All about reading good books & writing good books.
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’”
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.”
