I am a huge Downton Abbey fan, so imagine my excitement when I found out there's a novel actually written about Downton Abbey fans: WHILE WE WERE WATCHING DOWNTON ABBEY. I had to have the author, Wendy Wax, on the blog!

She had really interesting things to say about what it's like to use Downton Abbey as a backdrop for her novel. She writes: "I knew I wanted Downton Abbey to be at the heart of the story, but I didn’t want the story to be about Downton Abbey; I wanted it to be about my characters." And while she usually try not to stump her writing process by thinking about her readers too much, she had to in this case: "I needed to think about who would read my novel. And whether there was a way to write a story that would appeal to die hard fans and series’ virgins alike. It was thinking about the readers that led me to write what Newsday called ‘possibly the first novel written about fans of the show.’"

Have you ever had to weave in pop cultural elements into your writing? What's your strategy for integrating them into the story?

Nevena

Book Country Coordinator

--edited by Nevena Georgieva on 1/2/2014, 11:10 AM--