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Will Forrest Samples An Inconvenient Earl
Katherine Grant: Welcome to the historical romance sampler podcast. I'm your host, Katherine Grant, and each week I introduce you to another amazing historical romance author. My guest reads a little sample of their work, and then we move into a free ranging interview. If you like these episodes, don't forget to subscribe to the historical romance sampler, wherever you listen to podcasts and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Now let's get into this week's episode.
I am super excited today to be joined by Will Forrest, author, poet, and general nuisance. Will writes unusual and usually queer romance with a dash of mischief and mayhem. Will grew up on a steady diet of Douglas Adams and classic bodice rippers, and has a diploma of fashion design, a degree in social theory and a bad habit of changing careers, life goals and continents.
Currently they live in a very warm part of Canada with three lovely humans and a succession of martyred houseplant. And if you're listening to this without the visuals, you might wanna go check out YouTube on this one because Will has shown up in a period appropriate costume. Will, thank you so much for coming on.
Will Forrest: Yeah, no problem. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Glad to be here. I am excited.
Katherine Grant: Before we get into the books, just briefly, since you have a degree in fashion design, did you construct this outfit yourself?
Will Forrest: I did. It's sort of an amalgam of a few different things. The waistcoat is just a modern piece that I reconfigured, put some fancier buttons on and took off the collar.
The shirt I made from a pattern that's based on like an 18th century chemise. That is all square shapes that you kind of like jenga together. Nice. That was very interesting. And then the cravat is just a nice little piece of queerness. A little bit of rainbows in there,
but...
Katherine Grant: love it. Yes. All right. So you are reading today from one of your historical romances, an Inconvenient Earl.
Yes. What should we know about an inconvenient Earl and the scene that we're gonna hear?
Will Forrest: Inconvenient earl is I call it lovers to enemies, to it's complicated. It's a story of an earl, presumably who really does not want to be in a position of power. He has dyslexia, he has anxiety. None of these things are named in the book because we didn't have that language at that time.
But he's basically desperately trying to get out of his responsibilities and his daydream is that somebody like his secret lover will perhaps conveniently kidnap him and whisk him away to some magical land where he has no responsibilities and nothing bad ever happens. This obviously goes very, very badly because it's a novel.
And so, yes. Ralph is essentially trying to struggle with his position in the world and not feeling like he deserves the privilege or the life that he leads and is just like so many of us kind of looking for that knight and shining armor to kind of sweep him away and, and let him start a new life.
So I'm going to read from chapter four and chapter five. Ralph has just woken up with a very large hangover after going to meet his lover and he's woken up with a hangover and is now wondering what exactly is going on. 'cause there's quite a lot of unanswered questions that he has to face right now.
Katherine Grant: Hmm. Intriguing.
Will Forrest: Yes. So with no further ado, I shall read chapter four, A Rude Awakening. The beam of sunlight had been chasing him across the pillow for some time. Ralph turned this way and that, but there was no escaping its hot glare. Groaning at the ache gripping his head in its iron claws,
he rolled onto his back. A line had been painted on his ceiling. A hitch partway made it look like a river drawn on a large map. He gazed at its familiar contours, unable to place it, nor to account why it had been painted on his bedroom ceiling. Memories of the previous night lurked darkly in the corners of his mind.
He and Adam had been happy about something, then very, very sad. They had drunk an obscene quantity of wine and ale and something else. Its bitter taint, clinging to his teeth. He sat up, cautiously waiting for the wave of nausea to recede before reaching for the bell pool to summon his man Redmond, who was going to catch an earful for having left the bedroom curtains open. Except Ralph was not at home.
That was not his ceiling. He was sitting on a straw mattress on a rough hewn bedstand in a small dirty room lit by the beam of sunshine falling through the blurry glass of its one narrow window. A room he knew only by candlelight, yet he recognized it like he knew his lover's face. In a word: paradise.
He laid back, pulling up the prickly blanket up to his nose to breathe in his lover's scent. So the darling man had made their dreams come true. The tangle of last night's memories began to unknot. Their frantic laughter, their tears of mourning. Ralph's lover aiding him up the stairs to this very room.
