Local historical romance novelist to publish 3 books in the next 12 months

The deadline wasn’t just tight, it was borderline sadistic.

In the months before Anna Harrington’s first series of historical romance novels began their publishing run in 2015, there was barely enough time to breathe, much less work, eat, sleep and generally live life. Each book in “The Secret Life of Scoundrels,” three interconnected novels, had to be written, edited, revised and proofed in six months.

“Yes, that was quite intensive, and I don’t really want to do that again,” she says in a vast understatement.

While getting ready for the release and publicity push for the first novel, “Dukes Are Forever,” she was reading final page proofs for the second, “Along Came a Rogue,” and doing editorial revisions on the third, “How I Married a Marques.” At one point in the swirling process, she discovered that, “I was calling one of the characters by the wrong name.”

All three books were published by Hachette Book Group between November 2015 and April 2016, then her self-published novella in the series, “Once a Scoundrel,” came out in November.

Things haven’t slowed down all that much as she prepares for the February release of her latest novel, “If the Duke Demands.” It will be the first book in another series, which she plans for six books and is titled “Capturing the Carlisles.” The new series will focus on the Carlisle family, who appeared in “How I Married a Marques.”

And, just like her previous series, the books will be coming out in a rush. After “If the Duke Demands,” the second one, “When the Scoundrel Sins,” is set for August, and the third, “As the Devil Dares,” comes in January 2018. Hachette already has purchased the first three, she says.

That may seem like a heavy load – and it is – but rapidly published novels are not unusual in the historical romance genre, she says.

“There are some that are up into the teens for the number of books,” explains Harrington, 46, who came to Chattanooga about seven years ago to run the Developmental Studies program at Chattanooga State Community College. Readers “want the series. They get invested in the characters, the plots, the families… they want that many books.”

Her novels – which also have been published throughout much of Europe and in Japan – have received excellent reviews from mainstream critics. In a starred review for “A Duke is Forever,” Publishers Weekly wrote, “Harrington’s emotionally gripping Regency-era debut, which launches the Secret Life of Scoundrels series, is ripe with drama and sizzling romance… This new author is definitely one to watch.” When reviewing “Along Came a Rogue,” Romantic Times said, “4 stars! Newcomer Harrington creates fast-paced, lively romances with unconventional characters and plot.”

Michele Bidelspach, Harrington’s editor at Hachette, says that, when she first read the author’s writing, she was struck by “the vividness of her voice – how active and alive the story felt.”

“She also has a witty sense of humor that shines through her writing; it drew me in right away,” Bidelspach says.

All of Harrington’s novels are set – or will be set – in the Regency period of England, which ran from about 1810 until 1820, a period familiar to Harrington, whose has a Ph.D. in composition and rhetoric from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Currently, her fulltime job is teaching Humanities at Chattanooga State, a subject that covers, among other things, art, music, architecture, history, science and literature, all of which have given her insight into the era.

“A lot of the history is there in my memory,” she says. “I’ve studied this time period and know the most about it,” but then adds, “Thank God for the internet.”

And God forbid you botch a well-known fact about the time period, she says. Readers don’t take that lightly and will call her out. But she admits that, as a reader, she does the same thing. “I’m bad about this, too,” she says.

She doesn’t sweat tiny mistakes – “if someone gets the wrong terminology for a carriage part” – but does get “irritated” when a writer doesn’t know “basic things they should know.” For instance, writing about someone having a Christmas celebration. “They didn’t celebrate Christmas in the Regency,” she says.

They didn’t wear underwear; they didn’t have those super-tight corsets that many associate with the 1800s; there were no trains or steamboats. Nor did brides wear white, which didn’t happen until Queen Victoria wore the color when she got married in 1840.

Emotional resonance is at the heart of Regency romance fiction, Bidelspach says, and Harrington “really excels at this It makes her characters come alive, feel like real people, and it makes the endings of her books incredibly satisfying.

“She also has a nice way of twisting a story halfway through so that it’s feels almost new again. And sometimes I don’t see those twists coming – and I love that.

“But in the end, it all comes down to the romance between the hero and the heroine. Anna has a strong sense of how to play with the emotional conflict to keep the hero and heroine apart so that the romantic and sexual tension between them always remains high and believable. But she also gives you those wonderful moments of vulnerability and love so that you can see they’re destined to be together. So as a reader you’re actively rooting for their happy ending,” she says.

Harrington also has contracted with St. Martin’s Press as one of five authors writing a novella for an anthology focused on marriages in the Scottish Highlands during the Regency period. Her agent called her about 4 p.m. on a Tuesday to ask if she’d like to participate in the book and she had the novella’s plot summary done by 6 p.m., she recalls.

Single without children – “I can’t see how I could write with kids and a husband” – she hopes one day to be able to write fulltime, but she won’t put a timeframe on when that will happen “because part of me doesn’t want to jinx it.” It’s “very, very rare” for an author to be able to drop their day job and focus only on writing, she says.

“I’m so very, very fortunate and I know it,” she says. “It’s going along like a dream.”

Contact Shawn Ryan at sryan@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6327.