Steve Thomas: Amita, thank you for coming on the podcast.
Amita Murray: Thank you so much for having me. I’d love to talk to you and tell you more about the book.
Steve Thomas: Can you tell me a little bit, to get started, just about your experiences with libraries growing up, just as a reader, and then how your experiences maybe changed now that you’re an author, working with libraries?
Amita Murray: I love libraries, I always have and I was a hungry reader when I was a child. I would read so much, and I was the kind of person who would read a book until the book was finished. I’m the kind of person who can’t put it down if I really love a book. I remember reading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. I started at 3pm in the afternoon and I read it straight through until it was done at 4am the next morning. So that’s the kind of reader I was even when I was a teenager.
And I think because of that, I’ve always needed a steady stock of books coming in all the time. So, my experience of libraries was to be there all the time saying, “Okay, I’m done with this. I need the next book.” And people would recognize me and know that I’d be coming around for more books. So I’ve always been in libraries.
Now, recently, actually, I had a really good experience with a library program. In London, there’s a literary organization called Spread the Word, and they had done this fantastic program that they’d organized where they would work with authors, and the author would run a couple of workshops in, say, three different libraries in London. The great thing about the program was that even though the organization would pay us, the participants in the workshop wouldn’t have to pay for it. So what that meant was that people who may not see themselves normally in the usual creative writing workshop, but would definitely see themselves as library goers, could go and attend these workshops with us authors. So I love that.
And what ended up happening was you’d get such a diversity of participants because it was a local library and you’d get people that when I teach creative writing in slightly different settings, like a university or a festival, I wouldn’t see those same people. So it was really nice to increase that participation. The other thing was then they created an anthology. So you had this really beautiful, diverse body of work that had come out of those workshops. So I think libraries are essential. They just give access to books and they give access to even writing in a way that many other spaces don’t.
And also author events. I mean, there are author events that happen in libraries, which is really lovely. And you get to do kind of book readings and talks in libraries. And again, I think the people that attend those are different from the usual festival goer. I think there’s something quite special about that.
Steve Thomas: That’s great. So your new book Unladylike Rules of Attraction, is the second book of your Marleigh Sisters series. Can you give listeners a little bit of an overview of what the series is and what happened basically in the first book, which was Unladylike Lessons in Love?
Amita Murray: Yes, I’d love to. So, there’s this author, she’s a British author. Not everyone will know her, her name is Georgette Heyer, I can’t even say her name even though I love her so much. And again, she was one of those authors you know, I still remember the first time I found a book by her and it was a secondhand bookstore. It was one of those, “Oh, this looks like an intriguing cover. Why not? I’ll try it.” And I tried it, and I just loved her. The picture that she had created of Regency London, to me, that was quite magical. There was all kinds of really funny situations, witty banter. The romance in typical British style was quite understated but very passionate at the same time, and I just loved her style.
So, of course, I didn’t know that finding this little gem of a book was a life changing moment at that time. I had no idea. And I found that funny kind of witty stuff that she does with her writing stayed with me a lot. I would find it creeping into anything that I was writing. I would have that kind of impulse to make things a little bit funny or a little bit humorous and have a lot of funny dialogue as well.
All of that I think works really well in the Regency genre. It wasn’t necessarily working for other genres. It was when I saw Bridgerton. When Bridgerton came out, I had read one or two of Julia Quinn’s books before, but it was Shonda Rhimes’s version of Bridgerton, it just all of a sudden opened up this door where you could have all the fun and all the witty banter, and all the passionate romances, but you also had diversity and that really made me think, “Wait so Regency London, the way I had imagined it didn’t have very much diversity because I had not read that before. When Shonda Rhimes did it, all of a sudden there were people of all different kinds.
So I started looking into that and thought, “Okay, so who were these people?” and it turned out, there were loads of people because at that time people from Britain had already started, well, you know, not to put too much of a fine point on it, colonizing other parts of the world. And because of that colonial history, which is a very brutal history, of course, there were people of all different kinds from other parts of the world who now lived in England and especially London, because obviously it’s such a cosmopolitan kind of hub. So you’d find mixed race kids of Earls who had gone off to another country and had a mistress there or a wife there and then their kids would be shipped off here and they would grow up here.
