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Full Transcript - Misty Urban Samples The Forger and The Duke

[00:00:00] Katherine Grant: Welcome to the Historical Romance Sampler Podcast. The place for you to find new historical romance books and authors to fan over. I'm award winning historical romance author Katherine Grant, and each week I'm inviting fellow authors to come on and share a little bit of their work and themselves.

They'll read a sample of one of their books, and then I'm going to ask them a bunch of questions. By the end of the episode, you'll have a sense of what they write and who they are. Hopefully, you and I both will have something new to read. So what are we waiting for? Let's get into this week's episode.

All right, well I am so excited. Today I am joined by Misty Urban. Misty fell in love with stories at an early age and has spent her life among books as a teacher, scholar, editor, writer, and bookseller. Her favorite stories take you new places, teach you new things, and end with a win. She especially likes romances about unconventional heroines who defy the odds and the unexpected heroes who woo them.

So that's mostly what she writes. When she puts down the book, she likes to take long walks, drag her family to new places, or hang out around water, dreaming up new stories. Misty, I'm so excited to have you today.

[00:01:22] Misty Urban: I'm delighted to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:01:25] Katherine Grant: Yeah, I know you're going to read from one of your historical romances that is set in the Georgian era.

Can you tell us a little bit about that?

[00:01:33] Misty Urban: Sure, I wanted to read today from The Forger and the Duke. This one just came out in March, and it is set in Cornwall. It begins in Cornwall, but mostly set in 1776 London. It features, the part I'm going to read features Malden Gray, who is aspiring to the bar and is the bastard son of the former Duke of Hunsdon.

He is trying to get guardianship of his three young wards, his younger half siblings. And he's being fought on this in the court by the Duchess, who he thinks, is supposed to be taking care of the children, but she just cleaned out the coffers of the estate and left for the continent with the steward.

He's recently found this out. He goes in search of the children, cannot find them, finally locates them outside of the house that he doesn't recognize. So he storms in and he sees a woman feeding them cakes and tea and accuses her of kidnapping, which isn't actually what happened. The children have gone in search of their tutor, Joseph Illingworth, trying to seek his help.

He wasn't home, but his sister, Amaranthe, who is a copyist, is. She's working on her latest commission. She welcomes the children in, she feeds them, and when Mal sees this happening, he asks her to come back to Hunsden House to help him sort out the disarray that the house is in right now, because he has, you know, No idea what he's doing, and she seems like a very capable sort of young woman.

So I thought the scene I would read is after the dinner, and the children have somewhat introduced themselves, then Mal and Amaranthe are in the old duke's study, having a conversation about how to fix all of this.

[00:03:12] Katherine Grant: Awesome.

[00:03:13] Misty Urban: Shall I begin? Yes, take it away. All right, the forger and the duke. If anyone wants to follow along at home, I'm on page 71.

" My brother, Joseph, can make the necessary arrangements. I cannot think you welcome me poking my nose in your business," Amaranthe said. Truth, he wanted her nose in every other part of her in his business, no. Mal struggled to cut through the haze clouding his thoughts, no. He did not want her prying into his affairs as attractive as her nose was.

[00:03:42] Misty Urban: "Your brother does not seem to have been aware of what was going on here any more than I was," Mal managed to point out. A small line appeared between her deep set, altogether too perceptive eyes. She pressed her hands together as if she were a medieval nun at prayer. " Things have been deteriorating for quite some time, from what Ralph could tell me.

I cannot say how long it's been since the children had a proper meal. Their nurse left days ago, yet my brother noticed nothing." "The boys would have had too much pride to tell him anything was wrong," Mal said. A new, heavy weight on his chest pressed close those snaking tendrils of desire, putting them back in their proper place, ever since their father died.

