Historical Romance thrives at Yale

Let me commence with with the quotation I swiped from the syllabus for "Reading Historical Romance, " taught by authors

Lauren Willig

and Andrea DaRif (w/a

Cara Elliott

):

“Although our [novels] have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried.  From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are as many as our readers….”

                -- Jane Austen,

Northanger Abbey

(1818)

I'm happy to report that while this continues to be true, at least 18 Yale students have a different point of view.  I was one of a panel invited to be interrogated by these students earlier in the week.  (L-R:  Lauren, Carrie Ferron of HarperCollins, Andrea, SB Sarah of

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

, and me.)

These students are taking a course titled "Reading the Historical Romance"--a class I mentioned in a

previous blog

, whose required reading included, among other historical romances, my own

Mr. Impossible

.  Their thoughtful questions made me wish I'd been sitting in on all the classes.  It also made me wish we'd had more time to talk.  Our two-hour class was much too short.

Thank you, students, Andrea & Lauren, for a truly memorable day.

Mr. Impossible goes to Yale

Nerdy History Girl

Susan Holloway Scott

called my attention to

this piece by George Eliot

. 

I know that for some people, all romance novels are "silly novels by lady novelists." 

But I don't care what they say because I'm on a reading list at Yale.  Authors

Lauren Willig

and

Cara Elliott

are teaching a course called "Reading the Historical Romance"— and my very own

Mr. Impossible

is Required Reading!  Which is kind of funny, considering that the hero Rupert is...erm...well, no Einstein.  But there he is, in the hallowed halls of academe. 

That's Lauren on the left and Cara on the right.  And if various schedules can be made to mesh, I'll be meeting their students next month.

Last Night's Scandal in glorious purple

Last time I mentioned page proofs.  This is the first pass at the print version, when the book really starts to look like a book, and the author looks for the mistakes she missed, as mentioned in an earlier post, the previous ten thousand times she—not to mention the copy editor and various other editors—went over it.  No matter what, I always find mistakes in the page proofs that can't all be blamed on the printer.  Somehow all those eagle eyes on the manuscript missed, say, missing end quotes.  And then there are the sudden realizations, e.g., "What was I

thinking

?" or "Didn't anyone notice I used the same word three times in the same paragraph?" or "Wait a minute!  Isn't that an anachronism?" (It usually is.)

I'm happy to report that the page proof phase is now behind me, too, and the next thing I'll see, somewhere down the road, are the Advanced Reading Copies.

Then, before we know it,

Last Night's Scandal

will actually be on bookstore shelves—while I'm watching Deadline-for-the-next book loom ever larger upon the horizon.

But in the meantime, here for your delectation is the brand-new cover, before even Amazon has it.