Joanna Shupe – Gilded Age Romance

Joanna Shupe’s Gilded Age New York heroes are giving Regency Dukes a run for their money on romance best seller lists, making the age of the Astors and Vanderbilts “hot” with contemporary readers. Hi there I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and Joanna talks about feisty women, ostentatious wealth, dinner parties on horseback and how so often truth is stranger than fiction. Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode: Why surprising readers is important The lure of the Gilded Age Youthful passions – Edith Wharton or Jane Austen? The dawn of the independent woman Lots (and lots) of great reading suggestions Why she’d like to slow things down a little Where to find Joanna Shupe Website: http://www.joannashupe.com/ Facebook: @joannashupeauthor Twitter: @JoannaShupe Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/joanna-shupe Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/joannashupe/pins/ What follows is a “near as” transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions. Jenny: But now, here’s Joanna. .  Hello there Joanna and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us. Jenny: Hello there Joanna, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us. Joanna: Hello, and thank you so much for having me. I’m so honored. Joanna Shupe,Gilded Age romance author Jenny: I always like to ask the ‘Once Upon a Time question’ because people always like to the answer. How did you get started? Was there a moment at some stage where you thought, I’ve just got to write fiction, even if you were already doing nonfiction or was it something you always wanted to do? Joanna: Well, I’ve always been writing. I went to college to get a journalism degree because I knew I wanted to be in the field of writing somehow. But I always read romance. From a very early age I was reading things that I’m sure were completely inappropriate for me. People like Johanna Lindsey, and Amanda Quick and Jayne Ann Krentz.  That’s how I came into romance.  So when I graduated college, I came home, and I didn’t have a job yet, and I was reading a lot of romance while I was job searching and trying to keep my stress levels low. And my oldest sister said, you know, you should write one of those. You’d be really good at it, and it seems like it’s pretty easy. You just come up with a plot and then you sit down and write it. And I was so stupid that I thought, yes, that sounds pretty easy. I could totally do that.  So I was waiting tables at the time, and I would come home at one o’clock in the morning and I would write until four or five, go to sleep, get up at noon and do it all over again.  So in a couple months I had a book.  I let some people read it and I was encouraged by the feedback. That book will never ever be published. It was a practice, but I was really encouraged by the feedback that I got and my oldest sister, who’s the one that tried to get me to do it, said, “I don’t know where you came up with half the stuff that you thought of in this book. It’s really impressive.” And that stuck with me. Then I went off and I got a job in marketing and advertising and real life took over for a little while. But when I met my husband he encouraged me to dig it out and try and polish it up and, and get it published. And that was really the catalyst for me, to throw me back into romance writing. Joanna Shupe – Gilded Age romance in New York city. Jenny: That’s lovely that your husband would be so encouraging, isn’t it? Joanna:  Yes. I’m lucky because he does a lot of writing and he was an editor for a little while, so he will also edit stuff for me if I want him to, and he’ll brainstorm stuff with me and he answers all of my questions on technique and formatting and all that stuff. Jenny: Sure. Now you mentioned that it was romance. Was it historical romance? Joanna: I kind of bounced around, but really in those days it was the heyday of historical romance, so yes, I read all of ’em. Mostly historical, some contemporary, but mostly historical. Jenny: But this first book that you did, was that a Regency? Joanna: It was. He was a Naval captain.  I don’t remember much else about the plot, but yes, it was a Regency. Jenny: Stephanie Laurens was great in that space. I don’t know if she’s still publishing today. She was wonderful in the Regency space a few years ago. Joanna: Yes and I believe she does still publish. Jenny:  I must look her up again because actually I’m working by as a quote of hers. She once told aspiring writers, “Don’t expect to get anywhere unless you’ve got at least six books out and possibly as many as 12.” Joanna:  Oh, wow. That’s daunting, but you know, I can see the wisdom in that. Jenny: Yes. So tell us about your first book that got published. Joanna: So, I had a game plan when I came to publishing. I knew that Regency books dominate romance. I really was trying to do this seriously. This was 2008, 2009 or so, we’re talking about. Regency really had a stranglehold on the market and it’s still does.  I knew that I didn’t want to stay in Regency, but I knew that in order to get published in historical, that I would have to start in Regency. And I had to find someone who was willing to take a gamble on me. And that’s just what happened. The first series was set in Regency England. It was called Wicked Deceptions. And. It did well enough that when I wanted to switch out of the Regency, my publisher at the time said, “sure, let’s give it a try.” Jenny: That’s great, because that’s where we’re going.  