Duck Chat is busy this week! Welcome!

Mary Balogh’s latest book, First Comes Marriage, is in bookstores this week.  It’s the second book in her Huxtable series, and the next three books, Then Comes Seduction, At Last Comes Love, and Seducing an Angel, will be released each month for the next three months.  Other than that, the only thing else that needs to be said — because who needs an introduction to Mary Balogh?? — is Mary has offered a copy of First Comes Marriage to one lucky reader today. So read on for a nice chat with Mary and be sure to leave a comment!

Duck Chat: First thing, Mary, I have to compliment you on your lovely web site. It’s one of the most user-friendly and informative author sites I’ve ever been to. Your bio is chockful of wonderful tidbits about you and your family, you give an always-sought-after series list, and you use your News page to its fullest potential, just to name a few highlights. Whoever maintains your site is worth their weight in gold! Did you have to go through numerous drafts or were you lucky on the first or second time out?

Mary Balogh: My friend (and former student) Gayle Knutson was the first to offer her services when it became obvious to me way back that I needed a web site. I was very happy with the results and have been ever since. She will be delighted that you appreciate her work. She is a busy lady and wears several different hats, including farmer and mother of three young children, but if anyone wants a professionally designed and run new web site, I think she may be persuaded to fit in a few more customers. She can be contacted at kannued@hotmail.com

DC: If you could retire any question and never, ever have it again, what would it be? Feel free to answer it.

MB: The two most asked questions are “How do you pronounce your name?” (answer: to rhyme with Kellogg) and “Where do you get your ideas?” (answer: don’t know). But I don’t think there is any question that makes me want to scream when I hear it yet again. I am just pleased that people want to question me!

DC: I read on your site – yes, I’m still going on about that! – that your very first book, A Masked Deception, was released by the first publisher you submitted it to. That doesn’t happen often nowadays. What goes through your mind when you look back on that now?

MB: You know how when wonderful things happen to other people (like winning 50 million dollars on the lottery) we always grumble to ourselves that good things always happen to OTHER people? I am not one of those grumblers. I describe on my web site how I became published by doing simply EVERYTHING the wrong way because I was such a greenhorn and did not know any better. I always feel apologetic when I tell other writers how I did it—but I have never been sorry that it happened to me. Goodness, I could still be trying to get that first book accepted.

DC: I’ve heard writers often say their stories take them in surprising directions or dialogue flows from some unknown place. Is it the same with you? Do your characters surprise you sometimes?

MB: Not sometimes. Almost always. I create them and get them moving and speaking, and then they say thank you very much and take over. It’s the reason why I never bother to sweat over outlines or synopses or any of these other horrors many editors try to insist upon. Invariably a book turns out quite different from what I expected when I started it. Often I have almost finished a book before I get what I call the eureka moment—that moment when I realize what the point of the whole book is. Then I have to go back and do some tweaking so that everything falls together into a seamless whole. Well, that’s the hope anyway.

DC: What’s the most surprising change in the writing/romance industry in the last 20 plus years since that first book was published?

MB: I think the way everything has contracted. Fewer publishers, fewer distributors, fewer markets. It’s quite scary, especially with the present economic downturn. How many people are going to continue to be willing to spend their disposable income (if there is any) on books? More surprising than any of this, though, is that I have survived all the ups and downs for more than twenty years and am still going strong. As a writer I think you just have to keep doing what you do and what is within your control and hope for the best with everything else.

DC: Do you ever argue with your characters while you’re writing? How often do you let them have their way?

MB: Yes, I do—argue with them, that is. I always either have my own way or compromise. There are minor characters who will try to take over, and if they absolutely refuse to be cut down to size, I make a deal with them. The most notable example of this is a certain family of six brothers and sisters by the name of Bedwyn who were created as a snooty, aristocratic lot to give my heroine a rough time in A Summer to Remember. They came bursting to life on the page and kept trying to take over. I literally had to delete whole chapters in which they were taking front stage and pushing the hero and heroine into the dim distant background. Eventually I agreed to write a separate book for each of them if they would behave themselves in that one. They really, really wanted that to happen, because when I pitched the idea to my editor (I was in the middle of a contract at the time) she got back to me the very next day and offered a six-book contract. And so the Slightly series was born.

DC: Would you tell our readers a little about your Huxtable series?

