Regency Silk and Scandal is a unique 8 book author generated Regency continuity, featuring an ongoing mystery murder plot that runs through the whole series. It's about three friends, two scandalous affairs, and one secret code that leads to murder, disgrace and revenge. The stories will captivate the reader as they travel from the Cornish Coast to the heights of Hertfordshire, and from the ballrooms of London to the battlefields of Belgium.
Kari: What was it like for you in brainstorming an 8 book mystery plot?
Louise: Scary at first until I discovered how great it was working with the other five authors! Thank goodness for email and the Yahoo! group we set up, because it would have been impossible otherwise. Unusually, the editorial team at Harlequin Mills & Boon gave us a free hand, subject to editorial approval, so we really were starting from scratch with just an indication that they would like scandal and a wide variety of characters. Once we had broken the ice, there were so many ideas flying about that it was hard keeping a hold of them all until we developed systems with spreadsheets and charts.
For someone who tends to fly into the mist rather than plan intensively, this was a new way of working. Once we knew what the main storyline was, it became easier and we could work on our individual stories while checking back and forth with the others to make sure we were staying on track. In most cases characters would appear across the series - my two heroes are brothers and their sisters are heroines in other stories, for example, so there were a lot of emails flying about saying things like "Would Hal find this funny?" or "May I borrow Midge's stepbrother and get him wounded at Waterloo?" It was very strange writing by myself again afterwards!
Kari: LOL that sounds like a riot. Can you tell us about your books in the series?
Louise: I wrote two of the series - the first, The Lord & the Wayward Lady (June) and the seventh, The Officer & the Proper Lady (December). In the first the hero, Marcus Carlow, Viscount Stanegate, comes home to find his London home in turmoil, his father collapsed, a mysterious woman locked in the study and the shadows of a twenty year old murder and spy scandal risen to haunt them again. On the face of it, Nell Latham is a humble milliner who just happened to deliver the parcel that sets off this powder keg of vengeance, but she is more closely concerned with the old mystery than either she or Marcus realise. He has to chose between honour and desire as they fight an unseen enemy together.
In the seventh story Marcus's younger brother Hal, a rakehell cavalry major, finds himself involved with a young lady who is a complete novelty to him - the well-behaved, virtuous Miss Julia Tresilian. In the tense atmosphere of Brussels in the days leading up to the battle of Waterloo, both think that their unsuitable love affair is all they have to worry about, until someone tries to kill Hal on the battlefield - and it isn't the French! Back in London Hal finds himself trying to come to terms with his unsettling relationship with Julia and at the same time fighting alongside Marcus to protect their family from an increasingly dangerous nemesis.
Kari: Your books sound fascinating. Is this co-collaboration something you would ever do again, and any tips for authors thinking about co-writing a book or contributing to a connected series such as this one?
Louise: I would love to do it again - if I was sure I'd be working with such a fantastic team of fellow authors! If I was advising anyone else working on a continuity, I would say take your time to get to know the rest of the team; don't be afraid to say what you think will or won't work - but in a constructive manner; be prepared to compromise - and have fun!
Kari: Thanks so much for joining us, and I look forward to following this unique and interesting series.
Louise: thank you for inviting me to come along. I really look forward to hearing what your readers think about our series.
www.louiseallenregency.co.uk
http://twitter.com/LouiseRegency
13 comments:
OMG! I am so impressed. I can appreciate that the collaboration might keep one right on track- responsibility and all of that. But, still what a challenge. Louise, I'm super impressed! Now that I'm thinking about it, what fun too.
If you have developed a set of spreadsheets and methods for tracking your characters and events over that many books---you have something to market!!
Thanks for joining us on M&M. It's great to have you here.
I know a couple of gals who just acquired representation with a YA they collaborated on. They made it so easy, but I did try this a few years ago and found out I write way to fast for the person I was working with.
I think it's amazing that Louise was able to do this AND with 8!!
I know....insane but it sounds like fun too. Although I really do think it's all about the people you are doing this with? It has the potential to be a nightmare!