Though if his waking up mostly dressed was any sign, that had been the extent of their encounter, for which he was happy to make amends as soon as they were reunited. Blinking against his robust and very inconvenient headache, he rose from bed. He rinsed his mouth with a stale water in the chipped ewer,
and washed his face in hands, shivering in the morning chill. He looked about for his coat. His shoes as well were nowhere to be found, nor his purse and what jewelry he'd worn. Clearly he'd been robbed. A useless effort for his purse had been close to empty, and the jewels mirror paste. Hopefully the tavern keeper had a pair of shoes Ralph might borrow, so he might at least get home.
But when he tried the door, he found it locked. Usually his lover left the key in the hole. The room contained only the bedstand, a chair, and a table, one of its legs a different color of wood for it replaced the leg they had broken. He searched fruitlessly for the key, even feeling along the doorframe for an unseen niche. Despairing of choices, he knocked on the door tentatively, then with force.
The door swung inward suddenly, and like a dream made real, his lover slipped in, closing the door behind him. He was dressed for traveling with a heavy cape over his jacket, the sheath of a knife knotted to his wide belt.
"I'm so glad to see you," Ralph said. "They've taken everything." He gestured helplessly at his stocking feet, the barren room. "And you? Were you robbed as well?"
His lover shook his head. He hadn't moved from the doorway, but as Ralph moved towards him, he stiffened.
"What's wrong?" Ralph asked, stopping his advance. "Other than my having been robbed?"
His expression stark, the man tossed a cloth bag onto the gritty floorboards between them. "Put that on. We need to leave at
once."
The bag contained Ralph's shoes and coat and a similar cloak. "Where are we going?" He asked as he knelt to close his buckles. Feeling about under the mattress, his lover didn't reply. "Very well, if you wish to play the role of villainous abductor to the hilt..." and without further word, Ralph followed him out of the room, down the stairs, and out the back door.
After close to an hour of walking, they left the southbound road and started moving through the woods. Though the undulating terrain resembled land around Godin Hall, between their curving route around the rising hills and the clouds that had obscured the morning sky, Ralph soon lost sense of their direction.
He guessed it to be midday when they stopped at the bend of a swiftly running creek. His shoes were beginning to chafe as they were made for city streets, at most of the occasional stable, and not for tromping over hills. He sat on a flattish rock by the water to remove them. "As much as I enjoy surprises, it might be time to tell me where we're going,"
he said as he attempted to rub some feeling into his toes. "I promise our secrets are safe with me."
"Don't say such things." The other men gritted, his teeth bared.
"But my darling-"
His lover silenced him with a snarl and sharply raised hand as though Ralph with an errant dog in want of a whipping. "Don't ever call me that again.
Whatever we had, whatever was between us, it dies today."
"I don't understand."
With the shudder of unspeakable revulsion, the man drew his knife from its sheath. "Does this make things clearer?"
"Be serious, friend."
"I am entirely serious and I am not your friend." His face a mask of hatred, he stepped towards Ralph, the hand length blade gleaming dully in the gray light.
"Look, this is entirely unnecessary. I, I'm sorry those jewels of mine aren't worth anything. I never wear the good stuff when I come down here."
Ralph was babbling, but the blade was very long and the creek was very near and he was already on his knees and short of options. "But I assure you, I'm very, very wealthy.
I can get you whatever you want."
"You are a no position to bargain."
"Perhaps you don't realize just how wealthy I am."
"I have a very good idea, your Lordship." His lover, his former lover, sneered, his lovely features contorted with disgust. "I know exactly who you are and I know what you're worth, and all of that won't be enough to buy away free of me."
"Are you certain? Because it really is a considerable amount. And-"
"Shut up!" He lunged forward, bringing the knife to within an inch of Ralph's chin. "One little prick for me and your life ends. I'll leave you to bleed to death all alone in this cursed forest."
"What is it you want?"
"For you to do what you're told."
"Do I not deserve to know?"
"You don't deserve a damned thing! Now, are you going to behave yourself or am I going to leave you here to die?"
Of course, because nothing Ralph desired could ever become his. No wanting, no heart searing need had ever been enough to earn him the slightest shred of happiness. His captor's knife retreated.
He felt a single burning impulse to grab the man's hand, force an end to these endless losses. To do so was to give the victory to his enemies. He wanted to watch them burn.
