Jennifer Donnelly Visits the Lair!

Interview by Kirsten Scott

Friends, I am just tickled to welcome the amazingly talented Jennifer Donnelly to the Lair! Jennifer’s first novel, The Tea Rose, an epic historical novel set in London and New York in the late 19th century, was called “exquisite” by Booklist, “so much fun” by the Washington Post, a “guilty pleasure” by People and was named a Top Pick by the Romantic Times. Her second novel, A Northern Light, won the Carnegie Medal, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Borders Original Voices Award, and was named a Printz Honor book. Jennifer is currently celebrating the release of The Winter Rose, a sequel to The Tea Rose, and a book we should all be watching for on the NYT bestseller list!

So, onto the interview!!

Jennifer, I inhaled...er, read The Tea Rose and can't wait to dive into The Winter Rose, which has just been released in hardcover by Hyperion Books. Can you tell us a little about these books?

I'd love to! Both books are big fat sweeping historicals, very much in the style of books I loved as a kid. Books like A Woman of Substance and The Thornbirds. Books that kept me up all night, reading under the covers with a flashlight. I first read A Woman of Substance when I was thirteen. I found it on my Aunt Grace’s bookshelf, along with about a hundred big fat 70’s blockbusters, and I was blown away. Emma was ladylike, elegant, determined, and tough as nails – a total Edwardian badass. She got knocked down, but she got right back up, put on her black dress and pearls, and proceeded to take over the world.

I loved those books too! They did a few things right in the 70s, didn't they? :-) You obviously take the setting of your novels very seriously, to the point that it becomes a key character in the story. What's your research process, and how in the world do you get all those details right? In particular, I loved all the vernacular you used in The Tea Rose, and the way the different characters truly had different voices. Where on earth did you find that sort of information?

I'm so glad you said that! I really do want things like history and setting to be characters in their own right in my books. My research process is more an art than a science. I read everything I can get my hands on -- big historical surveys of the period to start, then I try to get hold of any and all primary sources. Things like memoirs, oral histories, letters, newspaper articles, studies. Also diaries and photo albums. I prowl museums to view clothing from the time period in which I'm working, household items, and in the case of The Winter Rose -- obstetrical tools from the late 19th century. (Seeing them made me very happy I live in the 21st!) I also immerse myself as much as possible in the setting. Obviously I can't go back to 19th century London, but I could go back to the docklands, and I could spend a great deal of time in East London, at markets, at pubs, at caffs -- listening to the language of East Enders, absorbing the inflections, the vernacular. Taking in the faces, the gestures, the body language. Just generally being a big sponge -- soaking up sounds and sights and smells. The research goes on before I start writing, and during and even after -- during the fact checking and copyediting stages. It informs my work, and it inspires it. There's nothing more exciting than history to me. I totally groove to it.

I think you'll find a lot of people around here who feel the same way! Now, the Romance Bandits write in lots of different romance sub-genres -- historical, contemporary, paranormal, suspense, young adult -- but we're united in our love of romance and a happily ever after. The Tea Rose is a huge historical epic, but at its core it is very much a love story. Are you a romantic at heart? Do you imagine your hero and heroine find their HEA?

Fiona and Joe did in The Tea Rose, and I hope that Sid and India do in The Winter Rose. I myself am very much a romantic at heart. But a nitty-gritty, mean streets kind of romantic. I don't believe love is all hearts and flowers and gloopy rhymes. I believe the HEA takes work and sacrifice and selflessness. Anyone can send you a nice Valentine's Day card -- but will he be there for you when you get your tenth rejection letter from the publisher? When you've been in labour for twenty-odd hours? When the toilet blows up? Will you be there for him in difficult circumstances? That's love, to me. That's the HEA.

I grow a bit faint when I look at the sheer size of your books and imagine the research they require. You obviously had to dedicate a lot of time and energy to your writing without having any guarantee it would see the light of day. Can you tell us a little about your journey to publication? Did you ever consider quitting along the way?

That's funny…my publishers faint, too, when they see the sheer size of my books!

I fell in love with East London -- the inspiration behind my first novel, The Tea Rose, when I was in my twenties. And I started writing the book a few years later. I worked fulltime, so I wrote mornings from 4:30 to 7:00 am, and then I went to work. I wrote on weekends. Instead of taking vacations. I wrote pages upon pages upon pages. Draft upon draft. I worked hard, but it didn’t matter. The story didn’t work. It didn’t flow. It bogged down in description. It meandered. So I ripped up what I had and started again. And again. A year passed. Two. Five. Eight. I watched my friends got ahead in their chosen fields while I cobbled together a living from part time jobs, temp jobs, freelance jobs. I watched others get agents, get editors, get contracts, get published. Frustration set in. A sense of futility. Depression. Despair. But I kept on writing. I knew that nothing and no one could guarantee I’d ever get published, but I myself would guarantee that I didn’t if I stopped.

Eventually I had what I thought was a finished manuscript, so then all I needed was an agent. In my typical fashion, I got a guide to agents and wrote to every single one who sounded nice. Luckily, a good one wrote back -- Simon Lipskar from Writers House. He told me I could write, but said I still had a lot of work to do on things like narrative drive, point of view, and pacing. So I started revising. It took me another year to get the manuscript right. Another year of frustration. Of going back and forth with Simon, page by page. Of tears and doubt and worry. Finally, it was done. Again. It was polished and perfect and I thought we’d sell it immediately. I was so wrong. The manuscript was rejected from every publishing house in New York, and a few outside of it. Simon tried hard to sell it for over a year. And then I got a call. Not The Call, not by a long shot. It was Simon, and he was calling to tell me we he’d tried everything and everywhere and he couldn’t sell it. At least, not yet. We had to take a break. Put it on a shelf.

I was so down, I can’t even describe it. Ten years of my life. All that work. All that sacrifice. Such a labor of love. And no one wanted it. Weeks passed. And then one dreary, cold, gray afteroon, as I was sitting at my desk at Saks Fifth Avenue, writing ad copy, the phone rang. It was Simon. There was excitement in his voice, I could hear it. My heart started thumping. My hands went cold. And sure enough, he said the words I’d been waiting to hear for a decade: “I have an offer for The Tea Rose.” There was an editor a St. Martin’s – a new hire – and she liked it. The offer wasn't riches, not even close. But it didn’t need to be. To me, it was priceless.

That's an incredible story, and so inspiring for anyone striving to reach a seemingly impossible goal. Any last piece of advice you'd like to give to our readers who are aspiring writers themselves?

The most important piece of advice I can give to aspiring writers is this: Keep writing. Don't stop. Don't say the big fat awful NO to yourself. Trust me, the whole world is ready and willing to do that to you. Don't do it to yourself.

Thanks so much for the fabulous interview! Now, I know you're all going to run out and find Jennifer's books and add them to your TBR piles, but you're going to have to put them next in the queue, because they are a bit...ahem...weighty. ;-) So to get you started, we're sending one lucky commenter a copy of either The Tea Rose (if you're new to Jennifer) or The Winter Rose (if you're already a fan!). So, friends and fellow Banditas, say hello to Jennifer!