From Courtroom to Regency Ballrooms: Janna MacGregor on Writing, Mentorship, and Body Confidence

What this episode covers

Samantha Tennant sits down with Regency historical romance author Janna MacGregor to talk about her brand-new story in the Busty Bodice Club series— a shared world built around eight sisters, each assigned an inheritance task by their late father. Janna’s contribution, The Curves for the Secret Duke, features Penelope and Edward and every trope she loves most: fake marriage, friends to lovers, and forced proximity. She also explains why she deliberately subverted the secret-duke premise — because a hero who hides his identity from the heroine is not, in her view, building a great relationship. They get into the collaborative dynamics of the anthology, what it actually means to be a hybrid author in the indie space, and why Janna’s background as a practicing attorney gave her a head start on story structure. She also talks about the care that went into writing full-figured heroines in a historical era when that was genuinely rare, and why she wants every reader to close these books walking away with a little more swagger. Plus the Fresh Fiction Facts Q&A: the classic novel she had never read until that weekend, the song she always cranks up (Stevie Wonder, naturally), and the one unsolved mystery she would most want answered.

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