Sophia James has had a long and successful career as a Harlequin historical author with a remarkable 24 books in print and more coming. Readers of her Regency series love her "haunted and damaged" heroes, and she says she loves writing these "broken men" because they are just so interesting.  But then, love was never meant to be easy.

 

Show Notes Summary

In this interview you'll discover:

How having her wisdom teeth out opened the door to Sophia's first book

Why she loves her haunted and damaged heroes - and heroines

How as an isolated young writer, she found her "tribe"

Why she loves the "safety net" of being a Harlequin author

How having an artist husband has helped her work

The city she loves more than any other - and no its not Regency London

 

Sophia can be found at sophiajames.co

On Facebook  @sophiajamesauthor

For more details, a full transcript follows:  Note - this is a "close as" rendering of our full conversation with links to key points.

And now here’s Sophia.

Jenny: Hello there Sophia, and welcome to the show. It’s great to have you with us.

Sophia: Thanks, Jenny. It's lovely to be here.

Jenny:  You’ve had an outstanding career as a romance writer. You've said you were first attracted to romance as a teen reading Georgette Heyer on your grandmother's porch at the beach. Possibly a purloined copy from your grandmother's library . . . .What was it that encouraged you to take the next step and try your hand at writing romance – that Once Upon A Time moment when you decided "I can do this"

Sophia: Well, it was as you say, I did love reading Georgette Heyer on my grandmother's porch with my twin sister, but then when I was about 23 or 24 I went to teach English in Spain, at Bilbao on the northern coast in Basque area.

I was teaching English in a little school. I had two very sore wisdom teeth and I had to have

Bilbao, Spain

them out.  So I was resting at home after having these wisdom teeth out and a friend from the international school - there was an international school that I would much rather have been teaching at - she came along with a book by a writer called Kathleen E Woodiwiss - a book Shanna -  which I'd always loved - and she knew I liked historicals and she'd also brought me a whole lot of Mills and Boon historicals.

I was home for about three days from school - which was lovely - reading these books and I thought 'why don't I try and do this?' I'd always loved writing and I'd done a degree in English and history and that was my moment.  I did start virtually straight away. I used to write when I got home from school - so yes, that was my "moment", really.

Jenny: I hate to date this was by computer or typewriter or by hand?

Sophia: Oh it was by hand. I was travelling so I didn't have a computer or anything else, and I've always written by hand.  Until quite recently really when I changed to using a computer.  But I  find hand is a good way to get things down.  In fact even now I still write a lot by hand.  I might have gone up to bed to read or something and I have some ideas and I'll write them down in notebooks and then transcribe them later.

Jenny: Oh great. . .  and was it Georgette Heyer that attracted you to the Regency period?

Sophia: Yes it probably was because I read all her books always..  You mentioned that I might have got a book of my grandmother's but I haven't got any of her books which I really regretted in later years.

They all went to the Raglan library and later I tried to get them back but never could  They were all burgundy coloured leather covered first editions - beautiful books.

I guess when you are reading a lot of Regency you pick up the conventions of the period. I like the manners of that period. I like the fact that it feels very distant from our own time. There are just a whole of things in it that make a romance viable.

Jenny: Yes I can see that - and when you break the conventions...