Stephanie Laurens – Romance Queen

Regency romance queen Stephanie Laurens has been in the top 100 Romance of the Year lists many times over. She is one of the most successful and popular romance novelists of all time, with over 80 works of historical romance, including 40 New York Times bestsellers. Hi there, I'm your host Jenny Wheeler, and on Binge Reading today Stephanie talks about switching from cancer research to romance and the changing tastes of romance readers. As usual, we've got free books to give away. This week it’s a range of historic adventures. Check them out here: https://claims.prolificworks.com/gg/GBTyjjv9LFfGQ1X5JI9vA GET FREE BOOKS And don't forget, you can get exclusive bonus content, like hearing Stephanie's answers to the Getting To Know You, Five Quickfire Questions, by becoming a Binge Reading on Patreon supporter. For the cost of less than a cup of coffee a month, you can get special bonus content, including a new one starting next month, Encore, where authors who have already been on the podcast talk about their latest book. It's a shorter episode, quick to get through and exclusive to Patreon. support binge reading on patreon Links for this episode: The Legend of Nimway Hall: http://www.stephanielaurens.com/series/the-legend-of-nimway-hall/ Devon Monk: https://www.devonmonk.com/ Sam Quinn series: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/k/seana-kelly/sam-quinn/ Faith Hunter: http://www.faithhunter.net/wp/ CS Harris: Sebastian St Cyr series https://csharris.net/sebastian.php Where to find Stephanie Laurens: Website: http://www.stephanielaurens.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorStephanieLaurens Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9241.Stephanie_Laurens Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/stephanie-laurens What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to the show notes in The Joys of Binge Reading.com for important mentions. But now, here’s Stephanie. Introducing Stephanie Laurens Jenny Wheeler: Hello there, Stephanie and welcome to the show. It's great to have you with us. Stephanie Laurens Romance Bestseller Stephanie Laurens: Thank you. It's lovely to be here. Jenny Wheeler: I am in awe or of having the chance to talk to you because you are one of the legends of romance publishing. You have been working since the early 90’s, you’ve got more than 80 books now published and many accolades including landing in the top 100 Romance of the Year many times. You have an international army of fans, so tell me about how you got into this career. Give us a little bit of a helicopter view of all of those years. Stephanie Laurens: Okay. I got into writing romances because I literally ran out of Regency romances to read. At that time, back in the late 80’s, it was 1989, I used to read Regency romances because I was working as a scientist and writing scientific grants and reviewing scientific grants and papers and stuff like that. It was all very, very dry as you can imagine, so I liked to be able to read at night. After I put the kids to sleep, I would read. At that time in Australia there were only two Regency romances brought in a month by Mills & Boon and that was nowhere near enough. I had already gone through a lot of the libraries and what Regency romances they stocked, and so in order to keep myself occupied I started writing one. I assumed that I would never get to the end because you know how you start projects. I always have projects lying around for literally years, incomplete. A hard beginning in Regency romance But, lo and behold, I found that because I wanted to find out what happened I got to the end of the book, so I actually wrote a book. I read it over again and I thought, this is not bad, and so I started to write around, to find out where to send it. It was my mother who told me, send it here. She pointed to the back of a Mills & Boon romance and said, you could send it to them. So I did. They came back and said, there's this and this and this that's not quite right and I said, let me have a try at fixing it. So, they let me fix it, and that was my first book. That's how it all started off. Then I just continued to write more or less to amuse myself more than anything, and they kept taking the books. In 1993 I decided to retire from science, not because of the writing or because I thought I'd have a life writing, but because it was getting too stressful. So, I did retire from science and then of course you open a door, and you have extra time. What are you going to do with it? I kept writing. I switched to writing for the American market which is a little bit different. Their books are longer, and it enabled me to write a bigger story, so that's what I did. I got into the American market. In 1996 I was first sold there. Subsequently I sold all my books to the Americans, and I have continued doing that ever since. Interest in Regency romance 'constant' I've generally written about two a year, but occasionally that goes up to three and sometimes it has been four, which was a lot but those were some of the quartets I did. It helped to be writing them very quickly one after the other because it was a continuous storyline. I have generally had fun writing and I've made a lot of friends in the States because I used to travel there at least once, sometimes twice a year, for either the conferences or for retreats or book tours for a while when book tours were a thing. That’s how it all came about and how it all evolved. Jenny Wheeler: That's remarkable. Taking you back to that comment about there only being two regencies released a month at that time, has the taste for Regency grown in this last couple of decades? Did that reflect the level of interest there was in Regency romances at that time? Stephanie Laurens: No, actually. I would have said that over the last two decades the interest in historical regencies may have gone up and down a little, but it's stayed pretty constant. It was always there, but it was Australian publishers who didn't think there was a market, so they didn't supply it. What they didn't realize was that instead we were getting supplied by the Americans. The American market was reasonably developed and developed more subsequently, but I don't believe the readership has changed in breadth and depth all that much over the entire period. Never Miss out!Never miss out on the hottest new authors, regular FREE BOOK OFFERS and Most Popular podcasts.Yes please to FREE BOOKS and updates on popular booksWe won't send you spam. 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