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Bliss Bennet Samples Not Quite a Marriage
Katherine Grant: [00:00:00] 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 super excited to be joined today by award winning author Bliss Bennett. Bliss writes smart, edgy novels for readers who love history as much as they love romance. Despite being born and bred in New England, Bliss has always been fascinated by the history of that country across the pond, particularly the politically volatile period [00:01:00] known as the English Regency.
Though she has visited Britain several times, Bliss continues to make her home in New England along with her spouse and an ever multiplying collection of historical reference books. Bliss, I'm so excited to have you today.
Bliss Bennet: Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here. Writing is such a solitary pursuit in so many ways and it's, it's fun to get a chance to actually speak with other people who are pursuing it and talk about how we do that.
Katherine Grant: Yes, absolutely. And I'm excited for a history nerd too because I always love to pick those brains. All right, well, so you're reading, what are you reading for us today?
Bliss Bennet: Today I am reading an excerpt from a book called Not Quite a Marriage, which you might guess from its title is a marriage and trouble romance, and the excerpt I'm chosen to read, I've chosen to read is a little different from what I've noticed most of the writers on your podcast have chosen to read because It's not a love scene.
It's [00:02:00] the prologue which sets up the premise of the series in which not quite a marriage is the first book. So that series is called the audacious ladies of Audley. And it tells the stories of five Regency era female cousins who get together during one summer. Their family gets together every summer at their grandparents estate, Audley Priory.
And they all vow to carry on the Audley family tradition by living lives as audacious as those of their proud female forebearers.
Katherine Grant: I love that. What a great premise.
Bliss Bennet: Alright, this is the prologue. August, 1816. "Holly, watch where you're stepping! You'll tear the hem of my nightgown!"
"If you just climb a little faster, Sheba, it wouldn't get caught under my feet." "It's not me, it's Connie who's the clumsy one." "I'm not clumsy, it's just that I can't see. I don't know why I couldn't have a candle too, like Lizzie has. I'm not even the youngest." [00:03:00] "Ooh, Connie's scared of the dark."
"I am not." "Are too Cowardy, Cowardy Custard."
"Philadelphia, make her stop!" Philadelphia Fry, all of fifteen, yet feeling as ancient as a crone, fought back a sigh. For the better part of this past week, she and her older sister Anna had been forced to ride herd over the squabbling jumble of unruly cousins while their elders visited and entertained during the annual family visit to Audley Priory, their grandparents Leicestershire estate.
Vivacious Anna relished the energy and attention of the four younger girls, but Delphie would have far preferred to spend her time alone at the pianoforte, or with a book, or even better, with her own daydreams. Which she certainly could have done. No one but Anna would have noticed her absence. But Anna insisted that Delphie should at least try to join in the fun.
After all, making oneself likable was only a matter of effort. Or so Anna always said. [00:04:00] "Polly, please stop," Delphie said, struggling to instill at least a modicum of authority into her tone. "Such impertinent behavior is not at all ladylike. And besides, you've hurt Connie's feelings." "You're not our governess, Philadelphia," Polly retorted, shoving the elbow in Delphie's direction.
"Stuffy, sloomy, tedious old thing" "We don't have to listen to you," Connie jeered, shifting allegiance with the easy perfidy of the young. Although she, unlike Connie, had her own candle, Delphie couldn't see very well in the dark of the staircase. But she wouldn't be at all surprised if both her cousins, despite having reached the advanced age of thirteen, were sticking out their tongues at her.
This time, Delphie didn't hold back her sigh. " Shhh!" From the top of the staircase, Anna raised a finger to her lips. Candlelight glinting off her silver locket lit her with a strange, uncanny glow. "Quiet now, or you'll wake the [00:05:00] spirits!" Delphie shivered at the whispered warning, at her own anticipation, at the cold draught that blew down on them from above.
Even in the face of a flock of unruly cousins, Anna could make life sparkle. Their five spectral nightdresses fluttered in the wake of Anna's white, satin ball gown. Alone, up in the attics, away from the bustle of the family party, the night seemed ripe with mystical possibility. What did Anna have up her puffed, beribboned sleeve?
