The Lady Pursues

Acknowlegments

All I wanted for Christmas was to finish this story and I got my wish!

First and foremost, I want to thank my writing companions. They know who they are, but I can't help naming them...

@MelissaThompson161 and @KittyBeaver have been with me from start to finish, holding my hand and listening to my many insecure ramblings throughout this process, from when I started with nobody reading to celebrating with me when I hit 200K and won my Watty, acting as if they knew it all along. Even if they did, I sure didn't! 

(They also have books here which you need to read!)

I never thought this story would resonate with so many people! When I started it, I was scared to death, looking at all the research involved in writing something in a time so far removed from my own. I've always loved historical romance -- the difficulty of finding love when marriage was a transaction, the manners that seem both romantically refined and an absolute obstacle to romance, the challenge of getting a couple together when they could rarely be in the same room! Basically, it was all too tempting to play with!

I'd also like to thank my sister, Nikki, for having me read this aloud to her as I went (which helped me catch many, though not all, typos) and suffering through my attempts at all the character voices and accents. Sometime I flirt with the idea of recording a chapter and, if I did, you can blame her for encouraging me by telling me she liked my terrible performances.

I also want to thank Amber and Margaret who, though they don't read in my genre, were gracious enough to buck me up when I needed it and give me encouragement to get to the end. 

I also want to thank @flights_of_fantasy for her invaluable help in the early chapters, correcting little historical inaccuracies I would never have noticed and for her wonderful resource book, Reading the Regency, which you can find here on Wattpad. She is a brilliant historian and shared her knowledge freely.

I'd also like to thank many historical writers for posting blogs and sharing their resources, no doubt gained from constant study of the times. I have bookmarked so many entries and learned so much.

I'd also like to thank Etymology Online for existing. I have it bookmarked in my phone and have used it to look up so many random words and phrases.

I want to thank my characters for jumping off the screen and becoming so real to me that writing a scene with them, even when they all crowd into a chapter (OMG, those group scenes!), it feels like reuniting with old friends.

Last but certainly not least, I want to thank my readers. You guys have been loving and patient throughout all my stops and starts, rooted for my characters, and made this entire experience so positive and heartening that I can't wait to start the next book and have you all at my side again. You have turned this process from being a solitary exercise rooted in self-doubt to being a beautiful process that makes me eager to post, to know what you have to say, to see which lines make you laugh or cry. Your words, your likes, your emojis... they make me feel like my writing has potential and and pathos and humor. You have reminded me why I love to write and you keep me writing!

Thank you for staying with me throughout this long journey to a happy ending. Writing this publicly, between your lovely comments and likes and winning a Watty, has been such a rewarding experience. Feel free to check out the next book in this series, The Lady In Disguise, if you have any curiosity about what Emilia was up to before her sudden appearance in Scotland and why Pru seems to know all about it, but refuses to tell.

And finally... If you all have any burning questions about this story, this process, and lil' old me, then I invite you to ask.

Now for a couple FAQs...

What do you do besides write?

A few of you have asked about my "day job" which is singing (senior homes and parties, nothing famous or glamorous, but it's a fun line of work.)  My comfort zone is jazz standards or French chansons from the 40s-50s.

What gave you the idea for The Lady Pursues? 

I really felt like there weren't enough stories about a lady going after her man. There are a lot of books where the heroine pines (and Charity is very guilty of pining) but it's often more passive. Not to denigrate other stories. I love a good unrequited-to-requited crush story as much as the next girl, but I just hadn't seen many where the heroines were shameless little flirts like Charity. The more I thought about it, the more the story took shape. I actually wrote a very sloppy contemporary romance with this premise (a very different story to how TLP turned out and it will never see the light of day), but it didn't really work.

And why Regency?

That contemporary attempt above just felt like an odd fit in our time and much more suited to the Regency era. The heightened emotions of it all seemed less strange in a more earnest time. As for why that era, I've always been a Jane Austen fan and re-read certain ones every year, at least. Outside of that, most of the romances I come back to for comfort reads have been Regency era. I love the hair, the dresses, and the language! There's also the romanticism of it. It's a peaceful time (even with the Napoleonic wars, English daily life at the time was not impacted the way it would be in future wars) and a time of progress, but also pastoral pleasures. It was  time within the Industrial Revolution, but more laid back, if that makes sense.

Are the characters based on you or anyone you know?

Not precisely. I am nowhere near as gutsy as Charity or as clever as Prudence. Though I will say I share more qualities with Ernest -- a love for and fixation on food and a tendency to say the wrong thing. There is a bit of me in all the characters. I'm as nosy as Lady Crewe, an internal complainer like poor Emilia, and Ian's pessimism is my night time persona. LOL. 

There's Charity in me as I'm a people pleaser and sometimes very silly and excitable about things, but she is also based on my sister (who is much braver about love and pursuing it than I am). There's also a bit of Lydia Bennet in her. Not the mean bits, but the naivete and tendency to act without thinking. I always thought Lydia gets a bad rap, considering she is only 15 when the story takes place. There's also a bit of my late cousin. I see her face very often when I write Charity, which is bittersweet. 

Prudence is partly based on my smart and sarcastic bestie since high school and I guess there's a bit of me in her as well -- mostly in her fangirling over certain novelists, playwrights and poets. My only regret about the time period is that Pru doesn't get to experience T.S. Eliot, Hilaire Belloc or Ogden Nash. 

If anyone has any other questions, feel free to comment and I'll be here to answer.

 Lots of love,

Abby