He studied the amber liquid in his glass, avoiding her gaze. "I suspect things have been deteriorating, at least, since then. Sybil would have had nothing but contempt or neglect for them until she saw Hugh's inheritance as a way to enrich herself, and when she set herself against me, she restricted my access to the house and to them, which is why I had no notion she'd abandoned them to the servants.

The servants had abandoned them as well." Mal looked at her in appeal. She couldn't blame him any more than he blamed himself. He'd gotten so caught up in his own concerns that he neglected to look in on the children he meant to make his wards, children who shared his blood. He saw no contempt in her expression, only a look of puzzlement as she studied his features.

"He was your father, too," she observed. "You must feel his loss in some way." Mal upended the last of his brandy. "I feel the loss of his attempting to make up for the circumstances of my birth with his money," he said shortly. ""His passing brought a period to a bitter life that in the end descended to madness.

It was a relief, if you must know. He was never a happy man. He told me once, in a maudlin fit, that my mother was the only person he ever loved, and when his father forced them apart, his life held no real satisfaction for him thereafter." " That is a heavy burden for him to lay upon you," she said quietly. Mal stared at the leather surface of the table, marked with small cuts and tobacco stains.

Miss Illingworth was alarmingly easy to confide in. No wonder the children had unburdened themselves to her at once, when they came to enlist the aid of her brother and found him not at home. And why had they not come to Mal? That omission stunk more than being left without the funds to support them. Or himself.

She picked up a small portrait that sat on a delicate table placed between two chairs. The face of a hauntingly lovely woman with delicate features and clouds of hair stared distantly from the frame. Mal stared back. His mother had always been half angel to him, fragile and luminous from the illness that eventually claimed her life.

All the times his father had called him into this study for a raking over about his wild ways and unknown future, Mal had never seen the sketch. He wondered who had done it and when. "Was this her?" Amaranthe asked. "I see a resemblance." "Yes, that was my mother, Marguerite." She startled and nearly dropped the silver frame.

Her fingers were graceful but strong like the rest of her, with ink staining the tips and a streak of gold along her thumb. " Would she have styled herself Lady Vernet by any chance?" A light blush touched her cheek as he stared at her. "I came across a book once with the name Marguerite Lady Vernet inscribed in it and I was curious about her.

I am sorry to pry." "Where did you find this book?" "It was an old manuscript in my A place I lived for a time, in Cornwall. I don't know where it is now." Her eyes fell, but not before he glimpsed the shadow that crossed her expression. So many things she was hiding from him. But he was caught in the sweep of her eyelashes as she steadied the table.

Miss Illingworth had the same subtle, ethereal beauty that his mother had possessed. Not the kind of assertive handsomeness that announced itself, but the kind of astonishing beauty that smacked a man across the face. Rather, she was a small, willowy shadow that stepped into a man's fractured world, and by the time she came into focus, she had somehow, magically, made everything right and calm and beautiful.

" It's possible your book was hers. She was mad about old things." Mel took a bracing swig that emptied his glass again. "I suppose my mother might have used the title. She always insisted my father had wed her properly, but of course he would have said anything to win her. No record of a legal marriage, though.

[00:07:57] Misty Urban: My grandfather claimed that my father deceived her, and I've never doubted that he did." Mel debated whether to refresh his glass. The brandy was fuzzing his perceptions making him think imprudent things about Miss Illingworth enchanting deed. When she sat across from him as prim and proper as a governess, he'd best get a grip on these galloping fancies.

 There was no sylph hidden beneath that drab worn gown. No passionate heart subdued by the constraints of her station just waiting to be awakened by a kiss. And if there were, he had no business knowing such things about her, now when he had so little to offer her in return.

"When my father married Christine, she became Lady Vernet for a short time." Mal moved his mind back to the matter at hand. "My grandfather didn't live long after the wedding, from what I understand. It was the aim of his life to ensure his heir married into a family of suitable wealth and station, and he achieved it."