And you would have sailors who had come on ships from other parts of the world. And you’d have nannies who’d come with the kids to take care of them. So there were people here from the Caribbean. There were people here from the subcontinent. There were people here from Africa. And I think that there’s such rich history there, and it’s kind of been missing from the genre because that colonial side of things has been unexplored or underexplored. Maybe not in literary genres, but it’s certainly sort of commercial romance genre is certainly missing. So this opened this magical door for me because all of a sudden, I could combine the identities and the stories that I really wanted to explore. At the same time, I could still write in that witty, fun, adventurous, kind of sexy way that I identified with the Regency. So Bridgerton was just this moment of, ” Oh, this is, this is going to be good.
So the premise of the series is that the Marleigh sisters are women, they’re women now. When they moved to London, they were little kids. Their dad was an English Earl and their mum was his Indian mistress. So they do get shipped off to London when they’re kids and now they’re all grown up and for various different reasons, which I won’t go into too much, they are not really getting on. They’re kind of living separate lives.
So that was the premise, that each novel of the series would focus on one of the Marleigh sisters. So we kind of see three sisters in the first book, but two of them weren’t prominent in the first book. They don’t really get on with the main character in the first book, who’s Lila, who owned a gaming salon and was kind of walking a bit of a tightrope in terms of respectability in Regency London, as you would if you owned a gaming salon, I suppose.
The second sister, Anya, who is the main character in Unladylike Rules of Attraction, is someone who is a singer, and she plays the sitar, which is an Indian instrument, but in Queen Charlotte’s court. So you have the wonderful Queen Charlotte, who now, of course, we’ve seen as a spin-off from Bridgerton as well, and she’s obviously a main character in Bridgerton too. So she comes into this and there’s definitely some banter between her and Anya, but then it’s a love story between Anya and Damien who is responsible in some ways for some inheritance that’s coming Anya’s way.
So it’s all a bit murky because she’s very attracted to him, but he’s also extremely annoying, so there’s lots of friction, lots of witty banter. My books do tend to be a bit on the steamier side, I’ll just say. So yeah, I think something fun and romantic and sexy in them, but at the same time, with a bit more of a deeper look into the histories of that time.
Steve Thomas: A couple of your previous books were mysteries, and you definitely bring that into this story as well. Halfway through the book, you sort of almost shift into, “Oh, now we have to do this mystery. We have to solve this and figure out who did something.” And it’s a good mystery too. So you brought that in as well. You have all those Regency elements, but also this mystery, adventure, intrigue part of it as well. It’s not just the typical court intrigue that you get in a Regency, but really out there on the streets hunting down someone.
Amita Murray: That’s so right. And just like you said, out there on the streets, I really liked that. That’s exactly right. There are a few scenes that you’d think of in a sort of a more typical Regency like in the court perhaps. And sometimes in a sort of a soiree or a ballroom, so there are some, but I really think that if we’re going to look at Regency London and Regency England, broadly speaking, that we normally just look at upper class, you know, we sort of look at the families that might have been presented at court and might have Earls and Dukes and Lords and Duchesses in the mix.
And I really wanted, for various different reasons, to step out of that and say, actually, there were what we now call working class, they weren’t called working class at that time, but it’s a bit of an anachronism, but who we now call working class people, and I don’t think they should be left out of history, they should have a name there and a voice there and a place there. So I do start looking very much not only at people who may have been from different socioeconomic levels, but also very interesting places that they might have gone to. So for example, if they go to the pub or the tavern, it would be different from where upper class people, wealthier people might go. Those are really interesting spaces to me.
So in the first book we go to something that sounds quite horrific, it’s rat baiting pits because London had those. And then we go into areas like Whitechapel and areas that were known as slums. I think it’s so important to make sure that we see that kind of breadth of society. So that was one reason why the mystery element didn’t just stay in the courts and in the ballrooms, but it got out into the streets, like you said.
The other thing is, I think I always prefer a bit of mystery and intrigue even when I’m reading a romance. A bit of danger, a bit of something not quite right that you have to sort out before you can be together with whoever it is that you’re meant to be with. So I do like that element, and I enjoy writing that element because then I’ve got something to solve and something to work towards that isn’t just the romance. And the mystery is often something that gets in the way of the romance perhaps, or you have to sort it out before you can resolve the romance aspect. So I do really like that.
The other thing it allows me to do is that we don’t just get stuck in the usual marriage march story where there’s a young debutante, they weren’t actually called debutantes at that time, that’s also an anachronism, but you know, women who’d just been presented at court who had just come out essentially. They’d be presented and they’d now be on the marriage march, and the typical thing was to look for a husband. And I really wanted to steer clear of that as well and give my female characters more agency. They usually have some form of career that they’re pursuing and they want independence, and at the same time, they do push against the norms of that day. And I think that’s just much more, they were there, you know, these women did exist at that time. So it’s just telling their stories, but also perhaps making these women quite strong in their own right and independent. So yeah, that’s important to me.
