The Joys of Binge Reading

Loretta Chase is a doyenne of Regency romance with nearly 30 books in her back list. And she still winning awards.

Ten Things I Hate About The Duke, won an AWA cherished award, one of the old Rita’s now called a Vivian for the best long form historical fiction. And it’s just the icing on the cake for a writer who’s already enjoyed a fantastic career.

Hi, I’m your host, Jenny Wheeler, and in Binge Reading today, Loretta talks honestly about getting over writer’s block when you’ve already published 28 books and why she loves writing about impossible men, like the Dis Graceful Dukes in her latest series.

That’s strictly in fiction, not in real life. No, no, no.

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For a limited time only Sadie’s Vow #1 in the Home At Last series is my contribution to this freebie list.

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And remember if you enjoyed the show, leave us a review so others will find us too. Word of mouth is still the best form of recommendation and you want your friends to know about a show that will recommend great books for them. don’t you? Sure you do.

Links to items mentioned in this episode

The classic romance Loretta read early in her career

Kathleen Woodiwiss: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/88445.Kathleen_E_Woodiwiss

Edith Layton: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/74459.Edith_Layton

Mary Jo Putney: https://maryjoputney.com/

Jo Beverley: https://www.jobev.com/

Who Loretta’s Reading Right Now:

Carl Hiaasen: https://carlhiaasen.com/

Tim Dorsey: https://www.timdorsey.com/

Terry Pratchett:https://www.terrypratchettbooks.com/

Kristan Higgins: https://www.kristanhiggins.com/

Kristan Higgins on The Joys of Binge Reading: https://thejoysofbingereading.com/kristan-higgins-queen-of-love-and-laughs/

Two Nerdy History Girls (Blog and Podcast): https://lorettachase.com/blog/2022/1/10/the-two-nerdy-history-girls-return-engagement

Susan Holloway Scott: https://susanhollowayscott.com/

Caroline Linden Books and Rom Cons (Conferences) https://www.carolinelinden.com/index.html

https://www.carolinelinden.com/aboutcaroline.html

Harry Whittaker: https://www.harrywhittaker.co.uk/

Atlas: The Story of Pa Salt: https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/lucinda-riley/atlas-the-story-of-pa-salt/9781529043525

Where to find Loretta Chase online

Website: https://lorettachase.com/

Blog: https://lorettachase.com/blog

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorLorettaChase/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lorettachaseauthor/

Introducing Loretta Chase – Regency queen

But now here’s Loretta. Hello there, Loretta, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.

Loretta Chase – doyenne of Regency romance

Loretta Chase: Jenny, I am so honored to be here.

Jenny Wheeler: You’re one of the doyennes of romance writing. You’ve written 28 historical romances starting back in the 1990s, and you’ve won numerous awards.

The most recent one, Ten Things I Hate About the Duke, just won an RWA award for the best long historical. That’s a great track record you can be proud of.

Loretta Chase: I really am. I’m very proud of that book. I was so happy when it won the award. I felt as though those two books, the first two in the Duke series, were strong work. So it was great to have that recognition.

Jenny Wheeler: And just as a little aside, they’re calling it by a different name. They’re calling it a Vivian, aren’t they? But is that the same as the old Rita?

Loretta Chase: Yes, it is the same. They’ve changed the award itself. It looks different and they’ve given it a different name, but it’s basically the same thing. from Romance Writers of America.

Jenny Wheeler: ‘Ten things’ is the second in your most recent series. And I found it really hilarious. They’re called the Dis-Graces with a little hyphen between the ‘dis’ and the ‘graceful.’

And they feature as three bad boy aristocrats, Ripley, Ashmont and Blackwood. Tell us about the “three Dis-Graces.”

The attraction of ‘impossible’ men

Loretta Chase: Oh, I love these guys so much. And I’m loving them more with every book. Now that I’m working on the third one, I’m having so much insight into their characters.

I see them as very rich, privileged, men who started acting up when they were in school and just rebelling against everything. Rebelling against good behavior and only interested in having fun.

Each of them has a distinct personality in my mind. So Ashmont, who was in the most recent published book comes across as not too swift, but in reality, I felt as though, yes, he has a brain.

He’s just been too lazy to use it until he meets a woman who forces him to start thinking because he wants her.

He wants to please her, and it makes him step up his game, and he has to start thinking and using that brain that he has, and I loved doing that.

Jenny Wheeler: You say you undertook this task with delight because you’re “attracted to,” quotes, “impossible men in fiction only.” I’m glad to hear that. What is it about impossible men that you find so appealing?

Loretta Chase: I think part of it is the fun of matching them up to women who will put them in their place. Women who require them to ‘Up their game.’

To be more intelligent. Think about things that maybe they haven’t thought about before. And the more difficult the guy is, the more challenging and fun it is for me to create a situation and a heroine who’s going to make them really work for the relationship.

And I think that’s a good start for the relationship if the guy has to work at it, it’s not just handed to him.

Social outcasts who need smart women

Jenny Wheeler: yes, you say that despite being under 30, attractive and rich, they’re all social outcasts at the start.

