Regency romance novelist Kristi Ann Hunter visits with us at ACFW and discusses The Hawthorne House series, and which sibling will be featured in her next novel. The latest book in the series is An Elegant Facade (Bethany House).
The Hawthorne House series follows the Hawthorne siblings and the mother.
The mother doesn’t have a story, but each of the siblings has a book.
She might one day get a little novella because she did remarry right before the series started. She had her own little romance. She always already seems resettled in my head. I would really have to go back and think about how did that occur. She might get a novella.
Your stories slightly overlap from book to book. For maybe a quarter of the book the reader will see other characters from the previous novel in the next phase of their life. Was this something you conceptualized?
It was not something I wanted to do because it was very, very hard. Especially because when I was writing the first one thinking about the second one’s plot because it was going to overlap and making sure all the scenes worked for both books was very difficult. It was not what I set out to do, but it was what I had to do.
It’s not something I would say I will do again because it was incredibly difficult. It was just what the story required to have happen.
Which sibling are you following next?
Trent’s book is next. It comes out in January. The title of that is An Uncommon Courtship.
Trent is the eldest? No, Trent is second–
The oldest brother’s name is Griffith. He’s a duke. He will be out next fall.
What’s Trent’s story like? In Georgina’s book, he doesn’t have anybody on his radar–?
No, he doesn’t. She’s a new character to the series. Although if you’ve read the whole series all the way back to the beginning you had some interaction with her family. She herself has not appeared on the page.
It’s going to be a very new experience for her and for him as well. It’s kind of a marriage of convenience story except it’s love as plot. It’s not convenient at all. Her mother essentially traps them in a situation where they have to marry. It’s very crafty on her part. They get trapped and he has to marry her.
This is your debut series. Are you going to stick with Regency?
I adore Regency. Even if I ever add anything else or dabble in anything else, Regency will stay.
Do you have anything in the works after this series?
I do, but it’s not signed. I haven’t got a contract yet. I can say I have turned in a proposal.
Tell me what you can of what you’re currently working on.
Right now I am working on finishing Griffith’s book. I got to finish his book because he’s coming out next fall. That’s what I am working on right now. I have just turned in a proposal for the next series. Hopefully they will like it as much as I like it.
I will say this, whatever I write next Regency-wise, it will stay in the same world as this one. You might see some pop ups. They might pop up in little cameos later in books. It’s in the same world.