Steve Thomas: Yeah, but you don’t abandon all of those genre tropes either, because in this book, she’s a very strong character, but you still do have the ticking clock of, “Oh, she has to get married before X happens,” and so there is that sort of thing that happens a lot in romances of like, “Oh these two people who think they hate each other find out that they love each other” and like you said, you intertwine it with the mystery too, that part of the mystery continues to pull them apart. That’s one of the things I was going to ask you about, of how do you keep that suspense, that romantic tension going throughout the entire book where you’re not spending the entire book going, “Oh, just kiss already!”
Amita Murray: It’s funny, because you’re saying “kiss already,” but my characters seem to have the opposite problem of like, they go there quite quickly. You might say, slow it down a little bit, Amita. I think to me, when I can maintain the tension, I think it’s because I’ve been able to create two characters that I may have created at the start of the book, but then they kind of become their own thing, and they kind of take up the story. If I haven’t done a good job in those first 30, 000 words of creating these two characters, of making them come alive, and making them real people in my head, then even their relationship and their romance doesn’t progress properly. And I realize that, and I keep on going, “Gosh, what’s wrong with it?” and then I have to go back and sort out something about their personalities that clearly isn’t working. So I have to really for the witty banter and the friction and even the chemistry to keep going, I feel like they have to each be a really strong character.
And yet we should be able to see, cause it’s so magical when you do meet someone who complements a part of your personality or you long for that moment of connection. And I think if my characters are the way they are, and often my characters are quite lonely, they’re quite lonely people. They’re quite solitary in some ways, or they’ve had a difficult childhood or they have difficult circumstances, and so they’re quite lonely and both Anya and Damien are lonely, but they don’t want to admit it, so they’re quite independent, and they’d probably defy, they’d say, “We’re not lonely, I’m sorry, but you know, that’s rubbish” but they are actually quite lonely and craving connection, but don’t necessarily know it.
So I think creating those characters individually, and then seeing the thing that they’re longing for is in each other. That’s quite important to me. And if I do that bit, the first 30, 000 words can take quite a long time for that reason because I just need to nail the characters. If I’ve done that bit, the rest of it flows quite easily because then now they’re leading the action and I’m kind of following and just trying to write it down fast enough.
Steve Thomas: And like you said, yeah, you do get to the kissing and other parts pretty quickly, but then there’s the rest of the book then of, okay, well, so they’ve done all this. Why are they apart now for another 200 pages? You do a good job with that. But speaking of those kissing scenes, how do you decide what level of spiciness, I guess we can say, that you want to go to in those scenes?
Amita Murray: This is a really good question.
Steve Thomas: Or are you just playing it by ear?
Amita Murray: I am playing it by ear, to tell you the truth. For example, in Unladylike Rules, I did wonder, because there is a scene that happens pretty quickly that does go quite, they do get physically close quite quickly, and to tell you the truth to this day, I think, “Oh, was that a bit quick?” What I tell myself is a couple of different things. One, actually physical chemistry is a very big part of two people connecting, and to me, if that physical chemistry is a bit placid or a bit bland, then there’s something not quite right in their connection. So to me, that is a really important part. So that’s one thing.
Then I do think, in real life, there are times where we do rush things a bit, perhaps. So why can’t Anya, just because she’s a Regency woman possibly rush things a bit? And then you do get into that territory of, “Oh, we kind of got close, but we don’t really know each other yet that well,” and I think that’s quite realistic because we do that. We don’t necessarily take the time to really get to know someone really slowly and sensibly because we’re irrational people, and we are an object of our desires. I think that it’s quite realistic to think that there are times in some couples where they will get quite close. I think both of them do get quite close, and both of them are really drawn to each other, and not just physically, I think they’re quite emotionally drawn to each other, and probably to each other’s solitary nature and the intelligence that they sense in each other, the possibility that neither one quite fits where they are, but also doesn’t fit anywhere else, so maybe this is the right place for them to be. So they both have that. I think there is a lot drawing them together. And them getting physically close quickly, relatively quickly, does mean that they are much more likely actually to get into trouble with each other and not really trust each other fully Wanting to trust each other but not quite knowing each other well enough. I think that that’s fairly realistic and you see other authors really pulling that off quite well as well.
