A World to Fall in Love With?
The Jane Austen/Warren Hastings connection Lauren posted about recently got me thinking about another kind of Austen connection: Not, this time, of reach beyond the circumscribed geography of her life, but rather of the density of connection within her books, as three or four families in a country village (to use Austen's own words) become a palpable community that resonates with shared (if sometimes contested and often unspoken) experience. When I began writing romance, one rule I encountered was not to create too many minor characters. Which is a reasonable enough stricture for a beginning writer, and most particularly one bound by the Iron Law of Thou Must Foreground the Romance Plot. But as I continue, I find myself so taken with the idea of a world built upon the interlaced lives of its characters (major and minor), that I'm increasingly willing to stub my writerly toes on the boundaries of the genre (especially when I'm fortunate enough to have readers like Tumper...