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Romance Unlaced: Beyond Britain's shores

Madeline Hunter
Special for USA TODAY
"By Possession" by Madeline Hunter.

A few years before I sold my first book (so we are going back at least 15 years), I called my agent with a great idea for a new story. Before I launched into my pitch, I asked, in all innocence, whether there would be a problem with a book set in medieval Lithuania. The connection went so silent I thought she had hung up. When she spoke again she gave me a friendly, professional reality check. Without saying "Are you a freaking idiot?" she managed to let me know that, well, yes, there could be a problem with a book set there.

So I wrote the sequel instead, which takes place in England. Only it had a prologue for the hero, before he returns home. My publisher did not tag the Prologue's setting "Lithuania." Instead it was tagged "Near the Baltic Sea." I think By Possession is one of my best books, and it earned me my first contract, but it is the only book I have written that did not make national bestseller lists. Readers seeing "Near the Baltic Sea" first thing on opening the book probably did not help.

Did I learn? Four years later when I moved from medievals to books set in the 19th century, I opened the first one, The Seducer, in France. It was already in production when a well-established writer said to me, "Your series launch book is set in France? Books set outside the U.K. don't sell." Hey, it was only one-third outside the U.K.! "Doesn't matter," she said. "Even a trip outside creates problems with sales."

The whole "don't leave the U.K." common wisdom really bit me about five years ago, when I wrote Lessons of Desire, a book where the middle half takes place in Italy. Being shrewd (I thought), I began it in England and ended it in England. I figured I'd sort of sneak Italy in, see. Readers weren't fooled. That book won a RITA award, but its sales languished. I tell myself the problem is this character or that, or the theme, or whatever. While any of those might be true, I also know the setting did not help.

Writers are well aware that some readers complain that too many historical romances are set in the United Kingdom. As a setting, England is a well-known (and for some readers, overplayed) melody, one which readers can happily hum. Scottish historicals join in to create a bit of harmony. We know readers think we should provide more variety. Many writers would like to. However, the numbers discourage that, and in the end writers need to sell books.

Yet, despite the evidence that says the market overwhelmingly wants books set in familiar times and places, writers still step outside the box. I asked a group of writers who have used "unusual settings" about this. Why do it? What are the challenges? Is the common wisdom correct?

"Silk & Secrets" by Mary Jo Putney.

Mary Jo Putney has set several of her books in Asia. Silk & Secrets is based on a real rescue mission to Bokhara in the early 1840s. It features an explorer and writer hero, Lord Ross Carlisle, who is making the very dangerous trip into Central Asia in hopes of retrieving the bones of his military brother-in-law. On the way, he discovers the long-estranged wife he's never stopped loving.

Did she receive any pushback from her publisher regarding that setting? "I've been lucky to have editors who would let me write what I wanted as long as the romance was strong," she says. What about readers? "I've found that not all readers want to try the exotic settings, but those who like the stories really like them."

Jade Lee's entire Tigress series is set in 1899 Shanghai, China. She loved exploring her own cultural background, and also finding her themes in it. "In most of these books two people — a Caucasian and a Chinese — get caught in a Tantric Cult of the tigress. It's a way of using sex to reach spiritual moments. (The religion is real.) I played with cultural clashes, sexual mores, and a little of the political climate. Hero/heroine were on opposite sides of most of those conflicts but eventually found love together. They're good books where people found a way across massive divides."

"The Way of the Tigress" boxed set.

Her editor encouraged the stories, she explains. However, readers were not as adventurous. "Sadly, we were both surprised by the massive resistance from the reading public. People knew about the books and embraced the concept, but they didn't buy the books."

Sherry Thomas also visits Asia in two of her books. Her experience with the first one is the kind of cautionary tale that makes writers hesitate to go too far afield. Her first venture to an unusual setting was Not Quite a Husband, published in 2009, set mostly in the Northwest Frontier of the British Raj (today's Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan). Although critically acclaimed, it did not sell well. "When I chose an unusual setting for Not Quite a Husband, I had no idea that it would impact sales," she says. "The book didn't do well. That ... led to my then publisher asking me to write under a new name so they could relaunch me. I declined and went to a new house instead. Hard lesson learned. I stayed away from unusual settings for a good long time."

Despite this, she has returned to Asia for her most recent title, My Beautiful Enemy, set partly in Chinese Turkestan, known as Xinjiang (New Territory) today, and still part of China.

