Printfresh x Simon & Schuster | Meet Author Martha Waters
Can you talk about the inspiration behind ‘Christmas Is All Around’?
I had never thought super seriously about writing a holiday romance, but the one idea I’d always had in the back of my mind was that it would be really fun to write a Christmas romance about a heroine who hated Christmas romances — just lean into being very meta and self-referential and sort of poking fun at the genre, which is something I love to do with my books. So when my editor approached me with the idea of writing a contemporary Christmas book, I was totally game, so long as she was okay with me writing about a Christmas-hating heroine (which she was!). From there, the idea to set it in London came very naturally, since I’d moved there pretty recently, and I loved the idea of incorporating a hero who’d inherited a historic house - something that always seems great in my Regency books, but which in the year 2024 is considerably more of a pain and a financial burden.
Are you personally a fan of holiday rom-coms?
Books, yes! Movies . . . less so. One thing Charlotte, the heroine of this book, and I have in common is our mutual hatred of Hallmark movies, which honestly make me feel dead inside. (I realize this sounds melodramatic!) There are some big-screen Christmas movies that I love - I have definitely watched both Love Actually and The Holiday too many times to count - but my favorite Christmas movies are honestly ones that are a bit more melancholy (It’s A Wonderful Life) or just short and nostalgic (A Charlie Brown Christmas).
What was it like transitioning from writing Regency historicals to a contemporary holiday romance? Did you face any unpredicted challenges?
My editor definitely had to flag a few spots where I was drifting too far into old-fashioned-sounding phrases, but I do think it was helpful for me that my Regency series was pretty modern in tone (I have a lot of readers who primarily read contemporary romance, and I think the modern feel of the series is what drew them to it) so it wasn’t as big of a leap as it would have been otherwise. Combined with the fact that this is about an American woman visiting London, and I’m an American woman living in London, and it actually felt a lot easier than writing a historical book! And getting to include text messages in a book for the first time was oddly exciting.
How has living in London shaped your writing style?
I’m honestly not sure that it has! I think my ‘voice’ in my books has been pretty consistent for as long as I’ve been writing, and it’s just . . . me, and my personality, shining through, if that makes sense. Maybe readers will tell me if they disagree, once they’ve read a couple of books I’ve written since moving here!
What’s your favorite part of the story?
I deeply love any of the scenes involving Charlotte’s sister and brother-in-law and baby niece. I really love writing secondary characters, I think you can have so much fun with them and be a bit more over-the-top than you can be with a protagonist, so getting to write all of Charlotte’s interactions with her slightly insane family was extremely fun for me.
Any plans to write other future holiday hits?
Not as of now! I have a lot (lot lot) of book ideas, but none of them involve another holiday book! I have always thought it would be fun to write a historical holiday novel (not necessarily set during the Regency, though - possibly something more recent) but I don’t have a specific idea for one so if that ever happens, it’s a ways off.
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