A Chinese American from the San Francisco Bay Area, Christina fell in love with English literature and the classics after going through an obsessive Regency-romance phase in her early teens. While her reading tastes have grown to include sci-fi with robots, survival epics, and doorstop-sized histories, love stories will always be her favorite. She and her family live in Bellevue, Washington.
Christina Dudley is the author of fourteen indie-published Regency romances, as well as the traditionally-published contemporary romance Pride and Preston Lin, a modern adaption of Austen’s classic which was named to the 2024 Best Romance lists for Kirkus Reviews, Booklist, and Library Journal.
Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, or special space for your writing? Or tell us about your ‘dream’ workspace.
CD. I have taken over the dining room as my office because (1) it’s close to the kitchen, so I can keep heating and reheating my cup of tea; and (2) it has a big window looking out on the backyard, where I can see trees and rain and occasionally deer!
Q. Do you have any special rituals or quirks when you sit down to write? (a neat workspace, sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, a glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)
CD. I always start the morning with a cup of tea and waste too much time scrolling on my phone. I also always have a puzzle going on a table in another room, so that I can take little breaks, “rewarding myself” if I actually gets some words down, or letting things bounce around in my head when I’m stuck. After lunch every day, I take a half-hour walk because it’s a great way to clear my head or sort out plot points.
Q. Could you tell us something about yourself that we might not already know?
CD. I went down in flames on Jeopardy! in 2008, coming in dead last on my one episode because in the first round I was confounded by the clicker thingy, and in Double Jeopardy I didn’t know many of the answers. Only Final Jeopardy helped me avoid complete humiliation because it was a Dickens question!
Q. What tools do you begin with? Legal pad, spiral notebook, pencils, fountain pen, or do you go right to your keyboard?
CD. My tools are mostly online. Without the internet, I would be lost. Because, while I have a shelf of research books which I consult often, I write with the online Oxford English Dictionary open. It’s essential for checking word usages, in the endless battle to avoid anachronisms and Americanisms in my historical writing. (It’s not foolproof—since I don’t know what I don’t know—but it helps.)
Q. Do you have pets? Tell us about them and their names.
CD. Nope. Only “pets” I follow on Instagram. My youngest daughter and I send each other cute cat videos.
Q. Do you enjoy writing in other forms (playwriting, poetry, short stories, etc.)? If yes, tell us about it.
CD. This is a funny question because my other form of creative writing is skit-writing for the church Sunday school! Yep, if you need a ten-minute skit to illustrate some Bible story or concept, I’m your go-to gal. I always try to make it entertaining and relatable for all ages.
Q. What’s your best advice to other writers for overcoming procrastination?
CD. I have none, since I have daily struggles with procrastination. But I firmly believe time away from the manuscript isn’t wasted because your brain, especially your subconscious, is always working.
Q. Where/when do you first discover your characters?
CD. For my Regencies, because I write in series, I always start with a family situation. How many are in the family? Are they rich or poor? What is the overriding crisis they face? Once I have my family, each book is a chance to develop one character, while still checking in on or charting continuing growth of other characters.
Q. What first inspired you to write?
CD. In high school, friends and I used to write collaboratively, passing pages of ridiculous short stories back and forth. With one friend the stories were just words, while with another we tried our hand at graphic novels (she was a way better artist than I was!). But then I didn’t really write again until my kids were in elementary school, and I found myself with a few hours a day I could call my own. I had to stop again during their teenage years because bandwidth, but since I started again during the pandemic, I’ve been going strong!
Q. What comes first to you? The Characters or the Situation?
CD. They’re almost simultaneous.
Don’t miss Part II coming next week!
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