"The plot of My Beautiful Enemy is basically Downton Abbey meets Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, in which a beautiful martial arts expert travels to England to retrieve clues to a lost treasure, only to run smack into the man she had loved and lost years ago, in Chinese Turkestan, when he was there on a spying mission for the British." Her willingness to venture back to Asia partly derives from the story she needed to tell, and from the long tail of that first book. "Well into its afterlife — what I call the period when a book is no longer widely available in bookstores — Not Quite a Husband has proven to be consistently the sturdiest seller of my first four books due to good reviews and word-of-mouth."

"The Songbird's Seduction" by Connie Brockway.

Authors with a lot of experience sometimes use unusual settings because the variety challenges them. Connie Brockway has recently set two books in Egypt. Her The Songbird's Seduction moves characters to a different, but still unusual, setting. In it, on the eve of WWI, a buttoned-down professor agrees to escort his grandfather's old flame to a remote Pyrenees town to collect her share of a tontine and finds himself marooned en route with the lady's winsome, free-spirited niece.

"I was definitely aware that the setting would be off-putting for many historical readers and recognized that the settings could present marketing problems," she explains. "But I also hoped that readers were ready for something a little different and would be willing to 'give it a shot.' So, whether the result of hubris or optimism, knowing the marketing issues did not materially affect my decision."

One would not think France would present problems in the market, but it still can. Joanna Bourne has been writing books set during the Napoleonic Wars, and the setting moves back and forth between France and England. Her forthcoming book, Rogue Spy (Nov. 4), takes place mostly in London, but the one after that will return to France. "I think I've written more scenes set in France than in England. I find it interesting to 'break new ground,' as it were. I love beautiful, sophisticated, wise, and worldly Paris," she says.

"Rogue Spy" by Joanna Bourne.

Did her setting matter? "The first book, Spymaster's Lady, was set largely in France. Publisher after publisher said, very frankly, that a book set in France wasn't going to sell and no thank you very much. I was lucky to find an editor willing to take a chance on me." The stories demanded the French setting, but she admits that she finds Paris at that time fascinating, too. "Paris, in those years, would have seen the shops opening a little late because they had to sweep up the debris of yesterday's riot from the doorstep. Cafes offering more and more dubious soup as food supplies ran out. As always, ordinary folks tried to go on with their ordinary lives. And on every street corner the news sellers hawked papers full of victory or defeat, world-changing debate in the national Assembly, and undreamt-of revolutionary ideas."

All of the writers I interviewed expressed the same fascination with their settings, and described how fresh it is for a writer when she takes her characters "on the road." They all also described how using an unusual setting requires imparting more information on the setting, so that readers can place themselves in the book. "Creating that sense of a different place is essential, and a good part of the reason for choosing such a setting," Mary Jo says. "Writing the Regency is easier because there is this vast, shared world fantasy about the era that began with Georgette Heyer. With Central Asia or India or China or Indonesia, a lot more work is required."

"My Beautiful Enemy" by Sherry Thomas.

Sherry agrees. "If I just said the Northwest Frontier of British India or Chinese Turkestan, most people would be drawing a blank. What kind of terrain are we dealing with? What kind of climate? What kind of people would the H/H come across? So yes, more work is necessary to world-build, but only so that my readers would be able to visualize and understand the setting."

It is a challenge to include that information, but one that the best authors handle adroitly so readers are not bogged down in endless descriptions. If the characters are British, the reader joins them on what Connie calls "a journey of sensory and cultural discovery ... sharing the impressions and references of characters with whom they are comfortable and familiar. Like dukes."

The unusual setting is never capricious. It is closely tied to the story, which could not be told otherwise. "Neither of my books could have been set in the U.S. or U.K., not with a few changes or any number of changes," Sherry says. "The settings were integral and definitely made the stories richer and more interesting."

Jade agrees. "The stories had to be set in China. There's no way to get that cultural divide otherwise."

In the end, of course, it all comes down to the reader, and creating a story that will absorb her. Like Sherry, the writers believe that these books will find their audience if they are good, even if they do not hit bestseller lists the first week after publication. And I think we can all agree that the market, that exacting mistress, is richer for the bravery, or rebelliousness, or optimism, or whatever causes a writer to be a contrarian in choosing a story that requires an unusual setting.

USA TODAY and New York Times bestseller Madeline Hunter is the two-time RITA-winning author of 25 historical romances. Her most recent book, The Accidental Duchess, was published June 3. You can find her at www.MadelineHunter.com. To contact Madeline about content for or in this column, please e-mail her at RomanceUnlaced @ gmail.com (close up the spaces). Due to the volume of mail, e-mails from authors may not be answered personally, but all will be read.

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