Written on Your Skin is Meredith’s new historical that will be out tomorrow, July 28th. To celebrate the release, Meredith is here to discuss what goes into researching a historical (and to giveaway copies of both Written on Your Skin and Bound by Your Touch).
Strange Pasts and Virtual Time Travel: An Ode to Great Research
Consider this: it’s the early 1890s. An American heiress from a “common as dirt” family takes out an advertisement in prominent London newspapers, seeking a chaperone to introduce her to all the right people. In response, a bona fide duchess offers to sponsor her debut for the small price of £2000 (plus, of course, various expenses – the rent on the duchess’s Mayfair house, the carriage and driver, the servants and grocery bills). The duchess also feels sure she can procure the heiress a well-born husband, “but not for the £2,000. Oh no! …That sum of money would take [one] only so far as Buckingham Palace.”
Sounds like the plot of a romance novel, right? I expect our heroine is the duchess, who is broke, widowed (but perhaps, somehow, still a virgin), and destined to fall in love with the heiress’s beau, a penniless but titled fortune hunter. The heiress, meanwhile, is most taken with the duchess’s stiff-lipped butler. In the end, love triumphs for everyone and the reader is satisfied, although she might roll her eyes at the plot premise and think, “Only in fiction would this happen.”
Except, of course, it did happen in real life – except for one small difference: the heiress was an American journalist who went undercover, posing as a midwestern heiress to prove to her English friends that money could, indeed, buy a social position in Victorian London. While she didn’t take the duchess up on her offer, you can read all about the other responses she received (as well as her stunt as an undercover housemaid in London’s finest homes) here.
(By the way, for those among you who haven’t discovered Google Books and the New York Times archives yet, there’s a great deal of fun to be had by googling odd terms in the date-restricted searches. For one fascinating story about an English conwoman that I pieced together recently, check out this piece.
I share this anecdote because it evidences how the past is at once stranger and more familiar than we give it credit for. Great novelists bring this feeling home in full. Consider, for instance, my Desert Island Keeper (DIK) shelf. Kinsale, Gaffney, Ivory, Thomas, Goodman—these writers’ novels are brilliant. They can make me forget about my world completely; when I put them down, I am always startled to find myself amidst the mundane furnishings of twenty-first century America. But while the power of these DIKs stems largely from how well they’re written, I think it also has to do with the excellence of their authors’ research.
Now, by excellent research, I don’t just mean historical accuracy. I’ve read hundreds (probably thousands) of historical romances since I turned thirteen, and a good many of them were very well-researched indeed. But only the keepers leave me convinced that I now have some idea of what it *really* felt like to be alive during another time period. And that’s the feeling I read for. That’s why I love historicals above all other subgenres of romance.
So, how do *great* researchers write books that make me feel transported to another time and place? My answer: they create a world that feels as startling and unexpected as it does recognizable. Even though I’ve encountered nineteenth-century England in dozens (if not hundreds) of other romance novels, the books on my keeper shelf make the past seem uncanny and fascinating all over again. They show the world to me in a way that I’ve never seen before, in a manner that seems uniquely authentic to the period.
Sometimes all it takes to hook me is a fabulous eye for unexpected and convincing details—like the magnificently Russian coat worn by the hero of Judith Ivory’s Untie My Heart, or the description of lightning in Sherry Thomas’s Not Quite a Husband: “The periphery of the sky lit every few seconds, truant angels playing with Lucifer matches.” Lucifer matches? I had to look that up, and it thrilled me—such a description, it seems to me, could only belong to a pre-twentieth century world.
Or it might be the tone and setting of the novel that disorients and displaces me. Patricia Gaffney’s To Have and to Hold showed me a new facet of the Victorian world I’d come to know through so many other books—the penal system. It also put me in a strange place as a reader by eliciting my sympathy for a woman in a position of terrible vulnerability vis-à-vis the hero, her aristocratic employer. I’d never before been made to feel what it meant to be on the wrong side of this power dynamic. Suddenly, as I came to identify with the beleaguered Rachel, the past felt fresh and terrible and wondrous and mysterious all over again.
