Please tell us a little about yourself
Firstly, thank you so much for inviting me to chat on your blog. I live on the west coast of Scotland in Argyll on the Clyde Peninsula which is officially one of the wettest places in the UK, but also one of the most beautiful, with hills and sea lochs. I have been writing full-time for, drum roll, (scary thought, now I’ve just worked it out) about 18 years, and (even more scary thought) I’ve written around sixty historical romances, if you count all the novellas and on-line reads as well as two other books so far, collaborwritten with Sarah Ferguson. I’m the eldest of seven children (so I’m bossy) and have three sisters who I spend a lot of time with. And last year I finally ‘came out’ about my age, after deluding myself for years, and admitted to reaching my 60th birthday. I don’t have any children, but I have heaps of nephews and nieces, and like to think that I’m an excellent auntie.
Please tell us about His Runaway Marchioness Returns and your inspiration for the book
I have really enjoyed writing older heroes and heroines of late – and when I say older, I mean romance-land older, where thirty is the new forty, the opposite of real life. Older people have baggage, and I love the complications that brings to a relationship, whether it’s children, former relationships, entrenched opinions or simply a well-established life that has no room for sharing. As always with any of my books, I started with the characters, wanting to bring together two people who had established themselves in their own field, who had made a real success of what they did, and who were still ambitious, still had lots of plans. What would happen, I thought, if those two were forced into a situation that was total anathema to them, and obliged to work as a team, when they were both used to making all the decisions.
Oliver is a self-made man, a philanthropist but not a do-gooder, and was inspired by the likes of Robert Owen, Sir Titus Salt and William Lever, industrialists who built their own towns for their workers and their families, though my hero has none of their – let’s say more repressive natures. Oliver is a staunch socialist with a very poor opinion of titled and landed gentry, and the last thing he’d want is to become one of them. So of course, that’s what happens.
Lily, like any historical heroine, was more problematic. I wanted her to be a woman in a man’s world, but trying to find a credible occupation that is out of the ordinary in Victorian times for a woman is really tricky. I had been reading up on Paris and the Belle Epoque for another project which hasn’t yet got off the ground, and I had also done a bit of research into variety theatres while working with Sarah Ferguson on A Most Intriguing Lady, and that’s where my inspiration for Lily came. She’s a failed actress who spots a gap in the market, the representation of women on the stage – effectively a theatrical agent. Yes, she is a little bit ahead of her time, but I think as long as you admit to that up front in the historical notes of a book, that’s fine.
Bringing Lily and Oliver together by manipulating the marriage of convenience trope a little took me some time to get right and again, I have probably twisted historical fact a little in order to make it work (caveated in the book of course) but I do love a marriage of convenience, and it felt right for them. Setting the opening of the book near Folkestone came about, incidentally, because I was planning it while I was visiting Peter, one of my oldest friends and former dance partner (that’s a whole other story). I sneak a lot of personal locations into my books, sometimes as in this case, as they are, sometimes calling them by quite other names, but I know where they are.
Whew, that’s a bit of a long answer to a short question, sorry.
What was your journey to publication like?
Like many, I sort of fell into a career that paid the bills and allowed me to buy lots of books and shoes, but I had always, from a young age, wanted to be a writer. Mills&Boon are one of the few publishers who accept un-agented submissions – in fact they actively encourage them – so I had a go, thinking, like lots of people, how difficult can it be? Very, is the answer. My contemporary market-gardening heroine Flora was excruciatingly badly written, but I still have the very polite thanks-but-no-thanks letter.
So I carried on in the corporate world, escaping into history through the wonderful Open University for a while, and then came the opportunity to volunteer for redundancy presented itself. I leapt at it, took a very belated gap year and settled for a while in Cyprus where I decided to try my hand at writing again. I wrote all sorts, including articles and short stories, as well my first attempt at a historical romance, which I sent off to Mills&Boon. I wrote another while I was waiting, and it was in a stint back home, covering for my sister’s nanny, that I got the call - though more prosaically it was an email, saying that they wanted both my books. I was absolutely gobsmacked and over the moon at the time. By sheer serendipity, my sister lives about half an hour from Richmond, where Romance HQ was at the time, so within a few days I was having lunch with Linda Fildew, then head of Historical. And I’ve been very, very lucky to work with Flo, my fabulous editor, for nearly all my books since.
Can you tell us about your collaboration with Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York and what it is like writing together?
Like all true romances, Mills&Boon brought us together! Sarah had the idea for Lady Margaret’s story – in fact she’d had the idea for about fifteen years. Though I had worked with other writers in a series, I’d never done any sort of collaborative writing before, so although I loved the idea, I had lots of reservations. As it turned out my main worry was also Sarah’s – would we get on? We both instinctively knew that was the most important factor. Fortunately, right from the start, we got on like the proverbial house on fire. We agreed we would tackle the book our own way, make our own rules, and always, always be honest with each other. Sarah is a very kind person who finds it difficult to criticise, so it took her a while to learn to tell me when she wasn’t happy with something, but once she saw that it had a positive effect and didn’t have me reduced to tears, what we call our collabor-writing process really took off.
Working on our second book (A Most Intriguing Lady) was even better than the first. We know each other so well, we understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses and we encourage each other and rein each other in. We laugh, I think that’s the most important thing for both of us. The process is fun, and we spark off each other. I think we’d both say (in fact we have both said) that it’s the most unlikely friendship (and we are friends first before collabor-writers) and one of the most rewarding.
What do you like to do outside of writing?
Reading, obviously! My wonderful mum taught me to read before I even went to school, and a passion for books is something we all share, my mum and sisters. We swap books, we have a WhatsApp reading group, and we talk books all the time. Thanks to my mum, I am also a mad keen sewist. I have had a machine since I was wee, a toy one first and then my gran’s ancient electric one. As a 60th birthday present to myself, I bought a seriously scary new cover-locker machine that I’ve not quite got to grips with yet. My newest sewing obsession is to make dresses to match my boots, but I also love making things for other people – make-up bags of late, and dresses for my sisters. If you follow me on social media, you’ll know that I also garden – or try to, it’s a constant battle with the weather and the deer – and I love to cook. I’m also constantly battling the aging process, yoga being my latest weapon.
Thanks, Marguerite!
Marguerite's latest book His Runaway Marchioness Returns is out now.
A Most Intriguing Lady by The Duchess of York and Marguerite Kaye will be published at the end of this month.
Photographs from Debbie Hare Photography.
