Regency romance queen Stephanie Laurens has been in the top 100 Romance of the Year lists many times over. She is one of the most successful and popular romance novelists of all time, with over 80 works of historical romance, including 40 New York Times bestsellers.

Hi there, I'm your host Jenny Wheeler, and on Binge Reading today Stephanie talks about switching from cancer research to romance and the changing tastes of romance readers.

As usual, we've got free books to give away. This week it’s a range of historic adventures. Check them out here: https://claims.prolificworks.com/gg/GBTyjjv9LFfGQ1X5JI9vA

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Links for this episode: 

The Legend of Nimway Hall:

http://www.stephanielaurens.com/series/the-legend-of-nimway-hall/

Devon Monk: https://www.devonmonk.com/

Sam Quinn series: https://www.fantasticfiction.com/k/seana-kelly/sam-quinn/

Faith Hunter:  http://www.faithhunter.net/wp/

CS Harris:  Sebastian St Cyr series  https://csharris.net/sebastian.php

Where to find Stephanie Laurens:

Website: http://www.stephanielaurens.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorStephanieLaurens

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9241.Stephanie_Laurens

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/stephanie-laurens

What follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for word but pretty close to it, with links to the show notes in The Joys of Binge Reading.com for important mentions.

But now, here’s Stephanie.

Introducing Stephanie Laurens

Jenny Wheeler: Hello there, Stephanie and welcome to the show. It's great to have you with us.

Stephanie Laurens Romance Bestseller

Stephanie Laurens: Thank you. It's lovely to be here.

Jenny Wheeler: I am in awe or of having the chance to talk to you because you are one of the legends of romance publishing.

You have been working since the early 90’s, you’ve got more than 80 books now published and many accolades including landing in the top 100 Romance of the Year many times. You have an international army of fans, so tell me about how you got into this career. Give us a little bit of a helicopter view of all of those years.

Stephanie Laurens: Okay. I got into writing romances because I literally ran out of Regency romances to read. At that time, back in the late 80’s, it was 1989, I used to read Regency romances because I was working as a scientist and writing scientific grants and reviewing scientific grants and papers and stuff like that. It was all very, very dry as you can imagine, so I liked to be able to read at night. After I put the kids to sleep, I would read.

At that time in Australia there were only two Regency romances brought in a month by Mills & Boon and that was nowhere near enough. I had already gone through a lot of the libraries and what Regency romances they stocked, and so in order to keep myself occupied I started writing one. I assumed that I would never get to the end because you know how you start projects. I always have projects lying around for literally years, incomplete.

A hard beginning in Regency romance

But, lo and behold, I found that because I wanted to find out what happened I got to the end of the book, so I actually wrote a book. I read it over again and I thought, this is not bad, and so I started to write around, to find out where to send it. It was my mother who told me, send it here.