On Writing Historicals: Celeste Connolly and her Lady Petra series

I decided this year to challenge myself as a writer, and am attempting a stand alone historical between my Nora Tierney English Mysteries and Trudy Genova Manhattan Mysteries. I’ve been doing research for quite a while as I finished my third Trudy Genova book, Death in the Orchard, but thought it would be a great idea to pick the brain of someone who’s already completed historical.

With her second book just out in her Lady Petra series, called  “Bridgerton meets Agatha Christie,” All’s Fair in Love and Treachery, I asked Celeste Connolly, Agatha Award nominee for Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Lord, to share what drew her to write historical mysteries. Here she is in her own words:

The History of My Love for Historicals By Celeste Connally

I cannot remember a time when I was not fascinated by English history, and it largely came from a family full of history buffs, but also being introduced to wonderful period dramas from a very early age.

I like to joke that watching PBS Masterpiece is one of my first memories, but it’s actually quite true. It was, and still is, one of my mother’s obsessions, and one I happily inherited. Then I became an avid reader at a young age, and had books by British authors as much in my hands as those by American authors.

Combine all that with a fascination with British history, and an ever-growing love of mysteries, and my Anglophile, historical, and whodunit-loving tendencies have always been chugging along at a consistently high rate.

And then Jane Austen adaptations came into my life, and I was forever changed. Yet while I was inching closer to my dream of writing novels, I had not yet thought of writing a historical.

Possibly I should have, however. For when I started writing mysteries, well before I was published, I hired an editor to work on one of my first books I ever wrote (that is my “still in my desk drawer” book), which was set in the present day. She wrote back to me, saying lovely things about my writing while gently telling me that my dialogue and word choice could be quite formal at times. It made me chuckle, and I should have taken it that I might like writing a historical mystery, but it took three published cozy mysteries and the Covid lockdown before I did.

Under stress like all of us during those days, I’d been rewatching all my favorite period dramas, including many of the Jane Austen adaptations, to keep a positive mindset. I found myself enjoying them as much as always, all while really taking note on the pressures of women during the Regency era to marry, and what happened when they did not—making for the classic spinster, as it were.

I realized how monstrously strong these unmarried women had to be in real life, even though they were always depicted as the sad, put-upon women who were a burden to their family. To merely survive, and to enjoy life in any way, these women had to have a will of iron. And at that point, I began to think that a woman like this would make a great heroine, not to mention an investigator.

Thus, my Lady Petra Inquires mysteries were born. My heroine, Lady Petra Forsyth, is the headstrong daughter of an earl, and one who nearly got married—and, like many real women of her time, did not wait for her wedding night to understand the romantic mysteries of life. Coming so close to being married gave Petra a glimpse into her future, and the harsh realities of it. Namely, at that time in history (and well before and after), when a woman married, even if her husband were kind, she became his property—as did her money, her possessions, and any children they would have.

I knew right away that my Lady Petra would value one thing above all else: her independence. She would also have an innate desire to help others, especially other women. Since one of the things I learned from all the period dramas I’ve watched or read is to not judge the strength of a woman from her dresses, bonnets, and curtsying manners, I truly enjoy writing Petra as looking soft as a petal on the outside while having an inward core of iron.

And I hope that in writing a strong, intelligent Regency heroine, and one who also knows how to have a bit of fun, too, I can keep giving historical female protagonists a good name—and maybe introduce a few new readers to my love of times past, all while enjoying a mystery along the way.

Celeste Connally is an Agatha Award nominee and a former freelance writer and editor who writes historical mysteries with a feminist spin set in Regency-era England. She delights in giving her mysteries a good dose of romance and a few research facts she hopes you’ll find as interesting as she does. Passionate about history and slightly obsessed with period dramas, what Celeste loves most is reading and writing about women who don’t always do as they are told. You can find her on Instagram and Facebook at @celesteconnallyauthor, and at celesteconnally.com.

Thanks for joining us Celeste, and sharing your inspiration into another era. Writers, any one else thinking of delving into the past for a story?

MIss Demeanors

Author

Marni Graff is the award-winning author of The Nora Tierney English Mysteries and The Trudy Genova Manhattan Mysteries. Her story “Quiche Alain” appears in the Anthony-winning Malice Domestic Anthology, Murder Most Edible.  Managing Editor of Bridle Path Press, she’s a member of Sisters in Crime, Triangle SinC, Mavens of Mayhem SinC, the NC Writers Network, and the International Crime Writers Association.