In this episode of Jolene's Book & Writers Talk, I'm joined by Lauren Gilbert, a Port St. Lucie-based author whose lifelong love of English literature and deep immersion in Regency-erahistory shapes every page she writes.

Lauren shares how she brings authentic Regency heroines to life without the 21st-century makeover, why Jane Austen's private letters unlock a layer of wit and social critique that thenovels alone can't deliver, and how she tracks hundreds of research sources across spreadsheets timed in five-year blocks. We talk about her two published novels, her ambitious nonfiction project profiling seven largely overlooked women of power from the Regency period, and what it means to lose a publisher contract yet keep writing anyway.

We also get into the tools she uses: the British Newspaper Archive, British National Archives, genealogy records, ProWritingAid's plagiarism scanner, and the unexpected research windfall that came out of the COVID lockdowns.

This conversation is for writers drawn to historical fiction, nonfiction researchers, and anyone who has ever fallen into a period newspaper and lost an afternoon. Visit the Author's website: https://lauren-gilbert.com/

• 00:00 Show Welcome

• 00:41 Meet Lauren Gilbert

• 01:38 Why Regency Matters Now

• 03:05 A Rational Attachment

• 04:26 Deep Research Sources

• 07:23 AI and Old Documents

• 09:25 The Nonfiction Women Project

• 13:03 Archives, Online and In Person

• 15:05 Plotter or Pantser

• 17:44 Tracking Notes and Citations

• 21:05 Newspapers Then and Now

• 25:07 Advice for Historical Writers

• 27:09 Finding Rare Research Books

• 30:21 Dinner with History Icons

• 32:56 Closing and Subscribe

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