I think at least the last two series have been set in Gilded Age, New York, haven’t they? Joanna: Yes. Gilded Age New York – Joanna Shupe’s Magnate romance Jenny: And that’s the period in New York, probably just in the early years of the 20th century, early 19 hundreds maybe going back to the late 19th century, a little bit. Joanna: Right. It starts in the 1870s and continues on to just around the turn of the century., It’s the era that’s also called the Progressive Era. It’s the time of Big Business and big invention. And a lot of the immigration comes over from Europe into the United States. It’s a period of great upheaval and change and progress, and it’s always fascinated me. So, yes, I have three series now, set in Gilded Age in New York. Jenny:  Right.  I was aware of the Knickerbocker series, and your new one, The Uptown Girls, They are very much business dominated. And it’s also the period of the Robber Barons, so-called, isn’t it? Joanna: Correct. Yes. So you’ve got JP Morgan and the Astors and the Vanderbilts. It’s when all the railroads were built in this country. It’s the era really of big business and, and all of those people just became stupid, stupid, wealthy. I mean, the amount of money is just staggering. And so you have big mansions and you get unfair labor practices and we start to see strikes and unions and the real the push-pull between business and labor. Jenny:  That sounds like a fascinating period to write in, but why did it have an attraction for you as an author? You’re trying to plow a new field and a different setting from the one that’s the most popular one. What made you decide to take that on? Joanna: I grew up reading Edith Wharton.  I did not read Jane Austin until I was like in my thirties. So I don’t really have this romanticized view of England, like so many of my romance contemporaries, especially historical, you know, they tend to all be fanatical about Jane Austen. But I read her so late that it just didn’t leave a mark on me like Edith Wharton did, which is who I was reading in my teens. I loved the class wars, the people that Wharton depicts.  That to me was so fascinating. And then I also have this connection to Ellis Island, which was the place where all the European immigrants came when they first arrived in the United States. Mogul: Joanna Shupe Gilded Age romance. A robber baron with a heart of gold. Knickerbocker series Book Three. It was the processing center, and my ancestors on my Dad’s side came over from Italy around the turn of the century. So I’ve always felt a personal connection both to New York to the concept of this country being a melting pot. And that for me was, was one of the reasons why I wanted to write in this particular time period. Jenny: You’ve also made a name for yourself, doing some great unusually dramatic set-ups.  There’s one online for people who want to read it, one of the Knickerbocker series where you have this fantastic opening scene where this woman grabs an obviously wealthy man and pretends to be his wife, and the whole scene is done so brilliantly. You think, Oh man, you could just see it all happening, and yet it’s far-fetched but you believe in it. And I think you do that over and over, and you’ve made that a mark of your work as well, haven’t you? Joanna:  I do try. I mean, my whole goal in writing, no matter what I’m doing, is to give the reader something they haven’t seen before.  I read voraciously. I read all the time. I probably read four to five books a week, primarily  romance. So I have a good idea of what’s out there. And I do try to give readers something they haven’t seen before. Or try to keep it interesting. So that book Tycoon, I needed them on the train together because if you’ve ever seen the movie Strangers On A Train, which is the Alfred Hitchcock movie, that was what I was doing. I was doing Strangers On A Train, but the romance version of that, so I needed them together on the train. And that scene just wrote itself. I do try to start the book off with something unusual happening. One of my books starts with a dinner party on horseback, which actually happened in the Gilded Age. There was an actual dinner party on horseback. They drank wine out of saddlebags. They had trays that were set up on the saddles. I mean they dined on horseback and I thought, “how could I not use that?” Tycoon: Hitchcock’s Stranger on a Train as a romance. Gilded Age New York, Joanna Shupe Jenny:  Yes. It is funny how sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, isn’t it? Joanna: Absolutely. I mean, there are so many things that I couldn’t make them up if I wanted to. Jenny:  And also, your woman, have agency – this phrase that we’ve been using a lot in the last few years about women.  They have or haven’t got agency and your women, they’re all very driven woman. They’re achieving something. They aren’t going to just sit there and wait for the world to give them their lives. Is that what women in that period in New York were like? Joanna: Yes. We have to remember that in the 19th century, prior to the Gilded Age, a woman’s  whole future would have been what you can see around you. You would have lived on a farm with your family. You would have been married off to another local farmer or somebody local and you would have stayed local. But in the Gilded Age, with the rise of department stores, office buildings and so forth, women could come into the city and actually get a job. They could be secretaries. They found work in department stores, or as writers. I mean, we just see this explosion of job opportunities for women that we’ve never seen before. So they were able to move into the cities. There was public transportation, there was also the bicycle, which allowed women the freedom to move around, and they were able to have their own income and to live alone. I mean, we take those things for granted, but in the Gilded Age, that was revolutionary. We see women pushing forward in the Gilded Age. Look at Victoria Woodhall, who was the first woman to run for president in the 1870s. She and her sister opened the first female led brokerage firm on Wall Street. I just happened to learn this last week, that the first person to ride in a barrel over Niagara Falls and survive was a woman. She was a school teacher. She was 63 years old, and that was in like 1901. Even Alva Vanderbelt who was a social maven of the time, once she divorced her husband, she becomes a suffragette, a progressive, and is lobbying for women’s rights.. I think New York, the cities generally – are really important in the Gilded Age.  