When you wrote your first novel, The Wedding Date, did you have any idea that it would become the first book in what I refer to as the 'Extended Jasmine Guillory Literary Universe?' One book may star a cousin who just made a brief appearance in a previous novel, or in Vivian's case, she went from being the mother of the heroine to the love interest of the next book. Your novels, to date, have all featured recurring characters. If you can believe it, I was so excited to write this book that I voluntarily moved my deadline up by six months.

So, I emailed my agent, and she loved the idea, and my editor loved it even more-and Royal Holiday was born. And in The Wedding Party, the mom of the heroine was Vivian, a Black social worker single mom in her 50s, and I'd already been tossing around ideas for how I'd get to write a book for her. But so many people responded to that tweet, that I started thinking about it. And Margaret tweeted, 'I now NEED a charming romance about the single mother of a new Duchess falling in love with an appropriately aged royal retainer while spending Christmas at Sandringham.' I responded, as a joke (really!), 'I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE'. In the fall of 2018, just as I was finishing up the draft of my third book, The Wedding Party, there was a news story that the Queen had invited Doria to Christmas with the royal family at Sandringham. Read on for their conversation about fully-formed heroines, royal research, and why so many romance novelists are lawyers. So when Glamour asked Guillory to participate in our “Bodice Rippers,” series (an exploration of the $1 billion romance novel industry) we couldn’t think of anyone better to speak with her than Cliffe. They brainstormed cottage names, swapped royal insight, and served as Guillory’s soundboard. (The group is so serious about their subject that they met up IRL for a weekend away to watch Meghan and Harry’s wedding.)Īs Guillory began to research and write her latest novel, Royal Holiday -a Doria Ragland-inspired love story where a 50-something black woman falls for one of the Royal’s private secretaries-she called upon Cliffe and Powell for help. Along with another friend, Samantha Powell, they formed a “Royals Group Chat,” where they dissect, celebrate, and challenge anything and everything related to the British Royal Family. Over time, their friendship progressed along a very 2019 trajectory-they went from Twitter DMs to text. The Slate columnist and the romance novelist bonded over a love of the royals and similar social media sensibilities. For Nicole Cliffe and Jasmine Guillory, it was love at first tweet.

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