them into the water.

Sarah: No, no, empty swimming pool! But you might get paper cuts; it wouldn’t be good. [Laughs]

Mary: Right.

Sarah: Now, I know that you don’t necessarily have much of a say in the intricacies of cover art, but because you are such a long-published historical romance author, and because historical romance has changed the way it looks so much, I’m curious about your, your perspective. Your latest covers have women in these beautiful, opulent, lush settings – they’re gorgeous – and earlier –

Mary: Yes.

Sarah: – earlier series started with men and then trans-, transitioned into images of women all by themselves. What do you think of how historical romance has changed from your covers and other covers?

Mary: Well, I could tell you the story between that transition from the men on the covers –

Sarah: Oh, please do!

Mary: – early in the series, and the women later. Yes! My publisher at the time started to put these men on the covers, the men in the generic white shirt which is open down to the navel and a waxed chest underneath it, all muscle.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Mary: I just, I just freaked out. I hated them, I ranted and raved, I wept. You know, my, the publisher knew that I was really just about hysterical over these covers, and they would not change them. They, they insisted that they wanted to appeal to a younger audience with a, with sexy covers, and I came to the end of my contract, and I moved to a different publisher purely for that reason. I could not –

Sarah: No, really!

Mary: I could, I could not stand those covers. I used to get my free copies, and I wouldn’t give them away to anyone. I didn’t want anyone to see that cover and think that I’d written that book. So yes, I moved to a different publisher, and I’ve been with them ever since. I absolutely adore them, and right from the, from the get-go I was given full cover consultation.

Sarah: Ooh!

Mary: I send in my ideas for what I want on a cover. They produce a cover and show it to me, and if there are some things I’m not too keen on I’ll, I’ll ask for a – I try, try not to be prima-donna-ish about it, but, you know, I’ll ask for a slight change or a tweak here, and they’ll do it! And I love it!

And one other comment I’ll make on historical covers is that most histor-, historical romances also tend to be Regency romances, and yet the fashion now is for women with larger and larger skirts, enormous skirts covering and billowing over the whole cover. This is the Regency, folks!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Mary: You know, with the, with the glorious Grecian lines and clinging skirts, very, very feminine and attractive and sexy, and yet, no, they have to have these billowing skirts, which incidentally are totally unhistorical for any era I know of. There is no historical era where women wore those skirts, except for the crinoline skirts of the 18th century or the late Victorian –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: – which were different altogether. So I, I really – I can’t say I hate those covers; some of them look very attractive – but I despise them. You know, if you’re writing an historical book, well, at least have the cover match that historical period. If you want the reading public to take romance seriously – I’m, I’m sorry; I’m on my soapbox here, but I do feel strongly about covers, and I love my own. And those, those men covers, ugh, yuck! I hated them! I hate, hate, hated them.

Sarah: I have never been a fan of the waxed man chest either, so hearing you talk about it –

Mary: Oh gosh!

Sarah: – made me laugh so hard.

Mary: [Laughs] And the generic shirt.

Sarah: Why is it always the same shirt? Do they only have the one shirt?

Mary: Probably. Probably.

Sarah: [Laughs] It’s all these heroes, they have one shirt! I remember –

Mary: Yes! The –

Sarah: – ages and ages ago, all of the heroes were headless? Like, it was just –

Mary: Yes!

Sarah: – from the neck down, and I used to imagine all the heads, like, getting together in a support group and, and being like, I was on a really good cover, but then – gkk! – off went my head!

[Laughter]

Mary: Yes. Yes.

Sarah: So with the, with the books that you’re re-, reissuing with the beautiful striped covers and the silhouettes, do you have a say in those as well? Are you involved in the design? ‘Cause they’re wonderfully eye-catching, and they thematically –

Mary: Yes, they are! Yes.

Sarah: – work together. They’re wonderful!

Mary: It’s my, my agent, it’s her publishing company. She set up the company for my e-books, and we discussed covers, and few ideas tossed around, and I suggested silhouettes on the cover, but I was picturing the black silhouettes, you know?

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: And, but the whole thing sort of grew, and I think they found someone who was willing to do that sort of cover, but I can’t, I think it was Maria herself who suggested the pastel covers with the sort of stripy, slightly stripy background –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: – and I don’t know who suggested the, the emblems that also go on the covers. Very often they’re a flower, though not always.

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: And the, the silhouettes themselves are not, are not always black. But when we put it all together on a few covers I just loved it, and I, you know, kudos to the cover maker who manages to come up with something a little different each time for each book, but I love them, and they’re easily recognizable, and I think that’s important when you’re reissuing old books. I think readers appreciate that – I do as a reader – to be able to see a cover and say, oh, there’s another of so-and-so’s books –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: – because I recognize that’s that cover, so it must be one of hers, and you look and sure enough it is, and I think that’s important.

