Teresa Grant's Imperial Scandal

HALLIE EPHRON: Today we're delighted to welcome author Teresa Grant. Her newest novel, "Imperial Scandal," is a thrilling, romantic tale set in Brussels in the wake of Napoleon’s escape from Elba.

In today's interview, she talks about the era she loves to write about, where she finds the details for her stories, and how she juggles a writing career with being a new mom.

Tracy, why do you think historicals--not just books but Downton Abbey, etc., are so popular right now?

TERESA GRANT: It's an interesting question. So many people I know love Downton Abbey - my editor and agent and I were just talking about it over lunch last week. I think on the one hand historicals provide an escape from the stresses of the modern world (another friend and I were debating whether Downtown Abbey stirs nostalgia or makes the untenable nature of the class system clear).

But I also think history offers a lot more than escape - as a history major, I often think of it as the ultimate social science. History has so much to say about everything from human interactions to politics and economics. I think historical fiction always says something about the era in which it's created as well as the era in which it is written. I think we're in the midst of a period of change now and both the Edwardian era/the Twenties and the Regency are times of change as well, so I don't think it's a coincidence that stories set in both those eras resonate now.

HALLIE: Why did you choose your particular period?

TRACY: It's an era on the cusp between the 18th century and the industrial era, between the classical and romantic eras, between the Les Liaisons Dangereuses generation and Victorian repression. Echoes of the French Revolution linger. The railroad is in its infancy. There's so much to explore from the Napoleonic Wars to social unrest to Beethoven, Turner, and the romantic poets.

HALLIE: Did you feel any qualms about taking on the Battle of Waterloo? And the real historical characters in the book?

TRACY: I was both excited and terrified to take on Waterloo. It's such an iconic historical event from the Duchess of Richmond's ball at which the British got the news that Napoleon had marched through the battle itself and its aftermath. I wrote about Waterloo in Shores of Desire, one of my historical romances, where the battle was a smaller part of the book than in Imperial Scandal. I'd wanted to explore it in more detail ever since.

But so many wonderful writers have dramatized the battle from Thackeray to Georgette Heyer to Bernard Cornwell that it was hard not to be intimidated. I had to remember that I was telling my version of the battle and the surrounding events, through the lens of this story and these characters.

I love weaving real historical characters into my books. I had particular fun with Lady Caroline Lamb, who actually wasn't in Brussels until after the battle in point of fact but who was such a wonderful foil for Cordelia Davenport, one of my fictional characters, that I couldn't resist including her. The Duke of Wellington, who you'd think might be intimidating, I actually find quite easy to write about - his dialogues comes quite easily to me.

One of the challenges of this book is that there are a number of historical characters, such as Wellington's aides-de-camp, about whom there isn't a large historical record. I tried to build fully realized characters on the information I had to work with.

HALLIE: The details of place and time are so evocative in your book. For example, you open a battle scene:

"Mist hung over the fields, mixed with smoke from the Allied cooking fires and those of the French on the opposite ridge. Steam rose from cheap tea brewed in iron kettles. The smell of clay pipes and officers’ cigars mingled with the stench of wool still sodden from the night’s rain. Shots split the air as soldiers fired their guns to clean them."

Wow. How did you find those incredible sensory details?

TRACY: Thank you so much! I worked really hard to bring the battle scenes to life, so your comment means a lot to me.

I read a lot of letters and diaries and memoirs from people who were involved in the battle. I made notes of details mentioned and then tried to imagine what my characters would see, smell, hear, touch in the midst of the scene.

It's the same for a scene on a battlefield as in a ballroom, though with the battle scenes there was the added challenge of giving the reader a sense of the overall progress of the battle while at the same time writing from the POV of the characters who would mostly be experiencing chaos.The Waterloo scenes in Imperial Scandal are some of the most challenging I've ever written and also some of my favorites.

HALLIE: I know this is a weird question, but I've always been fascinated by the clothing of past eras, and the undergarments women had to wear to get into them. Did questions like this figure in your research for this book??

TRACY: Definitely. As I said above, the clothes are one of the things I love about this era. Malcolm and Suzanne, my investigative couple, do a lot of their talking about the mystery while getting ready to go out for the evening or undressing at night. Which means I have to know things like how dresses unfastens and corsets unlace.

I'm fortunate to have two writer friends who are wonderful fonts of information about early 19th century clothing, Candice Hern and Isobel Carr. Isobel helped me figure out the best kind of corset Suzanne could wear to allow her maximum freedom of motion in action scenes.

HALLIE: Your Facebook page features you with the most adorable baby. We all want to know, how do you juggle your time?