Still.....very impressive. I am looking forward to check out all the books. They sound awesome.
Welcome Louise and thanks for joining the M&M's today.
Scary is sort of an understatement about writing with so many other authors. I shudder to think of all the different writing styles and trying to all agree!
I'm with Cassy, I'm super impressed.
This sounds so intriguing! I can't imagine what it is like to SHARE my characters like that! LOL Did it seem strange? Or am I just too possessive? :)
Hey, Tonya...one of the reasons this worked was because those who write faster (like Louise Allen) got to do 2 books in the series, and create the spreadsheets and family trees and so on, whilst us slower ones just did the one!
And, Mary, another reason why this was so fulfilling to do, was the relative freedom given us by the editors. We all naturally veered towards different aspects of the original murder/mystery scandal, and chose which hero/heroine/plotline fired our imagination.
And Donna, it was a real thrill to see my characters walk across the pages of the others' stories. And to borrow the other heroes/heroines for walk-on parts in mine.
We talked about them so much, they all became very real to us all...like a bunch of friends whose adventures we were describing.
I got a bit of a thing for Hal Carlow, the hero of Louise's second book, I have to confess...
Annie
Louise,
Cassy and Mary might be impressed but I'm totally curious about the series. I can't wait to start reading them.
Hi everyone! Mary - we didn't make any attempt at all to merge or change our own natural styles and voices, but we did make every effort to make certain the characters, their motivation and natures were consistent. Because we were writing more or less all at the same time we didn't read each others' books, so now we have the fun of following them as they come out. Cassy - the spreadsheets were just vast Excel sheets with columns for everything and dates down the side. Christine Merril did inventive things with clothes line strung across her study which was way more fun than spreadsheets.
Donna - I enjoyed sharing my characters, but only because I trusted the others with them. And Annie, I don't care how much you plead, you are not having Hal - he's mine, all mine
This sounds like such a fun series. Like Cassy said, I'm impressed. I have trouble just keeping my own series characters straight, I can't imagine working with characters that someone else created.
But it really must be exciting to see your characters in someone else's story. I think that would just be the coolest thing. My characters feel real to me, but seeing them in another story would make them feel even more real.
First off, welcome to M & M. This joint venture sounds so intriguing. How great to play to everyone's strengths.
As Donna mentioned, it must have been hard sharing the characters. You have them pictured in your mind a certain way, or at least I do.
Good luck with the series. It sounds wonderful.
Another RS&S author chiming in here. I guess the thing that made "sharing" characters easier is that we all collaborated to come up with the families. Then we got to choose which character from the families we wanted to write. Amazingly, we didn't have any arm-wrestling to get the one we wanted; each of us seemed to gravitate toward different characters, with very little discussion necessary to allocate them. Then we had to come up with a hero/heroine to match our continuity character, which again allowed us to choose a type of character we liked writing and thought would be a good match for the strengths/weaknesses of the continuity character, someone who could also help move the overall story along.
It is great fun, tho, to finally read the other books as they come out (only Louise and Chris Merrill were wise enough to snag the sets of books 1-4 and 5-8 when they were available on the Mills & Boon website; they quickly sold out, so the rest of us have to read them month by month like every other reader!) and see our characters walzing through the pages of someone else's book. Since my heroine, Honoria, is the sister of Louise's Book 1 hero Marcus, it was interesting to read about her when she's still in London, pre-disgrace.
And since I still haven't read the last few books of the series, I don't know precisely how Louise and Chris managed to finish everything off!
This sounds like such a fun and "novel" approach! I'd love to be able to do that with a group of similarly-minded writers. All my CPs write in different genres, though. We once tried to get an email round robin going but it fizzled out miserably, each of us pulling in different directions, contempory, paranormal, historical.
I'm going to keep an eye out for these! I love Regencies! And, my personal fabulous news on that front is that Carina Press is going to publish my Regency novella! So excited.
Congratultions on having the novella pubbed. I'm looking forward to the series also.
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