Exclusive interview with author Maggie Robinson on her new novel about romance and rehab
By Gabrielle Pantera
“As much as I love writing about the Regency, Victorian, and Edwardian eras, I am grateful for living in the twenty-first century,” says Schooling the Viscount author Maggie Robinson.
“Laudanum and opium for the asking at the apothecary. Tonics that were 100% alcohol. Soldiers who were malnourished and ill-equipped and sent off to hellish foreign climes to fight anyway. Queen Victoria cranking out nine kids.”
In Robinson’s new book series, Puddling-on-the-Wold is a tiny village that has no train, no manufacturing and very little to offer…except the people of the town, who are known for helping members of the aristocracy recuperate, rehabilitation and to get rest. The town will do all in their power to help a guest recover… whatever their affliction.
“Puddling-on-the-Wold popped up in my head as a humane alternative for those suffering from the reality of the 19th century,” says Robinson. “I saw a young soldier, wounded in body and spirit, limping down the street and trying to get his life together, and Schooling the Viscount was born.
The novel opens with Captain Lord Henry Challoner’s father The Marquess of Harland, bringing Henry to the village. His son needs to dry out and stop chasing women. As Henry wanders the town he can’t believe the town is dry and has no young women. He’s restricted where he may take walks, but leaves the path. He sees a young woman teaching at the school. Rachel Everett knows the rules when the town has a guest. Will she break them?
Robinson started researching for the book in 2014. “I was planning a trip to Bath and did some research on its history as a Regency spa town. I’d read my Jane Austen. Charlotte Bronte too. I thought of mad Mrs. Rochester in her attic. I read some truly horrific things about how ‘difficult’ people, particularly women, were treated medically, psychologically, and legally for rebellious behavior. If I’d been alive then, I would have been rebelling all over the place.”
Robinson visited a hydrotherapy spa hotel in Scotland for another book. “I kept wondering how people managed to live with societal constraints without going insane. Massages and hot baths and the odd game of lawn tennis were obviously insufficient. So I made up my own celebrity rehab in an imaginary tiny Gloucestershire village. Simple food, fresh air, daily exercise, a chat with the vicar…after twenty-eight days, cured! Or not, as my characters can tell you.”
Robinson lived in a nineteenth century weaver’s cottage for a month and visited local museums (sometimes the smaller the better), churches, and graveyards. “Soaking up the atmosphere …ducking under the low lintels. My six foot three husband knocked himself out several times. I discovered Rococo Garden (in the Cotswolds), which have been transformed into the Sykes estate for the second book in the series.”
She did most of her research online, and bought local books and booklets on the region for primary source excerpts and maps within.
Schooling the Viscount is Robinson’s 14th full-length novel. She has eleven published novellas. She’s been nominated twice as a Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice and won several contests as an unpublished author. A former library clerk, Robinson says she’s proud of a starred review from Library Journal for In the Arms of the Heiress. Schooling the Viscount has yet to be optioned for film or television.
Robinson is currently working on the fourth book in the Cotswold Confidential series, a marriage-in-trouble story. Books two and three in the Cotswold Confidential series are releasing soon, Seducing Mr. Sykes (June 2017) and Redeeming Lord Ryder (November 2017).
Robinson will be at the annual Romance Writers of America convention in Orlando in July and at the Fall in Love with New England conference in Manchester, New Hampshire, in October.
Robinson lives in Belgrade, Maine, in a house on a lake. She was born in Mineola, New York, narrowly avoiding being born at sea when her parents returned from Vienna. She grew up in a suburb of New York City.
Schooling the Viscount by Maggie Robinson. Paperback: 252 pages, Publisher: Lyrical Press (January 31, 2017), Language: English. ISBN: 9781516100033 $ 15.00 Kindle already available
