The Deception of the Emerald Ring

A CONVERSATION WITH LAUREN WILLIG

Q. My dear girl, I really must object to the premise of this absurd farce in which you appear to have embroiled me. Elopements are decidedly passй.

A. If you must blame anyone for the elopement plot, blame Georgette Heyer. During my research year in London, I used to sneak Heyer books into the British Library to read over lunch in the BL Cafeteria. The English editions were conveniently small and compact, perfect for propping up against a bowl of watery soup, and it made for a nice break from peering at crabbed seventeenth-century handwriting all day. At the time, I was midway through writing The Secret History of the Pink Carnation. Geoff—and his infatuation with the unsuitable Mary Alsworthy—had already been introduced into the plot, and I had been rather absent-mindedly wondering how I was going to extract him from that tangle.

Geoff, like so many men I knew in grad school, is entirely at home with a complicated theorem or an abstruse idea, but completely at a loss with the opposite sex. Having so little experience with women, Geoff cherishes romanticized notions of love with a capital L. Having his father and two younger siblings carried away by smallpox when he was eight, Geoff grew up in cold marble rooms, with a mother more interested in her maladies than in her sole surviving son. Like Miles, the closest Geoff came to a true family life was with the Uppingtons. But, unlike Miles, Geoff never let himself be entirely drawn into their family circle. In short, Geoff lacked any notion of what it was like to be truly close to someone, leaving him easy prey for the machinations of a Mary Alsworthy.

I'll never forget the day in the BL cafeteria when I propped open Georgette Heyer's Devil's Cub, and encountered the perfect solution to Geoff's problem. For those non-Heyer readers out there, in Devil's Cub, the sensible older sister interferes with her flighty younger sister's elopement with a bored rake, and finds herself carried off in her sister's stead. Geoff couldn't be more unlike the amoral hero of Devil's Cub (who certainly didn't have marriage on his mind), but the basic idea caught my imagination. If Geoff wouldn't seek out the right sort of woman on his own, I would fling her into his path in a way he couldn't ignore—by putting her in his carriage at midnight in her sister's place. Being an honorable sort, Geoff couldn't possibly refuse to marry her. Good-bye, Mary Alsworthy, and hello, Emerald Ring….

Q. Carrying off chits of girls in carriages is one thing, but was it necessary to export me to Ireland for your literary whims? I had an engagement to attend a house party in Norfolk when I found myself arbitrarily whisked off across the Irish Sea. One would think it could at least have waited until the Irish Season in December when there would be decent entertainment to be had.

A. I give you a whole rebellion to play with, and you claim there was no decent entertainment? There's just no pleasing some characters. And, no, Lord Vaughn, it couldn't have waited till December for the simple reason that the Irish Rising of 1803 occurred in July.

I first stumbled across the Rising of 1803 in 2002, in the midst of a bitter-cold Cambridge winter. At the time, I was an overeager third-year graduate student teaching a class on the Second British Empire (1783–1945), desperately trying to stay one step ahead of my students, all of whom seemed to know more about Ireland and India than I did. As I burned the midnight oil, reading up on rebellions and revolutions, murders and mutinies, I came upon one of Ireland's lesser-known risings: the tale of Robert Emmett and the Irish Rising of 1803. The Irish Rebellion had it all: hidden identities, smoky taverns, dark alleyways, secret negotiations with the French, smuggled explosives. I knew, then and there, that it had to form the backbone of my third book. Admittedly, at that point I still hadn't even finished my first book, and I had no idea when, if ever, I was going to make it all the way to a third, but the Irish Rebellion was just too perfect to miss out on.

Fate appeared to agree. When a good friend got married that spring, the postparty to the rehearsal dinner was held at a bar. As we approached, a wooden sign creaking in the May breeze caught my attention. An oddly familiar picture of a dapper man in white cravat and black frock coat, his hair cut short and combed forward over his forehead was painted on it. The name of the bar, of course, was Robert Emmett's. The rest, as they say, is history.

Q. I have been credibly informed that you have so sunk in your social station as to take a situation in a solicitor's office. I trust this ill-advised foray into employment will not result in any delinquency in the penning of my chronicles.

A. First of all, they're not your chronicles. It's the Pink Carnation series, not the Lord Vaughn Show. One trembles to think what the Lord Vaughn show might entail. No, please, don't tell me.

It is true that I have another life outside the Pink Carnation books, as an associate at a large New York law firm. It all happened in a rather roundabout way. Way back when, during my research year in London, it finally dawned on me that the academic job market is just as bad as everyone says. Since I didn't much fancy the idea of starving in a garret by the light of a single candle—and even decent garrets are pretty hard to come by these days—I fell back on the last refuge of the liberal arts major: law school. One month into law school, I got the call that every fledgling author dreams of: suddenly, I had a book contract and a legal career (and an unwritten dissertation, but I try not to think about that bit). Once I was getting that legal education, it seemed a waste not to put it to use. So here I am, associate by week, novelist by weekend.

Although the two may seem very different, I find that my day job as a lawyer and my weekend job as an author feed into each other nicely. On weekdays, I wake up at seven, put on my suit and pearls, traipse into the office, plunk myself down at a desk, and drink too much coffee. On weekends, I wake up at seven, put on ancient plaid pants and a shirt with holes in the seams, traipse across my living room, plunk myself down at a desk…and drink too much coffee. See?

On a more serious note, having a day job does have an unexpectedly beneficial impact on my writing, even aside from the ability to pay my rent (see garret, above). I've always found that one of the great drawbacks of the writing life is that, while one is purporting to purvey truths about humanity, one doesn't interact much with humanity. Dialogue and characterization become increasingly based upon other authors' fictional worlds rather than the actual ebb and flow of life beyond one's apartment doors. At the workplace, on the other hand, character quirks and overheard bits of dialogue are as plentiful as the coffee splotches on the pantry floor. Gainful employment also tends to increase efficiency. As a lawyer, I know that when something needs to be done, it needs to be done now. "But I'm waiting for my muse!" is never an acceptable answer someone is waiting for a document (which begs the interesting question: Is there a Muse of Legal Writing? And, if so, where has she been hiding all this time?). Since I have a very bad tendency to procrastinate when left to myself for long periods of time, being put through the professional equivalent of boot camp on the weekdays does wonderful things for my production of prose on the weekends.

Q. I find myself in want of a mistress. If one must continue in this series, one expects at the very least to be provided with the basic amenities.

A. My dear Lord Vaughn, I fear you mistake yourself. The proper phrase is "in want of a wife." Trust me. You shan't be in want of one for long. In fact, you may be getting a bit more than you bargained for there!