In which readers are asking

Continuing with reader questions, Reader Kim posted the following:

1. Can you tell us a little about your writing process? How much time do you devote to research and how long does it take you to actually write the novel?
2. Was it different writing for Julia & Nicholas as a married couple?
3. While Portia and Plum appear in Dark Road, can you tell us which March siblings figure into Book 5?
Thank you.

The process varies from book to book. I used to be completely rigid about doing all of the research before I began the first draft, and then, with Dark Road to Darjeeling, that simple wasn’t possible. I had to learn how to write a draft while I was researching. And in the course of the research for that book, I read Rumer Godden’s memoirs and realized she always did the research last! It seemed absolutely crazy, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. If you research first, you run the risk of putting in too much information. And goodness knows you read FAR more than you really have to. If you wait until the skeleton of the book is constructed, you know precisely what information you’re lacking, and it takes a fraction of the time to find it. I can’t give you an exact amount of time because I tend to let projects overlap and I fit research in at odd times. Right now I’m on a nine-month schedule which suits me fine.

It was a huge challenge writing for them as a married couple! I wanted to keep a certain amount of tension between them, but it was also necessary to see them behaving as a married couple—committed, emotionally intimate, etc. In order to do that, the tension has to stem now not from the question of “will they or won’t they get together?” but “how will they make it work?” Challenging but fun!

In book five we’ll see Portia and Plum again, along with Bellmont and Lord March himself. Hector is back! We’ll also see Fleur and Aquinas. (I have a scene with Valerius now, but I suspect I will end up cutting it during revisions. I fear what could happen with too many Marches amok in a single book…)