You’ve got New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Those places are critical because we’re seeing just all these women, young girls, move into the cities and be able to thrive in a way that they’ve never, ever been able to do before. The Devil of Downtown – Joanna Shupe, Book Three in Uptown Girls Gilded Age romance series Jenny: Just mentioning a couple of the books in your most recent series, The Rogue of Fifth Avenue, features Mamie Green, and the one that you’ve got coming out soon, The Prince of Broadway, features her sister Florence. And both of those heroines are very much in the mold that you’ve just been discussing. Mamie very cheekily gambles and then uses the proceeds to support her charity work because her father wouldn’t approve if she did that, with his knowledge. And Florence also, she’d got her own secrets going on there, both of them very much in quiet rebellion against the father, aren’t they? Joanna: Right. I mean, they have been raised in a certain way. They’re of a wealthy family. They live very far uptown in a very sheltered place, but all the action is happening downtown.  It was actually very common in the Gilded Age for wealthy citizens who lived uptown to take tours of downtown and go to gambling saloons, and go to dance halls, opium dens and the tenements to see how the other end of New York city really lived. I wanted to write a series where these three girls are just so tempted by what’s going on downtown, outside their own little bubble. Then they of course, all fall in love with men from the wrong side of the tracks. Jenny: Frank Tripp, the hero of The Rogue of Fifth Avenue, the lawyer that Mamie has a love-hate relationship with, is a great character as well because he’s very much from the wrong side of the tracks, but he’s made good in the new world. Joanna: Yes. He’s like the fixer.  He’s a wealthy lawyer who represents other wealthy men to make all their problems go away. And he’s based on an amalgamation of real lawyers of the time who did this kind of thing.  He comes from very humble beginnings, but he’s ashamed of it, so he’s changed his name and becomes someone else, which, with the lack of the Internet back then, I think would have been very easy. Jenny: Yes. Script guru Robert McKee has said that to make a a period popular with contemporary readers it has to have some resonance with them. Everything that you’ve been telling us about women’s blossoming during that period makes it understandable why modern readers would love these stories. Joanna:  I agree. I mean, some things change, but some things remain the same. And in writing the Gilded Age, especially in the last few years in the political climate in our country, it’s very clear that greed, corruption, political struggles for women and other marginalized groups fighting for representation and, fighting for their rights . . .  Sadly some of those things never go away. It’s just a playbook that this country has seen before and it doesn’t end well. Jenny: Yes. Is there a lot of original material that you can draw on  for your research? Joanna:  One of the really great things about writing this era is, there’s even movies.  I mean, Thomas Edison invents the movies in the Gilded Age. So you’re able to even find movie street scenes.  And there’s all the clothing that still exists.  Also newspapers really come into their own in the Gilded Age. So there’s just tons of original source materials to look at and pull from. Jenny: That’s fantastic. Moving away from the individual books to your wider career. You mentioned that you had a beginning in marketing and in public relations before you got into full time writing. And it’s obvious from the way you’ve tackled your writing career, that you had a very good marketing strategy there.  How have those influences helped your writing do think? Joanna:  One thing that I do, even now, is I will look at what people like about what they’re reading. So I will get the books that everyone’s talking about and then I will look in Kindle. In KIndle It makes it really easy to look at passages that readers are highlighting. So I will look, not only in my own books to see what readers have highlighted, but I’ll look in popular books to see, okay, what’s really resonating with them, and how can I implement that same idea in my stories. Usually, in my own books, when I check the bookmarks, it’s usually things that I would never have guessed in a million years that would resonate with readers. It’s always really interesting, after the fact,  long after the books have been out. to go back and look and see what readers have liked. Jenny: Can you think of an example of something that you wouldn’t have guessed people would like that they do? Joanna:  Usually it’s witty dialogue, and that makes sense. Cause if it makes you laugh .. . . But a lot of times it’s some kind of heartfelt moment. Something I have tossed in there, not really even planning to have a reaction for. And then I’m just surprised that, Oh, okay, well, I should have expected a reaction because usually it’s some emotional revelation on the part of one of the characters. Jenny: Yes. So you’re giving them a little surprise somewhere. Joanna:  Yes, I’m trying to. Sometimes it’s a surprise for me, too!  