Today’s guest author, Madeline Hunter, shares her view on coloring within the lines (or not!)… 

About four years ago I fulfilled a life-long dream when I took my family on a Mediterranean cruise. I don’t remember when I first fixated on a vacation like that, but it was right up at the top of things I wanted to do before I died. So I saved my pennies and finally I sprang for the big splurge.

While on the cruise, we toured the Amalfi Coast south of Naples, then visited the Roman ruins of Pompeii. The drive along the coast was worth the cost of the trip in itself.

The road snakes along the hillside, high above the sea. The drop to the sea is straight down in many places, and an incredibly steep slope in others. Towns and villages cling to this land, hanging over the deep blue water. Inlets and bays abound that are like fjords. It is so steep, so awesome, that my husband who suffers from dizziness at heights could not look out the coach window.

Punctuating this dramatic landscape, perched on fingers of land overlooking the sea, are medieval watchtowers, built when the Normans controlled this land. As we approached one I had a fantasy of a woman standing at the window, looking out. She was a lovely, unusual woman with long red hair, someone out of place in southern Italy and very Celtic in appearance.

That was the first seed of LESSONS OF DESIRE. That tower and that coast and that woman. No plot, no names, just images. I knew that one day I would write a book that used this setting.

Even though the rules said I should not.

Now, we all know that there are no rules when it comes to romance novels except that the story end happily. Actually, the “official” RWA definition speaks of the story ending optimistically, I believe, which even leaves a bit of leeway on the happy part.

So, no rules. None that are written and even fewer that are admitted. And yet rules have a way of taking hold anyway. No one ever announces them. No editors carve them in stone. Readers do not savage writers who disobey. The rules just show up, get passed around, and put limits on what writers are allowed to do.

Normally it is the “market” that is blamed. The “market” does not allow this or that. The “market” isn’t good for stories with widows, it is said. The “market” abhors flashbacks. The “market” will not accept the death of a child. The “market” will not accept infidelity or adultery.

I began writing not knowing any of the rules. I joke that I was out in the wilderness when I wrote my first novels, oblivious to anything about the “market”. So I broke a lot of rules. I opened one book during the year of the Black Death and, yes, a youth died in chapter two. The hero expected to die as well. No, he didn’t die. I did not need a rule to tell me not to kill off the hero.

Even after I left the wilderness of my isolated writing and learned the rules, I sometimes broke them. I had adultery in a book, knowing full well that I would lose some readers over it. It was the book that had to be written for those characters, however.

Which brings us back to the reason I was not supposed to use that spectacular setting of the Amalfi coast. One of the rules that has always surprised me is the one that says you can’t set an historical romance outside of Great Britain.

Well, you can, but it won’t sell. Well, it will sell, just not as strongly as your other books. Editors warn writers about this. Some forbid writers from moving the characters to another country even for a chapter.

I first heard about this rule while I was revising a story that, you guessed it, took place outside of Great Britain. Great, I thought. Here I am, almost done with this story, and NOW you tell me.

My editor had not clued me in. She had read the synopsis and approved it. Another writer gave me the news. Leave England, she warned, and your sales are doomed.

Too late. The book was published with most of it taking place in Brittany, not Britain. Titled THE PROTECTOR, it has become one of my best selling titles.

That was because it was a medieval romance, another writer explained. For Georgian and Regency, you better stay in England.

Only I had an idea for a story that began in France. A really compelling idea. It would be my first book in this new time period and I really wanted it to do well. Maybe I could change the setting to Scotland or something. Maybe. . .

I wrote the book and set the first third in France. It was my first one in THE SEDUCER series. It made the New York Times list and it too is among my books with the highest number of sales.

Well, another writer said, France is different. Sometimes you can get away with France. Just don’t go farther afield. Don’t go to, say, Italy. Books set in Italy bomb.

Except that I had an idea for a story that . . .  well, you know the rest.

So here I am, waiting to learn the results of the first week of sales for LESSONS OF DESIRE. Will the market figure out that a good chunk of it takes place on the Amalfi coast? Will readers avoid it if they do a bit of skimming in the store and realize it isn’t all in England? It begins there and the last third takes place there. The main characters are very English. But the rule says I wasn’t supposed to go there. Italy, the common wisdom insists, is outside the “market’s” comfort zone.

The “market” means readers. Readers like you. Do you insist that all your stories stay in England or Scotland for their entirety? The rule did not appear out of thin air, after all. It is the result of many books that had disappointing sales that were attributed to the setting not being England. So maybe the rule is a good one. Maybe the market does penalize those stories set elsewhere.

Maybe up until now I have just lucked out.

What do you think?

With LESSONS OF DESIRE I finally exorcised the image of that woman with long red hair at the window. And I used the tower. It plays a very special role in the book.