Grey Warden

(reblogged from Whatever by John Scalzi)

Author Zen Cho shares her insights into what helped her write this fascinating novel both about British High Society and the unseen pieces that make it run.

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When I started writing what was to become my first published novel, I’d already written two novels. I had to throw them away because they did not work. I was tired of launching upon a new project buoyed by optimism – this will be the one! – only to come crashing down when it turned out to suck. So I decided to write a book that would definitely not work. At least I’d be prepared for the inevitable tragic end. I would take the Regency romance – a genre I love, exemplified by Georgette Heyer’s spectacularly entertaining novels – and use it to tell a story about the centrality of the colonial territories to Britain. Also there would be magic. And dragons. And vampiresses who weren’t really vampiresses …

What do I mean about the centrality of the colonial territories to Britain? When you read a Jane Austen novel (which you can’t really describe as a Regency romance, but is sort of a deity of the genre, influencing it but residing in a firmament above), or a true Regency romance like one of the classic Heyers, you enter what seems to be a hermetically sealed world. This is a world where the riots of poor men and agitations of politics are never mentioned save in passing; where the wars with France appear to impinge only slightly on the lives of the protagonists; and where the colonies might as well not exist, save insofar as they send back wealthy men to marry the heroines.

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