FAQs

What's your newest book, and what is it about?

Our next book is called MY IMAGINARY MARY, and it came out in August 2022.

It's about Mary Godwin (who later in history would come to be known as Mary Shelley) and Ada Byron (aka Ada Lovelace) and the robot boy (named Pan) they accidentally bring to life.

We had so much fun writing it. Please read it.

What's the deal with the Lady Janie "series"? Do you have to read them all in order?

Short answer: No. All of our books are written in a similar STYLE, as in, we fix things for women in history and we love to break the fourth wall, but all of the Lady Janie books are STANDALONES and each one presents its own separate story and its own unique world. (With the exception of MY CONTRARY MARY, which takes place in the same world of the E∂ians and Verities as MY LADY JANE, but is still its own separate story.) You can read them in any order.

Here are the elevator pitches for the Lady Janie books:

MY LADY JANE is Jane Grey meets LadyHawke. (Or The Princess Bride.)

MY PLAIN JANE is Jane Eyre meets Ghostbusters.

MY CALAMITY JANE is the Wild West meets Teen Wolf.

MY CONTRARY MARY is Reign (the TV show) meet The Princess Bride. (Or LadyHawk.) Again, same world as My Lady Jane.

MY IMAGINARY MARY is Frankenstein meets girls in STEM. (Okay, this is not a great pitch--we actually prefer to describe MIM this way: Mary Shelley (the teenage author of Frankenstein) and Ada Lovelace (the world's first computer programmer) build a robot boy and accidentally bring him to life.

MY SALTY MARY (Coming in Summer 2024) will be Pirates of the Caribbean meets The Little Mermaid.

See our Book page for more details.

What's the deal with the Lady Janie SERIES, as in the TV series? Is that really a thing?

YES! My Lady Jane is currently being made into a TV series with Amazon. It's going to begin principle photography (as in filming) in August 2022 and should be available to stream sometime (it hasn't been announced yet) in late 2023?

We are very excited. We will tell you what we can, when we can.

What real-life girl from history are you writing about next?

We are writing about Mary Reade, who was a famous female pirate, along with her friend Anne Bonny. There will be swashbuckling. 

But Goodreads says the Mary books will be about Typhoid Mary and Marie Curie?

Yeah, Goodreads is not, it turns out, always right, although that is based on the announcement when the Mary books were sold. We were going to do Typhoid Mary next, but the global pandemic really changed how we viewed the character of Mary Mallon, and we agreed that it might be a bit tricky to write a novel in which she was the protagonist. We really liked the idea of Marie Curie, but as we looked more into her we realized that she didn't quite meet the criteria we use to base our novels on. So we went with Mary Shelley (which also stars Ada Lovelace, another one of our fave tragic historical figures) and Mary Reade.

How did the Lady Janies meet?

We met in Texas in 2012, when our publishers sent us on a book tour. At the end of that week we were fast friends, and throughout that next year we kept meeting up to do events together. Then we'd meet up because we just wanted to hang out. And then we decided to co-write a book so we'd have an even better excuse to spend time together. We kinda like each other.

Where did you get the idea for MY LADY JANE?

Cynthia had the idea. She'd always loved the figure of the Lady Jane Grey in British History. (Cynthia was a history minor in college, because she loved to listen to the tragic stories of the past.) She thought the Lady Grey story was TOO tragic. Here we have this awesome teenage girl who loves to read and write, who is infamously opinionated and strong-willed in a time where women are discouraged from being either. And then what happens to her? She ends up in a forced marriage to a boy she hardly knows. She becomes THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND, but only for nine days. And then, because she won't renounce her beliefs, she gets her head chopped off.

Cynthia wanted to rewrite that story to give Jane the ending she deserved. And that's how this novel started--revising history.

How do you write your books? Isn't it hard to get three different authors all working together on one story?

Actually, the writing process is surprisingly smooth. Our books are written from the point of view of three revolving characters, (Edward, Jane, and Gifford for MY LADY JANE, and Charlotte, Jane, and Alexander for MY PLAIN JANE) and we are each responsible for writing one character's story. We'll let you guess who wrote which. :) 

*** Leave your questions for us in the comments below, and we'll try to get back to you with the answer quickly.***