Over the centuries, Audley Priory had been home to more than its fair share of audacious women, as every Audley cousin well knew. Elfthryth the Fair, who had sited the priory she built to house her religious order next to a hated brother in law's estate to serve as a constant rebuke for that lord's marriage and murder of her beloved elder sister.
Euphemia of Wherl, prioress during the 12th century, who had somehow managed to increase the number of the Lord's handmaidens devoted to her order from 28 to 80 during the worst years of the Black Death. And of course Lady Joan Audley, [00:06:00] who sold the assets of her order before they could be seized by Cromwell's men, giving over the resulting proceeds not to her brothers, but to the sisters in God whom she had vowed to support before sending them back into the world temporal.
But Delphie doubted that any previous Audley Lady had ever been as audacious as Anna. How else could her sister have beguiled all of them into doing something none would have ever imagined, never mind risked, doing on their own? Who else but Anna would they have followed up the creaking staircase to the Priory's rarely visited attics, especially when the clock in the front hall was on the verge of chiming midnight?
And onto night of all nights, the night of the annual Audley Ball, an event which every Audley cousin longed to attend, but which only seventeen-year-old Anna had been granted the privilege of so doing. Something truly wondrous must lie above, if Anna had left the glories of the ball, and the company of Spencer Burnett, the young viscount to whom she would soon be engaged, to show it to them.
Even [00:07:00] shy Delphie would have braved the crush below, for a chance to dance with the breath catchingly handsome heir of the Earl of Morse. No, Anna's presence here tonight was not an indulgence to be taken lightly. With a soft click, Delphie closed the attic door, then set down her candlestick on a battered table.
The flame wavered, then died, leaving Anna's candle the only light in the room. Delphie shivered again, then took her place in the circle gathering about her sister. Anna stood silent for endless minutes while her cousins waited to see what she would do next. At the precise moment when anticipation threatened to tumble over into fear and flight, Anna raised her candle.
Slowly, slowly, she guided it around the circle of girls seated on the dusty floor, pausing for a moment in front of each. Elizabeth Audley Davenport-Devenport, Bathsheba Audley Honeychurch, Polyhymnia Audley Adler, Constance Audley Ellis, Philadelphia Audley [00:08:00] Fry, and I, Anna Audley Fry. We, the six female descendants of the ancient and noble Audley line, have gathered here tonight to meet, perhaps for the last time, as unmarried women." Bodies shifted uneasily around the circle.
"No," a voice across from Delphie whispered. "Yes," Anna said, her voice growing stern. "Soon your parents, as have mine, will find you a suitable life partner, and each of you will thereafter fulfill the sweet duties of wife and mother, duties for which all proper gentlewomen are destined." Delphie felt her pulse quicken.
Anna's pale face seemed to glow with some strange inner light. What could her sister be about? " What is a husband? A family? All for which a lady might wish?" Anna dropped to her knees and clasped her hands to her chest. "Might a woman not have greater desires? A greater destiny? Especially a woman with Audley blood in her veins?"
A gasp- from easily [00:09:00] frightened Connie? -Echoed throughout the shadowy room, Delphie edged closer, the need for physical connection overcoming any worry of appearing weak. Goose flesh crept over her arms. Anna threw her hands wide, almost as if she were preaching a sermon. "Tonight, I invite each of my fellow Audley cousins to ponder her future, to examine her mind and her heart, and then give voice to her most secret desire.
And in so voicing, take the first step toward realizing it." Delphie's stomach plummeted. Give voice to her most secret desire, here, in front of all her cousins? " Ugh, only a silly, silly wishing game." Polly, who had risen to her knees at the same time as Anna had flopped back with a humph. "There's no full moon tonight, and the first cuckoo of spring has long since sung.
Have you collected some dandelions for us to blow, Anna? Huh, I know, it's to be the old wished upon an eyelash game, isn't it?" "No [00:10:00] mere superstition, Polly," Anna chastened, pinning their youngest cousin with the sharpness of her gaze. "This is an ancient ritual, handed down for generations through the eldest female in the Audley line, generation after generation, long before any Baron Audley was summoned to Parliament."
"Are you certain this isn't sacrilegious?" Sheba, whose family belonged to the Society of Friends, was always wary of anything that might offend Quaker sensibilities. "Completely certain," Anna answered. "Why, your own mother participated in the very same ceremony, when she was not much older than you." "But won't telling you all what I wish for make it sure not to come true?"