They walked for several hours more up and down ever taller hills, and along the stony valleys between. This late in the year, the trees had lost most of their leaves,
their branches twining blackly against the sky's featureless smear of watery gray. As it grew darker, their progress slowed until they seemed to be creeping through a twilight underworld. A purgatorial realm without destination or purpose. At last, they descended a treacherous slope to the gorse- clogged valley floor where they halted beside a hulking mount of stones, which proved to be the ruins of a small house.
The thatch was missing from one end of the roof, the other end so rotted a small tree had sprouted beside the canting chimney. A corner of the single interior room had been used as a privy by its prior occupants, as well as an assortment of animal life. The man steered Ralph to a pile of juniper bows and punched straw, which lay against the other wall.
"Put your hands behind your back."
"If you intend to kill me, can you please do it very quickly?" Ralph said, as he complied. "Although to some that's an invitation to make it take longer. Oh, please don't make it take longer."
"I'm not going to hurt you," his captor replied sharply. "I'm going to sleep and you are going to stay absolutely still and silent while I do."
"So is it really necessary to- ow- tie me so tightly? I won't run away, I promise." "Promise is just words. I have no reason to trust you."
"Whereas I can't trust anyone but you." The man paused and Ralph hurried on, "Think of it from my perspective. I'm already incapacitated." He flexed his bound hands, the coarse rope pricking his skin.
"I don't have the slightest idea where we are. Anyone wandering about the woods in the middle of the night is unlikely to be the sort of person attention I wish to attract. They're as likely to kill you, bugger me, and rob us both blind as they are to offer me aid. I can't get much more helpless." He waited, the other man's ragged breath hot against his neck.
"You make a sound," the man grated, "and I'll be making sure tomorrow's the worst day of your life."
Pinching his lips closed, Ralph nodded. And then he was falling, his legs buckling under him as his captor prodded his knees into the back of Ralph's. The man heaved him onto his side, facing the wall of damp, chalky plaster.
His shoulders were already beginning to ache. His feet were rubbed raw in countless places, the sole of one of his shoes starting to come away from the toe. He was very cold. The thin cloak offering scant protection against the damp air. None of these discomforts matched the agony within his heart.
Two days ago, everything had been as it should be. Two days ago, he'd had a father and a lover, and a future, or the very least, a vision of the future he desired.
Now he had nothing at all and it wasn't nearly as liberating as he dreamed. Don't speak, don't blub. Don't make things worse. Don't let him know how much you hurt. Luckily, he had a lifetime of practice at shedding silent tears.
Chapter five, knives and Spoons. I I'll mention here. They have been lying to each other the whole time.
They've known each other. They don't actually know each other's name. So I will now be changing names, but it's still Ralph and Ryan are the same person, but Harry doesn't know that yet. So, chapter five, knives and Spoons.
As Ryan lay softly weeping, Harry walked away out of the ruined cottage into the black night. A dozen paces into the woods,
he crouched, hugging his knees to his chest and biting his kneecaps to keep from screaming his frustration. This wasn't a bothersome task. This was torture, a deliberate and malicious punishment. The death of Harry's partner and friend not payment enough for their having disappointed one of Fisher's clever little gambits.
He hated every part of this. Hated that he was here in his wet cold ruins and charge of a weeping earl, and not in that snug room over the watchmaker's shop, eating toasted cheese and drinking Bixby's cherry wine, and planning the next take. What he might have been doing with the weeping man whose life he was presently ruining was too near to contemplate.
Dreams of what it could have been lost to him forever. He compelled himself to his feet. Exhaustion hung around his neck, like iron chains, chains forged of two weeks of restless vigilance. The long night minding Ryan while he slipped off his foul friend's drug and the subsequent hours of travel on a deliberately indirect route Harry had plotted to confound both his captive and any pursuit.