So, while I’m aware of the historical romance thing that people tend to go a bit slower perhaps than in some of my books, I tend to think we are a contemporary audience and I think that we can handle it. We can handle this thing of “Shoot, I should have got to know this person better perhaps in a slower way but I didn’t. So now what do I do?”
Steve Thomas: I mean, it’s not gratuitous in any way. I don’t think it’s anything beyond what you would see on Bridgerton or something. It’s a heavy PG 13, I guess, maybe you might say because you don’t cross the line into erotica. This is capturing that animal magnetism that you have, like you said, you’re just attracted to each other in all kinds of ways…
Amita Murray: I think that’s a good analogy that in Bridgerton as well, and Queen Charlotte, you do see some quite explicit scenes. You don’t shy away from seeing explicit scenes, I think it’s only that the trope that we’re used to with Regency is that people get married first and then kind of go there and I’ve deliberately played with that because otherwise I may as well have gone with the marriage march story.
There is an intelligence and an independence and the strength to these female characters, and I don’t want them to be people who don’t understand their own bodies or that they’re going to be educated by this man who’s very experienced. I do want them to have their own longings and desires and their own agency, so that’s really important to me. And I do write about that in various articles a lot as well because I think that that trope of women not knowing their bodies, it keeps us trapped a little bit. And I think that it’s really important to break away from those stories and tropes.
So I do play with that a bit, but as it happens, Anya and Damien do get into murky waters because they did rush things perhaps a little bit. But what I think is really important in those scenes that I do create that I tend to try, and again, I think I really show consent, I really show agency, I show sensitivity, and there’s always emotional growth, I think, happening, even as we’re seeing them get physical, so I do try and keep those things in mind, that it’s not gratuitous, and it’s something, it’s definitely not erotica.
Steve Thomas: Throughout it, there’s always both characters paying attention to the other person as they’re doing things, and like, making them feel good makes me feel good. So it’s not just a “make me feel good” but it’s a bonding thing for them.
Amita Murray: Yes. Thank you for pointing that one out. I do find that a little bit funny as well, when I get my male characters to go, “Ah, so if I focus on her pleasure, it’s more fun for me as well.” I do like to do that. It’s like, “Yes, that’s what we want to see in our men. We want men who pay attention and are loving and kind and generous. We like that! So I do tend to try and create that in the male characters.
Steve Thomas: You also don’t keep away from harder subjects like racism, gender roles, different sexualities. Was that an important thing that you wanted to make sure to include in these books as well? Because again, that’s not in the traditional Regency romance, but again, trying to paint a more realistic world. It’s not like gay people just started existing in the 20th century, and obviously, like you said, having people of various races and having strong female characters.
Amita Murray: Yes, it was really important to me, actually. I think that the first one that you said, for example, you mentioned racism, and I think, how can I show diversity that is just easy? It’s not easy. It’s been tense, and the reasons people from other countries were in England, some of those could be relatively benign reasons, but much of them weren’t benign reasons. They were histories of colonialism and slavery, and we can’t go there and then gloss it over and say, “Actually, it was all easy!” So I don’t dwell on it too much, but I don’t shy away from it, let’s just say that. There is an element of that. So, yeah, that’s important to me.
But yes, sexuality, I mean, again, people say, write what you know, and what about my friends who are gay? Why can’t I write about them in Regency times? They were there, and they had lives and they had loves, and it was very difficult for them as well because it was punishable by death if they were caught. So they were living extremely difficult lives.
I remember I was doing a book reading for the first book a few months ago, and someone, a queer audience member said “If you ever have queer characters in novels, often they are just there to help the straight characters sort something out. How will you steer clear of that?” So that said, in the first novel I introduce Kenneth who is Lila’s, the main character’s best friend and he does help her out in some ways but Kenneth then has his own love story with Jeremy, and you do see Jeremy for a couple of minutes in the first book but then he’s a much more of a full character in the second, and while at times they are playing the best friend role, because of course how do I show them more fully unless they’re somehow connected to the main character? But they do have their own story and that story does span the series. And so we do see it develop and we see the push and pull within that love story a little bit from, from the main character’s point of view, obviously. So we see that, but it’s also for me, writing what you know means that my friends who are queer should have a place in historical fiction and should just be normal everyday people instead of kind of making this big thing out of it.