Logical Elizabeth asked. "That's what they say of dandelion wishes, and of eyelash ones, too." Anna placed a reassuring hand on Elizabeth's arm. "You don't have to say your wish out loud." "You only have to acknowledge it to yourself." Delphie certainly wasn't the only one to utter a sigh of relief at that. [00:11:00] She knew only too well what she longed for when she lay alone in bed at night and sleep refused to come. A wish so shameful she could hardly bear to acknowledge it, never mind imagine it actually coming true. Anna reached behind an abandoned trestle table and pulled out papers and pencils she must have hidden there earlier in the day.
"Come, each of you, write down the innermost desire of your heart." Why an ages old ritual required writing, something Delphie guessed many of their ancient ancestors had not the least idea how to do, Anna did not bother to explain. Her sister had, no doubt, made up the entire ritual out of whole cloth. But her story, or rather, the certitude with which she told it, had caught the imaginations of her cousins.
Small hands reached eagerly for scraps of paper. Even skeptical Polly took up a pencil and began to scribble. "Think very hard before you choose what to write," Anna said, as she pushed a pencil toward Delphie. "The ritual will only work if you confide your [00:12:00] deepest, most heartfelt desire." Biting her lip, Delphie picked up the pencil and clutched it in a cold hand.
With her other, she held a sheet of paper in place on the floor. None of the other girls seemed to have any trouble confiding their wishes, but for Delphie, the words would not come. " When you're done, fold your paper so that you can no longer see the writing," Anna said, after a long moment filled with only the scratching of pencils.
Delphie's breath caught in her throat. Could she pretend she had already finished? She glanced up to make sure no one else was looking, only to find Anna staring right at her, an already folded piece of paper clutched in her gloved hand. Anna had made a wish, too, but why? Didn't her sister already have everything any young lady could ever want?
Pressing her lips flat, Delphie scribbled her own wishes across the paper. To charm and entertain without having to work so hard at it. To inspire enthusiasm and devotion in the people around me. [00:13:00] And, finally, coming to the real point. To be courted by the most handsome man in all the world. The image of Spencer Burnett, his tousled long curls, his energetic stride tumbled across her heart.
Delphie raised her eyes, her gaze flicking toward her sister, then quickly away. In such dim light, surely Anna would not be able to see the flush of guilt flooding her face. With a scowl, Delphie screwed her paper up tight in her hand. Anna rose and gestured for her cousins to follow her behind an old, tattered screen.
There, atop a battered dining table, sat an elaborate silver rococo epergne, each of his six arms holding up a small, flat dish decorated with an elaborate border of shell and scroll. Anna placed her candlestick with care in the epergne's central basket. "Now, everyone, gather close. We were meant to do this part outside, around an open fire, but I think our candle will serve just as well.[00:14:00]
Touch a corner of your paper to the flame, then hold onto your wish for as long as you can. Only when you are in danger of singeing your fingers should you drop it onto a dish in the epern. The less paper that remains to burn on its own, the greater the likelihood of achieving your desire." Delphie suddenly realized what her wishes really meant.
I want what Anna has. What Anna is. She was the first to thrust her paper into the candle's burning wick. But the younger girls quickly followed suit. Six tiny flames sparked, then burned, Anna instructed, even though no one had spoken, "Think hard of your wish, and only of your wish." They watched as paper crackled and crumpled, ashy black snowflakes wafting through the chill air.
As fire flickered closer and closer to tender fingers, papers dropped, one by one, to silver dishes below. Delphie had intended to let go of her paper first, to make sure she had the least chance of having her [00:15:00] embarrassing, selfish desires come true. But somehow, her fingers held tight, tight, slowly inching away from the crackling edges, until warmth turned to heat, and finally to pain.
With a cry, she let go and watched as the last scrap of her wish fluttered toward the epern. By the time it fell to the dish, its fire had gone out entirely. Her only gasping breath was the sound, only sound Delphie could hear. Until finally, silk rustled once again, and Anna's palm curled about Delphie's.