Ryan hadn't stirred and made no sound as Harry lowered himself onto the musty palette beside him, lying back to back and keeping to the very edge. Having long ago broken through every boundary of physical intimacy with the other man touching him bore no significance. Yet Harry felt he was sharing a bed with a tiger or smoldering keg of powder, something seething with danger. At length,
he slept, lulled by Ryan's steady breath and the rhythmic tap of rain dripping from a broken rafter onto stone. When he woke, it was still dark. Ryan lay as he had all night on his side facing the dirty wall, his hands bound behind him. His hands. In the coldest hour of the night, Harry must have rolled over for he was curled around Ryan whose cupped hands neatly cradled Harry's balls. Stiff for the morning urgency,
Harry's cock lay hard against Ryan's back. If either of them so much as sneezed... with excruciating slowness, he lifted his arm from around Ryan's waist, shifted his pose in minute adjustments until his cods were free of the newly minted earl's slumbering grasp. Harry's cloak was snagged on a juniper branch protruding from beneath the heap straw, and he lost several more minutes to unhooking it without jostling the other man or cursing aloud.
By the time he got outside, the cold air had done its duty and his relief was swiftly obtained. It was a narrow life that could be measured by such base pleasures, the satisfying of one's gross physical needs. He returned to find Ryan struggling to rise, feeling a pang of mercy or possibly guilt. Harry unbound his hands and helped him to his feet.
"Still a ways to go," he said. "We need to start."
His eyes unfocused, head heavy, Ryan merely nodded, then followed Harry out of the tumbledown cottage. His lordship been clearly taken to heart Harry's threat for he said nothing as they picked their way along the pathless hillsides. Harry had been making use of the Margate estate for longer than he'd been a thief and knew its contours as though the land was his own,
the route marked in his memory as a series of places. This bend of the creek, that storm filled tree. Yet today, every step dragged at his feet. The gray light and damp air sapping his vigor and meddling with his eyes. Looking behind to be sure his captive was keeping pace, he caught a flicker of movement between the distant trees. A bird, a small animal, nothing of menace.
Still, he could not help from looking back, pausing again and again to survey the empty forest as the cold morning became indifferent noon. At the summit of the next ridge, he stopped to sight down the valley before them. As at every halt, Ryan stood motionless, his head bowed, hands limp at his sides. He had fallen twice, and muddy leaves clung to his stockings and cloak as Harry gazed out across the valley
in search of a reliable landmark.
Ryan resumed his shuffling gate, brushing past Harry to start down the hill.
"Where are you going?" Harry called.
Ryan stopped and slowly turned to him with a questioning expression. He glanced down the valley, then back at Harry, and with a sigh began to climb back up. Behind him on the valley floors stood the stone walled cottage,
its peaked thatch roof hidden by a grove of saplings. Abandoned long before Harry had found it, the cottage was of the same construction as the hovel they'd sheltered in last night. Built of local stone, dobbed with chalky clay soil. Over the years of his quiet use, he had repaired the walls with stones scavenged from the ruin, and replaced much of the thatch.
It had proved a snug if confining den in which to spend the previous winter, licking his wounds both bodily and spiritual. Two miles from any road and all but invisible unless one was standing nearly on top of it. He had known of no better place to store an inconvenient earl for a fortnight. Harry had never come at it from this approach.
His face heating, he waved Ryan to turn him out. "Nevermind. You were headed the right way. And when I said you had to be quiet, I didn't mean for the rest of your life."
On the hillside below, Ryan stopped yet again. He turned slowly to face Harry, twigs sticking to his cloak and mud on his hands, tendrils of his black hair clinging damply to his brow, like the stark black branches of the leafless trees stretching across the colorless sky.
He nonetheless stood resolutely, at last looking the part of a son of privilege, a peer of the realm untouched by any law but his own. "Is that so?" He said, his eyes glinting with a cold fire. "Then please allow me to express my thoughts of the last several hours, starting with you can suck a rotten lemon,
you hack handed rat- looking deceitful donkey brained-!" He broke off with a shudder of contempt before going on bitterly. "I trusted you. I cared for you. And you tossed that caring out the window and into the gutter like a turd. And I will never ever forgive you. And for Muggings Mercy's sake, you aren't even any good at this!"
He gestured angrily at the cottage in the valley below. "Your victim shouldn't be able to find your secretive hideout at a single glance."
Staggered by the pointed tirade, Harry snatched the first defense to hand. "You only found it because I brought you here."
"I found it because I was looking in the direction it happened to lay."
"You'll note the absence from our own environs of any other person who might see it.
"Perhaps because all there is to see in these mugging environments is this mugging hill!"
"God, Christ, why am I arguing with you? Just get your ass down the mug-ah! the fucking hill and keep your voice down, or I won't hesitate to gag you."