So I do feel that’s really important. I feel it’s really important for them to have their own agency and stories, but also in this normal way of, the way that I am with my friends in that way. So that’s really important to me. It’s also important to me to push the walls of a genre if I’m in that genre and not just say, “I’m writing in the Regency genre and these are the tropes and I’m going to stick with the tropes.” I think it’s important to completely be familiar with the tropes and understand them, but then play with them all the time.
Steve Thomas: So can I assume readers can expect a third volume focused on the third sister, Mira?
Amita Murray: That’s exactly right. At least in England, in the UK, it is coming out in January, so actually not that long now, but I need to check when the dates are for the States, because sometimes they’re a bit different. It’s called An Unladylike Secret, and it is about Mira, the third sister, because in the second book you’ll see the relationship between Lila and Anya develop, and so we now need to bring Mira into the picture and she will have her own love story and it will be based on her being a writer. There were female writers at that time. Jane Austen is obviously one huge example, and so I play with this idea of a woman who wants to be a writer but has to write under a pen name, make herself sound like a man. She wants to write about intelligence, feminist, without calling it feminist because that wasn’t a word at that time like it is now.
So she’s a writer, a strong writer. She writes under a pen name and this gets her into trouble. And so we’re going to see a lot of her and we’re going to see her love interest. And we’re going to be on the beach a lot in Devon this time. And so we’re going to see a different part of England.
Steve Thomas: Interesting. That’s one of the things of them being separated for various reasons that you get to see different parts of England and what they’re doing. That’s great that you can be within a series and keep the same general tone, but really explore different areas.
Amita Murray: Yeah, it was really nice because also Devon is just so beautiful. I mentioned in the third book, just the beauty of the seaside in Devon, and the red cliffs, and it’s the Jurassic Coast, so you’re seeing just gorgeous coves, and all of this stuff, and there was also quite a bit of smuggling going on from France, so you do see a little bit of that. It’s just such a magnificent setting, really, for a story, because it’s just so beautiful, but because it’s the seaside, and it’s not the courts, you see a different part of Regency life and you see more countryside and you see more people walking on the beach instead of feeling like they’re in their court dress and in their ball gowns all the time. You do come to London a little bit in that book as well, but it’s quite a lot of it is set on the coast in Devon.
Steve Thomas: Well, and you have a little bit of cricket in here and I will say you do explain it well enough that an American like me can understand enough that you need to understand. I still don’t understand cricket at all, but I understand enough that I need to understand for this story. It comes back later, so it’s important, but I’ve tried several times to understand and I just can’t get my head around it.
Amita Murray: You’ve got to think about it from the baseball point of view, maybe connect it, and then it might help. It’s funny though, you say that, Steve, because I was doing a book reading and it was an event for the first book, but I actually read a little excerpt from the second book and it was in London, so you’d assume people knew about cricket and I get to a point where there is a strike and the consequence of that strike is that Anya gets bowled out. I read this bit and where I dramatically pause after she gets bowled out and people were just completely silent because they hadn’t understood the cricket reference. And I just thought, “Oh my god, you know, if this is an English audience, I’m in trouble.
It doesn’t last for a long time. What it allows me to do is a couple of things. One is that there is a colonial relationship between England and India. And I think cricket is such a big part of that colonial relationship. What has happened with cricket is it’s that funny thing of something that went from England to India, but of course has taken on this huge life in India to the point where people from all over the world now go and play in the Premier League in India. So that is a huge thing. There’s a huge connecting thing with colonial history that we can’t ignore.
Even though it only appears, I’d say, for about, I don’t know, three or four pages in the whole book, I still think there was something important about referencing that this exists and that Anya, even though she’s a British woman, she learned when she was a child, before she moved at about five years of age, she learned it in Delhi, and I think there’s something quite important to acknowledge about that history.
So there is a little, and it leads us into the first time that Anya and Damien meet each other and Anya is just completely furious with him because he bowls her out. I think there is something quite charming about that and the wonderful thing about the UK cover, it is different from the US cover, on the UK cover is Anya with a cricket bat. There’s something quite charming about that as well.
Steve Thomas: The other thing I wanted to mention is early in the book, they’re talking about how popular King George is, and to me as an American, I’m like, “That’s that guy we rebelled against!” There’s no good feelings for King George in the United States. He’s like the villain. Go see Hamilton and he’s the villain.
