The WD Interview: Vanessa Riley

[This article first appeared in the November/December 2024 issue of Writer's Digest magazine.]

Recently, I was scrolling online, and I saw a reader pose an interesting question: “Where is the history in my historical romances?”

Vanessa Riley is one author for whom her readers never have to ask this question. Although she writes in several historical subgenres—romance, mystery, and biographical fiction—each story feels both grounded in the time and full of imagination. “The reason I love the Regency is because I’ve read over 10,000 books in that era, written in that era, written by modern people for that era. I love it all,” she said. “And there’s room for so much more storytelling.”

Riley has become an expert in the Regency era, compiling research on everything from weapons to drugs and medications to furniture and fashion—and that’s not even touching the complex social and political climate that defined the Regency. Something that features prominently in her work is that the era was much more diverse than modern schooling and media have led us to believe.

“It shocks me that the truth is there if you care to know,” she said. “I revere history. I feel very privileged to tell these stories. … Everybody is entitled to tell the story the way they want to tell it. You don’t have to go cradle the grave like me, but be aware of the choices you make.”

She’s also passionate about showcasing women in her work—not just brave ones taking on enormous tasks (though there are quite a few of those!) but also funny women, messy women, women who love thrills and drama, women who see the world in ways that men cannot. “Women, I find, have that power of observation, mainly because we’re made to be quiet most of the time. So, we’re always observing and looking and observing and looking.”

Her dedication to walking the line between fact and fiction gives her readers the fully immersive experience of stepping right into the world of her characters, some of whom were real people. It’s these details that make her work stand out among the crowd and have earned her acclaim, including a “Good Morning America” Buzz Pick, an ABC “The View” Lit Pick, the 2024 Georgia Mystery/Detective Author of the Year, the 2023 Georgia Literary Fiction Author of the Year, and starred reviews from Booklist, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly.

World-building is where we began our conversation.

Because when I got started, there wasn’t a space for these types of stories. And today you say something is a fantasy and that’s a compliment. It wasn’t a compliment when I started publishing. I remember my very first agent was shopping a book and we got some of the best rejection letters. “We love her voice. Does she have anything else? We love this. We just don’t know how to market it.” …

They use that as a way to gatekeep and keep people from telling their stories or shaming people into telling the same story over and over with just different names because they want to be accepted. They want to come to the parties, they want to be in the club. I took a very different route. I looked at the history, and the history is crazy and funny and scary and humane in aspects that, at the time, just weren’t even being touched. And I said, “You know what, we’re going to play this game—because the minute you get a detail wrong, that’s how they used to exclude you from the club. So, it made me sharper, it made me dig deeper. And then you see this whole world of things that are just so interesting to me.

It made me strive to let you know this is the history. We can still have our tropes. We can still be funny. But we can ground ourselves in a history that is true, that may be different than what you have known and grown up [with]. But I think that’s the exciting part. Here’s another spin, another look. And then you get the doors open to stories you probably would not have seen.

Absolutely. … Too much is gatekept. There were people who’ve always encouraged me in the earlier stages of my career that if they had gatekept, I wouldn’t be [publishing]. And so that is my policy. … This goes back to the early days. People had never heard of this history, and I said, “Let’s put it out here. Let’s organize it so that it’s easy for everybody to see.” We’re [the] mothership now for all types of Regency, not just Black history but all types of history. We’re there for women’s activities, different political movements. If I can find it, I put it there.

[And] in my historical fictions … I have complete bibliographies in the back of the book.

When you go back and read all these conceptions of how we think, how sterile history is, how black and white, and then you see there’s all these shades of gray. That always blows my mind.

… Talking about Haitian history, Queen of Exiles, the fact that she [Marie-Louise Christophe] was media stalked. I’ve found so many articles saying where she was staying, how many attendants she had with her, what her daughters were wearing, who was visiting them, all the different countries she was going to. Yet modern historians will say that she was poor and unaccepted because she was Black, and nobody bats an eye. All they have to do is look at newspapers, archives, or do a really good Google [search] and you’ll see that’s not the story. So far from the story.