She set the portrait gently in its place. Mal battled the impulse to take those cool, capable fingers and press them against his aching head. "And where is your mother now?" "She died when I was young." Dear Lord, he was becoming sentimental. He pushed the weakness aside. "You are coming to know a great deal about us, Miss Illingworth, and I know very little about you."

Her eyes crinkled as she smiled widely and Mal cast about for breath. "We have not even been properly introduced. Malden Grey of Bristol, aspiring to the bar." He held out his hand. "Malden," she said, and a silken quality in her voice made him shudder, as did the slide of her fingers as she placed them in his.

" There's an Anglo Saxon poem about a battle at an English ford called Malden. One of those manuscripts sadly lost in the Cotton Fire, actually." "You haven't told me your name." "Miss Amaranthe Illingworth of St. Clair Cornwall, copyist. My father was very fond of classical antiquity, so he chose a Greek name for me.

[00:09:45] Misty Urban: He gave my mother the honor of naming my brother." "Joseph," Mal said. "A Hebrew name. Very different tradition." " My mother's family were Portuguese conversos. She withdrew her hand. Jews who converted to Christianity so they might escape the Inquisition with their businesses and their lives. They practiced in secret for centuries, or so I've been told, but in the end my mother converted in truth and married a man bound for the Anglican Church."

She held the housekeeper's volume close to her chest like a shield. He sat back. The confidence stunned him. She'd learned he was a bastard, the status he wore like a brand on his forehead, marking him as deficient. But if her family had been Jewish, then she knew something as well about being set apart.

She rose, and he scrambled to his feet. Very neatly, she placed her glass on the shelf beneath the decanter. Her eyes traced the figurines above, all of them representing mythological half women, with breasts prominently displayed. "They are not mine," Mal said. That quirked her lips again. "No, they are young Hunsdons now, I imagine.

I've seen this and worse among some of the medieval marginalia I've copied, Mr. Gray. You wouldn't believe some of the grotesque those monks could dream up. I suppose it comes from being locked away day after day with no company but other men." That was his problem as well, Mal decided. Too much time in the company of other men.

That was why she'd riled his senses so potently. He moved around the table toward her as she stepped away. "I could drive you tomorrow to the orphan place with the distressed women." Again the dance of those interesting brows. "You sound terrified at the very thought of confronting those in distress. Yet, as a barrister, I imagine you frequently encounter persons in unfortunate circumstances."

"Prospective barrister. I'm waiting to be called to the bar." He hated appearing so helpless, so insufficient, around her. A woman could not desire a man she pitied. "What time shall I bring the carriage round?" She hesitated, and her face went studiously blank. A slither across the back of his neck told him this was the expression she wore when she was withholding something.

He was beginning to recognize it. "Edie made up a room for me here," she said. "Do you mind?" "Of course not. There are dozens of rooms." Or so he thought. Hunston House was not his, as nothing about the Hunston estate was to be his, not even the family name, and so he'd never let much of it occupy his attention.

He wondered which room Miss Amaranthe Illingworth would select for her own. Did she see her silk smooth skin as best set off by the draperies in the blue room? Would she choose the oriental patterns of the jade room? Or would she, like an Empress of old, demand the royal purple? He imagined her nearby in the house, going about her nightly routine, taking down her hair, drawing off her prim robe, perhaps splashing water onto her face, that would run down that softly stirred neck to the collarbones hidden beneath, and... he'd best stop imagining Miss Illingworth at her ablutions.

He was about to embarrass himself. "Till tomorrow, then, Miss Illingworth." Had she said he could call her Amaranthe? He wanted to roll the name over his tongue. It was exotic, yet robust, a name with command and presence, much like the woman. Good lord, that brandy has turned his wits. He was behaving like a moonstruck calf, no worse.

"'Til tomorrow," she said softly, and her gaze held his. The flickering candlelight brought out violet shadows in her eyes, and all the air left Mal's body. He wanted to be found worthy of that calm, assessing gaze. There was no way she would ever find him worthy. The door shut behind her, and Mal smacked a hand to his head to clear it.

