All about reading good books & writing good books.
The first recorded economic bubble, ‘tulipomania’, occurred in the Dutch United Provinces between 1635 and 1637. The 1630s were a period of intense political and religious intrigue, when Pope Urban VIII appeared to be supporting Spain’s attempt to reclaim her lost territories in the Netherlands, but was actually conspiring to limit the size and power of the Habsburg Empire, Continue reading “Plague and Tulips: gambling in a time of pestilence.”
. . . members of a reading club had been asking me about my characters. Where, they wanted to know, did my characters come from?
Well, the truth is I see things: that is I see people doing things. The other truth is I didn’t know this wasn’t normal: I grew up knowing my great-grandmother was ‘fey’; Continue reading “Uninvited Characters.”
If my great-grandmother had lived in the 17th Century there’s a good chance she would have been named a ‘wise woman’. Great-grandmother Margaret was ‘fey’: she knew things. Take for instance the time she and her husband, who was a forester, took a few precious days holiday in a remote area of the Mountains of Mourne. Continue reading “Suspect Women”
Sandra Danby asked various people about their ‘comfort reads’ – which books do they always go back to? Here is my response.
My ‘Porridge & Cream’ novels are in the House of Níccolò series by the late Scots author Dorothy Dunnett. I became hooked on her sixteenth century Game of Kings series featuring the exquisite Francis Crawford of Lymond in the 1970s. Continue reading “My ‘PORRIDGE & CREAM’”
Secondary characters are used to develop the main character(s) and/or further the plot in any fiction genre, but in historical fiction the author also has to ensure what they say and do is appropriate to the epoch of the novel.
Whether or not the protagonist was a real person, secondary characters are frequently fictional constructs and in the story to serve a purpose. Continue reading “Secondary characters in historical fiction”
Roller-skating in the Hindu Kush.
(Background research for The Empress Emerald)
‘Horrible looking hills loomed nearer and nearer and then you saw some sort of crack going up through the hills – and this was the Khyber Pass; great slabs of rock towering up on either side of you.’ (Ed Brown, Royal Warwickshire Regiment, 1930s)
‘I set the defaulters to work with pick axes Continue reading “The Great Game.”
In response to an article on how the real slog and sadness in an author’s life can begin on publication, I’d like to raise the issue of so-called ‘celebrity status’, and the silent worlds most comfortably-dressed, disconnected, happily-individual writers inhabit.
In what now seems like a previous existence, I studied dance and drama. It was drummed into us that we must never be seen off-stage Continue reading “Confessions of a reluctant show-off”
Fiction writers are essentially liars. Historical fiction writers are thieves as well.
Readers of fiction enter a deal whereby they knowingly suspend disbelief, and believe what they are told. Readers of historical fiction do not have to suspend disbelief, but they knowingly accept stolen goods – unless the tale has been legitimately inherited as in Karen Charlton’s Catching the Eagle. Continue reading “The Act of Writing Historical Fiction.”
Which epoch and why? #1
JGH: ‘I write stories set in the seventeenth century and the early twentieth century.’
Question: ‘Why those epochs?’
Good question. Let’s look at some clichés first: Roman sword’n’sandal stories are bloody and exciting; the War of the Roses is full of intrigue; Tudor novels are sexy; Regency novels are titillating; Victorian novels are upstairs and downstairs; and World War stories are full love, loyalty and family suffering. But the seventeenth century has it all – and Continue reading “Writing historical fiction – when & why.”
