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Welcome to our New Faces column, where you can meet debut romance authors and find out about their books. This time we're visiting with Janet Mullany, whose first release is Dedication from Signet Regency. Let's meet her. Janet, congratulations and welcome to TRR! Tell us about yourself. I'm originally from England but I've been here so long I don't really consider myself particularly English. I still have an accent that I'm told here is really strong, but over there people tell me I sound like an American (and, it's usually implied, a loud one). I still have some English traits--I drink gallons of tea, I am drawn as if by magic to foods rich in animal fats and starch, and my husband claims that half the time I'm unintelligible--not my accent, but diction and vocabulary. Are you coming to romance writing from another job? At the moment I'm working as a proofreader and doing customer service for a small press. I've been an archaeologist, draftsperson, arts administrator/publicist, radio announcer, and marketing manager for a software company--mainly interesting jobs. I can't imagine not working, however the writing goes--I like to have the structure of a day job. Like death, it concentrates the mind wonderfully. Most of the people I know who supposedly write full time write less than I do--they're sucked into all sorts of family, volunteer etc. activities, because they're at home with time on their hands. Ha. I have tremendous admiration for women who combine raising small children with writing; my daughter was old enough to cope with maternal neglect and burnt, or non-existent dinners, and escaped to college shortly after I started writing. Ideally of course I'd like a part-time job that pays twice as much as my current full-time one--or three times as much, now I think about it. What led you to write romance? I'm not a longtime reader of romance, although I did spend a lot of time reading Georgette Heyer when I was about 17, and dreamily wandering the streets of Bath (where some of my family lived) longing to be transported back in time and then wondering how I'd explain the miniskirt. I also read a lot of Mary Stewart then and other gothicky things. I started writing fiction about four years ago, having written lots of promotional stuff, brochures, ads, feature articles for work, and thought I'd like to try to write a story. So I started two long rambling things that have never gone anywhere, although I've borrowed bits and pieces from them since, and wrote and published a few short stories. I started looking around for writers' groups and discovered Maryland Romance Writers (my local RWA chapter). I liked their very practical approach and decided that was what I was going to do, and through them I joined my wonderful critique group, The Tarts. Tell us about your road to publication. After giving up on the two things above which never went anywhere (FYI, no. 1 was about an actress in eighteenth-century England who kept inexplicably sleeping with the wrong men; and no. 2 was a sort of time-warp mess about an English archaeologist [male], who I finally figured out was the reincarnation of the female 1st century AD parallel character, which was interesting but didn't help much), I walloped out the first draft of a regency-set historical, The Woman in the Mirror. It had a plot, sort of. Then I worked on Dedication, my debut book, and it won a contest that year. At the time it had a highly complex plot involving code-breaking and spies which I barely understood myself, but one of its highlights was that the villain was killed by being eaten by the hero's pigs, something I am determined to recycle elsewhere. The Woman in the Mirror then finaled in the 2003 Golden Heart, much to my surprise. I really wasn't ready for that, and neither was the book which was rejected by every agent and publisher I sent it to. The truly wonderful thing about the GH final (other than swift passage on and off agents' and editors' desks, a mixed blessing) was the close relationship I've formed with the other finalists that year, a wonderfully supportive and talented group. I've had a few other contest finals as well as some appallingly low scores, a cosmic plan to keep me humble. Dedication meanwhile went through a few rewrites, got slammed in contests for the most part, had a couple of near misses with editors, and then won the 2004 Royal Ascot, non-traditional category. The judge, Laura Cifelli, asked for a full manuscript, and on September 1, 2004, I received The Call (my phone, which wasn't working very well, disconnected us three times while I drooled and stammered). The offer was that if I cut 20,000 words, it would be published as a Signet Regency. Fine, I said, but the sex stays (there's a lot of it, and some of it is, ah, unusual). That was ok. This was to be a Signet of the new twenty-first century breed. Basically they loved my voice, and that's what got me published. What kind of research was involved for your first book? I'm a very sloppy, lazy researcher for the most part. There's a lot of stuff I know from growing up in England (what buildings and the countryside look like, for instance), reading Jane Austen and other nineteenth century authors, and what I don't know I'll look up, and if it's really obscure, make a lucky guess. I've always had a knack for remembering trivia. Tell us about your debut book. Dedication is about a couple who meet up again twenty years after a brief and badly-ended affair when they were both very young. Adam, the former rake is now a rather stuffy country gentleman, and Fabienne was a rather naive convent-educated French emigree (she fled the French revolution) who is now a very sophisticated and independent woman. She is a patroness of the arts who holds a fashionable literary salon, and she starts an intimate correspondence with a writer of gothic novels, Mrs. Ravenwood. But when she tries to meet up with Mrs. Ravenwood she runs into Adam again, and concludes the writer is his mistress. Meanwhile she spills her guts to this woman she knows only through letters, and at the same time finds Adam is part of her life again, and a lot of issues from the past are unearthed. Every chapter is headed by a quote from one of Mrs. Ravenwood's novels--they were a lot of fun to write, and satisfied my purple prose tendencies. Who are your influences as a writer? As far as romance writers, I love Judith Ivory for her rich language and intensity, Jennifer Crusie for her wit and very spare, selective language, Kathy Love and Christie Kelley (both my critique partners!), Pam Rosenthal, Nita Abrams, Diana Gabaldon, Jane Feather, Anna Maxted, and Jo Beverly. I read a lot of other genres, too--some of my favorite writers are Paul Theroux, Terry Pratchett, Carl Hiaasen, Jonathan Kellerman, Nick Hornby, Angela Carter, Sarah Waters, and Sue Grafton. I read some history for both pleasure and research--one recent, awesome book is Adam Hochschild's Bury The Chains, about the English abolitionist movement. The books that have influenced me most, and the ones I re-read regularly, other than Jane Austen, are Villette by Charlotte Bronte, Daniel Deronda by George Eliot, and Wives and Daughters by Mrs. Gaskell. What does your family think of having a published romance author in their midst? Bemused is the word that comes to mind. I'm very nervous about people who know me reading my stuff, so they have no idea what I'm doing other than the few odds and ends I've let them read. My in-laws are thrilled! Tell us about plans for future books. I really wish I could say I have a six-figure multi-book contract...I'm in the strange twilight world before the second sale. To keep my mind off it I'm writing humorous regency-set, and an erotic fantasy on Jane Eyre (she keeps Rochester in the attic). Generally my stuff is rather dark, erotic regency-set, or brainlessly funny (at least I hope it's both, and more funny than brainless). I don't consider myself a writer of traditional regencies, and Dedication certainly isn't by my definition, although it's a Signet regency. I'm also hunting for an agent. How can readers get in touch with you? Visit my website, www.janetmullany.com. You can email me from there, and I hope you'll sign up for my newsletter if I've figured out how to set it up. Thank you for letting me talk about myself! Janet, thank you for visiting with us, and best of luck with your future books!
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