From Super Collaborator to Solo Historical Novelist

By Peggy Joque Williams

If I could claim to have a writerly Superpower, it’s that I am a great collaborator. As far back as sixth grade I was collaborating with friends, spending our summer evenings brainstorming and passing around the notebook as we wrote the next great Beatles movie after A Hard Day’s Night came out. Okay…I just dated myself.

During my teaching years, I was also moonlighting writing educational, corporate, and industrial videos—collaborating with clients and producers. I teamed up with Christine DeSmet (The Fudge Shop Mystery series), and we cranked out a number of spec feature film scripts, some of which won awards, others were optioned. Our short film, The Stone Carver, made its debut at the Door County, Wisconsin 2024 Film Festival.

Along the way, my sister-in-law Mary Joy Johnson and I co-wrote and self-published two mystery novels: On the Road to Death’s Door and  On the Road to Where the Bells Toll. We’ve started a third in the series, but that got side-tracked when I had an idea for a solo project. My first solo project—Courting the Sun: A Novel of Versailles

Courting the Sun was conceived when I was deep into genealogy, researching my French-Canadian ancestors. I learned that in the late 1600s King Louis XIV of France recruited young women to go to New France (Canada) and marry his soldiers, fur traders, and farmers to help grow his colonies there. He paid their passage, gave them a dowry and a trousseau, and even paid them to have babies. The roughly 800 women who took him up on his offer are referred to as Filles du Roi (Daughters of the King). I discovered I am descended from twenty of these amazing women. 

And that discovery begged the question: why would a young woman leave everything and everyone she knew and traverse a dangerous ocean to marry a man she didn’t know? Many of these women were orphans, or indigent, or their families unable to provide a dowry. However, I decided to let my imagination run wild answering the question.

And thus was born the entirely fictional Sylvienne d’Aubert of Amiens, France (home of one of my real-life ancestors). To come up with a dramatic enough reason for her to leave France, I needed to put her in a tough situation, one requiring a life-changing choice. 

Writing Courting the Sun took me about three years, mostly because I am not the kind of writer who keeps to a specific schedule. I tend to write in fits and starts, and mostly late at night when the house is quite. And more often than I care to admit, I am writing in bed by flashlight because scenes and solutions to plotting problems tend to come to me just before I fall asleep. If I don’t write them down, I’ll never remember I thought of them. It became a running joke in my critique group when I woke up in the morning surprised to find new scenes in my bedside notebook.

Historical novels take an inordinate amount of research—in person, via the library, and online. It had been many years since I’d been to France, so most of my research was done concurrent with writing. I read both fiction and non-fiction books about the era, about King Louis XIV, his brother Philippe, his mistresses, Versailles, the food of 17th century France, the furniture, the clothing, the role of women, and the life of the nobility and everyday citizens of France. I toured Versailles virtually. I collected images of the houses I thought my characters might live in, clothing they might wear, furniture, and other artifacts. I also saved images of the real-life characters that would populate my book. I obsessively sourced every piece of information so that I could find it again if needed.

My process for writing a novel tends to be mix of plotting and pantsing—plontsing? I start with how I want the story to end. In this case, that Sylvienne needed to make the decision to leave France and go to Quebec. I then work backward from there—what could cause her to have to make that decision? What caused the cause? I take the key plot points and write a narrative outline. That outline might only be a paragraph long to start with. Then I add plot elements and stretch the story, until I have a narrative outline that is several pages long. 

The pantsing part of my brain is what happens late at night, while I’m in bed and wanting to fall asleep. Occasionally, it happens while I’m out for a walk or in the shower. Those are times when my brain is free from everyday needs, hassles, choices, and enjoyments. During those moments of freewheeling pantsing, an important element of a scene will come to me, perhaps something sensory or an emotional interaction. I jot it down in my notebook or tap it into my phone.

I’ve learning to email notes to myself, so that when I am ready to incorporate them into the manuscript or turn them into “scenes to add,” I can simply copy and paste them. Of course, everything will be revised and edited many times, but the basic scene will be there. And as I add each scene and write transitions, my outline grows organically into a manuscript that is eventually ready for the revising and editing phase. 

Now that Courting the Sun has been published, I’ve started over again, writing the sequel—A Tangled Dawn.

Courting the Sun: A Novel of Versailles was released May 9, 2024 by Black Rose Writing

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COURTING THE SUN

A rich journey through 17th century France in all its aspects—its bucolic countryside, the still-unmatched splendor of the court of Louis XIV, and the struggling French colony in Canada.” –Margaret George, New York Times bestselling author of Elizabeth I, The Autobiography of Henry VIII & The Memoirs of Cleopatra

France, 1670. On her sixteenth birthday, Sylvienne d’Aubert thinks her dream has come true. She holds in her hands an invitation from King Louis XIV to attend his royal court. However, her mother harbors a longtime secret she’s kept from both her daughter and the monarch, a secret that could upend Sylvienne’s life.

In Paris, Sylvienne is quickly swept up in the romance, opulence, and excitement of royal life. Assigned to serve King Louis’s favorite mistress, she is absorbed into the monarch’s most intimate circle. But the naïve country girl soon finds herself ill-prepared for the world of intrigue, illicit affairs, and power-mongering that takes place behind the shiny façade of Versailles.

This debut historical novel from Peggy Joque Williams captures the vibrancy and quandaries of 17th century life for a village girl seeking love and excitement during the dangerous reign of the Sun King.

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Peggy Joque Williams is the author of Courting the Sun, as well as co-author of two mystery novels, On the Road to Death’s Door and On the Road to Where the Bells Toll, written under the penname M. J. Williams. A retired elementary school teacher, Peggy received degrees from Michigan State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her fascination with genealogy inspires her historical fiction. She lives with her family in Madison, Wisconsin.

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Category: Contemporary Women Writers