Jessica Benson

Jessica’s first job after college was as a kindergarten teacher. She still has nightmares about--um, fond memories of-- that time. It did not take her long to figure out that it was not her calling. However, since she was now addicted to working long hours for virtually no pay, Jessica got a job in publishing. This job required that she pretend to be cheerful, efficient and competent. After a while, this started to wear on her. Also, she suspected that people were beginning to see through the act so she decided it was time to move on.

She had gotten married during this time, to her college boyfriend, and when he mentioned that he might like to go to law school in New York, she thought she might just accompany him. Unbelievably, she got another, better job in publishing for a Boston publishing company (www.godine.com), for which she would become the Publicity and Rights Director and open a New York office. The office was in her living room, and the office staff consisted of…her. But the books were great, and it certainly beat working with the demented kindergartners from hell, since she got taken out to lunch a lot.

Eventually, her husband graduated from law school and it appeared that he might become gainfully employed, so Jessica decided to pursue her long-standing dream of becoming a crusading journalist. She thought it might be a good idea to actually try writing something first, so she wrote about the publishing industry for the Philadelphia Inquirer and did some freelance magazine pieces. Having proved that she could turn on the computer, she decided to take the crusading journalist dream one step further by going to graduate school to learn how to be just that. One of the first things she learned was that it it seemed likely she was going to have to go out at night in the cold and cover things like car accidents and fires for probably many years before she would get her own editorial column in the New York Times.

This came as sort of a rude awakening, so she decided to have her first baby instead. She had very great plans to write complex, witty, insightful magazine articles with one hand, while entertaining her cherubic newborn with the other. Her stint teaching kindergarten had apparently taught her nothing. After about two weeks of motherhood, when she managed her first shower (well, okay, not really, but it felt that way) and her first two consecutive hours of sleep (yes, really), she was clear-headed enough to realize that her goals might be a trifle ambitious. Particularly as it was becoming apparent that she was not even able to read complex, witty, insightful magazine articles at the moment, because many of them were over two pages long! So for the next six months she nursed a lot, went to many baby music classes, wished there was a Starbucks in her neighborhood, and called her husband about fifty times a day to ask what time he was coming home.

One night they were out by themselves at dinner and her husband mentioned that he was finding her just a tad…irritable. Perhaps, he suggested, right before ducking under the table and taking cover, she needed something else to do with herself? Well, she thought—never one to let reality intrude—I could write a book. I do know sort of a lot about British history. I could write one of those things like Georgette Heyer did… And, unbelievably, she did, although she did not precisely understand that she was writing a Regency Romance. Perhaps equally unbelievably, she found an agent, and the agent sold Lord Stanhope’s Proposal, which won the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best First Regency. She had a second baby, and spurred by both those successes—and also by the fact that her agent reminded her that she was contractually obligated to do so—she wrote a second Regency Romance, Much Obliged, which won the Romance Writers of America’s prestigious RITA award.

Jessica is now writing longer historicals for Pocket, the first of which is The Accidental Duchess. She lives in New York (where she is happy to report there are now numerous Starbucks) with her husband—who is of course very much like a Regency duke would be if he were a commercial litigator—and two extremely noisy young sons.

On the Web

• Official Website [1]

Books

• Accidental Duchess, The - 2004
• Carpool Confidential - 2007
• Lord Stanhope's Proposal - 2000
• Much Obliged - 2001

Awards

• 2002 RITA Award Winner - Regency Romance, Much Obliged
• 2000 RT Reviewers Choice Award Winner - First Regency Romance, Lord Stanhope's Proposal