He'd best bring himself in order. They had business to conduct, problems to solve. She had secrets he wanted very much to discover. He had gotten his first good look at Miss Amaranthe Illingworth. He wanted a second. and a third.

[00:13:31] Katherine Grant: How beautiful. Thank you so much. I want a second and third look at her.

[00:13:36] Misty Urban: Yay. I'm so happy to hear that.

[00:13:39] Katherine Grant: Well, I have a lot of questions for you about this passage and about your career, but first we're going to take a quick break for our sponsors.

Hey samplers! It's Katherine Grant. I am interrupting this episode to tell you how to get a free book, the Viscount Without Virtue. First, go to bit.ly/hrs fan, go through the checkout process. This is where you add the promo code, HR SFAN as your last step. Just download your free ebook to your ereader.

Alright, well let's get back to this week's episode.

All right, and we are back with Misty Urban who just read a sample from her book, The Forger and the Duke.

And. I know from your bio and also from reading your website that you are a medievalist, you have a PhD in medieval literature, so in that passage that you read, I picked up that there's an allusion that Malden's name is is alluding to but I don't know it. Can you, can you tell us the deeper meaning of the name Malden?

[00:14:48] Misty Urban: So there is a whole body of beautiful poetry in Old English and I studied that for my master's degree. I ended up researching some poetry on monstrous women who cut off the heads of warriors, but a lot of the poetry is focused on battles. And as we know, there were many, many invasions. of England from the Danes from elsewhere during the Anglo Saxon period.

And the Battle of Malden is a very lyrical and tragic poem. It's about, if I remember correctly, an utter defeat. It's much like the Song of Roland in that respect. It's, you know, valiant soldiers and the slaughter is wholesale. And part of the manuscript is lost, as is a lot. of Anglo Saxon work in A Fire That Struck the Library of Sir Robert Cotton.

And this is something I mentioned in the book. It was something that always traumatized me as a scholar. You know, it's the English equivalent of the burning of the Library of Alexandria. All that literature lost. So she brings it up. She mentions it when they're at dinner. And then she mentions it again, but I really couldn't tell you if Marguerite named him Malden on purpose, because she also likes medieval literature, it would be highly unlikely she had gotten her hands on a copy of that poem.

I believe there's only one in existence and Cotton had it. I could be wrong on that. Yeah, but it could have had a copy floating around, but I just liked the name. I didn't want Malcolm. I didn't want a different sort. I wanted Malden, I think probably because I spent so much time immersed in Anglo Saxon poetry for my master's degree.

[00:16:27] Katherine Grant: Yeah, I love it. I love also that it's important, it's significant that Amarynthe knows it, and that's telling us about her as a character, while also kind of cluing us in to this literature history. Another thing I noticed about the scene that you read is this idea that, and this is something that I think is, We see in historical romance, sometimes the legacy of love and that the parents had a true love that was broken.

And so Mal is kind of processing that and suffering through that. And I guess my question is you know, was there a lot of intentionality behind that theme?

[00:17:11] Misty Urban: Part of what I love about this period is just the Variety of circumstances and the paths to power and the way that your birth defined your class so far, and yet there was so much tension attendant upon those who crossed these borders.

So I was really interested in the idea, and this is something we saw a lot in historical romance written in previous centuries and now, this idea of social trespass. I knew he was going to be a bastard. It was going to be important to the story that he wasn't legitimate, but I wanted to think about how a duke's heir, he knew he was going to be a duke, why would he promise marriage to a woman so far beneath him?

She is a haberdasher's daughter, I think is what I made her, or some sort of, you know, genteel, but not very rich or lucrative trade. What would he would have promised her? Why did she believe him? And What happened? Why does she think they were married? When of course he would never have done that. He wouldn't have had his family's approval, as we find his father forces him apart.

