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'THE DUKE'S WAGER' INSIDER NEWS


My first published book, and it took two and a half years to get it into print.

Oh, there were some interested agents and editors. But they insisted that the villain could not get the girl. That wasn't what I wanted.

butterfly In truth, when I planned this book he wasn't the one I expected to win the fair Regina either. He was the villain, plain and simple. But it turned out there was nothing plain or simple about Jason Thomas, Duke of Torquay. As I wrote I began to see he was far worthier than the standard hero. I also soon realized that Sinjun St. Charles, Marquis of Bessacarr, wasn't standard in any way either. I liked who they were and what they became too much to stuff them into stereotypical molds.

So, I kept sending out the manuscript and getting it back - with comments about why I shouldn't be so difficult. "Women," one agent wrote to me, "don't like unusual romances. They like books that are like Noh plays - with never-changing formats. Your characters are too three-dimensional." He actually wrote that to me. Grrr. Two years ticked by. I amassed a really fine collection of rejection slips.

I finally found an editor, Hilary Ross at Signet, who understood what I was trying to do and asked only that I add a chapter showing why I loved my black hearted duke so much. I did. And thus: The Duke's Wager.

Finally.

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Edith Layton's Writings in Her Old Site
1997



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