We chat with author Joanna Lowell about her new novel Artfully Yours, which sees sparks fly between a lordly art critic and a lady forger in this enthralling Victorian historical romance.
Hi, Joanna! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi, hi! Let’s see. I’m a Gemini. I grew up in a pizza shop and did my formative reading atop sacks of flour. I eat preposterous amounts of grapes. I teach creative writing at a liberal arts university in North Carolina.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I think it came out of make believe. Playing pretend with my little brother and then kids at school. We rotated through tons of characters, mostly animals, but I also remember a phase of pretending I was different fruits from the fruit bowl, probably because people were always saying Joanna Banana. I wanted the make believe to keep going, so I’d write about the characters too as a way of staying in whatever world I’d created with my brother and our friends. Story is still very connected with play for me, even though writing is also work.
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
The first book I remember reading is Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. It gave me too many feelings to forget. The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin made me want to become an author, in a roundabout way. It actually made me want to become wizard, but I wasn’t able to perform any feats of wizardry in real life, so I wrote about the magical feats instead, and eventually writing began to seem like an acceptable alternative to spellcasting. I’m still thinking about every story written by Ted Chiang.
Your new novel, Artfully Yours, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
These words are all aspirational, but I was going for atmospherically Victorian, intensely emotional, swoon-worthy.
What can readers expect?
The book’s heroine is a reluctant art forger who falls in love with an art critic determined to bring forgers to justice. Readers can expect intrigue, divided loyalties, slow-to-ignite but fiercely burning passion, and one literally steamy scene.
Where did the inspiration for Artfully Yours come from?
It came from writing The Duke Undone. In that book, the heroine wants to be an artist. I started thinking about how it would work to write a heroine who doesn’t want to be an artist. Not being an artist isn’t usually something a person has to want very badly. It’s more the default. Some angsty, highly specific conditions are required to make that desire a driving force in someone’s life. Nina and her situation emerged from there, and Artfully Yours followed.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I really enjoyed writing Fritz, Nina’s mischievous marmoset. I wrote the book during the pandemic, so my only activities were walks around the neighborhood. It got so I could tell apart some of the squirrels. Fritz is a homage to Virginia Woolf’s marmoset, and also to the squirrels of Winston-Salem.
What do you love about the romance genre?
I love the big emotions, and I love that the form allows us to feel those big, risky, intense feelings safely. The happy ending is a promise, a narrative promise, but also a promise about care, that the characters will receive it, and readers too. I love that. A genre focused on care strikes me as radical and beautiful. Romance keeps creating different models of interdependence and accountability and desire and being with others, and I love this as an imaginative practice.
Do you have any advice for those who may have set some writing resolutions for the new year?
Maybe not advice, more encouragement. Even though I like to think writing is magical, there’s no magical secret to it, and I don’t believe there are chosen ones meant to write, or that writing should look the same for different people (as a process or a product). Be generous with yourself. Don’t take it as a sign that you’re not cut out for writing if things don’t flow easily, or if you fall behind your goals, or decide you hate your project. Stay with it. Or change it up. But write on, in one way or another, because it’s for you as much as anyone.
What’s next for you?
A fourth book in this Victorian artist series! It’s the first to center queer characters and includes a bicycle tour and some good times at the beach.
Lastly, are there any 2023 book releases our readers should look out for?
So many! I’ll just list a few. Lex Croucher’s Infamous. It’s such a fun, fresh take on Regency romance, insightful and hilarious, and the writing crackles. I can’t wait to read Liana De la Rosa’s Ana María and the Fox. I’ve been counting down the days. Same for Adriana Herrera’s An Island Princess Starts a Scandal, which follows the fantastic A Caribbean Heiress in Paris, one of my favorites from last year. Elizabeth Everett’s A Love By Design is already out, so you don’t have to wait! I loved every page. Heart-stealing characters. The most delicious pining. And beyond romance, I’m so excited for Infinite Constellations, an anthology of speculative fictions by writers from the global majority, edited by Khadijah Queen and K. Ibura. It’s absolutely visionary, heart and mind expanding.