You have to know who you’re telling the story for—the purpose of the story—and keep that very, very clear. For my romance people, they want sweeping, they want epic. They want humor. They want chaos! [Laughs]

This is real history, but there’s distance. … You get to have all that in that context but I’m very clear this is a romance. There are reader expectations and happy-ever-after. Now we have to feel these people falling in love. But I’m gonna throw in as much foolishness as possible.

The fact that they are all somewhat in the Regency world makes it easier for me because the dress, the talk, the hairstyles, the political movements, I understand that intimately. And that’s the same regardless of if it’s a murder mystery or if it’s romance. They’re very different, but they share enough unique bonds that it’s a lot easier. If I were doing a contemporary and a historical, that might be more complicated because everything is different. It’s all about the pre-work that you do. And I do a lot of pre-work for these stories.

I’ve read a lot of books during that particular timeframe by the writers in that timeframe. Particularly Jane Austen. And what you understand is she’s telling a story. It’s not without contractions. It’s not without color and the humor of the times. There are political angles that we may miss, but people reading it then did not miss.

Particularly with Mansfield Park, they’re talking about the uncle having to go work on his habitations in the Caribbean, and she didn’t have to use the word slave or enslavement, but they all knew why he had to go. We missed that, or we choose to miss that piece because we have this fantasy that she wasn’t political, and she was extremely political, and that’s why her word survives. There’s a beauty of understanding the period that you are writing about and trying to get that right, but then remembering you’ve got present-day readers.

Funny story—I was working as a consultant on Sense and Sensibility, Hallmark’s reimagined movie. There’s this big ballroom scene. They have to come into the room in order by age, but for the scene they did, they needed these two [to enter together]. I was like, “This is the way,” and it was like, “Thank you, Vanessa, but we’re going with this.” [Laughs]

It’s a necessary balance. You get as much as you possibly can. But for the moment that you’re trying to show, it’s got to be crystal clear what is going on. Whether you’re in film or written word, the language has to feel authentic. …

Choosing how to bring the present world into this language to draw closer to the modern reader is a challenge, and I have fun with it sometimes. But there’s always still a misperception of how people wrote versus how they speak. … I’m very careful with that, and I try and give you as much flavor as I can of the times, but it has to be accessible.

I have a three-plus draft process. First time I write this book is horrible. [Laughs] I’m getting from point A to point B. It’s white clothes, white rooms, white floors, white sky. And if it’s a murder mystery, I got the “When will the body show up? And why does it make sense for them to show up?” That first draft, that’s the two things I’m going for. Get from point A beginning of story to point B, end of story.

And how do we get there on the second and the third draft? We are tuning motivations. We are adding in the colors. We are sharpening things. The final revision is going through and looking at every spoken word as well as every thought that’s written in that book. Is it sharp? Is it going to leave a sting when the reader reads it? Magic happens in editing. And you cannot edit a blank page.

I relieve myself of trying to be cute and clever, and I’m getting to the end on those first couple drafts. Then once I get to the end, I go back over and we sharpen and we go back over and we sharpen, we go back over and we sharpen, and then we go back, we’re like, “Can I play a little bit? Can I just make this scene more impactful if I say less?”

It’s a fine balance, right? Sometimes we can’t see ourselves, and we need a strong voice to tell us or to share an opinion. Sometimes I use secondary characters to just be the elephant in the room. Like, “You’re trying to do X, Y, and Z, but do you see what is happening?” You need a vocal conscience. Sometimes these secondary characters are being that. That gives them more time. Sometimes they are the humor hits, right? You know, “We’ve just survived being killed. Let’s go get cheese.” [Laughs]

… In all honesty, we do life with people, not props. I want to feel that community. And it’s another way for me to make sure we round the cast out so people can see themselves in these books. Oftentimes we don’t or … diverse characters sometimes get relegated to the best friend, the wise-talking grandma, that smack talker, and whatever. Everybody needs to be relevant. And we all play a part in their lives.