MB: I had written six Bedwyn books and four Simply books with linked characters, and those ten had been preceded by One Night for Love and A Summer to Remember. I really loved (still do!) all of those characters, but it was time to break away, to write something wholly different in which not a single one of them poked even as much as a nose onto a page. So I created the Huxtables. Four of them—three sisters and their young brother—live in a small cottage in a quiet English village at the start, but things are about to change drastically. They are about to be forced into the world of the ton. Stephen, the brother, has unexpectedly inherited an earldom. The fifth character is their second cousin, whom they have never met. He is significant because he only just missed inheriting the earldom himself, and it is not at all clear in the first four books if he resents this fact or not. His book will, of course, be last. The first, First Comes Marriage, is the story of Vanessa, the widowed middle sister, and Viscount Lyngate, who is the reluctant messenger of good news to Stephen. Then Comes Seduction, Katherine’s story, is second and will be out at the end of March. At Last Comes Love, Margaret’s story, is third and will be out at the end of April. Those three will be mass market paperbacks. Stephen’s story, Seducing an Angel, will be out in hardcover at the end of May. All of the books have had wonderful reviews so far.

A special treat:  an excerpt from First Comes Marriage:

Her father-in-law had entered the assembly rooms, looking important in his genial way, his chest thrust out with pride, his palms rubbing together, his complexion ruddy with pleasure. Behind him were two gentlemen, and there was no doubting who they were. There were very rarely any strangers in Throckbridge. Of the few there had been in living memory, none–not a single one–had ever attended a dance at the assembly rooms and precious few had ever been to the annual summer ball at Rundle Park.
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These two were strangers–and they were at the assembly.
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And one of them, of course, was a viscount.
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The one who stepped into the room first behind Sir Humphrey was of medium height and build, though there was perhaps a suggestion of portliness about his middle. He had brown hair that was short and neatly combed, and a face that was saved from ordinariness by the open, pleasing amiability with which he observed the scene about him. He looked as if he were genuinely glad to be here. He was conservatively dressed in a dark blue coat with gray breeches and white linen. While probably past the age of twenty-five, he certainly still qualified for the epithet young.
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Louisa plied her fan and sighed audibly. So did a number of the other ladies present.
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But Vanessa’s eyes had moved to the other gentleman, and she knew immediately that it was he who had provoked the sigh. She did not participate in it. Her mouth had turned suddenly dry, and for a few timeless moments she lost all awareness of her surroundings.
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He was about the same age as the other gentleman, but there all similarities ended. He was tall and slim without being in any way thin. Indeed, his shoulders and chest were solidly built while his waist and hips were slender. His legs were long and muscled in all the right places. He had very dark hair, almost black, in fact, and it was thick and shining and cut expertly to look both tidy and disheveled at the same time. His face was bronzed and classically handsome with an aquiline nose, well-defined cheekbones, and the hint of a cleft in his chin. He had a firmly set mouth. He looked slightly foreign, as if perhaps he had some Italian or Spanish blood.
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He looked gorgeous.
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He looked perfect.
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She might have fallen headlong in love with him, along with at least half the other ladies present, if she had not noticed something else about him. Two things, in fact.
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He looked insufferably arrogant.
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And he looked bored.
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His eyelids were half drooped over his eyes. He held a quizzing glass in his hand, though he did not raise it to his eye. He looked about the room as if he could not quite believe the shabbiness of his surroundings.
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There was not even the faintest suggestion of a smile on his lips. Instead, there was a hint of disdain as if he could not wait to get back downstairs to his room. Or, better yet, far away from Throckbridge.
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He looked as if this were the last place on earth he wanted to be.
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And so she did not fall in love with him, magnificent and godlike as he undoubtedly was to the eyes. He had stepped into her world, into the world of her family and friends, uninvited, and found it inferior and undesirable. How dared he! Instead of brightening her evening, as the presence of any stranger ought to have done–especially a handsome gentleman–he was actually threatening to spoil it.
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For everyone, of course, would fawn over him. No one would behave naturally. No one would relax and enjoy the dancing. And no one would talk of anyone else but him for days–or more likely weeks–to come.
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As if some god had favored them by dropping into their midst.
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And yet it seemed clear to her that he despised them all–or that at the very least he found them all a colossal bore.
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She wished he had come tomorrow–or not at all.
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He was dressed all in black and white, a fashion she had heard was all the crack in London. When she had heard it, she had thought how very dull, how very unattractive.
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She had been wrong, of course.
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He looked sleek, elegant, and perfect.
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He looked like every woman’s ideal of a romantic hero. Like that Adonis they all dreamed of, especially on St. Valentine’s Day, come to sweep them off their feet and onto his prancing white courser and away to a happily-forever-after in his castle in the clouds–white, fluffy ones, not damp, gray, English ones.
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But Vanessa deeply resented him. If he despised them and their offered entertainment so much, he could at least have had the decency to look like a gargoyle.
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She heard the echo of the sigh that had wafted about the assembly rooms like a breeze and fervently hoped she had not shared in it.
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“Which one do you suppose is Viscount Lyngate?” Louisa asked in a whisper–necessary in the hush that had fallen over the room–as she leaned closer to Vanessa’s right ear.
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“The handsome one, without a doubt,” Vanessa said. “I would wager on it.”
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“Ah,” Louisa said, regret in her voice. “I think so too. He is impossibly gorgeous even if he is not blond, but he does not look as if he would be bowled over by my charms, does he?”
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No, he certainly did not. Or by anyone else’s from this humble, obscure corner of the world. His whole bearing suggested a man with an enormous sense of his own consequence. He was probably only ever bowled over by his own charms.
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What on earth was he doing in Throckbridge? Had he taken a wrong turn somewhere?
