Anne here, and this morning I did an interview on Zoom for the French Romance Novel Festival — le Festival du Roman Féminin
It will surprise nobody that this year the festival is going virtual, rather than in person, as most festivals and conferences of this sort have had to since CoVid hit. We're all fairly used to Zoom meetings and on-line interviews now, and yet I'd be willing to bet most of us had never used Zoom before 2020.
And though these on-line meetings started as a second-best necessity, I think it's really opened us up to the benefits and innovations are happening that I think will stay when the Covid danger has passed and we're more or less back to normal.
For instance the lovely people who organize le Festival du Roman Féminin have several times invited me to come to their conference, and I would love to go, but traveling from Australia to France is a big time and money commitment — and a very long flight — between 21 and 24 hours sitting on a plane. Thus for various reasons I haven't been able to attend. Yet.
So when they asked me to do a Zoom interview with US Historical romance writers Darlene Marshall and Minerva Spencer (who also writes historical mysteries as S.M. Goodwin) I jumped at it. It was scheduled for 10.30 a.m. my time, and the US writers had their times and the valiant French interviewer was staying up until 1 am to do the interview.
However for me, this morning ended up more of a scramble than a zoom. <g> I'd just stepped out of my shower when an anxious email came through, saying Anne, we've started the interview. It was 8.30 am! Two hours earlier than planned. Yikes!
We had forgotten about the effect of daylight saving — a double effect, in fact, because just as Australia had "fallen back" an hour, people in some parts of the Northern Hemisphere had "sprung forward" and there was now a two hour difference.
I flung on a dress, didn't even brush my hair (which was still damp), had no time to gather up my French translation editions for 'show and tell' and, in dire need of a large mug of industrial strength coffee, I jumped belatedly into the interview.
Here we are; Darlene (top left); me (top right); Minerva (bottom right), and Agnès, our interviewer. (My dog Milly did attempt to photo-bomb us, but she didn't make it into this pic.)
Despite my scrambled start it was a lovely session. I hadn't met the other two writers, but as they described their books and spoke a little bit about their latest books that had been published in France, I realized we had a lot in common, and I've ordered books from both. Agnès, our French interviewer did an excellent job — and she'll be translating everything we said for the French speakers in the festival audience — no small feat!
As well as talking about our own books, we talked a little about how we thought the romance market had weathered the 2020 CoVid year, and Darlene made the point that she thought historical romance had done relatively well, that it seemed as though a lot of people were turning to historical romance rather than contemporary romances, perhaps as an escape from current day stresses.
Then we talked about how some of that "conversion" to historical romance was a result of the huge popularity of the Netflix Bridgerton series, and the flow-on effect that happened after readers had devoured all of Julia Quinn's books and were looking for more historical romances to enjoy.
And naturally that led to a brief discussion of the shock announcement that the handsome male lead of Bridgerton, Regé-Jean Page, would not be appearing in season 2.
We then talked a little about how it's a feature of most romance series that each book deals with a different couple, but that's not necessarily how TV works. The Virgin River series — books and TV series— was another example we discussed.
The appearance of previous characters in a series appearing in "future" books threw up some interesting discussion — some readers love it when characters from a previous book appear in the current book, but apparently a lot of readers hate it. I suppose it depends on how it's handled. I'd love to know what people here think.
So that was my morning. I've only touched a little on what we discussed -- there was much more, and if you can attend the virtual French festival, I'm sure you'd enjoy it. I know Wench Nicola Cornick has been a guest there in the past. I'm not sure about the other wenches. But I do know we'd all love to go in person one day. (Maybe combine it with a Wench writing retreat and follow it up with a UK reader meet-up — wouldn't that be fun?)
So what about you — Do you like it or loathe it when characters from previous books appear in a 'current' book? And what about TV adaptations of romance novels — do you have any favorites? Or do you prefer the books? And lastly, has on-line technology given you an escape during Lockdown and enhanced your ability to experience events you might not otherwise have attended?