In short, I believe that great research is crucial to great writing. And when excellent writing and great research coincide, the result ravishes me. It revitalizes my own ongoing romance with history, and inspires me to delve more deeply and thoughtfully into the fictional worlds I create myself. Above all, it allows me to time travel from the comfort of my couch—to fall in love in foreign lands and times, and to return with an enriched imagination and a deeper understanding of the human condition. That’s no small order for a book, to be sure. But when a novelist delivers on it, she earns a place on my bookshelf forever.
Meredith will be dropping in and out today, so if you have a question, please ask! Anyone that leaves a comment will be entered to win one of three copies of Written on Your Skin as well as an autographed set of Bound by Your Touch and Written on Your Skin!
I’m sorry to say I never read your books before I will now your book sounds so good. thank you for being here today. I just started reading the historical romances and I’m loving them. I love the red dress on your cover too.
Penney
luvhistoricalromance(at)gmail(dot)com
I’m loving the covers and the story sounds interesting, which means i have another book/series to read now!
I’m afraid I haven’t tried your books yet, but I see you now share a blog with Sherry Thomas. She has been quite complementary about your books. It’s always nice to try a new author, so I look forward to reading one of your novels. Best of luck with Written on Your Skin.
Just want to say that I can’t wait until tomorrow when I can go to the bookstore to get your next book “written on your skin”. I read “Bound by your Touch” a few weeks ago and LOVED it! You are an ‘auto buy’ author now.
*waving* Hello, Ms Duran!
I had the pleasure of meeting you at RWA.
Hi! I’m a newbie to your books, too, but I am really interested. Your books always get the best reviews!
Hey Miss Meredith! So nice to see you here! I’m off to the bookstore tomorrow to buy new books. WoYS is at the top of my list!
So, question: Whatcha working on now???
I am not a newbie to your books, Meredith, but think you are fab! I’ve loved everything I’ve read so far, and you can tell that you’ve done your research. It does make a world of difference. Thanks for sharing! 🙂
Meredith, I love a good description myself. There’s nothing quite like the experience of reading something and saying, “Ahh, I wish I had written that!”
Margay
I hadn’t discovered Google books and found it very enlightening! Thanks for sharing.
I have Bound by your touch in my TBR pile and still haven’t sunk my teeth in it but I am looking to add your latest so I can read them together. Do you think you will be adding more books to the series?
I have to say that I have become particular in my historical books, however after reading your little blip here, I have to say that you have caught my interest and I am going to have to read your books. Thanks.
Congrats on these 2 books! Around the blogs, I have read nothing but absolute raves about both of these!
I’m convinced.
I actually think that this same skill (even artistry, in some cases) of making the small details relevant, convincing, and comprehensible even if one has never heard a certain term before is what sets excellent fantasy and science fiction apart from the average.
Hi Meredith,
I read Bound by your Touch last week (I’m always late !!) and loved it. Congratulations on your new release, can’t wait to read it too !!
I have read your first book, great start 🙂
Congrats on your new releases.
I do wonder, as an author wannabe. Do you feel most comfortable writing in this genre that you know?
Congrats on your new release! I am looking forward to reading it.
Hey, all! Thanks for stopping by today. (Special shout out to Azteclady! My sighting of her nametag at RWA caused me to squeal so loudly that heads turned, so I figure I should make it a tradition to greet her very loudly! 😉 )
Jane asked: How did you come to choose Hong Kong as the setting?
Originally the book was intended to be an across-the-world-chase that followed one route for opium smuggling. So, we would move from Hong Kong to Singapore to Calcutta to London. As the characters developed, the plot changed radically, and I had to scrap this idea. But during the course of my research on Hong Kong, I’d fallen in love with the place, and still wanted to use it for the (very dramatic) beginning of the novel. In particular, there was a fire on Christmas Eve, 1879 that I very much wanted to use. Ultimately I had to scrap that, as well! But Hong Kong remained. (You can read an early beginning that featured this fire on my website. I had such fun writing it. Grr argh, self-editing is painful.)
Blodeuedd asked:
Do you feel most comfortable writing in this genre that you know?