Sarah: Yes, and, and the people –

Mary: So yeah, I, I love those covers.

Sarah: Ugh, they’re wonderful, and the visual ties them together.

Mary: Hmm!

Sarah: The minute I see one I’m like, oh, that’s going to be a reissued Regency; better grab that one!

Mary: Yes, good. I’m, I’m glad that it’s working, that concept, the concept itself, and the recognizability.

Sarah: Oh yes. Do you, do you like the cover for Someone to Romance? Am I allowed to ask?

Mary: I like it; I don’t love it.

Sarah: Really!

Mary: I was a little disappointed. I – it had on it all the elements that I had asked for, and I, I really don’t hate it, but I think of it as the, as the quarantine cover, and I know it’s, it’s incredibly difficult for publishers these days to, to manage everything, to produce a cover. And when I had it, I was given, very unusually, I was given a block of about twenty different versions of this cover.

Sarah: Oh my!

Mary: And, and I sort of sensed anxiety. You know, what is she going to say about these covers? And I chose, you know, I, I wasn’t thrilled about any of them, they weren’t quite the way I had visualized it, but I was not going to ask for wholesale changes, so I chose one I liked and asked –

Sarah: Mm-hmm.

Mary: – if it could be melded with another one I like. You know, a little bit of this and a little bit of that, and it turned out, it, I, I heard anxiety in the reply, it wasn’t really workable, or at least not without wholesale changes. I said, fine, just, you know, and they suggested something, I suggested something, and we came up with that. So it’s, it’s my quarantine cover. I like it! I do like it.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Mary: But I’m not wildly in love with it as I have been with a few of my covers.

Sarah: Which are some of your favorites? Do you have a favorite Westcott cover?

Mary: Ooh! I love, I love the cover of Someone to Care. To me, it’s very, oh, romantic is a very weak word. It’s –

Sarah: No, it is! It has so much movement! The way her –

Mary: Yes.

Sarah: – dress is billowing behind her?

Mary: Yes. And the, almost a suggestion of mist in the hills and that lovely house, which is much too elaborate for the cottage in the book. I actually think I went, I think I went back to the book and adjusted the appearance of the cottage to match the cover a bit better than it did, ‘cause I loved the cover so much!

Sarah: [Laughs]

Mary: But yeah, I, I think that probably is my favorite, although I do, I, I like the first one, Someone to Love; I love that cover, in which a graveyard had to be taken out. [Laughs]

Sarah: Oh!

Mary: It’s a picture of a church with a, with a churchyard and the, the lich gate, and the graves were actually in the original, and I said, you know, mmm, this isn’t really good, to have the grave, the gravestones in here, so they took them out.

[Laughter]

Mary: But I love that cover, I think for similar reasons. I love her dress and the way it, the, the movement it has.

Sarah: Yes. So many –

Mary: But I love all the covers, really. I like them all. I don’t hate any of them or even, you know – the, the most blah one is the final one, as far as I’m concerned. It’s a little bit blah, but it’s okay.

Sarah: I also love the richness of the purple in Someone to Remember with her hat –

Mary: Yes.

Sarah: – and her coat. I am a sucker for jewel tones, but wow! That’s a beautiful cover.

Mary: It is. Now, unfortunately, the story itself, it’s very specific about that scene, that she is wearing a pale blue outfit. It’s –

Sarah: [Laughs]

Mary: – it’s part of the story! But I thought, ohhh! – [laughs] – I like that purple, and I really couldn’t change the story, so I just hoped nobody would notice. Some readers have noticed, yes, but yes, I love the purple too.

Sarah: Now, I always ask this question: what are you reading that you might like to tell people about?

Mary: Well, there’s one series that I haven’t, strangely, read before, and it’s, it’s just what you were describing a little while ago; it’s this total comfort read. I’m reading the, the Virgin River series.

Sarah: Oh, that is, that is grade A comfort reading.

Mary: Yes, it is! And I haven’t read them before, and they’re great books, and there are lots of them, so it’s going to be a while before I get to the end of them. So I’m really, really – you know, thank you, Robyn Carr. I’m really, really relaxing with that series.

Although I must mention a book that I just read yesterday and the day before which absolutely wowed me. I love this book. It’s Elizabeth Berg’s A Man Called – oh dear, what is it?

Sarah: Is it the, A Man Called Ove?

Mary: No, it’s not that; I have read that and loved that book too, but that, this isn’t that book. It’s –

Sarah: Is it The Story of Arthur Truluv?

Mary: Yes! Yes, I was just finding it, but you found it before I did. Yes! Glorious book! I just loved it. I just finished it last night. And now I haven’t read any of her other books, and she has quite a lot, I see, so I’m going to be trying something else of hers.

