Mullany, Janet

PERSONAL:

Married; children: a daughter.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Washington, DC. E-mail—elailah@yahoo.com.

CAREER:

Writer. Has worked as an archaeologist, classical music radio announcer, arts publicist, and as a proofreader for a small press.

MEMBER:

Maryland Romance Writers.

WRITINGS:

Dedication (novel), Signet (New York, NY), 2005.

The Rules of Gentility (novel), Avon Trade (New York, NY), 2007.

SIDELIGHTS:

Romance writer Janet Mullany says she was not a longtime fan of romance novels before trying her hand at the genre. "I started writing fiction about four years ago, having written lots of promotional stuff, brochures, ads, feature articles for work, and thought I'd like to try to write a story," the author told Cathy Sova in an interview for the Romance Reader Web site. "So I started two long rambling things that have never gone anywhere, although I've borrowed bits and pieces from them since, and wrote and published a few short stories. I started looking around for writers' groups and discovered Maryland Romance Writers (my local RWA chapter). I liked their very practical approach and decided that was what I was going to do."

In her first Regency romance novel, Dedication, the author tells the story of a couple who have an affair and then drift apart only to rekindle their romance again twenty years later. Adam has reformed from his rakish ways and is now a gentleman living in the country. His former lover, Fabienne, was an inexperienced French woman educated in a convent but has become a sophisticated patron of the arts. Nevertheless, the recently widowed Fabienne is very lonely. "I was interested in characters who had had experience in life, including good relationships with other partners, friends, and family, and who had not been holding grudges or harboring revenge plans for decades," the author explained to Amanda McCabe on the Risky Regencies Web log. "In other words, fairly complex and healthy people, who were mature enough to solve their own problems but were also human enough to make mistakes. So that's how I ended up with a heroine in her late thirties and a hero in his early forties, both widowed."

When Fabienne starts corresponding with a reclusive author, Mrs. Ravenwood, she once again meets Adam and believes that the author is Adam's mistress, a distressing fact because Fabienne has been revealing her innermost longings to the writer. Although Fabienne believes the author must be laughing at her, she eventually learns that Mrs. Ravenwood is not who she thinks she is. "Brava for Mullany eschewing the darling belle of the ton just coming out for giving us an older, more mature woman," wrote DeborahAnne MacGillivray on the Best Reviews Web site. Her writing is sexy, savvy."

The author's next Regency romance, The Rules of Gentility, was called "absolutely delightful" by Brooke Wills in a review on the Romance Junkies Reviews Web site. The novel features Philomena Wellesley-Clegg, a strong-willed heiress who has rebuffed the romantic advances of lords and poets. She is a woman whose dedication to high fashion is only matched by her set of ideals that she thinks a man should possess. However, when she meets Inigo Linsley, a handsome man with a scandalous past, she finds herself attracted to him despite the fact that he represents nothing she thought she wanted in a man. The attraction only deepens when Inigo presents a plan to help Philomena drive away the many suitors that she finds unpleasing, namely, to fake an engagement until the end of the social season. The story is told in the first person by both Philomena and Inigo. Writing on the Once upon a Romance Web site, Amy Lignor commented that the protagonist's "comical struggle to find a … purpose in life (as well as a ‘bonnet’ that will stand the tests and trials of a regency heiress) will … entertain." Romance Reader at Heart Web site contributor Kay James commented: "The style of writing is clean and clear, and every scene is so well written that it jumps off the pages."