West Palm Beach native-now author gets boost from Bridgerton mania

Perhaps destiny had always beckoned Martha Waters, from the moment the fair-haired maiden opened her first storybook.

Curious and clever, she became enchanted by every hippity hop of Peter Rabbit, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cottontail.

Indeed, if toddler Martha could have toppled down a rabbit hole and traveled from her West Palm Beach bedroom directly onto Beatrix Potter’s farm in the Lake District of England, I daresay she would try.

She also would have said “daresay” a great deal.

You see, dear reader, this damsel grew up delighting in everything British, from Potter’s woodland creatures to London’s cobbled lanes to each delicious word from Jane Austen’s pen.

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“I became an Anglophile at an early age,” says Waters, 34. “In middle school, I was instantly hooked by Jane Austen … she’s very sharp and smart and deceptively observant and deep, with the depth disguised in comedies of manners. Her world is old enough to feel different from modern society, but it’s also modern, with a lot of humor.”

Humor, that’s the ticket. Witty banter rips a bodice quicker than barbed thicket.

That’s how Waters — Suncoast High School grad, professional librarian and exceedingly witty, self-professed goofball — ended up writing Regency-era romance novels that are as scrumptious as sugar biscuits.

Romance book captures "Bridgerton" author's attention

Waters’ historical romps are laugh-out-loud funny, charming and so popular that “Bridgerton” author Julia Quinn mentioned Waters’ upcoming book on the "Today" show. That novel — “To Swoon and to Spar” — comes out April 11. It’s the fourth of five paperbacks in Waters’ “Regency Vows” series, published by Atria, a division of Simon & Schuster. The fifth will appear in 2024.

Waters’ first Vows novel, “To Have and to Hoax,” came out in April 2020, a month into the pandemic. There’s some irony to that, since the plot revolves around a fake case of consumption.

In short: Lady Violet Grey meets Lord James Audley on a balcony during a ball in 1812. (Side note to single ladies with 19th-century sensibilities: Balconies invite scandal. As Violet’s mother chides her on Page 1: “Curiosity will take you nowhere. Curiosity will lead you to balconies! And ruin!”)

To avoid ruin, Violet and James quickly marry, then banter, then bicker — all with an undercurrent of corset-busting desire. They’ve been estranged for four years when Violet receives a note that James has fallen from his horse. When she races to his side, she finds him in a tavern. To get him back, Violet employs a hoax of her own. Delicate coughing ensues.

“The doctor seemed very interested in my lungs,” she sputters, in the manner of a fake consumptive.

“In your lungs, or the breasts that cover them?” James retorts.

It’s “an ever-escalating game of manipulation, featuring actors masquerading as doctors, threats of Swiss sanitariums, faux mistresses — and a lot of flirtation between a husband and wife who might not hate each other as much as they pretend,” the back cover states.

Waters chuckles at the plot’s origins.

“I had been joking with my friends that consumption is the most romantic way to die. A fake case of consumption! That would be a funny romance novel,” she laughs. “That turned into my first book.”

That book features so many juicy secondary characters that the Vows series was born to expand their stories. The second book, “To Love and to Loathe,” appeared in 2021, with “To Marry and to Meddle” arriving in 2022.

Writing a book a year while balancing work as a children’s librarian requires a feistiness akin to that of Austen’s heroine Elizabeth Bennet of “Pride and Prejudice,” and Waters has had every reason to address her deadlines the same way Elizabeth addresses Mr. Darcy: “My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me.”

She dedicated ”To Have and to Hoax” to her parents, “who took me to Jane Austen’s house.”

Good books begin like Martha did - with a love of reading … and some real characters

Waters’ parents planted a garden of imagination for Martha and her younger sister, Alice.

Her father, Lannis Waters, spent more than three decades as an award-winning photojournalist at The Palm Beach Post. Her mother, Liz Best, is a freelance writer.

“Watching them work inspired me,” Waters says. “And they had very interesting friends.”

Surrounded by books and stories and eccentric newsroom characters who could have been from another era, young Martha’s mind churned. “I had lots of personality, and I could see it was OK to be a little weird.”

She wrote short stories in first grade at Palm Beach Public, and her mother decided to open a “publishing center” at the elementary school. Students wrote and illustrated their stories, and they’d make books with spiral binding and “about the author” blurbs.

“My mom is to blame for this whole thing,” Waters laughs.

Liz Best remembers the moment her daughter’s spark for Brit lit was lit: “Martha was 3 years old, and we played this kids’ movie about Beatrix Potter. The actress playing Beatrix was in a cottage in the countryside, and she got a cup of tea, stoked up the fire, and she started writing a letter on stationery and sketching Peter Rabbit. Then she wraps a shawl around her shoulders and walks to the post office to mail the letter. Martha went into her room and came out wearing a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.”

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In 2006, with Martha’s ardor for Austen in full bloom, the family visited England — and Austen’s home in Chawton, about 45 miles southwest of London.

“Going to England cemented my love for it,” Waters says. “It is as great as it is in my imagination.”

She went back to London for a semester as part of her undergrad degree in history and international studies from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, and kept visiting and writing.

“I had been trying to get a book published, and trying to write young adult novels,” she says. “Then I went to grad school to become a librarian and randomly picked up a Julia Quinn book. I loved it and read her entire backlist. The banter, the humor, the relationships …”

Julia became her new Jane, and a historical romance writer was born.

“What’s so fun about this time period (the Regency era, circa 1811 to 1820), it’s well-trodden ground in terms of culture,” Waters says. “As a writer, it’s fun to make your story exist within the bounds of the era. I play fast and loose with the history sometimes — it’s a mannered society, with firm rules on what appropriate behavior is — and the characters push against it while still living within it.”

“To Have and to Hoax” hit the shelves, with acceptable sales. And then came “Bridgerton.”

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If you have not heard of “Bridgerton,” perhaps you should get off your balcony.

Netflix describes the hit show this way: “The eight close-knit siblings of the Bridgerton family look for love and happiness in London high society. Inspired by Julia Quinn's bestselling novels.”

“Bridgerton” proved to be a campy and colorful cure for COVID-weary souls, a gossipy confection like no one had ever seen before. In grim times, we need a romp.

“The historical romance genre got a big boost from ‘Bridgerton,’” says Kaitlin Olson, Waters’ editor at Atria.

A prequel, “Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story,” will debut on Netflix on May 4, sure to boost sales for Waters’ “Regency Vows” books.

She’ll be watching from her home in Portland, Maine, where she moved in 2021, because North Carolina summers were just too darn hot. Florida summers? Never again, I daresay!

“The child me had a romanticized idea of a northern rocky shore — about as different as you can get from South Florida,” Waters says. “And I’ve always been intrigued by the history of New England.”

Drawn to the drizzle, the restless Atlantic, and the necessity for coverings, capes and coats — or, as Jane Austen might say, parasols, pelerines and pelisses (Google it, if you must) — Waters has found a cozy spot to create and enjoy a cup of tea (or Pimm's Cup in a can).

She holds on to one tangible souvenir from Jane Austen’s house: a leather bookmark, now poised between pages written by the curious and clever Martha Waters.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Regency romance is having a moment just in time for Suncoast grad's next book