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The gentlemen did not remain long in the doorway. Sir Humphrey led them about, a broad smile of satisfaction on his face as if he were solely responsible for bringing them to the village on this of all days. He presented them to almost everyone present, beginning with Mrs. Hardy at the pianoforte, Jamie Latimer on the flute, and Mr. Rigg on the violin. Soon after, the gentlemen were bowing to Margaret and Katherine. And a few moments after that, they were nodding to Stephen and Melinda and Henrietta Dew, Vanessa’s sister-in-law, and the group of other very young people gathered with them.
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“I do think everyone ought to start talking again in more than whispers,” Vanessa whispered.
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The shorter gentleman exchanged a few words with everyone, she noticed. And he smiled and looked interested. The other gentleman–undoubtedly Viscount Lyngate–remained virtually silent and totally intimidated everyone. Vanessa suspected that it was quite deliberate. His eyebrows rose when he was introduced to Stephen, giving him a look of great aristocratic hauteur.
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And of course Melinda was giggling.
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“Why is he here?” Louisa asked, still in a whisper. “In Throckbridge, that is. Did Sir Humphrey say?”
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“They told him they were here on business,” Vanessa said. “They must not have explained what it was or Father-in-law would not have been able to resist telling us.”
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“Business?” Louisa sounded both puzzled and amazed. “In Throckbridge? Whatever can it be?”
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Vanessa had, of course, been wondering the same thing ever since Katherine had brought word of his arrival this afternoon. How could she not? How could anyone not? Whatever business could anyone have in a sleepy backwater like Throckbridge, picturesque as it was, especially in the summer, and dear as it was to her?
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What business could a viscount have here?
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And what business did he have looking down upon them all as if they were mere worms beneath his expensive dancing shoes?
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She did not know the answers and perhaps never would. But there was no time for further speculation–not now anyway. Her father-in-law was bringing the two gentlemen their way. Vanessa wished he would not, but she realized that it was inevitable.
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Sir Humphrey smiled jovially from Vanessa to Louisa.
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“And this is the eldest Miss Rotherhyde,” he announced and added, with a lamentable lack of tact and questionable truth, “and the beauty of the family.”
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Louisa hung her head in obvious mortification and curtsied low.
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“And Mrs. Hedley Dew, my dear daughter-in-law,” Sir Humphrey added, beaming at Vanessa. “She was married to my son until his unfortunate demise over a year ago. Viscount Lyngate, ladies, and Mr. Bowen.”
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Vanessa had made the right identification, then. But she had never doubted it. She curtsied.
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“Ma’am,” Mr. Bowen said, bowing and addressing her with a charming but sympathetic smile, “my deepest commiserations.”
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“Thank you,” she said while she was aware of Viscount Lyngate’s eyes fixed on her. She had worn her lavender gown after all as a slight salve to her conscience for deciding to come to enjoy herself–though she knew Hedley would have urged her to wear the green. It was not a vibrant lavender, and it had never fit quite right. She knew it was a dreary garment that did not become her at all.
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She hated herself at that moment for minding, for wishing she had chosen the green after all.
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“I insisted that she come to the assembly tonight,” Sir Humphrey explained. “She is far too young and pretty to mourn forever, as I am sure you would agree, gentlemen. She was good to my boy while he lived, and that is what counts. I have insisted that she must dance too. Has anyone solicited your hand for the first set, Nessie?”
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She had grimaced inwardly at his opening words. She could have sunk through the floor at his last. She knew what he was going to say next.
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“No, Papa,” she said hastily before it occurred to her that she might have lied. “But–”
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“Then I do not doubt one of these gentlemen would be delighted to lead you into the opening set,” he said, rubbing his hands together and beaming at her.
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There was a tiny silence while Vanessa fervently wished she could join poor Hedley in the grave.
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“Perhaps, Mrs. Dew,” the viscount said–his voice was deep and velvet-toned, to add to his other physical perfections, “you would do me the honor?”
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She was being asked to dance with a viscount. With this viscount, this most glorious of male creatures. This arrogant…popinjay. But sometimes her sense of the ridiculous came close to being her undoing. Whatever must the viscount be thinking? She almost laughed aloud and dared not glance Margaret’s way. But mortification quickly outpaced any amusement she was feeling. How absolutely awful that the assembly should begin this way.
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Was it her imagination that the whole room hung upon her response?
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Of course it was not.
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Oh, goodness gracious. She really ought to have insisted upon remaining at home with a book and her memories.
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“Thank you.” She curtsied again and regarded the hand stretched out for hers with some fascination. It was as fine and as well manicured as any lady’s. And yet there was nothing remotely effeminate about it.
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Or about him, of course. Close up, he looked even taller and more solid and powerful than he had from across the room. She could smell a subtle masculine cologne. She could feel the heat of his aura.
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And there was one other thing about his face, she noticed as she set her hand on his and looked up at him. His eyes were not dark, as his hair and complexion had led her to expect, but were of the deepest, clearest blue. They looked back at her keenly from beneath those still-drooped lids.
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His hand was solid and warm.
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Well, she thought as he led her toward the lines that were forming and Mr. Rigg played a nervous little trill on his fiddle, this was an evening she was not going to forget in a hurry. She was to dance with a handsome, proud viscount–and the opening set, no less. She wished she could go home afterward and share the fun with Hedley.
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“Nessie?” Viscount Lyngate said as he settled her in the line of ladies and prepared to depart for the gentlemen’s line opposite. His eyebrows were raised again. He was not addressing her. He was asking a question.
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“Vanessa,” she explained and then wished she had not said it in such an apologetic way.
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She did not hear clearly what he said in response as he stepped into the line opposite her own, but she thought it was “Thank God!”

