Donna Lea Simpson| Bucking My Own Trend

I wrote traditional Regency romances for six years with Kensington. I read Regency romances. I researched the period, read about the period, loved the period, so when I switched to longer format historical romances, I would naturally write about the Regency period, right?

Well, no.

I veered off to the late Georgian era. My Awaiting series (Awaiting the Moon, etc.) was set in 1795 Germany, and Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark (Sourcebooks Casablanca – April 2009), the first book in a new series, is set in Yorkshire 1786. Why? At first, I didn’t know a thing about the period, except that George the III was mad (he wasn’t really… oh, he was ill, but it was physical not emotional or mental) and… well, that was pretty much it.

You think I’m exaggerating?

I wish I was. My first problem with Lady Anne and the Howl in the Dark came right away, when I had to write the first scene, where Lady Anne is traveling north to Yorkshire at the desperate request of her friend, Lady John Bestwick. Seems there’s a werewolf in Yorkshire, and Anne needs to get there as quickly as possible. Royal Mail was the only way to get there swiftly. Luckily, I found out that the Royal Mail had begun accepting passengers by 1786, and had improved the route to the point that Anne could get from London to Yorkshire in one day, more or less.

That was just the beginning of the research I needed to do, I realized, when I tried to describe her dress. When, exactly, did the waist on lady’s gowns rise from Georgian lows to Regency highs? How did you light a fire or a candle in 1786 (hint… not with a match). How were Georgian gowns constructed? (I became familiar with the ‘Stomacher’, a section pinned or fastened on over a gown front). And the gowns! There was the robe à l’Anglaise, à la Française, à la Polonaise, à la Mayonnaise! Okay, so that last part I’m making up. No mayonnaise.

But why would I do such a thing as completely depart from an era I had spent years researching and learning about? It wasn’t out of necessity. The Regency is a tried and true period popular among romance readers, after all. But that was the problem. With the ‘Awaiting’ books, and again with the Lady Anne series, I wanted a kind of Gothic feel: mystery, menace, madness. The Regency felt too light and bright for me, too modern, too known.

I’ve now done the acres and acres of research on the Georgian period to credibly clothe and inform my characters, so, much of what I read now, I read out of interest not necessity. I’ve fallen in love with the art, the music, the literature. And I think I understand better now, what made me travel back a few years from that tried and true Regency era. I wanted the challenge, and I longed for the unknown. I needed to take a break from the familiar and step into the unfamiliar.

It’s worked, and I had a lot of fun doing it.

So…

Have you ever taken a step outside the familiar to travel down an unknown road, either literally or metaphorically?

Have you ever promised to do something at work and realized you didn’t know how to do it? Volunteered for a committee or project, and found out it entailed a lot more work than you realized?

Or…

Has a favorite writer of yours ever changed the era in which he or she set their books, and you wondered why?

Visit me at: www.donnaleasimpson.com to find out more about the Lady Anne series, and the Georgian Era!