You could look at Mary Bly in two ways.
An academic with a bachelor’s degree from Harvard, a master’s from Oxford and a Ph. D from Yale. She is a Shakespearean scholar who is a tenured professor at Fordham University.
Bly is also a highly successful romance novelist, writing under the pen name Eloisa James. James has sold millions of books, including her latest Four Nights With the Duke.
And if you thought the words "successful" and "romance novelist" couldn’t successfully co-exist, you’d be very wrong. In fact, women have been making a living through romance novels that spans far greater than Jane Austen. What many who are unfamiliar with the genre or novels themselves, James explains that there is almost a scientific formula to creating a successful romance novel.
"It's an extremely constructed book," says James. "And I think that's something that interests people who don't know a lot about romances. They don't think how much thought and construction actually goes into making a book that you will rip through in two nights."
Eloisa James has written over thirty books since 2000, and is a New York Times bestselling author. Despite her success, she plans to continue teaching as well as making stories and characters her audience will dive into head-first.
"I want somebody to be able to escape for two nights, I want them to not be able to put [the book] down," says James. "I want the world to fade away for five hours, ten hours, fifteen hours. That's my success."
