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Published on: 3/12/2005
Last Visited: 3/13/2005
Lauren Willig's academic adviser laughed when she told him why she enrolled in Harvard's graduate history program: to write a historically accurate romance novel.
She wasn't joking.
Willig, 27, is in her second year at Harvard Law School, still trying to finish her doctoral dissertation on the Royalists during England's 17th century civil war
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Willig has been batting around ideas for a romance novel since childhood, but she didn't start writing "Pink Carnation" until the summer after her second year of graduate school, as a reward to herself for passing her exams.
The work carried over to the following summer.She had a job in the history department's library, where she spent time writing dialogue for her book.
"My friends in the department knew what I was up to," she said."Most other people didn't.They just assumed I was working."
Willig mined her academic research for her novel's plot.
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The book bounces back and forth between 19th-century and present-day England, allowing Willig to mix in aristocratic courtship rituals with modern dating observations.
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"As everyone knows, lipids are fats, and fats are bad for you, and therefore ex-boyfriends must be avoided at all costs," Willig writes.
Despite the obvious parallels between Willig and her heroine, her novel isn't a thinly veiled autobiography.
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Willig didn't have to wait long to get her book published.
Two years ago, a friend gave her manuscript to someone in Miramax's book department.Miramax shopped the book around, and less than two months later, it was snapped up by Dutton publishing, a division of Penguin Books.
Laurie Chittenden, Willig's editor at Dutton, said the novel is a unique marriage of "chick lit," like "Bridget Jones' Diary," and serious fiction.
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"The field seems to be undergoing an expansion," Willig said.
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Willig has no plans to become a full-time novelist.She is interviewing for summer law jobs in her native New York City and plans to become a litigator once she graduates from law school.
Willig calls her dizzying career path a "family curse."Both of her parents traded in doctorates to practice law, and her mother also is an author.
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