MJ: It first started when it became startlingly clear that I
didn't want to be an academic. But I loved doing research, I loved
what I was studying, and I wanted another outlet for the fascinating
facts that I was finding, the interesting people I was meeting in my
research. I thought of historical romance, and I had friends who read
historical romance and asked them for some suggestions, then
started reading them.
This was also shortly after my mother died, and reading those
romances provided an amazing outlet for dealing with the confusing
emotions I was experiencing. Especially because they always had a
happy ending; that's one of the things everybody likes to mock about
romances, but it made reading them very cathartic. I would take one,
go to the gym at the morning--very early, because I was studying for
my general exams for my Ph.D.--and I would never actually work
out. I just sat there on the floor of the gym, read an entire book, then
I went home to study French poetry or Petrarch. I did that every
day, and that was how I stayed sane during a really strange period.
RH: So The Stargazer came before The Story of
O, the eventual title of your dissertation?
MJ: Actually, they were simultaneous. I was living in Venice,
finishing up my research for The Story of O. It was November,
and Venice was flooded. One day, I was supposed to go to the library,
and I opened my front door, and the water was up to my knees. I
said to myself, "There's no way I can do this," so I stayed in and I
wrote the beginning of The Stargazer and didn't go back to the
library until I was done. It was a great diversion. Everyone should
have something to do during the rainy season. (smiles)
It was good training for the dissertation, too, because there are some
strong parallels between writing prose and writing academically.
Problem solving, making connections, building sections that work--
those all hold for both, and the act of writing 8-10 hours a day,
which I did for Stargazer, was really good training for writing
the dissertation quickly when I finally got around to it.
RH: What was the reaction among your colleagues as
they found out that you were writing romances, and then
that you had gotten one published?
MJ: Some of them are amused. The job situation in academia is
such that a lot of people are leaving grad school anyway, so it's really
kind of a hoot that I've left to do this. The reaction's been great,
better than in some parts of my family, where people are put off by
it. I've been surprised by how well everyone in academia reacted.
RH: How surprised was your husband?
MJ: I'd been saying to him for a long time [that I was tired of
academia]. I tend to make pronouncements and keep repeating them
over and over so that finally I have to make them true. Like I'd told
him over and over again that we were going to live in Italy for a
year, so when I said over and over that I was going to write a
historical romance, I think he accepted it as inevitable. He was also in
a Ph.D. program at the time, and has also subsequently left the
academy, so he understood what was going on. And I'm certainly
much happier when I'm not in academia, so I'm sure he's just
thrilled. Plus it's fun to be able to say at cocktail parties, "My wife
writes romance novels." You don't run into that very often in the
systems dynamics field.
RH: How did you hit upon the idea doing a series around
a group of cousins?
MJ: Totally by accident. All of a sudden, there were these six
really tall men in my head, and I just started writing. It was
amazing; that sort of thing doesn't really happen in academic
discourse. The third book, the one I'm working on now, is about the
second youngest cousin, Miles, who's a poet and a ladies man, but has
gotten himself in a bit of trouble. It's set in London in 1590, just
after the battle with the Spanish Armada, so London is in turmoil.
RH: You probably know a lot about the mysterious,
unseen cousin, L.N., at this point, even though we readers
are still in the dark.
MJ: He's the big secret, the last book. It's going to be a really
excellent plot. But I'm really lousy at keeping secrets, so keeping the
secrets of L.N. through a seven-book series, which is essentially
seven years, is really making me cuckoo. But I've sworn myself to
secrecy. Only my editor knows about L.N., and I can't say anymore or
I'll spoil it all.
RH: Both of your novels are murder mysteries as well as
romances.
MJ: I love mysteries. I think that's characteristic of people
who have spent as much time in academia as I have. If you go to
Wordsworth [a popular independent bookstore in Harvard Square
--ed.], they have a huge mystery section, even though they
wouldn't deign to carry romance novels. Mysteries are the acceptable
pop culture reading material for academics, intellectuals, whatever
you want to call them. I think it's because they follow a trajectory
and solve a problem, it's an identical intellectual quest.