Amita Murray: I find that really hard too, because I think it’s that thing, the fine line of finding this society quite charming, Regency England, the way it’s been written about by authors, by novelists is very charming. It does have all that kind of pomp and romance and the ball gowns and the people on horses and horse races and all of this. So there is a lovely charm to it.
But if you start unpacking that history, and thinking about colonial history and with the relationship between England, its crown, and its colonies and the wars that led to the violence that it led to… oh gosh, it’s difficult, and then you, as an author, you’re treading that line of describing this charming society, and yet not shying away from the underbelly, which wasn’t quite as pretty, and I think that is a tricky one, that is a really tricky one.
Steve Thomas: Well I wanted to ask three quick questions at the end that I’m asking all the authors this summer. The first one is what was your first favorite book?
Amita Murray: Oh gosh, you know, anytime anyone says, say one thing, I think about, like, ten. I read loads of kids’ books, but I’m not gonna go into them so much. I actually was very keen on, when I mentioned Rebecca earlier on, Rebecca was something that I was really keen on. I had already read all the sort of the British classics before then, but Rebecca really blew me away because again, it was about this woman who’s a misfit really, she doesn’t really fit and she doesn’t know where she fits. But the intensity of her feelings was something that I could really identify with and the intensity of longing in that book So yeah, I think I might have to choose Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier.
Steve Thomas: And since I’m talking to authors all summer, I’m going to try to build a summer reading list. What’s a book or two that you want to add to a summer reading list?
Amita Murray: Okay. So there’s an author called Hannah Dolby. She has written this lovely series and the second one is just coming out. And I will need to look at the book to remember the name of it, but Hannah Dolby, I think I would recommend her. She’s again got that historical period charm, but not as far back as mine because it isn’t a regency. It’s more First World War kind of time, but again, that quaint and charming summer read, I think that would be quite a good one.
Steve Thomas: Is that How to Solve Murders Like a Lady?
Amita Murray: That’s the one, yes, that’s the one. So I would recommend that. I don’t know that it’s a summer read. You know, what I want to read, I’m desperate to read it, and it’s not coming out this summer. It’s going to be towards the end, I think, of the summer. It’s Tomi Adeyemi’s third of a trilogy. You know, she wrote Children of Blood and Bone, and then the second was Virtue and Vengeance, and the third one is still out. Two words with an A, whose name also I can’t remember [note: it’s Children of Anguish and Anarchy], but Tomi Adeyemi’s book I’m really looking forward to because I just think what she’s done with bringing history and magic together she just does that in such a fascinating way, so even though that’s not necessarily summer reading, Tomi Adeyemi’s third book of her trilogy I am quite keen on reading. So that would be another one.
I think there’s slightly older authors, like Georgette Heyer, she really influenced me, but I’ve read recently many, many interesting books. The reason I’m hesitating even is because they’re outside the genre in which I’m writing. But I really love the magic genre. I do love fantasy. So I’m probably going to mention, besides Tomi Adeyemi, I’m going to mention that I’m just reading Saara El-Arifi. She’s really, really good in the magic fantasy genre and I really like her.
I really like Shannon Chakraborty as well, she’s really good. She came up with the Daevabad series, Kingdom of Copper and all of those books. So she’s really good. And I want to read Jade City by Fonda Lee and I haven’t read it yet, but that’s on my list, so maybe that’s going to be my summer reading. But yeah, I’m mentioning all of these books that are not in my genre at all. But I am kind of keen on the fantasy genre. I do really love to read it and it gets me out of the Regency mode which is nice because it’s a good break from it and it keeps me fresh for the Regency when I’m writing it.
Steve Thomas: Is that something that you think that you could write or is it not in your wheelhouse of writing?
Amita Murray: I’d say watch this space.
Steve Thomas: Okay.
Amita Murray: I can’t give away anything. I do love that genre. There’s a way of looking at history that it allows you to do because you’re looking at it speculatively and in a fantasy world that you’ve created that frees you up to do things that you might not do in a contemporary or a historical novel. So I do really like that genre and I will experiment with it because the other thing about me is that I love to experiment with different genres that I enjoy reading. The publishers probably hate this, but I’m not a one book a year person. I like to write more than that and I like more to be coming out.
So yes, I think I’m always open to experimenting a little bit outside of the genre that I’m currently writing in, while sticking to obviously all the important deadlines in the ones that I’m writing.
Steve Thomas: Well, I don’t know if you’ll ever get to the James Patterson level of cranking out books, but…
Amita Murray: No, I think I’d need a factory of people to do that, to somehow pull that off. No, I won’t be doing that, but I do see getting to the point of doing more than one a year. I’m a hungry writer just like I was a hungry reader and still am. So I think I will keep on again pushing what I think an author’s life is.