"Come and take each other's hands, ye woman of Audley, Anna intoned, more pagan priestess than earthly sister. With our hearts and our fire, tonight we consecrate our most precious secret wishes. We call upon the power of our ancestors to give us the strength to pursue what we most desire, no matter the cost.
And, most importantly, we pledge to do everything in our power to help one another make our dreams come true." Delphie flinched at the pain of her sister's unexpectedly [00:16:00] hard squeeze as a chorus of young voices echoed Anna's pledge. Anna blew out her candle with a quick puff.
Katherine Grant: Ooh, what an interesting and spooky excerpt. Well, I have lots of questions for you, but first we're going to take a quick break for our sponsors.
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Katherine Grant: I am back with Bliss Bennett, who just read a very spooky sample from Not Quite a Marriage, which is kicking off
the Audacious Ladies of Audley series. And one of the things that stood out to me among many things in that scene is there are some fantastic names, including Philadelphia and something like Poly Poly Nia.
Yes. Poly Nia. So can you talk to me about the inspiration for that and then like what research did you put into those names?
Bliss Bennet: Yeah, I know it's kind of crazy because if you read a lot about Regency era names, especially the aristocracy, they're pretty similar, like the same names get used over and over again.
But so when Not Quite A Marriage was published, someone on one of the [00:18:00] discussion boards at All About Romance actually said, Oh, I hate this, this People using contemporary names in historical romance, and I had to say, but, but wait a minute I used DeBrett's to look up names to find actual historical names that were used in the period, and Philadelphia was a name that appears four times, I think, in DeBrett's, so.
Katherine Grant: Oh, wow.
Bliss Bennet: Yeah, so I, yeah, I, I like to make sure that my names are historically accurate to the period, so I have my, 1832 copy of DeBrett's and love to flip through it and find interesting names.
Katherine Grant: Oh, that's so cool. And then I, I loved how, like in just that prologue, we got such a rich sense of this family. There's the history of the building. There's the history of the ball. There's this throwaway that one of the cousins is being raised as a Quaker, which indicates something very interesting happening
in the family being different religious. Can you talk about your process for developing this series like what came first for you [00:19:00] and how much did you know before you started writing?
Bliss Bennet: Yeah, well, this series actually just started with Delphie's story I had this idea about a couple that had married very young and not
by choice, and that relationship sort of going off the rails, and the husband running away, and they're apart for five years and then he comes back and he's trying to make good and be a better man. So that's where that started and then I had the idea of maybe she married the man that her sister was supposed to have married, so I know I'm supposed to not be depressing but Anna dies in the between the prologue and the start of the story and So Delphie's father and Spencer's father decide to just replace one daughter with another and so Delphie is 15 years old and gets married and gets immediately pregnant, has a child and it's not a secret because it happens, talks about in the first chapter but the child dies.
[00:20:00] And Spencer's father is very controlling so all of those things make him sort of run off the rails. But so I wanted to set up that desire of hers too. Like she feels really bad and guilty. And so then this idea of wishing came to me and I was researching different wishing games that were popular in the period.
So the wish on an eyelash or wish on dandelion, some of the things that we still do today. But the first cuckoo of spring wish on that, that was something I hadn't heard before. So then I came up with this idea that Anna was this very dynamic, charismatic kind of older sister figure for Delphie and Delphie was shy and quiet and felt inferior in a lot of ways.
And so that I set up that scene where Anna's the one who's gathering all the cousins together and making them do this wishing game that really gets Delphie to think about what she wants and then to realize, Oh, I'm jealous of Anna. I want to be like Anna sort of setting up [00:21:00] all of the other girls as well.
You don't get what their wishes are, but in every book, there's a prologue that sort of repeats the scene, but from each character's point of view, and there's, there's things that happen to them before the actual wishing takes place that sort of sets up what they, what their wishes might be, what they, what they want out of life.
And then, you know, in the way of wishes. Maybe you don't want to wish for because what if it comes through that so that's that's sort of a sub sub theme of the series as well, like how wishes.
Katherine Grant: I mean that sets up Delphie for such a pathos if she wanted to take her sister's place and then she ended up taking her sister's place in a terrible way.
Bliss Bennet: In a very terrible way and then it certainly does not work out at least for the first part of her marriage to Spencer. Sure.