So we actually do see these social climbing marriages, and they created these ripples of gossip and astonishment inside of the era. And I thought it would be just really fun to make that gesture in the book. To work in those realities that families were not nuclear. You had women dying all the time of childbirth.

You would often have a duke who had children. three different wives. It wasn't a big surprise. So I just wanted to play with that opportunity in the actual historical record.

[00:18:55] Katherine Grant: Yeah, well, it's really interesting. It also makes me think of the Prince Regent who, you know, married his love. Well, he kind of blackmailed her into marrying him and she was Catholic.

So it was literally illegal for them to get married and this was never going to go forward and yet they did it.

[00:19:13] Misty Urban: All of George's children had these clandestine or illegal marriages, almost all of them, you know, Kent's the only one who goes off, and then he doesn't even have a son, he has a little daughter.

It's so family interesting, it's just so interesting, it's so productive for fiction writers.

[00:19:32] Katherine Grant: Well, that's a segue into another question I have for you, which is that you write historical romance across multiple eras. You write contemporary romance. You write creative nonfiction. You write creative short stories. So when you're in this world of fiction thinking, what pulls you into a story and what factors help you determine what kind of story it's going to be?

[00:19:53] Misty Urban: That's a great question. The quick answer is, what is the story I want to tell, and what is the effect I want to achieve? If I want something that I can be more experimental with, and I can probe the darker undersides that lends itself to literary fiction, I haven't tackled the literary novel yet.

That seems to me like a very intricate sort of thing, but I'm very attracted to the thought and I'm no doubt going to try one at some point. But recently, I've always had a love for romance. I love reading romance. I love writing romance. I've been scribbling contemporary romances since I was really young, but I'm drawn by the structure of the romance.

And I studied this for my PhD, the Medieval Romance. The earlier antecedents of that, and then the prose fiction that comes after. The themes attracted me. It's love, it's passion, it's adventure. There's always obstacles. There's always reconciliation. And the quest interested me as well. There's the external quest and the internal quest.

So when I want to have a story that has those elements, then I think I'm drawn to the novel. I'm drawn to the romance. I saved the creative nonfiction for a lot of those everyday life moments where I ask myself. What happened? How do I feel about that? So I write about that. And then every once in a while, I still do some medieval scholarship just to keep the skills sharp because I do love research and I do love analysis.

It is actually fun for me.

[00:21:23] Katherine Grant: Well, that's great. And so do you think like a modern day romance reader, if we were able to read medieval Language, would we recognize, pick up a medieval romance and be like, Oh yeah, this is a romance? Or is it the kind of thing that You know, it has been used as a different word throughout the ages.

[00:21:41] Misty Urban: When we think about the conventions of romance now, they come very much from the period I'm writing. They come very much from Pamela, Richardson's Pamela, Jane Austen's courtship novels, a bit of the Brontes and their wild Gothic passion and longing. And so those Beats of the story are probably more modern.

If somebody picked up a medieval romance, and there actually are some, I worked a lot on the Tale of Melusine. It was translated into English around 1500, and it's also has a wonderful modern English translation from the French. And if somebody picks it up, they would say this is so so wild and bizarre.

Fairies, kings being imprisoned in mountain, curses, women who turn into a serpent from the waist down one day a week. And then there are the crusader romances where you go off and you battle and there's just so much cultural tension and prejudice that's being worked out there. Thousands of people being slain.

There's Jeffrey the great tooth is a little bit monstrous. There's. Penitential work in medieval monasteries. There's some elements that are very strange, but the emotion of it, the magic, the mystery, the fantasy, the idea that you can walk into a separate world, the idea that heroes aren't pure, but there's this kernel of darkness in them.

I think all of that would appeal. I really do.

[00:23:05] Katherine Grant: Yeah. So that makes me wonder two things. Number one, will you ever write a historical romance set in medieval England? And number two, will you ever write a romance that is really pulling from the conventions of medieval romance?