Steve Thomas: That’s great. Because I hate when authors feel like they’re pigeonholed and can’t write anything else because I’m a romance author and that’s it. It’s great that publishing today allows you to explore outside of that.
Amita Murray: You just have to fight for that a little bit if you’re doing something a little bit out of the box, but I think in the States especially there’s more room for that. I think the British publishing industry is catching up because I do think there is room for authors to be able to experiment. I think it’s just that the way that the traditional industry is structured or set up, you’re expected to stick to brand and all of this. But I think if you are sticking to brand, your covers are quite different in the different genres that you write, you could experiment with pen names that people know about. That way people have the option of reading only your one genre or reading multiple genres. I think the reader is savvy enough to know, we could trust the reader and say actually readers know what they want to read and what they’re not that interested in. But it does mean that it gives authors a chance not to feel confined.
Steve Thomas: Right. Well thank you so much for coming on the show. The book again is Unladylike Rules of Attraction, and I appreciate you talking to the listeners about all about your book and everything else we talked about.
Amita Murray: Thank you so much, Steve. And thank you for the care you took to read my book and you asked me questions that were referencing things in the book and that was a real joy to go back to the book and be able to think through it a bit more thoughtfully with somebody who has taken care to read it and understand it, so thank you so much for that.
Steve Thomas: You’re welcome. You have a great day.
Amita Murray: Thank you. You too.
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Rebecca Vnuk: I’m Rebecca Vnuk, the Executive Director from Library Reads.
Yaika Sabat: And I’m Yaika Sabat, a librarian working at Novelist.
Rebecca Vnuk: And today, the book that we are talking about is going to be Regency Romance. So the book that Steve featured on the podcast today is Amita Murray’s Unladylike Rules of Attraction, which is a multicultural regency romance that also has some suspense going on. So I’m going to let Yaika actually take over this one because Novelist has great subject headings and levels for this one.
Yaika Sabat: Yes so, this one, I mean, Regency Romance is very much the thing right now with Bridgerton but this one’s not quite Bridgerton. When I looked at it, it was very interesting. First, it is the second in the Marleigh Sisters series, so just so you know, there’s one before it. I don’t think you have to exclusively read them in order, but I always like to let people know. But going to this record and looking at it was very interesting because the first thing I did notice was that the mood of the book is suspenseful, which is not what you normally see with Regency romances. With Regency romances, you’re more likely to see things like steamy, funny, banter-filled, that kind of a thing, but in this book, Anya Marleigh is sort of a singer and performer in the court of Queen Charlotte, and she’s also the illegitimate daughter of the upper crust, but she ends up being surprised because one of her elderly clients leaves basically an inheritance for her. The countess leaves her an inheritance, but of course there’s a condition, which is that Anya has to marry before her next birthday if she wants to see any fortune, and of course there are people bickering, people wanting it. One of the people who’s in line is a man who’s basically accused of murder, most likely as a way to get him out of the line of potential inheritance, and so Anya also becomes involved in proving that he is not a murderer.
So as opposed to something like Bridgerton, which is going to be much more balls and courts, this one’s got that, but it’s also got this guy who is also of a lower station being accused of something that he is innocent of which I think is such a unique perspective. And this book also has a protagonist who is multiracial. She’s Indian and British. So you also get her view of society at that time being in a different perspective. But yeah, if you look at this, it’s going to have well-developed characters. The writing is really detailed and engaging, but it’s still plot driven, so you’re still gonna be turning the page to keep going. Pretty much as soon as I read this, I was like, oh, this is intriguing. I might actually check this one out, and I’m not always a big romance person.
Rebecca Vnuk: I think what’s really cool about this that you just pointed out is when we’re seeing these historical romances not being as lily white as they always have been, it really adds just a different dimension to it. And there’s nothing wrong with your classical Regency romances, but it is kind of nice to see, “oh, yeah, look, it wasn’t just rich white folks.” Like, how nice.
Yaika Sabat: Yes, sure.
Rebecca Vnuk: People from other backgrounds that actually lived during that time.
Yaika Sabat: That existed. Yes, that’s a thing.