TRACY: I've become quite adept at writing with a baby on my lap :-). I'm lucky that my daughter Mélanie is very adaptable (I just took her to New York and she was a great traveler). I was actually able to get back to writing sooner than I expected after she was born.

She likes the stimulation of going out, so we spend a lot of time in cafés where she can look out the window, and I can write with a latte. I'm definitely better now at grabbing work time when i can. I've always liked to write late at night, and that still works well as she sleeps a lot then. And I've found nursing time is great for catching up on reading.

I think Malcolm and Suzanne will have their second child in the book I'm going to write next so I can put my hands-on baby research to use!

HALLIE: Thanks, Tracy! Tracy will be checking in today so please, share your thoughts and questions. What do you think makes us such suckers for period drama?

Tracy Grant's Magnificent Historical Mysteries

DEBS: Today Jungle Red chats with one of my favorite novelists, Tracy Grant.

Fans may be familiar with Tracy's wonderful Regency suspense (is that a category?) novels featuring Charles and Melanie Fraser, but now, writing as Teresa Grant, she brings us Vienna Waltz. Europe's elite have gathered at the glittering Congress of Vienna - princes, ambassadors, the Russian tsar - all negotiating the fate of the Continent by day and pursuing pleasure by night. Until Princess Tatiana, the most beautiful and talked about woman in Vienna, is found murdered. Young diplomatic wife Suzanne Rannoch discovers her husband, Malcolm, who is rumored to be among Tatiana's conquests, kneeling over the princess's body. An intricate dance in the search for the truth ensues. No one's secrets are safe and the future of Europe may hang in the balance.

I just had to repeat the first line of the glowing review of Vienna Waltz from Publishers Weekly: "A murdered Russian princess creates a diplomatic imbroglio in this magnificent mystery set in the midst of the glittering palaces and ballrooms of the Congress of Vienna."

How often have you seen PW use the word "magnificent?" High praise, indeed, and very well deserved. Of course, you might guess that I loved the book, since my quote was featured on the cover. I feel very privileged!

And the cover! It is, I think, one of the most beautiful book covers I've ever seen. Did you have input into the design?

TRACY: Thanks, Deb! I love the cover. My editor asked me for my cover ideas early on, and I sent suggestions and images. I suggested a woman (I described Suzanne and actually the cover model looks quite a bit like her), which seems to be the classic look for historical fiction these days. I said I thought it was important to make sure her dress looked elegant and regal, to suggest the sumptuousness of the Congress of Vienna and the world of Continental royalty, instead of looking too Jane Austen-y and British. The cover design by Kristine Mills-Noble and the illustration by Judy York are beyond anything I imagined. The cover is so beautiful and the dress has a lavish, over-the-top elegance, which perfectly captures the mood of the Congress of Vienna.

DEBS: You're a fellow Anglophile. What led you to your interest in England, and to the Regency era in particular?

TRACY: My mom loved British history and literature. When I was six, my parents took me to the Laurence Olivier-Greer Garson Pride and Prejudice. I loved it and immediately wanted to read the book (or rather have it read to me). My mom said I'm not sure you I'll like it, but we can try. I thought it was wonderful. To me, at that age, it was a story about girls (older than me but young enough that I could identify with them) dealing with their sisters and parents, growing up, falling in love. Every time I reread Pride & Prejudice I get different things from it, but I was totally hooked at the age of six.

A family trip to England and Scotland the next year helped cement my love of British history. We'd been watching the Elizabeth R series on PBS, and we went to a lot of the locations, as well as to country and London houses right out of a Jane Austen novel. My mom and I went on to read all of Jane Austen and then my mom discovered Georgette Heyer's Regency-set novels and introduced me to them.

Even when I was reading on my own, we still tended to read the same books and talk about them, including Anthony Trollope's Palliser series and British golden age mysteries by Dorothy Sayers, Margery Allingham, and Ngaio Marsh. I was always particularly drawn to the Regency/Napoleonic era, I think because of Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer. My mom and I began to plot a Regency romance together when I was thirteen. We worked on it off on and on for several years.

I went on to college at Stanford where I majored in history (specializing in the late fifteenth century for a never-published historical fantasy series I was working on, though I learned a huge amount about historical research that's been invaluable in researching the Regency era). The summer between my sophomore and junior years in college, my mom and I went back to our Regency romance in a very focused way. We sold it (to our own amazement) the next winter. That book, The Widow's Gambit, was published in May 1988, just before I graduated. Though my books are now ore mystery focused, I continue to be fascinated by the
Regency/Napoleonic era and to find new stories to tell in it. I'm having a lot of fun writing Continental set stories now, but I still write about British characters, and I look forward to getting back to writing books set in Britain eventually.

