Behind The Book With Georgie Blalock 

In 2022 when I began doing regular Q&As with authors, Georgie Blalock was one of the many I had the pleasure of working with. In early 2023 I read The Other Windsor Girl about Princess Margaret. Today I finished reading an early copy of The Windsor Conspiracy about Wallis Simpson & Edward VIII & am honored to be doing this edition of Behind The Book With Georgie Blalock! The Windsor Conspiracy will be published on July 16^th! Preorder the book now if you are a Georgie Blalock fan & enjoy historical fiction! You are in for a treat! 

Q: Georgie, in our Q&A almost two years ago, you spoke briefly about different story ideas you wanted to explore for your next novel, Wallis Simpson being one of them. What intrigued you about Wallis & Edward VIII? 

A: Thank you for having me back on your blog! What intrigued me about Wallis and Edward was uncovering some of the truth behind the myth of their supposed love affair of the century. I’d read a number of books about Wallis that cast doubts on her love for the Duke. Many books also detailed Wallis’s desire to become Queen and how she and the Duke schemed with the Nazis to regain the British throne. With that much drama, I knew there was a juicy story waiting to be told.  

Q: The research & writing for this novel is excellent! Since we discussed this briefly in 2022, what was the process like researching & writing the book? How long did it take for you to do both?  

A: I read every book I could get my hands on about the Duke and Duchess and then, after a few months, I narrowed my focus to their lives during WWII. There are several books about their activities during WWII but most of them are older and I had to hunt to find them. Both the Duke and Duchess published autobiographies, and while they did provide some insight into the couple, they were both overly flattering portraits. Thankfully, several biographers were willing to outline the less savory aspects of their lives. 

To help flesh out Amelia and her day-to-day life with the Windsor’s, I tracked down every autobiography of the Windsor’s personal secretaries that I could find. There were only a couple of books from their secretaries, and while they provided a great deal of information, they were overly rosy and flattering to the Duke and Duchess. Sadly, none of their staff wrote any tell-all books. It just wasn’t done back then. 

Q: In the Acknowledgements Section, you wrote that while Amelia Montague is a fictional character, you took on various accounts from different Windsor secretaries to create her character and story. Why did you decide to have Wallis’s story told from a fictional secretary rather than Wallis herself or one of the real secretaries? 

A: I decided to tell The Windsor’s story from Amelia’s point of view because I wanted someone unfamiliar with Wallis’s world that the readers could identify with. I wanted readers to be drawn into Wallis’s life the way Amelia is and to be as surprised as Amelia when she starts to uncover Wallis’s dirty dealings. 

Q: Without spoiling too much, which scenes did you enjoy writing the most and why?

A: My favorite scene to write was the opening chapter. It was fun to research Chateau de Cande and to really delve into how Wallis and the Duke reacted to the Duke’s brother becoming King. Also, reading the wedding guests’ catty reactions to the Windsor’s relationship and wedding ceremony offered a great deal of insight into how people really felt about the couple.

Q: For anyone wanting to know more about Windsor’s during this period, what books do you recommend they read after they finish reading The Windsor Conspiracy? 

A: Two good books I recommend learning more about the Windsor’s Nazi dealings are Andrew Lownie’s Traitor King: The Scandalous Exile of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and 17 Carnations: The Royals, The Nazis and the Biggest Cover-Up in History by Andrew Morton. A great book about Wallis is That Woman: the Life of Wallis Simpson, Duchess of Windsor by Anna Sebba. I also recommend reading The Windsor’s I Knew: An American Private Secretary’s Memoir of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Nassau, Bahamas 1940 – 1944, it provides an interesting peek into the Windsor’s time in The Bahamas and is available on Amazon Kindle.

Q: What lessons do you hope readers learn, after reading The Windsor Conspiracy? 

A: The lesson I hope readers learn is to question the official or popular story behind mythical romances. The Duke and Duchess are often portrayed as sympathetic people who were mistreated by the British Royal Family because of their love. The reality behind their relationship is much darker. They were self-centered people who actively worked to bring about Britain’s downfall for their own benefit, and neither of them cared about the many individuals who suffered because of their ambitions.