Interviewing author Jessica Cale

Author Jessica Cale is a recovering journalist writing romance novels out of a gray bedroom in North Carolina. Although Jessica is a Minnesota native, she lived in Wales for several years where she earned a BA in History and an MFA in Creative Writing while climbing castles and photographing mines for history magazines. She married her very own British prince and is enjoying her happily ever after with him in a place where no one understands his accent.

Jessica calls her works romance novels, but she can be rough on her characters. She kills some and puts the others through serious obstacles, including but not limited to poverty, kidnapping, imprisonment, mutilation, and infestation. She says it’s all in the name of historical accuracy, but perhaps she took the quote about the course of true love never going smoothly a bit too seriously. Her writing blends “gothic” romance with historical. There’s danger, suspense, dark themes, and plenty of sweet revenge.

Jess has an MFA in Creative Writing and a BA in Ancient and Medieval History from Swansea University, Wales. Under different names, she has written for BBC History, The Observer, Feedback, Plugged In, The Libertine, Subtext, the International Women’s Day Anthology (2010), and a whole bunch of other people, including an independent magazine she published from 2001 - 2011.

You originally worked as a journalist. What made you transition from journalism to fiction? Was the shift difficult or did having a journalism background has helped your writing?

Fiction was my first love, but I think I had more of a natural talent for journalism. I read constantly as a child and tried to write a couple of books as early as middle school. I found long fiction challenging at first; short stories became a way to develop my writing, and I stuck with these for a few years. Journalism felt easier to me. I started an independent magazine at fifteen and I published this all through high school and university for a total of ten years. I always wanted to write books, though, and historical romance in particular. My MFA is in Creative and Media Writing and all through university and some years after, I worked as a freelance journalist and magazine editor. It was fun, but it could be very stressful and time consuming.

I was a regular contributor to BBC History for a couple of years, but mostly I did music journalism. I also ran my magazine and had a full-time day job at the same time, so if I had a show that night, I’d run home from my day job, change, jump on a train to Bristol, Newport, or London, go to the venue, interview the band, photograph the show, and then have to catch the train back to Wales after it had finished. I’d make it home by three if I was very lucky, and then I’d have to be at the day job again by eight. It was a lot of fun and I made some amazing friends, but there wasn’t a lot of time in there to write fiction.

After a few years of this, I was pretty burned out, so when I moved back to the States, I decided to focus on my fiction and see where that went. This time when I tried long fiction, it was much easier. The voice I had developed through the journalism carried over into the fiction--as well as the finer points of pace, structure, and editing—and I had gotten used to marathon working sessions on nothing but coffee! The shift was a huge relief at the time, but there are things about it I miss. The biggest change has been the volume of music. Now I write in solitude on good equipment, but before I’d scribble notes on receipts against the windows of the late bus.

What is your writing routine? Any certain rituals that you perform or do you just jump right in? Do you listen to music when you write, and if so what kind?

It really varies. I’m changing up my routine now based on changes in my job schedule. I used to write overnight in the dark, and now it’s whenever I can grab a few hours of quiet. I like to be as comfortable as possible with water or tea nearby—it’s very easy for me to lose track of time and forget to eat or drink until it’s too late and I can’t think straight. I often listen to music. Certain songs have helped me to visualize scenes and if I need help seeing them, I’ll listen to the song, album, or playlist on repeat and see where it goes. You’d think this would drive you crazy, but you stop hearing it after a while. The longest I’ve ever listened to a single song was for twelve hours over a two day period for one particularly tricky scene. I still love that song, if you can believe it!

What was the pull of history for you? What was the attraction of studying ancient and medieval history?

I think I was born a history geek. When I was very small, Disney’s Robin Hood was my favorite movie, and this actually probably says a lot about how I turned out! As I got older, I loved historical movies and historical romance. The first one that really blew me away was Jude Deveraux’s A Knight in Shining Armor. I was so interested in history, there really wasn’t another genre of literature for me for years. It was medieval history in particular I was most interested in. I loved everything about it. The history, architecture, literature, the art.

I also enjoyed Greek tragedy and studied Latin in high school. When I applied to universities in the UK, I just applied to the programs that sounded the most interesting to me from each school – everything from different periods of history to anthropology and even French – and Swansea was the first school to accept me. I had chosen ancient and medieval history from their catalog, and that’s where I went. I’m so glad things worked out the way they did—Wales is an incredible country and I loved my school. Wales also has a truly staggering number of castles and other historical monuments, and I was lucky enough to visit many of these while I was there.

Your writing blends historical fiction with Gothic. Of the two what your favorite literary genre? What genres do you most read??

My favorite genre is historical fiction/romance, but of that genre, I most enjoy those with gothic elements. I do enjoy lighter historical fiction, but my favorite books are full of darker themes. I like a little horror in my romance.

You've written three books, The Long Way Home, Tyburn, and Virtue’s Lady are works marketed as historical romance. Can you discuss each novel? Do you consider yourself more a romance novelist or a historical novelist?

I get very frustrated that some people feel the need to distinguish between historical fiction and historical romance, as if one is inherently better than the other. I would consider myself first and foremost a historical novelist: my books are heavily researched, rich in period detail, and include real historical figures. However, in addition to the broader plot, my books have a central love story, sex, and they do have happy endings where the characters are in a committed relationship.