And that takes some doing, doesn’t it? Although still the young ladies probably throw themselves at them because they are rich and attractive, but the women that they become interested in actually disdain them, don’t they?

They need to be chased.

Loretta Chase: Yes, because the women are looking at them objectively. They’re not looking at them in terms of oh he’s a rich person who’s got the highest rank possible in the aristocracy.

They’re looking at this person as a man, and what kind of man In other words, the women are being more rational than women often are about men.

You see an attractive man, sometimes you’re not thinking clearly, but this is fiction. In real life, men like the kinds of men that I create my stories. I wouldn’t go near them.

They’re not gonna get better. they’re like that now. It would take a miracle. They have to fix themselves.

No, but in fiction, that’s the wonderful thing about writing romance. We create this ideal world where things go right, love goes right.

Jenny Wheeler: That’s wonderful. So is that part of the attraction of Regency as a genre for you?

Loretta Chase: I think that’s part of it. The thing I like about writing in the early 19th century and setting it in England, partly is the escapism factor. Partly I love doing the research and I think it was a very interesting time historically. Mostly in terms of social history. I like talking about the clothing.

I like talking about the circumstances of their lives. I’ve made a study of coaching routes and transportation.

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100%;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] [data-style="minimal"]{padding:40px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"]{margin-left:-5px;margin-right:-5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field,.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{margin:0 5px 15px 5px;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-field{-webkit-flex:100 1 auto;-ms-flex:100 1 auto;flex:100 1 auto;}.formkit-form[data-uid="d471e51619"][min-width~="600"] .formkit-fields[data-stacked="false"] .formkit-submit{-webkit-flex:1 1 auto;-ms-flex:1 1 auto;flex:1 1 auto;} Regency a favorite period for Loretta Chase

All those things have fed into this interest. And then when you get to the Victorian period, it’s not quite so interesting to me. The hypocrisy starts to grow. The religious evangelism starts to grow, and that’s not something I’m really comfortable with.

So the Regency’s been great for me to work in.

Jenny Wheeler: Just slightly reverting back to the bad boy theme. You had an earlier series called the Dressmaker series, and I noticed also that you had a temptation there. There was this family called the Dreadful DeLuceys a “notorious lot of blue blooded liars, frauds, and swindlers” who also get their comeuppance from a French family of young women who are extremely talented. It allowed you to introduce them to devious and ambitious woman. Tell us a little bit about that. It sounds absolutely delicious as well.

Loretta Chase: Oh, the idea for writing about the dressmakers came from my agent, but as soon as she mentioned it, that pieces started falling into place. And I was thinking I had created the Dreadful DeLuceys a couple of several books earlier in my Carsington Brothers series. And I thought, Oh, what about the women?

What would these women be like? And I loved the idea of these very ambitious women coming to England and being determined to be great successes with their dressmaking. And I loved that the women who are entrepreneurs who are making a life for themselves, who are facing these challenges and they deal with them.

There’s one woman who’s widowed, so she’s raising a child on her own, but she’s working with her sisters. It was just a great situation for me to work with and the fact that they were French and they had exquisite taste in clothing. And I do a lot of research in the clothing of the time period.

That was all it was just gravy. I really had a great time with those women.

Living in a Loretta Chase universe

Jenny Wheeler: It sounds like you have created a Loretta Chase universe that they do cross credit amongst some of the characters. Is that how they work?

Loretta Chase: Yes, that’s how it’s evolved for me. I’ve noticed that sometimes I mention characters from other books in a current book or a house that appeared that I created for a book, say three books ago, reappears in the story, or a character maybe a minor character keeps reappearing.

There’s a, street child who has appeared in about the last – I think the last three or four – books. And he’s in the one I’m currently working on.

So yes, definitely, I’ve created my own special world. I’ve stolen houses that actually existed and given them to my characters. So yes, a Loretta Chase world.

Jenny Wheeler: Your writing always has an edge of humor and really slick dialogue, and I noticed on your website, you remark that you started with the idea that you were going to write the great American novel, but you think your sense of humor got in the way. The great American novel is still in the bottom drawer, is it?

Loretta Chase: Oh, yes, absolutely. That was the point where I thought I was going to be writing literary fiction, and it turns out that’s not me.

I’m a popular fiction writer, popular literature. And once I started to write romances, I realized it was perfect for me, and that’s where I belong. I’m very comfortable in this world.

I think more comfortable all the time.

Jenny Wheeler: And how did that realization occur?

How Loretta discovered she was made for romance

Loretta Chase: it’s a funny story. I majored in English in college and in that environment, you’re discouraged from appreciating popular literature. And romance of course was really scorned. And so, I came to romance rather late. And it was only as I was trying to find my way as a novelist that I discovered that popular fiction seemed to suit me better.

I realized the thing that I really loved about even the great literature, classic literature, that I had read, was the love story.

It was unsatisfying to me if the love story went wrong. So often if the heroine had sex outside of marriage or fell in love with the wrong guy, something terrible happened to her.

And I felt like this isn’t right. They should have their happily ever after and romance offered that. And so I was fairly quickly converted, once I started reading romances. I said, ‘Oh, this is for me.’