The earl had already resumed his hobbling descent and gave no reply. feeling like his head had been turned inside out, Harry followed.
Katherine Grant: Captivating scene on two different levels of captivating! I've got lots to talk to you about, but first we're gonna take a quick break for our sponsors.
Katherine Grant: I am back with Will Forrest, who just read a sample from an Inconvenient Earl and I have just been looking at my notes trying to figure out which direction I wanna go. My first question is, you write so many different types of romance.
If anyone goes to your website, they'll see that you write paranormal, you write like 20th century, you write Victorian, you write all sorts of romances. And in this scene, we're getting so many themes about like, what does a person deserve? Dreams versus reality. I'm curious, what about this story told you to write it as a historical romance?
Will Forrest: It was more the idea of like, if I wanted to write a regency, what would it be like? And like what do I like about the regency era stories that are written from them? I'm not so much into like, like ballroom drama, like I'm not really into like, you know, gossip in court and that kind of social drama.
I like a little bit more kind of adventure in my stories. So like the, the kidnapping the heir is such a trope in Regency, you know, like you either the girl or the, the man gets, you know, whisked away and has to kind of cope with being out of their normal milieu because yeah, that's, that's just what more interests me more about that kind of era is the kind of adventures that you could have in it.
Katherine Grant: So what made you say, oh, I wanna write a regency book? Were you reading a lot of regencies? Has it always been on your bucket list?
Will Forrest: I mean, I don't really know if there was any particular like, ooh, I have to, like, it was tick in the box. There was sort of, there was sort of a bit of a trend going on for a bit where like a lot of big historical romance writers were doing queer Regency stuff.
Like Alexis Hall put out a few, KJ Charles...
and I'm just like, okay, well now this is a, this is a sandbox that I can play in now. Most of the things I'd written before that were Victorian era. But within that I'd written like a regency short story and kind of had fun with the wording and the pacing and like it is, I, I try and write in a very historical idiom and a very historical writer's voice, so I just wanted to kind of play around in that.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. Do you feel like there's something that you get from writing Regency that's different from even Victorian, which is kind of like a, they're kind of,
we,
we
kind of,
yeah. Group them all together a lot?
Will Forrest: Well, no, I mean, I think Regency is interesting. I mean, it's almost more coherent with like our current times because it was a very politically chaotic time.
There's revolutions happening all over the place. Social rules were being shattered. Kings were losing their heads. It is a very kind of like dynamic time and like, not to say that there were not political events that occurred in the Victorian and other periods, but it's just a very, it's, you know, it's an interesting period for everyone to write about because it has so much going on in it.
And, and, and the conflicts can be quite, you know, live or die kinda situations.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. And there's such a wealth difference too that I think
Will Forrest: Yeah. You see resonating and I really leaned into that because the one character in this book, Harry, is, I mean he is, came up from poverty. He's never really had. He had like a taste of middle class life, but that was sort of stripped away from him.
And he is been living by his wits as a thief for, since he was like a teenager, since he was about 15. And so for him to have even had a relationship with Ralph, the Earl or the Earl to be, was that was itself a kind of conflicting relationship to be stepping so far out of both of their comfort zones.
Like they're not supposed to know each other in any social context whatsoever. Right.
Katherine Grant: Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. So I noticed that your chapters have titles, and I always kind of play around with that idea because when you're formatting an ebook,
for people who've never formatted an ebook, the software is like, do you wanna have a title for this chapter? And I'm always just like, chapter one, chapter two. And I'm always like, oh, but it'd be fun to have chapter names, but then I just, I don't do it. What is your relationship to chapter titles and do you spend a lot of time thinking about it?
And what do you think about it?
Will Forrest: I mean, I kind of started using them just to help me in writing so that when I was scrolling through the manuscript, like a chapter two, chapter three, like what? That doesn't mean anything. Like knives and spoons. Oh, that's the one where they spoon and then he pulls the knife.
Right. And so it comes it started as just a way for me to kind of keep track of where I was in the story. But then they're a chance to sort of tease the theme that you're gonna lean into in that, I like to use them for puns and like little inside jokes.
And like, there's always that kind of like, I like giving the reader that kind of like, oh, I'm so clever feeling when you come across the chapter title or the book title in the book.
Katherine Grant: Yeah.