DEBS: You've not only changed your name, writing as Teresa Grant in Vienna Waltz, but you've changed the names of characters you've written about in previous books! Charles and Melanie Fraser became Suzanne and Malcolm Rannoch. How hard was that for you, and why the metamorphosis?

TRACY: It hasn't been as hard as I would have thought. My new publisher, Kensington, wanted me to have a more historical sounding name. I chose Teresa, because Tracy can be a nickname for it, so I can still be Tracy when I interact with readers. Vienna Waltz, as you say, is the story of Charles and Melanie Fraser's adventures at the Congress of Vienna.

Their time at the Congress is referred to in Secrets of a Lady, and in Beneath a Silent Moon there's mention of a murder Charles investigated in Vienna. But my new publisher also wanted them to have new names when they launched my books, so they are called Malcolm and Suzanne Rannoch (Malcolm and Suzanne are Charles and Melanie's middle names).

They're still the same people, just as I'm still the same person. I wrote the book using their real names so I could keep the characters and chronology consistent. Readers who first met the characters as Charles and Melanie have told me they mentally substitute the original names when they read about Malcolm and Suzanne. But I've heard from readers who met the characters through Vienna Waltz who say they find it hard to imagine them being called anything but Malcolm and Suzanne and mentally substitute those names when they read about Charles and Melanie in the earlier books. I like to think that Charles and Mel lead such adventurous lives it's no wonder some of their adventures are chronicled under aliases :-)

DEBS: And, oh, the clothes! What fun you must have had researching the women's gorgeous gowns and costumes. Even the men's clothes were so much sexier than today's.

Tracy: So true! There are so many things I love about the Regency/Napoleonic era--the fact that it's an era on the cusp of change, the political turmoil, the dawn of the romantic era--but the clothes are definitely part of it. I did indeed have so much fun researching the clothes for Vienna Waltz. The gowns, the jewels, the shawls and reticules, the men's coats and waistcoats and breeches, the uniforms. There are several scenes where Malcolm and Suzanne discuss the mystery while dressing for a ball or the theater or undressing after an evening engagement.

My friend and fellow writer Isobel Carr was a big help with getting all the layers of underclothing right for an early scene where Malcolm helps Suzanne undress (and yes, they're discussing suspects rather than doing anything more amorous). I got to make up lavish gowns for Suzanne and the other female characters (I even changed the description of one of
Suzanne's dress to sound like the gown on the cover), and I also worked in references to real gowns some of the historical characters are known to have worn.

And then there's the Carrousel, a re-creation of a medieval pageant that's a major event in the book. There's quite a bit of documentation about the costumes worn by the knights (of whom Malcolm is one) and the gowns of the belles d'amour (of whom Suzanne is one). I even worked in an exchange where Malcolm, who read history at Balliol, points out to Suzanne that real knights dressed in these clothes would have been cut to ribbons at Agincourt.

DEBS: What's next for Suzanne and Malcolm?

TRACY: I'm currently finishing up revisions on their next adventure, Imperial Scandal, which will be out in April 2012. It begins in Brussels a few days before the battle of Waterloo.

Malcolm slips away from an embassy ball for a secret meeting and finds himself in an ambush the leaves two people dead, including a decorous army wife who seemingly had no business being there. Malcolm and Suzanne are drawn into an investigation that involves a spy ring, double agents, and secret love affairs that could shatter the fragile relationship between Britain and her Dutch-Belgian allies. Once again the murder mystery is intertwined with real historical events. The investigation takes an unexpected turn at the Duchess of Richmond's ball where the waltzing is interrupted by news that the army is about to march against the French, and the story goes through the battle of Waterloo itself. Malcolm unearths clues on the battlefield where he's pressed into delivering messages for Wellington, while Suzanne continues the investigation in Brussels, where she's nursing the wounded.

I'm just starting the following book in the series, set in Paris after Waterloo during the White Terror, when restored Ultra Royalists turned on Bonapartists. It opens with a tavern brawl and the death of a former British agent who knows all too many secrets. I'm really looking forward to writing about Paris and also returning to several of the historical characters from Vienna Waltz.


DEBS: I can't wait! And I must say that I, too, loved Georgette Heyer, but your characters are ever so much sexier:-) Danger, intrigue, complex characters with dark secrets in their pasts, and an evocation of the period that seems so real you can almost believe you're there.

Jewels, indeed.

Oh, and if you ever get around to writing the fantasy series, I'd like that, too!