Saying Goodbye to the English Regency

I said several years ago that I wasn’t going to write any more Regencies.  That The Tyburn Waltz was going to be my last. But then I fell in love with my characters and wanted to continue their story; and I got the rights back to Ravensclaw (the first of my tongue-in-cheek vampire trilogy set in Regency Edinburgh) and wanted to do more with those characters also; and in the midst of writing those two trilogies I had a yen to do a novella or three.

I never set out to write romances. I’ve never considered that what I write is romance. I was typing very bad manuscripts for a local writer when I stumbled upon Georgette Heyer, loved her comedies of manners and her portrayal of Regency England, and decided to try writing a comedy of manners of my own. That first manuscript sold with very little fuss to Fawcett Crest for their new line of ‘Traditional Regencies’.  I’d written the right book at the right time.

Traditional Regencies were very stylized. They were largely true to Heyer’s vision, with particular attention to manners and mores (in my case, the more absurd the better), language, dress. Whatever hanky-panky occurred did so offstage.

Regency England remains very popular with readers. Members of societies devoted to the era dress up in appropriate costumes and have teas, attend balls, etc. Traditional Regencies are called ‘clean’ or ‘cute’ or something of that nature now. (As opposed to what? Dirty? Dull?)

Whatever one may call them, those books were, for me, a great deal of fun to write.

I loathe labels almost as much as I dislike being pigeon-holed.  I stopped writing Regencies the first time around because my publishers weren’t interested in letting me write anything else. When I came back to writing fifteen years later, I found myself in much the same situation. Kensington was looking for traditional Regencies and so…  I wrote four books for Kensington before they discontinued the line. By that time I was determined to prove I could write something different and so The Tyburn Trilogy began.

And now, with The Judas Kiss, all that has come to an end.

I put my Regency research away today. Packed it up and hauled it back to the shed. It was a curiously liberating moment. And also a little sad.

Next up is a late 1800’s mystery/adventure series. This time I’m not saying ‘no more Regencies’, however. Because I very much suspect that I may relapse with another novella or two somewhere down the road.