Alison Goodman is the author of The Dark Days Club: a novel of dark fantasy set in the shadows of Regency England:
London, April 1812. Lady Helen Wrexhall is set to make her curtsy to Queen Charlotte and step into polite Regency Society and the marriage mart. Little does Helen know, that step will take her from the glittering ballroom of Almacks and the bright lights of Vauxhall Gardens into a shadowy world of demonic creatures, missing housemaids and deadly power. Standing between those two worlds is Lord Carlston, a man of dubious reputation and infuriating manners. He believes Helen is destined to protect humanity from an unearthly truth, but all he can offer is danger, savagery and the possibility of madness. Not the kind of destiny suitable for a young lady in her first London Season. Against a backdrop of whispered secrets in St. James’s Palace, soirees with Lord Byron and morning calls from Beau Brummell, The Dark Days Club is a delightfully dangerous adventure of self- discovery and the dark choices of new found adulthood.In this short interview, Goodman and I discuss the pleasures of mixing fact with fiction, tentacled monsters, and why Regency Era Londoners didn't want a police force. Suvudu: I must admit that I'm astonished by the amount of historical detail that you've managed to weave into your novel: everything from little bits of Regency slang to characters like Lord Byron and events like the Ratcliffe Highway murders. Have you always been interested in Regency England or was this just something you got into for the novel? Alison Goodman: My obsession with the Regency era can be traced back to Christmas 1978 when my mother gave me my first Georgette Heyer novel. It was one of those read-in-a-day books, and I spent the entire Christmas summer holiday (I live in Australia) reading Heyer’s Regency novels. It was heaven on a stick! I then moved on to Jane Austen and was just as besotted. From that first moment I picked up and read Heyer, I was fascinated by the history of the period, and the etiquette of genteel society that overlaid normal human passions and urges with a strict code of politeness. Within that tension is enormous room for conflict, which is great for storytelling! SUV: I enjoyed the fact that you didn't really make any attempt to highlight the factual from the fictional. Readers could easily finish the entire book without knowing that there's a great bit of fact there. How did you come to the decision to handle it that way? AG: I remember reading The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum and then, after I had finished, finding out that the contract killer in the book––Carlos the Jackal––did, in fact, exist! I was blown away by the idea – that frisson of knowledge was so exciting and satisfying. So I suppose part of my decision was informed by that experience. I love a smooth blend of fact and fiction! I chose to set The Dark Days Club in May 1812 because so many fascinating historical events occurred in that month: the assassination of the Prime Minister, the trial and hanging of his assassin, Lord Byron’s overnight literary fame, to name just a few. These events happen in the background (and sometimes the foreground) of Lady Helen’s life in the novel and add a sense of truth to the fictional action. SUV: Reputation and good breeding were very important in the upper echelons of Regency England society. The disgrace that befell Lady Helen's family is a hard burden for her to carry. I'm wondering though if there are any benefits to having that kind of background. Do the poor expectations of her peers give her any kind of freedom to pursue unorthodox activities? AG: I think, in this first book, it is the opposite. Helen has been brought up to believe that she must make amends for her mother’s fall from grace by being a model Regency woman. At the beginning of the novel, she is trying to be that exemplary woman, but notes,
“… she also fell short of her uncle’s ideal of female virtue—it was so hard to be that irreproachable mix of innocence, modesty, and unquestioning obedience—but such a failure did not make her an instrument of Hell.”She has been taught that she must guard against any sign of wildness in her character that she may have inherited from her mother. Part of her journey is the realization that she is not her mother—that she must make her own choices––and the “wildness” within her is a strength rather than a grievous character flaw. SUV: The supernatural predators walking London's streets are parasitic creatures, and almost kind of Lovecraftian with their tentacles and other squicky bits. Where did you come up with this? I got the impression that in the world of the novel that they've been the inspiration for mankind's various fictional monsters, am I correct? AG: Hahaha, squicky bits – I like that description. Yes, in the novel, the predators have been around for quite some time and I do hint that they’ve inspired some of mankind’s monster legends. I wanted the creatures to be symbolic of the excesses of the Regency period, so they are based on human desires and yearnings such as blood lust and hedonism and sexual cravings. All good fun! SUV: The Bow Street Runners aren't a group that many people are aware of. They were predecessors to London's first actual police force, but the impression I get is that some of the well-to-do characters of your novel don't care for them. Why is that, and how does this affect the cover they provide for the secretive goings-on of London's undercover monster hunters? AG: For many upper class English people in the Regency era, the idea of a police force was closely tied to the French Revolution, which had ripped through France 15 years before. During the Revolution, the French police force aligned themselves with the new regime. The English establishment was terrified that a similar revolution would happen in England and a police force was thought to be a symbol of “foreign oppression” and an encroachment upon an Englishman’s right to protect his own property and family. Henry Fielding, the novelist who was also a magistrate, founded the Bow Street Runners in 1749. He saw a desperate need for some form of law enforcement in London. The Runners, as they were called, were paid by the government and formally attached to the Bow Street Magistrate’s Office. They mainly dealt with property-based cases such as robbery and fraud and while some officers were exemplary, others were quite corrupt which created a dubious reputation. In my novel, they pass on any supernatural cases to the Dark Days Club and, at times, are called in help to cover up the results of a clash between humans and supernatural creatures. SUV: A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing. Now that Helen has been made aware of the supernatural world around her, there's no going back. Is there a sequel in the works? AG: Oh yes, two, in fact! The Lady Helen series is a trilogy. Book 2 is already with the publisher—it is set in Brighton during the summer social season––and I’m now working on Book 3, which is set in Bath during the winter social season.