[00:23:18] Misty Urban: I hope to, I will say yes. I hope to do both of those things.

There are so many medieval romances that I would love to work into a modern retelling the way people like to go back to Beauty and the Beast or those, those fairy tales. There's just so much material out there that I think because it's bizarre and because it's inaccessible, that's been holding me back.

I really would love to write a romance based on Melusine, but how do I deal with the fact that she turns into a fairy? She's a snake from the waist down one day a week, you know, you can't escape it, her husband finds her in her bath and there she is splashing her big long tail. It's a really pivotal moment in the book.

So once I figure out how to make those bizarre moments metaphors that will translate, then absolutely yes. The thing that's holding me back from medieval fiction is that I've spent too much time in the history and I'm too worried about changing anything. In the Georgian period, I'm like, we'll just miff this a little bit.

I feel free to change that even though, you know, I've taught it, I've studied it, and the rest of it. But the medievalists, I feel like my medievalist friends are on my shoulder like, no. It's more important to get the history right if I'm writing historical romance in the medieval period, but eventually I'll reach a point where I'll be able to kind of distance myself, so.

[00:24:35] Katherine Grant: Well, I think, you know, we've got orc romances, we've got vampires and werewolves. I think you can bring in a fairy snake.

[00:24:43] Misty Urban: Why can't you have a fairy snake? Where are all the fairy snake women anyways?

[00:24:48] Katherine Grant: And so I'm also curious about your experience being a, you know, scholar in the literary world and then also having this love of romance.

I think there's a stereotype that I have that there's kind of snobbishness around romance. Yes. So have you been on a journey about that or you said you've been writing romance forever so have you just kind of let that fall, you know, go off your shoulders?

[00:25:14] Misty Urban: That was a struggle for a long time. So when I entered MFA workshops, I hid the romance writer part of me very deep down.

I hid the little girl who read a lot of Harlequin romances. It was okay to say I fell in love with Jane Eyre because that was literature. I could study Jane Eyre, but the reason I was drawn to medieval romance, which by the way was demeaned in its own time, people were like, and then they read a romance and that's going to ruin their minds.

There's an echo of that in the print culture of the 18th century. All those stereotypes about those maids who are reading by the fire and getting ideas. And then they'll, they'll just be hysterical or you can't reason with them. That idea that indulging in fantasy destroys your ability for logic. That's just fundamental to a lot of assumptions that are made about literature, about women, about people, about the world.

And after a while, studying the medieval romance, dealing with what the monks had said about it and the scholars had said about it, and then, reading and teaching inside of the early modern period and then the 18th century and seeing what people had said about the prose novel. I just claimed it. I'm like, I love this.

I want to write romance. It turned out I had a really tough journey to figure out the structure of a novel, having been trained in the short story. But that was a different thing to tackle. But I was getting my MFA at Cornell university at the same time as I was doing my PhD. So I would start floating the idea, like, what if I wrote a fantasy, what if I wrote a romance?

And just, you know, I just started laying those little seeds. So I don't think anybody from my MFA cohort was terribly surprised when I came out. And then it was a few years later after the degree published a romance, they probably said, We knew it all along. We saw this coming. So now I just own it and I will still, you know, I'll give my book as a gift and someone in their family will say, Oh, that's, you know, a smut book.

And I'm like, yes, it is. Why is fantasy bad? Explain to me why it's wrong to escape into a book.

[00:27:26] Katherine Grant: Right. And why if there's Some sexiness in a romance, it's labeled smut, but then John Updike in the like,

you know,

the, the witches of Eastwick, they're like having three sons and it's like, let's study this.

[00:27:42] Misty Urban: Yes, I think the thing that dismisses romance is the happy ending.

Honestly, I don't even think it's the sex. I think it's the happy ending because it's unrealistic. So I think that's why it still gets degraded. Those things go hand in hand. It's indulging the passions of women. It's exploring women's sexuality. There's always something really dangerous about that, even in our day and age, I would argue, but happy ending, inferior.