Katherine Grant: Yeah,
Bliss Bennet: yeah, so you can tell I go for the angst rather than the humor.
Katherine Grant: Well, and also it seems you know, very clearly centered and grounded in [00:22:00] history and so I'm curious. I think this is something we all.
A line we all have to figure out how to walk for ourselves. Like, how do you think about the line between something that's historically accurate or even historically grounded? Like a lot of people died versus something that's entertaining and escapist for the modern reader.
Bliss Bennet: Yeah, I think that I write what I want to read and what I'm interested in reading.
And that's not always what the market. Wants to read because I feel like right now historical is very light and very in the corner of humor and lightness and fun and I like to read that, but I also, I really prefer angsty stuff. So that's what I write and I write historically grounded angsty stuff. And so I think that my books sort of dance on the line between historical romance and historical fiction, because I really, really, really love it.
The research, my, my spouse says, "I think you just write so you can do research." I've got all these cool things about, [00:23:00] you know, so I have to find like what, what building could Audley priory be modeled after and what, what county in England should it be set in and what kind of things are happening in that county at the, in 1816 when this scene takes place and then the actual novel starts in 1824.
So what's going on then?
Katherine Grant: Yeah. It stood out to me in your bio that you describe Regency England as politically volatile, because I know that's true, but I think when readers think of Regency, they think of ballrooms.
Bliss Bennet: I mean, the whole term wallpaper romance comes, I think, from that idea that a lot of readers.
I don't want to read about the pretty things of the period, but it was a really ugly period in a lot of ways and a period of great change politically and socially . And for me, that's what's most interesting about writing in in specifically in the 1820s, which sort of
in the middle of anti slavery movements, in the middle [00:24:00] of efforts to widen the, the vote, to have more people being able to vote. And yeah, so that's what, what appeals to, to me about that period. I don't know if it appeals to lots of historical romance readers, but I think it appeals to a good, a good number of them.
So.
Katherine Grant: I, I think readers are interested when they are invited into the conversation. Yes. And sometimes. It's not what you're looking for in a book if you're really just looking for something frothy and fun, but I think even then you can get a lot of this in there and it also, you know, we're living through a time that's got a lot of upheaval and I always say there, there's a lot of resonances.
Yes,
Bliss Bennet: I agree completely.
Katherine Grant: Now I know that in this book, Spencer goes to West Africa. Can you talk a little bit about maybe some of the research you did for that and what he gets up to?
Bliss Bennet: Yes. So, when I was thinking about, I had the idea that this couple had been separated and, Maybe Spencer went off [00:25:00] to war.
So I started looking what wars were going on what who was who were the British fighting at this period in 18 in the early 1820s, and then it came to the first Ashanti war, who knew the British were fighting in Africa in the 1820s. So that led me down a huge research rabbit hole about what was going on and the whole colony of Sierra Leone, which was the first
british colony, which was established with a specifically anti slavery mandate that slavery was not allowed. And so yeah, like all these books over on the shelf back there about Sierra Leone and the history and what was going on. So Spencer got a relation to get him a political post there and he was working in the government in Sierra Leone and sort of saw like what, what was going on in, The colony in Africa and the wider world and it sort of makes him grow up a lot.
And before he left, he was just all about, Oh, my father's telling me what to do and I don't want to do this. So I'll, I'll be a rake and I'll [00:26:00] drink and I'll gamble and I'll have a lot of encounters with women. And then he gets married and he's like, I don't want to do this either. And, you know, being faced with such such a different society and such politically Volatile issues, I think, makes, can make a person grow up and that's what happens.
So he comes back to England, both because his grandmother is ailing and he wants to see her one last time. And also he has friends who he's made in Sierra Leone and he wants to help them navigate and speak with people in the government about getting self rule rather than always being ruled from a distance.
Katherine Grant: Yeah, very interesting. I've done some research into that part of it as well, and it's so interesting, and there's so much there, and I feel, I mean, As an American, you know, I mostly learned about slavery from the American perspective. Yes, yes. And then I was like, oh, Britain outlawed slave trade in 1807 and slavery in 1830.
It's good for them. Right. [00:27:00] Actually, there's a lot more to it than that, which sounds obvious, but once you start peeling the layers. Yeah. It's very interesting and rich and terrible, of course. Yeah.