So, this is how Lady Worthing works. This is how her world works. You take somebody out, her world is not the same. That’s an important thing. It’s by sitting down before you start writing, and, for me, really thinking about who these characters are, and at the end of the story, how would they change? How have each one of these people changed by the time you get to the end? That helps in the world-building, that helps to make every character dynamic. I’m trying not to put filler into any of these stories. Every moment has to count. When every moment counts, you are judicious in where secondary characters show up where and the roles they play.

Abbie’s a complicated wreck, and I love her for that, right? She gets her real start because she’s curious. A man who’s invested in her father’s firm, Lord Worthing, is wrongfully suspected of embezzlement. She’s able to puzzle things together. And she’s bold enough that she lets the magistrate know what’s going on, and she appears to be right. [Laughs] That gets Lord Worthing free. Then that lets her godfather, who works for the prince regent, put things in motion. Now she’s Lady Worthing. She’s new in this creation of a title, and titles make people act certain ways. The fact that now she’s money makes people act certain ways, but she’s still Abbie.

You’re coming for a murder mystery, right? I am very clear, when you come for biographical fiction, you want a saga of a woman doing something incredible. It’s based on a true story. You come for a romance? You are coming for a romance. And when you come for a historical mystery, you are coming for the death.

You have Abbie. People are dropping dead around her … She is sharp; she’s observant. [Abbie’s] been able to channel that into reason and figure out what’s going on.

The politics of abolition are part of these crazy dynamics and how it affects a woman of color. A woman who has privilege is part of that integral story. And she’s always juggling. So, there are foils within her found family. …

Trying to balance all these various things, it’s not at all easy. But it’s enjoyable. I love writing her. She’s hilarious. I love her, and I hope people can really get to love her and her—I hope people get to see her world more and more.

Every one of my books, I have an author’s note. This was something Beverly Jenkins taught me very early on. I had gotten some horrible review, I’m whining, and she was like, “Write an author’s note, babe.” [Laughs] Because, once again, people don’t understand the history and the author’s note helps it.

In this particular case, I love Agatha Christie, but I questioned things. And Then There Were None had several titles. The original one was almost a slave catcher point of what they would do to a Black person once they found them. … That has always affected me. Like, what [Christie] did with it was brilliant. You get wealthy people on an island, and you bump ’em all off, because they all deserved it. I think that’s brilliant. But the mechanism to get there is this toxic nursery rhyme.

I do a lot of research about the different rebellions in the West. I was like, “Well, wait a minute. What if the enslaved had a rhyme that they would taunt their owners with before a rebellion started?” And I could hear the rhythm in the background and almost my father’s voice that sang that rhyme. And I was like, this will prove a point. This is very interesting.

So, you get people snowed in, and all these wealthy men have gotten a piece of a rhyme that they have to put back together to figure out who’s next to be killed. It’s a way to say, “This is what I believe Agatha was trying to do.” I believe she was trying to make a point about what stirs people to violence, but in the language of our time, it’s bad now. … Some people distance themselves from the past or want to forget about the past and say, “That doesn’t matter.” So, let’s turn the tables. What does it feel like if that is a nursery rhyme people are being taught before they commit violence? So, it’s a different take. It’s a little sharper take than some of these some of these books. But I think it’s a very interesting one.

Find the things that you like, find the parallels of things you like, and just add. There’s so much beauty. … Don’t limit yourself. I was doing Regency and bringing in all these extra worlds when it wasn’t cool. … I want to encourage everyone who finds their lane, who knows the stories they want to tell, to tell those stories, to perfect their craft, to study and learn, and to bring their A-game every time they get a chance. Every story has to be better than the last.

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