Not real life. So yes, fantasy.

 That's my theory. Just floating it out there.

[00:28:13] Katherine Grant: I like it as a theory, not as a reality. Right? All right. Well, now we're going to find out how much of a rule breaker you are with this segment. Love it or leave it.

[00:28:26] Katherine Grant: Do you love it or leave it? Protagonists in the first 10 per Do you love it or leave it? Protagonists meet in the first 10%.

[00:28:34] Misty Urban: I think with the romance, you have to have that.

I think it's a demand of the structure. The story is going to be the unfolding romance. There's one protagonist. I'm assuming there's two leads, one protagonist journey, the other protagonist journey, but they have their journey together and you want to start that soon. You want to get that curiosity and suspense established right away.

So love it.

[00:28:55] Katherine Grant: Love it or leave it. Duo POV narration.

[00:28:58] Misty Urban: I like it across the board. I like getting into the heads of other characters because they reveal something that we've been suspecting or have been missing from the first. And especially for romance I am currently writing male female romance, so I really like being able to see the two, him and her, fall in love, what they like about one another, what's, you know, their vulnerabilities are.

They kind of confess that to themselves, if not to one another. So I think it's a really good way to deepen the dimensions of the story. I love it.

[00:29:29] Katherine Grant: Yeah, it's just so juicy. And especially when one character is vulnerable about something, and then the other character in their head, without knowing they're vulnerable about it, is like, I'm really into that.

[00:29:39] Misty Urban: Yes. So then you're just planting those little seeds. Ooh, that's good. I'm writing that down. Great tip. You're a pro.

[00:29:46] Katherine Grant: All right, love it or leave it. Third person past tense.

[00:29:50] Misty Urban: I prefer it for romance. I really do. Philippa Gregory with her present tense, I'm like, Philippa, just put it in past tense already.

It's not gaining you anything. I resist that present tense a lot when it's just standing in for past tense. If you're using it as present tense for the things that present tense can do, here we see, you know, my literary scholarship coming out. But I'm fine with it. I've done second person point of view, you know, I will occasionally experiment and break those rules.

But again, for a lot of prose fiction, I think that third person past tense maybe it's because it's familiar, because it's the convention, but also I think it just makes for stronger and crisper language as well. Love it. Mostly love it.

[00:30:35] Katherine Grant: Alright, love it or leave it, third act, breakup, or dark moment?

[00:30:39] Misty Urban: Oh my gosh, in a Facebook group I've been in recently, someone just posted, Can I have a romance without the third act breakup?

And my immediate reaction was, no, that's a requirement of the structure you have. It's gonna get you through that third act if you don't have the dark moment, the despair, the heroic quest that's the point of no return. And then I thought, well, maybe you don't need, where it looks like they're breaking up, but you do need something that shifts the stakes of the story.

You have to have that dramatic suspense, if you ask me. And again, I'm looking structure. So in the forger and the Duke there is a moment where it looks like a breakup. There's a moment where he realizes she spoiler alert, has been forging manuscripts. She's been copying manuscripts and he's embarrassed her.

He can't condone this. So he walks out and there's heartbreak, but then they get brought together at the end by a shared concern. And there's a big courtroom battle and it was a lot of drama. It was a lot of fun to write. And they realized that they're both going to bat for one another. And he's reinterpreting, you know, he's arguing for the law.

Well, what is forgery? What is copyright at this time? Copyright was a very fun historical research moment. And then, you know, she's making revelations about his past. I don't want to spoil that about the book. So that brings them together and kind of repairs it. And so I think dramatically that third act.

You need that tension to keep you going. If you don't have some major turnaround or new development somewhere in act three, you're going to lose momentum, I think. Yeah. So I am pro pro the breakup, pro the dark moment at any rate.

[00:32:18] Katherine Grant: All right. Love it or leave it.