Sometimes it’s not something I’ve even planned, but that’s probably a little bit of my marketing and advertising brain that wants to analyze why people like what they like. Jenny: Yes. Is there one thing you’ve done more than any other that’s helped with your writing career, and if so, what would you say that one thing was? Joanna: Probably starting something new. I mean, starting something memorable, not being afraid to step outside the established box of, of what’s being published. When I first pitched the Gilded Age series to my old publisher Kensington, I remember my editor tweeting me asking “if I told you a book was set in this era, would, you know what I was talking about?” So they didn’t even really know what to call it or how to market it, and we tried a bunch of different things with the covers and some worked and some didn’t. And the sales team, especially on the first book, the first full length paperback, which was Magnate. the sales people just threw up their hands and said, “We don’t know what, is it a romance?  Is it a mystery? Like what is happening in this book? A Daring Arrangement – The 400 Club Book #1 in Joanna Shupe’s Gilded Age romance series, So then for the second cover, we went to a man and a woman. So that would be clear that it was a romance, but they felt like it was too dark. So then for the third cover, they wanted something bright. So there was a lot of testing to see what readers would like. Jenny: And have other writers now following in your footsteps? Are there other people working in the same Gilded Age New York space? Joanna: Maya Rodale http://www.mayarodale.com/books/ has written one full Gilded Age series and I hope she sticks with it to do another series.  There is Felicia Grossman https://feliciagrossmanauthor.com/books/ who writes wonderful Jewish characters in Gilded Age, and they’re mostly set in Philadelphia. I know there are others. So slowly but surely it might become a real trend. Jenny: Yes. You’ll be able to take the credit if it does. Joanna: Well, I mean, the readers will be able to take the credit if it does, because that means that they’ve really liked how we’ve been able to show them something different. Jenny: Great. Yes. What sort of comment do you get from them in that regard? Joanna: You know, it’s kind of a mixed bag. I mean, most readers will say, Oh, I’m, so tired of Duke’s and Regency. I’m so glad you’re doing this. It’s so different. And I really like it. And you know, it’s different, but yet familiar. And I have had some readers tell me they won’t read anything set in American history because they can’t romanticize our history the way that they can romanticize England’s history, which is astounding to me really. In America, we study history starting in kindergarten, but whose history are you learning? I mean, what’s in the textbooks that we’re are learning from?  I’m always surprised when somebody thinks that they know everything about American history that there is to know. Jenny: Particularly as in the mid 20th century, the teaching of history was still very much about institutions and things that men made decisions about. It’s only in the last 20 years or so that you’ve really started to get history expanding into the more social and women’s history, isn’t it? Joanna: Right. Correct. So a lot of the history that’s been taught has been very much from the point of view of the people running the show, rather than the ones who are trying to get some chance to get their foot in the door. Jenny: Yes, that’s absolutely true. Turning to Joanna as reader, because this is The Joys of Binge Reading.  You say that you’re reading say, five books a week. So who are you reading at the moment and who would you like to recommend to our listeners? Joanna: So because I write historical, I tend to read more contemporary romance because I don’t want my brain cluttered with someone else’s historical tone. So when I’m drafting a novel, I tend to read more contemporary authors, and I usually end up a little bit more spicy. That’s writers like Helena Hunting, Sierra Simone, Kresley Cole,  Naima Simone, and Elle Kennedy Those are contemporary authors that I just automatically buy and read. For historicals, I read Sarah Maclean and Lisa Kleypas and Alyssa Cole and K.J. Charles.  Those are some of my historical favorites. And if you want to talk about series books, some series recommendations. Well, I don’t know if you’ve read the Winston brothers series by Penny Reid. That’s a contemporary series set in Appalachia. I believe it’s Tennessee. A series of seven siblings and of course they each get a happily ever after (HEA). Alexa Martin: Playbook series: An inside look at the NFL romance. These books are a little fluffy. They’re not spicy or racy, but they are really big on the family dynamic. And humor. She’s really clever at taking a hero and a heroine that at face value you would think, “Oh, no way, not those two, that will never work.” But you can’t stop reading. You’re just breathless, turning the pages, because you’re so invested in these two getting a happily ever after. And another series that I really love is Alexa Martin’s Playbook series. It’s set in the world of the National