A Math Major Turned Award-Winning Author Shares Her Journey Into The World Of Historical Romance
Caroline Linden shares her journey from math major to bestselling author, her creative process, and the inspiration behind her award-winning historical romances filled with wit, passion, and unforgettable characters.
Caroline Linden is a masterful storyteller whose novels have captivated readers around the globe. With her sharp wit, compelling characters, and a knack for weaving romance with rich historical detail, she has earned a well-deserved place among the most celebrated authors of historical romance. Her works, translated into seventeen languages, have garnered numerous prestigious awards, including the RITA Award and the Daphne du Maurier Award, cementing her reputation as a literary force. From her debut novel, What a Woman Needs, to her beloved Scandals series, Linden’s books are a testament to her ability to craft stories that are as emotionally resonant as they are delightfully entertaining.
In this exclusive interview, Caroline Linden shares her journey from a math major at Harvard and a career in computer programming to becoming a bestselling author. With humor and insight, she discusses the inspiration behind her unforgettable characters, the influence of her analytical background on her writing, and the creative process that has made her novels a favourite among romance readers. Join us as we delve into the mind of this extraordinary author and explore the stories that have enchanted readers worldwide.
What inspired you to transition from writing computer software to becoming a fiction author?
Well… by accident. I always loved reading, but also math and physics. What I hated was writing, especially boring papers about depressing books. So I did math, and then got work writing life insurance administration code. But we moved, so I had to quit my job, and while I was on maternity leave my husband bought me my own. We were living in a new town, in a house that needed significant work, I hadn’t gone back to work, and I had two small children to care for. Making up stories was a bit of an escape from that.
No one was more surprised than I was when the story I was making up ended up being a whole novel. It was much more fun than insurance software!
How has your background in math influenced your approach to writing novels?
It’s absolutely vital! I tend to think of writing a book as writing a proof. In higher math, the proof is the standard form of “solving” a problem. You have a theorem, a conclusion you wish to prove is true (eg, these two characters will fall in love and be perfect for each other). There are a bunch of known facts, truths, and inferences (eg: the characters were friends as children, the families had a severe falling out and dating each other would spark an uproar, they blame each other for the feud, but they still remember how much they liked each other once) and you lay these out, in a compelling order with supporting context through scene, world-building, other characters, good dialogue, etc, until it is obvious to everyone that your theorem is proven fact. QED=HEA
The key difference between math proofs and novels is that novels need zigs and zags and sexual tension, while math generally lacks those (unless you are dating a mathematician, and then you’ve got everything).
What inspired you to create the character of Joan Bennett, and how did Fifty Ways to Sin shape her journey in Love and Other Scandals?
Part of the reason I got hooked on romance novels was my college roommate, Julie. She was an English major, reading Great Literature, but would take off at the bookstore for “fun” reading, and of course I read them too. Julie was also tall and lamented how short so many guys were, so Joan is for her: 5’10” (178 cm) with plenty of curves, a smart mouth, and a secret, exciting, reading habit. The book is dedicated to Julie.
Fifty Ways to Sin is obviously a play on Fifty Shades of Gray, which was everywhere at the time. Everyone was reading it or planning to read it. I really liked the idea that there was a book so popular everyone—even people who never read romance or anything like it—knew about it and had to read it. Joan was a gentleman’s daughter, raised in a rather constricted, controlled world, but she’s also bright and curious, and I wanted her to get a glimpse of something exciting and scandalous: not just meeting someone and getting married, but falling desperately in love and being swept away by passion.
How did you balance the tension between Joan and Viscount Burke, given their connection through her brother, in Love and Other Scandals?
Romance readers know that the brother’s best friend is a very potent set-up! He’s known… but removed… she knows how wild he is… but there’s some level of social verification. Joan knowns plenty about Burke, and while most of it isn’t respectable, he’s undeniably exciting and fascinating, and she’s sure he can’t be an actual villain because her brother still trusts him. For Burke, even though Joan’s safely behind the barrier of family disapproval and Guy Code, he’s still fascinated by her… helplessly so.
And then I sent the brother out of town, so he couldn’t spoil anything.
What drew you to create a heroine like Sophie Campbell, whose independence is tied to her skill at cards, in My Once and Future Duke?
I have always searched for ways to give my female characters some power and standing in an era where they often had relatively little on their own.
Sophie doesn’t have family support or money, so I gave her talent and the drive to use it. Cards were an easy choice because gambling was endemic during the whole Georgian era but especially the Regency, among men and women, and real fortunes were regularly won and lost—so a careful gambler, with skill and a clear head, could reasonably win enough to support herself.
How did you approach developing the high-stakes wager between Sophie and Jack, and how does it influence their relationship throughout My Once and Future Duke?
If one person is a good gambler, the other must have a strong aversion to it. Jack recognizes that gambling can only go wrong for him. When his younger brother beings losing, and expecting him to pay the debts, Jack takes a strong dislike to gambling.
Sophie needs gambling to survive, but for Jack it’s only the road to ruin. I wanted it to be a huge deal for him to make not only a wager, but a really shocking one. When he wins, he’s not sure what to do, while Sophie finds herself on the losing side after being so very careful not to do that. I wanted them both off balance, and thus open to things they would ordinarily have avoided.
Jack was a character in my very first book, and I wrote (carelessly) that he had once been fun and wild, until he was buried under responsibilities by his title. When I finally got to his book, I wanted to shake him up and have him see that his position also insulted him from some of the concerns many noblemen faced. He was a duke; he was rich; he could marry whomever he wanted. I like to make my characters make a leap, when they decide they are all in on a relationship.