Always end with an epilogue.

[00:32:22] Misty Urban: Don't love the epilogue. I especially do not love... apologies to everyone who wants to see babies. I get it. I love babies too, but to have it compulsory, there's something about like, I don't know. No, you don't have to have compulsory reproduction. You don't. There are so many ways to have families.

I like epilogues. It's funny because in all three of my books for Ladies Least Likely, there's a baby or hint of a baby at the end. But I justified it that it's necessary for the story. I like when an epilogue wraps up a question that wasn't important to the plot, but maybe matters to the world. And it just gives a new sense of completion or resolution.

So I like epilogues that do that.

[00:33:05] Katherine Grant: Well said. All right, love it or leave it, share your research in the author's note.

[00:33:10] Misty Urban: Some of your research. You don't need to have a manifesto or a dissertation. You do not need a 24 page bibliography in your sources, but I do love the author's note that will say, this was inspired by the Or if you're interested in the Battle of Malden, you can find it here. Or, you know, the cotton library actually burned and this much was lost.

And those manuscripts went on to be the foundation of the British National Library, something that might extend the world for your reader or for the, you know, nerds slash scholars like me who, who are curious and want to know more. You can leave those tips. It's, but think of it as another journey. I tell myself, think of it as another journey you're going on with the author.

It's not a vita that you have to give to justify anything. It's still fiction. I'm telling that to myself who wants to write medieval. You know, Medieval Romance, it's fiction.

[00:34:07] Katherine Grant: Right. It doesn't have to be. This is what actually happened. Yeah. All right. Well, and are there any other romance rules I didn't ask about that you do enjoy breaking?

[00:34:18] Misty Urban: You know, it's sad to say that I mostly abide by a lot of the rules. But again, in the writing and the conventions of romance, these are tried and true things that work. These are the things that work. they love. There's a reason they are the conventions. And, you know, genre fiction gets a bad rap because of that.

But the satisfaction of our story is tied to those conventions. So I think in some respects, you do want to have those beats, you do want to have those story arcs, you do want to follow the rules to some extent. But inside of that, If you can be playful, if you can be fun, if you can have a little humor, I'm all for it.

I love reading those kinds of stories.

[00:34:57] Katherine Grant: Yeah. Awesome. Well, I think you're pretty much a rule follower but very thoughtful about it. I love the way you've broken down all of that.

[00:35:06] Misty Urban: An intentional rule follower, not a fear of punishment. I choose to follow the rule.

[00:35:11] Katherine Grant: Yes, exactly.

[00:35:13] Misty Urban: That's me. You see me. I feel so seen.

[00:35:16] Katherine Grant: Well, Misty, this has been a really fantastic conversation. Before we go, where can readers find you and your books?

[00:35:23] Misty Urban: So, they can go to my website first, MistyUrban. com, and that should have links or leads to all of my recent and forthcoming work, the historical romances, the contemporaries, the literary fiction, and also the creative nonfiction and scholarship.

I think it's all there. I am on Facebook and Instagram at AuthorMistyUrban. I am on BookBub at Misty Urban Writes, and I believe that is my TikTok handle as well, Misty Urban Writes. On Amazon, you can follow me at Misty Urban, and I am on LinkedIn as Misty Urban as well.

[00:36:02] Katherine Grant: So you're everywhere. And are your books on Kindle Unlimited?

Or are they wide?

[00:36:07] Misty Urban: Ladies Least Likely are Kindle Unlimited. So the three historical romances are there. My contemporary, My Day as Timothy Kay, is wide.

[00:36:18] Katherine Grant: Alright, awesome. Well, thank you so much. I really, this has been fantastic.

[00:36:23] Misty Urban: Thank you! I so enjoy talking to other romance authors and readers.

[00:36:27] Katherine Grant: That's it for this week. Check out the show notes where I put links for my guests, myself, and the podcast. Until next week, happy reading.