I think I would feel comfortable writing in any genre of which I’m also an avid reader. For instance, a novel I wrote under a different name is being released overseas in the fall, and it’s definitely not romance – more like commercial fiction. (There’s a romance, but it’s secondary to the main plot.) I’m also a big fan of urban fantasy and YA, and through the years, I’ve developed a sense of what works in those genres, and what doesn’t. However, if you asked me to write a mystery or a horror novel, I’d be utterly stumped! And let’s not even touch experimental fiction…
Strlady asked:
Do you think you will be adding more books to the series?
There are a couple of characters in Bound by Your Touch that I think have potential as future heroines – James’s sister, Stella, and also his close friend, Elizabeth. But I have no immediate plans, only lots and lots of ideas. 🙂
Kati asked:
My next book, WICKED BECOMES YOU, out in May 2010. The shorthand synopsis: Provoked one too many times, London’s nicest girl snaps. If nice isn’t working anymore, perhaps it’s time she learned to be wicked. And what better place to learn to be wicked than the Riviera?
Unfortunately, the rake she chooses as her unofficial tour guide happens to be in love with her just as she is with him. Not that it signifies, of course. He knows that the tangled history they share–a history even darker than she realizes–makes any future between them impossible.
…Or does it?
Congratulations on the new release! I read Bound By Your Touch last week and it really was a wonderful story. I have to say that it was one of the best endings I’ve read in a long time. I really enjoyed how nobody in the whole book was truly good or evil.
Congrats on the great reviews. I’m looking forward to reading Written on Your Skin, love that it begins in Hong Kong. Can you tell us some of your favorite authors?
I really adore a historical romance when I learn something new that many don’t know about from your school history.
Congrats on the great reviews!
Hi Meredith, I’m glad we get to read Phin’s book so soon instead of having to wait. Loved Bound, and James, but I was also intrigued about what haunts Phin so much.
Never having heard of you till now I must say I’m glad I did. What lovely covers for the books and I’d love to be entered to win. Thanks so much and I look forward to finding out more about your writing.
Awesome, another chance to win. Would love a chance to read your books “outside of the box” of romance novels. Different is good:)
*blushing*
*grinning*
Thank you, Ms Duran!
I just started reading The Duke of Shadows – love it! Can’t wait to read more of your books.
Congrats on the new release, Meredith. How did you come to choose Hong Kong as the setting?
That was an amazing post. I linked to story about the American journalist that went undercover as an heiress. English society can be so trusting since they did not have resources to quickly discover these cons. But sure makes for great stories.
I have Written on Your Skin on the way and loved your first two books! Looking forward to what you will write next!
Yes!! You explain it so well – which is why you are the writer and I’m the reader 😉 It’s the books that reach out and suck you into their world. It’s a rare find for sure – Kinsale’s For My Lady’s Heart had me so enthralled I have mentioned many times how I would watch the news for the next week and wonder why they weren’t speaking right.
I’m very excited to try your books. I have Bound By Your Touch in my TBR pile.
CindyS
I have not read Ms. Duran’s books but they sound wonderful. I have heard great buzz about them.
Meredith!! 🙂 Hello!!
So glad to see you out and about. I really enjoyed your last (still on the lookout for your newest) book. FABULOUS and wonderful characters!!
It was fun today reading about how you do research.
rachie2004 @ yahoo (dot) com
🙂 Meredith, your a rising star chicka! Congratulations on your newest release, can’t wait to read it!!!
lyoness2009 AT hot mail *dot* com
I’ve heard alot about this one, sounds good! tWarner419@aol.com
I loved Duke of Shadows and your new books are on my wish list.
Congrats on the release!
I have only heard wonderful things about the new book. Bound by Your touch is next in my TBR pile and I am looking forward to it.
Congrats on the release *today*!!! I have heard so many great things about your writing but I don’t have either of your two previous books. Trust me – all three of your books are on my TBB list!!
lynda98662 at yahoo dot com
Eee… now I know how I missed this… I was stuck in the stupid warehouse… *pout*
I loved Duke of Shadows- need to re-read Bound by Your Touch, and I really want Written on Your Skin. Love the covers and titles too!
I need to figure out this google books thing… although maybe it’s good I don’t because I’d never get anything done and just research obscure facts.
Congratulations on the new book release!