Jenny Wheeler: And do you remember who those first romance authors were that you read? Were there any names that still come to mind?

Loretta Chase: I started out reading the very big historical romances by people like Kathleen Woodiwiss.

But then later, it was my sister actually, because my sister was a romance reader from an early age, and she was the one. When I expressed an interest in romance, she was the one who started handing me books and saying, maybe you’ll like this.

Maybe you’ll like this. At one point. She started giving me the Regencies.

And there were people like Edith Layton, and it’s hard for me to remember all the names right now Mary Jo Putney and Joe Beverly and others, and what I liked about it was there was usually humor there was often this lovely repartee, and that was very appealing to me.

Loretta – the ‘only romance set in Albania’

And also the Regencies, the traditional regencies were shorter books, and I thought this is more my speed for starting out. I think I can handle writing a shorter book.

So that was my way of moving into the romance world. And it was only after I’d written six traditional regencies that I tried the longer versions with The Lion’s Daughter, and that was because my editor at the time, my paperback editor, had asked me if I would be interested in writing a longer book.

Jenny Wheeler: What was The Lion’s Daughter?

Loretta Chase: The Lion’s Daughter was set in Albania. I think it might be the only historical romance ever set in Albania. And it was, in the swashbuckling mode, more like the Kathleen Woodiwiss kinds of stories with a big landscape. They start out in Albania, and they end up in England, and it’s a pretty big story, but it was fun for me.

I wanted to write something that I knew, and I am Albanian. My parents came from Albania. and I thought, oh, this is different. No one will be writing about Albania. That was how I ended up writing that book.

Jenny Wheeler: Some of the biggest names in romance writing, including Julia Quinn, have written very congratulatory comments on your work.

That must give you a sense of validation of your peers like nothing else could really,

Loretta Chase: Oh, that’s a really big deal. It’s very important to me to have your peers appreciate your work, speak highly of your work. I don’t want to say that it’s better than having the readers love it because the readers are the people that make your career possible.

So there’s that, but there’s a special thing about having your colleagues appreciate your work.

Praise from peers like Julia Quinn – ‘without price’

It’s just, I don’t know, maybe it’s like the thing when you’re in a classroom and the teacher gives you an A. The other students might dig what you do, but you’ve got the teacher saying, oh, that’s good work.

Also they’re appreciating it from the standpoint of people who are also doing the work and they know what’s involved.

There’s that too, that makes it even better.

Jenny Wheeler: You’ve been very honest about sharing your difficulties with the book that you’re currently writing, The third of the Dis-Graces. You’ve said, I can’t remember where I saw it. It must have been on an online blog, although when I went back to look, I couldn’t quite find it again. But you were saying that it hit a bit of a wall with your writing.

In fact, I think you even did mention the phrase ‘writer’s block,’ which most professional writers tend to, insist doesn’t exist. Tell us about this difficult period you’ve been going through and have you broken through yet?

Loretta Chase: I’ll start with the good news. I’ve definitely broken through. The book is proceeding now. I don’t sit down at the laptop and stare into space or the abyss and say, I want to shoot myself.

No, the story is actually progressing and I’m very happy to sit down to work, which was not the case for a long time because it was such a struggle.

Early in my career, I thought there was no such thing as writer’s block because I was so filled with ideas. It’s like I couldn’t write fast enough.

But I found out that things can happen in your life or your environment that are going to affect you one way or another. And, they can cripple you in terms of writing.

If I were a visual artist, it might be a similar thing, like nothing comes. And that’s because something in your world is disturbing you on a vital level.

Beating writer’s block after 28 novels

And in this case, I just had to work through it. I had to be patient. It’s been several years since the last book came out, but I have a decent chance of finishing this book by the end of the year.

Yes. Anyway, it was a dark time. It was not pleasant, but I have survived and the book is coming along.

Jenny Wheeler: Is that the worst episode of that kind of diffidence that you’ve experienced?

Loretta Chase: It’s the second time I’ve experienced it. I think this was the worst. The last time it happened, I just completely walked away from writing. I stopped writing novels for about 4 years. I think something like that. But this time I just kept at it because even though I was writing tons and tons of pages of trash and everything had to be deleted I just kept at it.

refused to be vanquished by whatever was bothering me. I knew because I had gone through this before that you can eventually get through it. And that was my attitude and that’s been my attitude for the past few years and it’s paid off.

Jenny Wheeler: That is one of the little pieces of wisdom that people give advice to young writers that they need a first draft, even if it’s rubbish, to be able to work on, and so you’re very much bearing that out, aren’t you?

That even if you believe it’s trash, you have to keep going.

Loretta Chase: Yes. And one of the things I always kept in mind was Nora Roberts had said something about, I think this is this was a quote. “I can fix a bad page, but I can’t fix a blank page.” And that was my mantra.

Jenny Wheeler: I have read the first two books in The Difficult Dukes, and I’m absolutely tongue hanging out for what happens with the last one, Blackwood, because he’s got already got some story set up in the first two books.

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Loretta Chase – Wickedly Funny Regencies