As we do every summer, my son and I are in Minnesota for two weeks visiting relatives and he’s doing sailing school (I almost wrote ‘saline’ school, which would be quite a different thing entirely, wouldn’t it?).

We return home tomorrow, but this morning, my blond (natch!) aunt took me to the local Y for yoga. And introduced me to one of her yoga buddies, who is also an author. She asked me what I wrote, and I told her “historical romance.”
And she then followed up with what people usually ask (when they don’t pop the dreaded bodice ripper question), which is, “Oh, so I guess you’ve done a lot of research.”
“Nope,” I answered.
She proceeded to ask me about the period I wrote in, and I sketched out the details–the dates, why it was a fascinating period, that Queen V. arrived about 17 years later, and so on.
And I realized, as I was talking, that I had gotten so much of my history from romance books that I didn’t *need* to do too much research. I do, of course, as all of us do, because I love history and delving into books that described how people lived.
(Yes, a caveat: I have been wildly historically inaccurate in certain things I’ve written, things that could have been cleared up with research. But this is not, for once, about my failings, but about my triumphs).
It felt kinda cool to be an ‘expert’ on something, even in the few minutes before heading into the class for downward dog and stuff. I don’t usually think I know a lot about anything, except for books and music, so it was neat to talk authoritatively about a different subject.
And, meanwhile, I am writing a book set in Scotland during the Regency period, so I am doing some research on that, since neither Heyer nor Cartland covered the area in their writings.
Megan