DC: Has it become more difficult to keep your stories fresh as the years have gone by? Or is it perhaps easier due to your experience?

MB: A bit of both actually. Names are a problem since really there were not that many in use during the Regency period and I like to choose names that sound authentic. And sometimes I find myself getting enthusiastic about a scene I have just planned only to remember that I have done it before. There is bound to be some repetition, of course, but I try to keep my writing as fresh and original as possible. Characters are not that much of a problem. Even when I create a character very similar in some ways to a previously used character, I find that he or she develops very differently as the story goes along. It’s like real life. There are all sorts of people who are similar to one another, but there are no two (even twins!) who are exactly alike.

DC: What is sure to distract you from sitting down and working/writing?

MB: Nothing except perhaps a real emergency. I am a very disciplined writer. I treat writing as a job that I happen to enjoy. I have regular hours and I keep to them almost no matter what. I can remember that when I first quit teaching to write full time, all sorts of people were claiming my time because I was at home all the time and ONLY writing. I got into the habit of calling my writing work. If I said I was writing, very few people were deterred from distracting me. If I said I was working, everyone left me alone.

DC: Is there a previous book in your repertoire you wish you could rewrite?

MB: I can remember that I was delighted when Dell decided to republish my WEB trilogy. I had always thought of those books as among my best. But I had not read them for almost fifteen years—until the proofs for the new editions were ready. I was quite alarmed when I read them again. I really had not realized how much my writing had changed. If I could have stopped publication, I would have. I could, I think, do a much better job of those books now. However, I am not sure I would ever want to rewrite anything from the past. I know many readers hate it when a writer changes an older book in any way. I would rather use my time and energy writing something new.

DC: How do you feel your male or female characters have evolved over your career? Do you think you write them differently now than you did when you started?