Apparently this romantic element is enough to get “serious” historical authors to dismiss them as rubbish. I would beg to differ. It’s deeply unfair how often romance is dismissed, but that’s a story for another day. I write these books the way I do not to fit into any particular genre, but to write the books I want to read. Every book I read, every film or TV show I watch, I am always looking for the love story, because there always is one. Historical fiction often features a love story—or several—and many even include sex, so it seems to me the only difference is that romance ends happily. I love happy endings not because I’m simple, but because I become invested in the characters and I want to feel, leaving that story, that they’re going to be okay when I close that book. So personally, I would say I write satisfying, swashbuckling historical adventures, but they are simplified as romance because of that central love story. I love romance and I’m fine with this, but the truth of it is a bit more complicated and harder to define.

As for the books:
Tyburn is the story of Sally, an alcoholic prostitute who believes she is being followed by Death. It’s a story of her quest to find her biological father in Restoration London, to escape her tragic circumstances, and to reclaim her worth after trauma. She is rescued by Nick Virtue, a tutor who moonlights as a highwayman because his employer doesn’t consider it necessary to pay his staff. They fall in love, but Sally is haunted by Death and the man who ruined her life, so she takes it upon herself to bring him to justice, knowing full well she’ll probably die in the process.

Virtue’s Lady is the story of Lady Jane Ramsey, an earl’s daughter desperate to live a life of her own choosing. Kidnapped in Tyburn, Jane falls in love with Mark, the Southwark carpenter who came to her rescue. When Jane runs away from home to find him in Southwark, Mark is horrified and turns her away. In spite of his rejection, Jane is determined to build a life for herself away from her father and struggles through starvation, poverty, long working hours, ugly dresses, a boxing match, and even incarceration to do it, proving to herself she’s more than anyone has given her credit for.

In The Long Way Home, barmaid Alice Henshawe takes up some unusual employment when she finds herself lost in France. Alice is painfully shy and almost completely mute, but through her powers of observation and sharp memory, she becomes a spy to Louis XIV in Versailles. She finds herself embroiled in the Affair of the Poisons at the same time her childhood crush turns up searching for a killer. They invent a marriage to stick together, but Alice still can’t speak to him. Murder, intrigue, and sorcery abounds, and Alice must find a way to catch the killer and escape the palace without getting herself executed for her involvement in the process.

Do you think the success of Outlander, a historical romance time-travel series bode well for works like yours?

I certainly hope so. I am writing The Southwark Saga as almost more of a series for TV than a series of books because I’m a very visual writer. I imagine everything the way it would look on film. Many historical books have been made into movies and TV series in the past several years and I hope that continues to be a trend as I have certainly enjoyed watching them. The Crimson Petal and the White was absolutely brilliant, and I also enjoyed Desperate Romantics. Neither was precisely a “romance,” but both well-written historical books. I think all of these historical shows we’re seeing—adaptations or otherwise—bode well for the future of historical literature as they generate interest in unusual periods and figures. I can’t get enough of Black Sails, The Devil’s Whore , ( The Devil's Mistress in the US) and Peaky Blinders. Of course I think my series would translate to TV particularly well, and it would be incredible to see it filmed one day.

What authors most influenced you?

It’s an odd mix. I’m drawn to voices more than anything. I love

Edgar Allan Poe

H.P. Lovecraft

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Anais Nin

Leopold von Sacher Masoch

Emily Bronte and

Oscar Wilde.


I’m also hugely influenced by great lyricists like Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, John Cale, and Tom Waits. Nick Cave and Leonard Cohen, in particular. They can fit more observation, sex, humor, and poetry into one five minute song than some people write over an entire career.

Would you consider writing a contemporary novel?

Absolutely, I even have a couple planned. My first real attempt at a novel at fifteen was a contemporary horror. It was great fun, and I’d love to go back to that someday. I’ve lost a lot of important stuff over the years, but that is one thing I have always carried with me.

You have an amazing blog named Dirty, Sexy History. Can you tell readers about it?

Thank you! Dirty, Sexy History is a new project of mine. I’ve posted several history articles on my personal blog over the last couple of years, and I’ve always thought it would be nice to have somewhere to put them. I took those and the historical guest posts I’ve had and used them for the basis of Dirty, Sexy History.

The idea is not a complicated one. I am most fascinated by the grittier side of human history—I’m always looking for the sex and intrigue behind everything—and most of my posts were on this theme. I have a four part series on contraception in history as well as posts on plague, causes of death, venereal disease, profanity, execution, infamous figures like Jack Ketch, the Earl of Rochester, and Claude Duval, and plenty of other subjects. I love history of all periods, so I wanted to expand the blog into a larger project by inviting other people to contribute articles of their own. There has been a lot of interest so far, and I’m very excited to see how the blog grows in the future.

Are there any other projects you’re currently working on that you want to share with your fans?

I have a few things I am working on at the moment. Dirty, Sexy History is the most recent, but I am also working on the fourth book in The Southwark Saga series, which I hope will be out before the end of the year. I recently joined The Bluestocking Belles, a wonderful group of truly outstanding historical authors, and we are releasing a box set of Christmas novellas to raise money for the Malala Foundation later this year. My novella in the set is a gothic Regency, and it’s also my first LGBT romance. I’m very excited to share it with the world.

If you are interested in learning more about or connecting with Jessica Cale, here are her links:

www.authorjessicacale.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Jessica-Cale/e/...

https://twitter.com/JessicaCale/statu...

https://dirtysexyhistory.com/

https://www.facebook.com/authorjessic...

https://www.pinterest.com/rainbowcarn...