Quotes from Deanna Raybourn

Without an expectation of success, one is rarely successful.

If you lift the romantic element out of my plots, you still have fully formed mysteries. In the same fashion, if you pull the mystery out of a historical romance, you are left with a perfectly satisfying story.

If one has a purpose, life is bearable enough, do you not think so?

Life is too uncertain... You must seize happiness where you find it.

In creating a new character, it's sometimes difficult to find a touchstone, a North Star that will always point you in the direction that character will travel.

Oh, yes. I mean to marry him. But not because I want him to give me a life. I want to marry him to share the life I already have. The difference, I think you will find, is a significant one.

You are curious and quick, you have a deft mind, and for some unaccountable reason, people tell you things -- useful things.

The addition of romance in my books or mystery to a historical romance is the sauce, not the goose.

To know how a character will behave in any given situation is a necessity and a gift.

Among my favorite half-dozen topics is the field of Victorian female explorers, the intrepid women who packed up their parasols and petticoats and roamed the world in search of adventure. Some were scientists, some artists, some unabashed curiosity-seekers who simply went out to see what they could see.

One of the joys of writing historical fiction is the chance to read as much as you like on a pet subject - so much that you could easily bore your friends senseless on the topic.