Rebecca Vnuk: It really is kind of nice to see that. I think the other thing that I find intriguing about this is perhaps many people, when they think of a Regency romance, they think they know what they’re going to get. They think it’s going to be straight up, romance, solid kissy kissy, proposing proposing, all of that, and when you have a book that introduces some suspense into it, it’s all of a sudden that is a nice little perk that you have, a little unexpected, perhaps. And I think it draws in people that might think, “Oh, well, I’m not really a romance reader” or “I like romance, but I only like contemporary stuff. I don’t think I really like historical” because they have this preconceived notion of what a Regency romance must be. I really think that the book industry is turning that on its side at this point.
And that’s fascinating to me because I love being able to pull out other aspects of a romance to entice people that might think they don’t want to read a romance. And if you could be like, “Oh, but we’ve got some suspense in this one” and “This is really, really plot driven” that that might draw in a reader that normally might think, “Oh, well, you know, Regency isn’t my jam. I like this kind of romance instead,” or “I don’t do romance.” And then you can pull them in from other ways.
So when I was looking at the Library Reads list to see, okay, what would I recommend really quickly as a read alike, the first thing I did was I went to our archive and I just I just did a search for Regency and of course I come up with lots of titles because romance is definitely our most popular genre, and I came across another one that I think would be a nice fit because it does have more of that, well there’s like an issue going on here and there’s it’s not just about, I wouldn’t say that this one is suspenseful necessarily but there’s something else going on here than just “man meets woman meets love”, right? And so I chose A Most Agreeable Murder by Julia Seales. This was on our June 2023 list, and I’ll just read the description really quick. “Beatrice has had enough of Regency societal rules about what is proper and loves true crime. And Lord Huxley. When Huxley’s former assistant shows up in her village, Beatrice immediately dislikes him. But when another guest to the village is murdered, Beatrice helps the vile man solve the case. Much laughter is had on the way to personal freedom and autonomy.” And that was written by user Michelle Ogden from the Crawfordsville District Public Library.
I think the reason that that one popped out at me right away was because, okay, you don’t really think of true crime and Regency romance in the same book description.
Yaika Sabat: Not at all.
Rebecca Vnuk: And that’s what made me kind of think of this one is that I wouldn’t have thought of suspense and Regency romance as coming together so I just thought that was kind of a cool little pairing there.
Yaika Sabat: And I did a couple things to try and find some read-alikes. Obviously, I started like in the books record in NoveList to see what read-alikes were on the page and the general tone, the appeal, what I’m looking for that’s similar. But I also went to our Recommended Reads book list in romance. And there is a Regency Romance list because we know how popular it is.
Rebecca Vnuk: So awesome.
Yaika Sabat: And the first in the series is actually on that list Unladylike Lessons in Love. And then I noticed a name on there, Vanessa Riley, who has written a series in 2022, Murder in Westminster is the book that I’m pairing it with. It’s another book that, one, has a not white protagonist. It’s a Regency romance and historical mystery. So there is also a murder investigation. There is a widow which in the description of the book it says, whose skin color and notorious family history have left her with few friends she can rely on.
Rebecca Vnuk: Ooh, notorious family!
Yaika Sabat: Yes. And just as the local vicar, accuses her of being the prime suspect in a murder case. So again, there’s this proving one’s innocence. It is a Regency setting. It does have that romance angle, but it is, I think, got a little bit of that mystery and investigation quality to it.
The next one is The Secret Lives of Country Gentlemen by K. J. Charles. I do love that the description of this book is literally “Bridgerton meets Poldark.” So you get a regency romance, but you get adventure and mystery and smugglers. It’s got LGBTQIA characters, gay romance, and it has “suspenseful” again, as that mood right there and it has a richly detailed writing. So this one definitely sounds a lot of fun, but again, the sort of not your usual romance story while still being a Regency.
And then, because I think sometimes it’s nice to have a read-alike that’s not an exact match, I stumbled on Something in the Heir by Suzanne Enoch from 2022. I picked this one because, again, it is another woman who is required to marry because of inheritance rules. So it is that same predicament that our protagonist in Unladylike finds herself in, but this one’s heartwarming. It’s lighter. So if you want that same experience, but with a lighter tone, a little bit more fun or upbeat, then this one might be a great choice for you.
Rebecca Vnuk: Oh, those pesky inheritance rules.
Yaika Sabat: I know, so frustrating!
Rebecca Vnuk: They’re always getting us, right? All right. Well, I think that is a great little overview of some things that people like about Regencies and some book titles that they can enjoy. So I think we will check you out next time on The Circ Desk!
Circulating Ideas 