Tag: historical fiction
Writing Team Spirit
Writing a book is a wonderful, yet often lonely business, especially when writing a book about togetherness and the power of camaraderie, like The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir. After spending days laboring in front of a laptop in an empty room, I can quickly become fraught with plot-related anxieties, character qualms, voice worries, and that omnipresent […]
Historical Fiction: Making Research Invisible – And Ignoring The Aspidistra
Memory is a cruel thing. It lingers in dark trenches, whispering, or withholding, waiting to creep into the no-man’s-land of our dreams. It knows what we long to remember, and what we hope to forget. And it knows Hearsay and Imagination will cover any gaps… So begins my new novel, The Echo of Twilight. Set […]
How Archival Research Added Texture To My Novel
Let me make this clear from the start: I love the smell and feel of archival documents, those yellowing bits of paper and crumbling photographs that rustle ever so slightly when extracted from their manila envelopes. There’s something magical about scouring through meters of racks, drawers and file folders until you find an interesting or […]
Cover Story
‘Never judge a book by its cover.’ In publishing, we know that the opposite of this is true. I didn’t know just how true until the publication of my latest novel, Through the Barricades, an historical love story set in the early 1900s. I had had seven novels published by a variety of houses eg […]
Blending History Into Fiction
Research can make your story accurate, but you have to dig deeper to give it life. The last major revision of my new novel THE TASTE OF AIR (Red Adept Publishing, Sept. 2016) changed the points of view to focus on the three women at the center of this story. Sisters Nell and Bridget were […]
Historical fiction – Modern Themes
I like to think of my books as offering intelligent escapism. While I write about past times I try to do so in a way that people today can identify with – posing the kinds of dilemmas and problems, challenges and triumphs that are relevant today – even though the way we respond to them […]
The Fifth Avenue Artists Society
I’m really into genealogy. I think I come by it honestly. My family as a whole is very interested in our history, and once you find one colorful story it’s hard to stop. Granted, I’ve hardly had to search for much—my grandma’s family sort of passes down anecdotes and then routinely talks about them, so, […]
Uncovering Family Secrets
Survivor guilt is a force that endures, whether within the context of the tragic wars of yesterday and today, or the ongoing trauma experienced by families. As a second generation American, whose relatives immigrated from Eastern Europe before WWII, it would take decades to uncover the details of their intricate pasts─ the dark secrets they […]
Talking Yourself Down and Talking Yourself Up (aka: Fighting the Two-Headed Dragon of Insecurity)
Insecurity, covered with writhing, glinting scales, is a dragon – a truly frightening creature. But here’s the worst part: the dragon has two heads. The battle against the beast begins the moment you put your fingers to the keyboard with serious intent. Your intent is to be a writer. A writer in the wool-stocking, coffee-gesturing, […]
New Author’s Survival Guide
There it is in your inbox, the passport to the magical country that has haunted your dreams and obsessed your waking hours: Author Land. After so many false starts and rejections (only a fraction admitted to), the email has landed and the contract is coming – one of the gods of publishing (small, large, doesn’t […]
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