I was raised on mysteries, ao it was natural that there would be
mysteries in my books, and that my plots would start off with dead
bodies. The next book is a lot of fun, because there's a vampire in it,
so it's a whole new kind of mystery for me.
RH: Your books seem more explicitly erotic than most
romances.
MJ: There's definitely a spectrum in the genre. My books are
not at the most erotic end of it. They're slightly to the erotic side of
center, but there are some that are much steamier. I didn't realize
how much to the erotic side of center they were when I was writing
them. I thought my love scenes were just different versions of the
scenes I've read in other people's books. But the reaction I've had
from others suggests that I'm mistaken.
RH: Oh, come on, when was the last time you read a
romance novel with a suspenseful lesbian seduction scene?
MJ: I do what I can. (smiles) A lot of authors have
characters who are involved in same-sex relationships, both men and
women, though usually women. But it tends to be fairly subtle, like
the two "uncles" in The Stargazer who are really gay lovers.
One of my copy editors didn't get it and kept asking me, "Don't they
need separate rooms?"
I had read a lot of romances, but I wrote The Stargazer in
something of a vacuum. I was in Venice, I was doing what I wanted...
A lot of the steamier bits had to come out in the editing process,
especially a lot of the same-sex bits. It was hard to hear the refrain,
"You can leave it in, but people won't buy the book," but after that it
didn't seem like such a bad idea to take it out.
RH: Who are some of your favorite romance writers?
MJ: Dangerous question!
RH: "They're all wonderful!"
MJ: You took the words right out of my mouth! (laughs)
There are so many, though...Some of the writers I read first have
really stuck with me, because they were my initiation in the genre--
people like Amanda Quick, Jane Feather, and Mary Jo Putney. And
then there's a bunch of new ones, like Jude Devereaux and Julie
Garwood.
How about favorite mystery writers?
MJ: I love Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe, and George Simenon's
Maigret books. Raymond Chandler, Walter Mosley... I just read my
first Sebastian Japrisot book and loved it... I'm kind of a mystery slut,
I'll read anything. But those are my top tier.
RH: You were just at the Romance Writers of America
convention. What was that like?
MJ: It's an amazing convention. It's great to meet the people,
see what they like and don't like, find out who they're reading.
They'll bring huge tote bags that end up filled with books. Given that
the literacy rate in America right now is worse than it was in 16th-
century Venice, and that the book market is apparently shrinking,
this is pretty incredible testimony.
There's a perception issue that fascinates me. Articles [about
romance writing] tend to be tongue-in-cheek. Why are romance
books are so easy to parody and mock? The easy answer is that it's
primarily a female author-female reader genre, and that may have
something to do with it, but I think there's something more. Maybe
part of it what you mentioned earlier, about the eroticism [in my
books]. Even though they aren't all like that, they do ask for some
sort of response, both emotional and physical, from the reader, and
people are uncomfortable with that.
One of the most interesting things about the genre is that its most
vocal critics are people who declare that they've never read it, but
still feel willing to generalize about it.
RH: But a good chunk of the people who have "never
read romance" might very well have read, say, Anne Rice.
MJ: Oh, sure. My father-in-law keeps asking when I'm going to
write a real book like Tom Clancy and John Grisham. Or I was at a
book signing recently, and an author kept telling me about how
things are done in "real fiction." But it's neat to work in an illicit
genre, one people turn their nose down at. There's something fun
about being able to have that freedom.
RH: And the fans certainly seem much more vocal.
MJ: What intrigues me so much about romance is that people read it and
react to it. People write letters with opinions in them. I'm a trained literary
critic, and to get me to give you an opinion about a book, you'd have to pull my
teeth out. But people feel really comfortable doing that...I've been on the bad
side of that, too. I've got some reader reviews on Amazon.com I wouldn't wish
on my worst enemy, but it's still neat to watch people come alive and respond
with detailed criticism, to have them come up to you and say, "I loved your
book, but I wish this had happened..." In academia, you'd hear, "This is wrong,
you're dumb, and there was a lacuna in Chapter Four."
