Dee
asked
Eloisa James:
You published your memoir under your pen name but now you are publishing a semi-autobiographical novel under your real name? Why the switch for one but not the other?
Eloisa James
Hi Dee! The reason I published Lizzie & Dante as Mary Bly is because it's a love story, but not a romance. The characters in my historical romances exist in a kind of cherished eternal present to me. My readers know that while they might experience turmoil in the book, afterwards they live happily ever after. (one of the reasons I always include kids in the afterward is because no heroine dies in childbirth). But Lizzie is grappling with cancer in L&D. I wanted to write a book in which the knowledge that none of us lives forever plays a part in the book itself. There's no death scene -- Lizzie undergoes treatment and gets to return to Elba for years to come. But there's a different feeling to the novel. I didn't want my Eloisa fans to automatically buy the book and find themselves plunged into a reality that they might not want to deal with. I'm a great escapist reader myself, and would be extremely annoyed. Oh, and Paris in Love is kind of in an eternal present as well. It was such a happy year.
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