Bliss Bennet: I mean, the second book in the series, which is called Not Quite a Scandal, is about Sheba, who is the Quaker girl who grows up as a Quaker, and she's a very ferocious anti slavery advocate, and that causes her a lot of problems in society, because that was not obviously a Popular.
That's the word. A popular position, especially if you have, have relatives who are part of the aristocracy. So. Yeah.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. Well, and then another thing I read on your website is a little fun fact that you were really into Harlequin romances and then your women's studies in college kind of turned you off of them.
But obviously now you're writing historical romance. So did you return to reading Harlequin romance ever? And how do you think about framing romance?
Bliss Bennet: So I [00:28:00] was a huge Harlequin romance reader when I was a teenager in the late 70s and early 80s. And then I went to college and took some women's studies classes, as you mentioned, and realized like why I was so fascinated in both the I was fascinated and sort of appalled by, by the books, and then I couldn't read them anymore because all the alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha, alpha holes could not, could not stand it anymore.
So, skip ahead 20 some years, maybe 30. And I was, I became a children's literature scholar. And I was doing research about Twilight. About the Twilight series and because for a paper that I was writing and I wanted to think about Twilight as a romance novel. So I started doing some research into romance academic romance, and then I found Smart Bitches Trashy Books, and then I found Loretta Chase.
And that was the beginning, I guess, for me of rediscovering romance that was different, way, way, way different from the romances that I had read [00:29:00] as a teenager, like so much more agency for women and. A lot of people experimenting both with constructions of femininity and construction of masculinity in interesting ways that I really was interested in exploring.
So, and I started writing a blog called Romance Novels for Feminists and I did that for about five years. I'm trying to explore, like, what, what is it about romance that can be considered feminist? Because in the past, feminism had pretty much looked down its nose at romance as patriarchal and oppressive.
But it seemed to be doing a lot more, a lot, a lot different cultural work in the books that I was reading now. I guess they're from the, the 2000s and onward than they had been when I was a kid. Yeah,
Katherine Grant: yeah. Well, a lot of people like to say that romance is written by women for women, about women, therefore it's feminist.
What are your thoughts on that?
Bliss Bennet: I totally don't agree with that. [00:30:00] I think that Like any genre, a book can be feminist or it can be anti feminist depending on what it says, right? I think there's still tons of books out there that are about, oh, let the man take care of me and let the man protect me and I'll just be his happy consort or person that he takes care of.
And, you know, that's fine. People can enjoy those, but I don't think those are feminist books, right? On the other hand, there are books that call explicit attention to gender norms and gender roles and try to challenge them in interesting ways in, in romance. And I think that's a great vehicle for it because romances are so popular and are working in interesting cultural ways to get us to think about those issues and are shaping our, our views about what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a man.
And what it Of any gender, what it means to be in relationship with, with someone else [00:31:00] of the same or different gender and how that, how you, how you negotiate power in those relationships. So I think that's what for me, when romance is feminist, that's, that's what it does. It thinks about masculinity and femininity and gender, and it thinks about how power in relationship works.
Katherine Grant: Yeah, I think that I agree like it needs to be in some way, considering what is the gender that the character is given what is the, what is their relationship to that, and usually kind of problematizing that I think I read a lot of cinnamon roll heroes, in part because they are not accepting the specific masculine role that they have been given.
Yeah. And so yeah, I find that to be an essential part of is this a feminist work is, is it asking what does it mean to be a gender.
Bliss Bennet: Yeah, [00:32:00] I think that
Katherine Grant: mean for the power.
Bliss Bennet: Yeah, a lot of the earliest feminist romance was focused on femininity, but I think the more interesting work today is happening, as you said, with men and what does it mean to be a man in our society in, or, you know, through the lens of our historical books, what does it mean to be a man and how can that be a positive thing rather than an alphahole asshole thing?
Oops, sorry.
Katherine Grant: Well, yeah, and if there is an alphahole, I would like to understand I would like to see the character go through an understanding of why is he this way, and what does he want to continue to be. Right. Right. Yeah. Well, we could talk about that for a long time, but we don't have enough time.