MB: Yes, and part of it is conscious, part unconscious. I think my male characters are more sensitive, though I try to keep them realistic. And my female characters are stronger, more assertive. When I was a new writer, my editor gave me a mantra to chant. She used to say with regard to my heroines, “Mary, think unwimpy!” I don’t think my earlier heroines are wimpy, but they might have been without her input. And overall, my books are lighter in tone than they used to be. This is deliberate. Although I know there are readers who still prefer my older, darker books, I cannot bear to write them any longer. I remember once reading a romance by a friend and favorite author of mine and being unable to finish it because I could not bear the pain—even though I knew it would end happily. And I realized that if I can’t bear to read about too much pain, I ought not to be writing it either. I am far happier with the somewhat lighter tone I now employ, though I still try to give my characters and their problems great emotional depth.

DC: Is there a work in progress you can tell us about?

MB: After writing the first four Huxtable books one after the other in order to meet the hectic publication schedule for this spring, I was pretty much played out. I am in the process of taking almost a year off with the exception of two novellas. In April I will be starting on Con’s story—the final Huxtable. He is the broody, mysterious type, whom no one can quite figure out in the previous four books. Does he hate his cousins or love them? They don’t know the answer themselves. I don’t really know the story yet (I never do!), but I can tell already that it is going to pose just the sort of challenge I always most enjoy.

DC: Is there a book that stands out as difficult to write, you thought you’d never get it finished?

MB: A Summer to Remember, which is now one of my favorite books, gave me a great deal of difficulty. To start with, it was intended as a sequel to One Night for Love, but my editor at the time twice turned down the synopsis she had demanded (she was the only editor I have ever had who insisted upon a synopsis before I wrote a book). She just didn’t like the heroine, Lauren, in the previous book and didn’t want her story at all. I had to wait for another editor before I could get back to the book. And then I wrote it completely and hated it and scrapped it and wrote something quite different. And then the Bedwyns entered the picture and tried their darnedest to take over. Despite it all, I DO think it is one of my best.

DC: And, conversely, what is that one book that was a dream to write?

MB: Combination dream and nightmare. After writing The Ideal Wife, I was consumed by the bit of a story that came out about a minor character and I was desperate to write his story. I dreamed of it at night and lived it almost constantly in my head by day. I couldn’t NOT write it. But I was writing traditional Regencies at the time, which were meant to be fairly light comedies of manners. And the heroine of this book was going to have to be a working prostitute. At a writers’ convention I sounded out the idea on a few writer friends of mine and they were all quite emphatic in telling me to forget it. In the end I sat down and wrote the book—it took me two weeks—and then stuck it up on a shelf for two years because I was convinced it was unpublishable. Finally I sent it in and waited and waited for a verdict. I phoned to ask about it eventually, and was told that it was in copyediting! It was A Precious Jewel—and it is to be republished in December by Dell. Readers often name it as among their favorites of my books.

DC: What advice would you give to your younger self?

MB: Nothing whatsoever. There is absolutely no point in wishing we could go back and do things differently. All the things I HAVE done in life, both good and bad, have together brought me to the place I am today. And really there is no other place I would rather be. I can use my past to help me today and in the future, but the past itself is beyond help. Let it go.

DC: Is there a genre you haven’t tackled but would like to try?

MB: No.

Lightning Round:
– dark or milk chocolate?  Dark
– smooth or chunky peanut butter?  Neither
– heels or flats?  Regrettably, flats.
– coffee or tea?  Coffee in the morning, tea for the rest of the day. And I like to have my cake AND eat it!
– summer or winter?  Oh, SUMMER, please!!!
– mountains or beach?  Beach
– mustard or mayonnaise?  Mayo
– flowers or candy?  Candy
– pockets or purse?  Pockets (but where can you find them on women’s clothes!)
– Pepsi or Coke?  Oh, neither, thank you
– ebook or print?  Ebook

And some more fun:

1. What is your favorite word?  Serendipity

2. What is your least favorite word?  Amazing! (so overused these days)

3. What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?  Candles, incense, soft music

4. What turns you off creatively, spiritually or emotionally?  Dogmatic people who have all the answers

5. What sound or noise do you love?  The wind outside the house at night (provided I am inside and under the covers)

6. What sound or noise do you hate?  An alarm clock

7. What is your favorite curse word?  What’s that? Do I KNOW any? Butter doesn’t melt in my mouth either.

8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?  Singing (opera)

9. What profession would you not like to do?  Building skyscrapers

10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?  “What took you so long?” Because I was at least 120 with all my faculties intact and a perfectly functioning brain when I fell asleep one night and didn’t wake up.

Thank you so much, Mary! And thank you for sending a copy of First Comes Marriage to one of our readers.