Will Forrest: So, yeah, it's just a little extra.
Katherine Grant: I love that
Will Forrest: there.
Katherine Grant: So in your bio you mentioned that, you know, you read a lot of Douglas Adams and classic bodice rippers.
Do you see similarity between sci-fi and romance when you read it? And then second part of the question, do you see sci-fi genre conventions showing up in your writing when you're just writing romance?
Will Forrest: Well, I would first say that my main association with Douglas Adams is not as sci-fi, it's as humor.
Katherine Grant: Oh, okay.
Will Forrest: Like, yes. Okay. It happens in space, but like what really has always engaged me with his work is just the comedy and the way he builds his sentences and the way the fish outta water characters interact with the, like, super ridiculously confident characters, but who are also kind of not confident.
That was always my joy. I liked seeing people kind of struggle just with the strangeness of, of settings. So, I mean, in a sense, as a reader, particularly if you're reading like historical, anytime you're reading, like anything that's not straight contemporary, I find that you are being asked to kind of inhabit this new kind of world and a new kind of setting.
But then you get there and you find out that the problems are just human problems. And the same human problems we've always had. You know, like how to get along with people you don't like. How to tell people that you like, that you like them. How to balance all these different needs and not lose yourself in the process or after you've lost yourself,
how to find yourself again. Something I always liked in the Hitchhiker's Guide series, if you read it all the way to the end, is that Arthur Dent does actually get his shit together eventually. Like he's not constantly just terrified and bumbling the whole time by, like by the fourth book, he actually has learned enough about this world that he found himself in that he can go back to just being a human.
He doesn't constantly have to be learning things.
Katherine Grant: That's a really great articulation of why fiction is fiction. Okay. I also read online that you've read a lot of Sweet Valley High, so yeah. Which Sweet Valley High Twin did you identify most with as a kid?
Will Forrest: Oh, definitely the bad one.
Katherine Grant: Okay. Jessica.
Will Forrest: Oh, yeah. Like Elizabeth's nice, but yeah, Jessica's my, she's my girl. Nice. No, I'm like, I'm not into like the, the, the gossips and the cattiness, but just like the kind of like freedom and I'm like, you know what? Just be yourself. If other people don't like it, that's I, they're loss. Like I just, she was always very confident and very like, Nope, I'm gonna go do this thing.
And Elizabeth's like, I don't wanna think about it. But then also like she also makes mistakes constantly, like, but then finds a way to kinda resolve it by the end. And I'm like, that, that kind of felt at home to me. 'cause yeah, I kind of bumble through life and have made some bad choices, but luckily I've had people around me who are willing to, you know, forgive me and, and let me back in.
So yeah, I'm, I'm the evil twin for sure.
Katherine Grant: I love that.
All right, well, it's time to play. Love it or leave it.
[Musical Interlude]
Katherine Grant: Okay. Do you love it or leave it? Protagonists meet in the first 10% of the story.
Will Forrest: Usually. Usually love it. 'cause then they have to fight it out. They don't have to like each other, but I like it when they meet each other early. Mm-hmm. Although one, one of my biggest series that I'm working on right now, they, they don't meet until, like the halfway point of the book.
Katherine Grant: Ooh,
alright. Love it
or leave it? Dual point of view narration.
Will Forrest: Ooh. I'm book to book. Like the, this, you know, inconvenient Earl is dual narration. 'cause I really wanted to show like Harry's struggle as well.
But I also sometimes like it when you have only the one person's perspective and you're kind of left in the dark as to why the other person's acting the way they do. Mm-hmm. Like, there's a lot more kind of, well it's just a different approach. Right. It just gives you different insight into, into what
the characters are going through. Yeah. And like sometimes one character is just more compelling and if, like, I wanna write the other POV, I have to write an entire second book.
Right. Fill in all the information. So yeah. I'm very much
book to book.
Katherine Grant: Okay. Do you love it or leave it? Third person past tense.
Will Forrest: Again,
yeah, I usually write in that, but when I write contemporary I tend to write first person present. Hmm. Like, I'm got a contemporary series, why choose series that I'm just finishing right now. And it's, it felt, I mean, contemporary and present tense sort of seemed to go together a lot in romance. So I kind of wanted to, you know, sort of follow the convention and also challenge myself to, to write that way because I don't usually, it was really the first time that I'd done that, but it just, it works really well for the story.