Sarah: Oh, that’s wonderful!

Mary: Yes. So I loved that one. But generally I keep drifting back and forth to the, to the Robyn Carr series and just enjoying all those, all those books.

Sarah: They are, they are incredible comfort reads.

Mary: They are! They have such lovely, particularly the heroes, such wonderful heroes. They’re all too good to be true, but who cares?

[Laughter]

Mary: And lovely heroines too, and they all appear in all of the books, and it’s, it’s lovely. I love it.

Sarah: Well, it’s, it’s like we were talking of earlier: the ability to re-enter a community and visit with familiar characters is wonderfully comforting.

Mary: It is! It really is. Yes, you, you feel you belong there, almost as if you can leave your own world for the moment and step into this. And sometimes when they’re getting too close together for some reason, or if they’re all in Jack’s Bar there, I’ll go, no, no! You mustn’t get too close to one another.

Sarah: [Laughs]

Mary: No, really! I really do find this happening.

Sarah: I do too!

Mary: This COVID mentality is –

Sarah: Why are you in a bar? You shouldn’t be in a bar! [Laughs]

Mary: Yes! Or, or if you are, you should be socially distanced! [Laughs]

Sarah: So where are your masks, people? Yes, I have this same problem! I was watching a TV show and, like –

Mary: It’s powerful, yes!

Sarah: – all these people are too close together, and it’s really crowded, and I’m very uncomfortable! [Laughs]

Mary: I know, I know! It’s really horrid, this effect it’s having on us, but anyway, it is lovely to escape.

Sarah: It is, it really is.

Mary: And when you, when you realize, you, that they, they’re allowed to get close together, you think, okay. All right!

Sarah: It’s almost like the rules of historical engagement, where you can’t really go off by yourself or be alone or too close to someone now. [Laughs] They appea- – 

Mary: Yes!

Sarah: – they apply now too!

Mary: Yes, that’s right.

Sarah: Well, thank you so much for doing this interview with me. I really, really appreciate your time.

Mary: Oh, you’re very welcome. I enjoyed it. I, I, you sent me the questions this morning, and I read through them, and I thought, oh, lovely! These are good questions.

Sarah: Oh, thank you! I appreciate that!

Mary: Yes! Yes, I enjoyed answering them.

[music]

Sarah: And that brings us to the end of this week’s episode. Thank you again to everyone who made excellent contributions with questions and enthusiasm for this episode, and thank you again to Brittanie Black for making this possible, and most of all to Mary Balogh for hanging out and chatting with me so I could really, really, really keep my inner thirteen-year-old under control. Barely managed it.

You can find all of Mary Balogh’s books and her blog at her website, marybalogh.com. I will have info and links in the show notes at smartbitchestrashybooks.com/podcast. I know we talked about a lot of books. Don’t worry; they will all be there. You can click and read and download to your heart’s content.

Also, a quick tip for you: many of the Mary Balogh re-releases of her older Regencies are part of the Hoopla digital collection, so if your library subscribes to Hoopla, you should be able to access many of her titles, including Truly, through that collection.

This episode was brought to you by Crushing It by Lorelei Parker. This romantic comedy from a debut author combines humor, second chances, and learning that the key to love can be found in first loving oneself. To pitch her new role-playing game at a European conference, Sierra Reid needs to overcome her terror of public speaking. So what better way than to compete in a local bar’s diary slam, regaling an audience with old journal entries about her completely humiliating college crush on gorgeous Tristan Spencer? This is a great idea until the moderator says, “Next up, Tristan Spencer.” Uh-oh! This book is perfect for fans of Christina Lauren and Sally Thorne. Crushing It by Lorelei Parker is available now wherever books are sold. Find out more at kensingtonbooks.com!

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All right, are you ready? I think it’s two jokes this time. You ready? Here we go. First joke: [Clears throat]

Why is justice a dish best served cold?

Why? Why is justice a dish best served cold?

Because if it were served warm it would be justwater.

[Laughs]It’s, it’s so dumb; I love it! When my kids were at camp I used to send them Overwatch jokes, and that was related to one of them. I like that very much.

I have a second joke. It’s a little bit more serious. [Clears throat] Serious podcaster voice:

An epidemiologist, a scientist, and a doctor walked into a bar.

Just kidding; they know better than that.

[Laughs]

So on that note, please wear a mask and look out for yourselves and the people around you, especially your loved ones. I hope that you and yours are safe and sound, and I thank you again for inviting me into your eardrums.

As always, I wish you the very best of reading. Have a wonderful weekend, and I will see you back here next week!

Smart Podcast, Trashy Books is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at frolic.media/podcasts.

[relaxing music]