Football League here in America, because Alexa is married to a former football player. So it’s set in the world of the NFL wives and the girlfriends. The WAGs so-called of the football players and they’re delightful. I mean, she is funny and they’re hot and no one else could write these books,  I don’t think, other than Alexa, because she’s got such a unique perspective on football and the players and what it’s like to really be a wife and a girlfriend of a football player. I think the third one in the series is coming out in a few weeks. The other series that is just getting underway that I’m also excited about is Wicked Villains by Katee Robert. She has just released the second book in the series, which is called Learn My Lesson. And the first book was called Desperate Measures. She’s picking the Disney villains and given them their own stories. So she’s pairing the Disney villains together with some of the Disney heroines and heroes and given them their own romance stories, which I think is so clever and so fun. The first book was about Jafar and Jasmine from Aladdin. That was Desperate Measures. And the second book is learned my lesson, which is Hades’ Megaera and Hercules. The series is just crack. I love it. I need every book now. So that’s another one that I really like. Learn My Lesson, Katee Robert. – very clever romance Jenny: Sounds great. We’re starting to come to the end of our time together, so circling round and looking back over your career at this point, if you were doing it all over again, w is there anything you’d change? Joanna: I might slow down. I mean, I feel like I have been going full tilt since I got into this in 2011, 2012 and it’s a lot. I mean, I have kids, I have a husband. I coach my daughter’s softball team. I have a job beyond writing, so it’s just, it’s a lot. So, I probably would try to slow down a bit. Also, slowing down allows you to enjoy the moment a little bit more and enjoy some of the the fun that I’ve had along the way. So, yeah, I would probably. Slow down. Jenny: Are you able to do that now? You’re obviously are well established now. Are you able to just sit back and enjoy the ride a little bit more now? Joanna:  I’m trying, I’m trying.  That’s my goal for 2020 Jenny: I know it’s a terrible question to ask, but many books a year do you write? In other words, do you write more than one book a year? Perhaps that’s a better way to put it. Joanna: It is dependent on the year. In some years I have written novellas that came out of nowhere. I did an anthology last year with a Sarah Maclean, Tessa Dare and Sophie Jordan called How The Dukes Stole Christmas. And so normally I write two books a year, but because a novella came out of nowhere, then it was two books plus a novella. So it depends on the year, but pretty much it’s two books a year. I think now I have 11 books in print. How The Dukes Stole Christmas – a holiday romance with Joanna Shupe and others Jenny: Well, you certainly have got a very strong platform now to be able to sit back a little and enjoy it, I think. Joanna:  I hope so. Jenny: So what is next for you for the next 12 months? What other works in progress do you have? Joanna: So my next proposal that I’m working on for my publisher is a Gilded Age baseball series. A lot of people don’t realize that New York is where baseball came to be.  It’s just fascinating, the story of the start of baseball. It was played by both men and women.  The rules and the team’s evolved and it all happens in the Gilded Age. So that’s what I’m most looking forward to. Jenny: That’s fantastic. So the Uptown Girls series. Have you finished book three in there? Joanna: I have. It has been turned into my editor, but I haven’t done any of the edits, the developmental or the copy edits on it, but it’s drafted. Yes. Jenny: That’s great. So do you enjoy interacting with your readers and if so, where can they find you online? Joanna: I love interacting with them. I was at a reader event last weekend and I said there, writing is so lonely and so solitary that it’s nice to get out and talk to readers. But also, I’m everywhere online. My website is Joannashupe.com. I’m on Facebook is @JoannaShupeauthor.  I am on Twitter is @Juliashupe  I have two Facebook reader groups. One is called The League of Extraordinary Historical Romance Authors that has a bunch of other romance authors on it. And then I have my own Facebook group called the Gilded Lilies. Jenny: That sounds really fun. Joanna: It is. It’s nice to hear from readers and just take a break from writing and be social. Jenny: This just wonderful. Joanna, thank you so much for your time. I’m sure that readers are going to have a look and find your books.  We’ll look forward to the baseball series. Joanna: Thank you so much. This was so much fun. If you enjoyed hearing Joanna talk about her Gilded Age romance you might also enjoy Grace Burrowes’ Regency best sellers. Thanks To Our Technical Support: The Joys of Binge Reading podcast is put together with wonderful technical help from Dan Cotton at DC Audio Services. Dan is an experienced sound and video engineer who’s ready and available to help you with your next project… Seek him out at [email protected] or Phone + 64 – 21979539. He’s fast, takes pride in getting it right, and lovely to work with. Our voice overs are done by Abe Raffills, and Abe’s another gem. He got 20 years of experience on both sides of the camera/microphone as a cameraman/director and also voice artist and television presenter. Abe’s vocal delivery is both light hearted and warm and he is super easy to work with no matter the job. You’ll find him at [email protected]