Bliss Bennet: I feel like we could talk for hours and days about a lot of
Katherine Grant: issues.
Now it is time for our game, Love It or Leave It.
Katherine Grant: So, Bliss, love it or leave it, protagonists meet in the [00:33:00] first 10 percent of the book?
Bliss Bennet: Okay, I think for both reader and writer, yes, I want them to meet early.
If it's a romance, I want to see the two or more characters who are going to become important to each other. And I don't want to spend a lot of time waiting for that to happen.
Katherine Grant: All right. Love it or leave it, dual point of view narration.
Bliss Bennet: Love it, because. My Harlequin reading back when I was a kid, it was mostly single point of view and from the female's perspective.
I don't know if you've read a lot of or any Harlequins early, but they're mostly single point of view from the female perspective. And that's partially because the man is a mystery. And that's where a lot of the tension and energy comes from in those books, like, is he really an asshole? Is he really as awful as he's acting?
Or does he really love me? And since you're not in his head, you don't know that. So I think it's, for me, it's really important to get inside both characters heads so I don't have that worry.
Katherine Grant: Yeah, that he actually [00:34:00] is an asshole.
Bliss Bennet: Right, right. So like I want to know if he's acting like a jerk. As you said, I want to know what the reasons are and if you're in their heads.
You can see that.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. Okay. Love it or leave it. Third person past tense narration.
Bliss Bennet: Definitely love it. Especially for historical romance. I mean, for other genres, I read very widely in romance and I like all sorts of kinds of tenses and point of views. But for historical, I think the distancing, it's like sets a little bit of distance between you and the story.
And that I think that's important when you're reading history because it's not taking place now it's taking place in the past and I want people to feel that. That sort of gap between then and now and think about like what's different between today and then and what's the same. So, yes.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. I love it
or leave it? Always end with an epilogue.
Bliss Bennet: Yeah, no leave it, leave it, leave it. My books, I'm a, as someone said, prologues, I, I write long. I, my books [00:35:00] tend to be long, so by the time I get to the end, I want it to be the end.
I like prologues, but no epilogues.
Katherine Grant: All right. Right. Love it or leave it? Share research in your author's note.
Bliss Bennet: Oh, yes. Academics love, you know, cite your sources, for sure. So, I always have author's notes, and then on my website I have bibliographies for each of my books. I think probably I'm the only person who looks at them, but you never know.
Someone, you might be wanting to know what I, what I looked at up for Sierra Leone, and it's on my website if you're curious. You can find it.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. Yeah. I, I probably, I will because I am interested. Okay. Are there any other romance rules I didn't ask about that you like to play with?
Bliss Bennet: I think I just like to do different things rather than write the same thing, which I don't have a problem with people who write the same thing over and over again, because that's really comforting for a lot of people.
And When I was a kid, I loved Nancy Drew, and it's like the same thing over and over and over again. And that's a really important feeling to be able to give to people. But for me, I like to write different [00:36:00] stories and different characters. Like all my characters are very different from one another.
Delphie is shy. Sheba, who is the character in the next book, who is the Quaker, she's very outspoken and strong opinions. And yeah, so. I think difference rather than the same is what I like.
Katherine Grant: Yeah, I can relate to that. What we need as a reader is so different than what our artistic souls need to do. So as writers, we've got to follow our, our muses.
Right. Well, this has been lovely. And like I said, I feel like we could talk for so long about so many things, but we do have to wrap up. Where can our listeners find you and your books?
Bliss Bennet: Yes. So I publish wide, so you can find my books, my eBooks on any online retailer and you can get print books through Amazon or Ingram.
And I, you can find me on my website at bliss Bennett, B E N N E [00:37:00] T one t. com. And I have social media accounts, Instagram and Facebook and blue sky. But I have to admit, I'm not. A big social media person. I have real issues about the ethics of a lot of the people who run those companies and and I'm shy and introverted, although you might not know that from the way I'm blabbing around, but
if
you want to get in touch with me.
Come to my website and and I'd love to talk.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. Well, thank you so much. I've really appreciated this.
Bliss Bennet: Thank you. I really enjoyed it. As I said, it's so great to talk to other people who are thinking about and excited about some of the same issues that I am.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. All right. Thank you. 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.