It's
been, I think contemporary tends to dwell a little bit more on people's interiority, like they're sitting and thinking through things that it's happening to them. Whereas I just like, I have such an association with sort of classic fiction with historical romance that I tend to prefer that being third person past.
'cause it just feels more natural to the genre, if that makes sense.
Katherine Grant: Mm-hmm. Makes sense.
Will Forrest: The more contemporary I write, the more I tend to prefer the first person immediacy.
Katherine Grant: Mm-hmm. All right. Do you love it or leave it? The third act dark moment.
Will Forrest: Ooh, yes.
Yeah. I like, I, yeah, I like, 'cause that's the chance to kind of push the characters to their limits. You know, everything's working really well, but there's still like 150 pages and you're like, oh god, you're gonna make me work for this, aren't you? And it doesn't always have to be a breakup. Sometimes it's just like, like the antagonist will suddenly make their move or something will happen to disrupt the sort of orderly flow of everything's going really well now.
And I'm like, well, life doesn't do that. Life tends to throw you curve balls constantly. So I do like that little kind of like, Ooh, if this wasn't romance, this would not work out well. Oh no.
Katherine Grant: All right. And do you love it or leave it? Always end stories with an epilogue.
Will Forrest: I, I will leave it. I, you know, I, I like it if you can get the it all in one.
I'm not opposed to the epilogue, but I don't think it's necessary. Mm-hmm. You know, some, you know, it depends how the story ends. Sometimes it ends really abruptly, and then you know that there's a cooling off period where literally nothing happens, and it's not very interesting. So if you get the six months on, you kind of end up kind of seeing everything come to a resolution, but sometimes everything wraps up within the story.
Katherine Grant: All right. Do you love it or leave it? Always share research in your author's note.
Will Forrest: Ooh, I'm very lazy with that. If it's important, I will. I released a mid-century book earlier this year and it had a lot to do with censorship issues in the 1950s.
So I wanted to add some kind of factual information in the back to show where my story sat in relation to, to the events in real life.
Katherine Grant: Mm, yeah. That's great.
Will Forrest: It's not always necessary, like the, I I didn't do a lot of research for an Inconvenient Earl. I just kind of relied on sort of generic information about the Regency.
There's no historical elements, like no real history in there. It's just a context, right. But Author, Author was very much drawing on real historical events around the court cases for Fanny Hill and Tropic of Cancer and the books that kind of broke open the literary scene and made it
allowable to put, you know, quote obscene material in, in literature.
Katherine Grant: Hmm.
Will Forrest: I felt like that needed some context.
Katherine Grant: I'm gonna go read that both the book and the author's note. Are there any other rules I didn't ask about romance rules that you like to break?
Will Forrest: My philosophy on romance is that the, literally, the only thing you have to do is have the happy ending for the main couple.
Like I tell this to people who are kind of like, I don't know, is it a romance? I'm like, are the couple together at the end? Yes. Okay, fine. Everybody else in the book can die, like, not the pets, but like, you know, it's, you can have a dark romance where both the characters are like evil, but they're perfect together.
Right? Mm-hmm. And they can go and do heinous things all over the place, but as long as their relationship is the core and, and they see it through, and then they're together at the end and happy together, then, then I'm satisfied. But other than that, like gloves off. Do do what you like.
Katherine Grant: Nice. Do anything. I love it.
Well, will thank you so much for coming on. Where can listeners find you and your books?
Will Forrest: Yeah I have a direct sales store now on my website. So you can buy all of my eBooks directly from me. I don't sell paperbacks there because I'm in Canada and the shipping is just. I don't wanna make people do that.
You know, it's cheaper for you to just buy it from Amazon. It's fine, it's fine. I don't want you to pay $20 to ship one book, but yeah. All of my eBooks are available on my, on my website and it's just will Forrest.com Forrest with two Rs. But yeah, my site's on there. You can sign up to my to news newsletter on there, which comes about once a month.
And yeah, it's sort of the hub for all things will Forrest.
Katherine Grant: Love it. I'm gonna put that link in the show notes, so listeners, you can just click right through. Great. Thank you so much. This has been terrific. Yeah, this was a lot of fun.
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