This week LUV's spotlighting decadent romance author @jesseverlee LUV: How would you describe your voice, style or brand to new readers? Jess: My first published series, The Lucky Lovers of London, is a series of queer historical romances set in in 1880s in (you guessed it) London. I gravitate toward the stories of the Victorian Era’s expanding middle class, so while you’ll get the banter, fabulous outfits, and built-in drama of the time period, these books leave the ballroom and royal courts behind for little-known clubs, crumbling theaters, and nonconformist coffee shops. Because I’m telling happy stories in historically difficult spaces, you’ll always find that light and darkness are knitted closely together on the page. You’ll find fluff and angst. Humor and sentiment. Spice and sweetness. I don’t see these things as contradictions at all; more as two sides of the same coin. My characters are living in a time where their love stories have been criminalized or erased; bringing romance, humor, friendship, and happy endings into a setting like that creates a balance that aims to illuminate the possibilities that existed even in hard times, and ultimately bring hope to modern readers. And that’s what I love most about romance: bringing readers hope! That can be hard for all of us to find sometimes, and sadly the modern-day queer community still faces its own share of demoralization. Though my characters get up to some pretty scandalous shenanigans along with rather serious difficulties, I carefully adjust all those seemingly-contradictory elements so that my readers close the book feeling cozy, hopeful, and heart-warmed by the end.

Posted by LUV Team at 2023-07-24 19:01:11 UTC