His Fic Author ~ C P Lesley

On Hist Fic Saturday

I am delighted to welcome to the blog

C P Lesley

Hello C P, welcome to Jaffareadstoo. Thanks for spending time with us today and for sharing your love of writing historical fiction.

As a historian who also writes historical fiction, what I love most is the freedom to make things up, to imagine the past, to play with possibilities. Although I feel bound by the sequence of events, to the extent we can determine what it was, even that carries in it a kind of freedom: sequences tell stories. Why did Napoleon advance in that direction, not this one? Why then, and not two days later or a week earlier? We never have all the answers, and in the gaps lie spaces for a novelist to fill in. 

Now if people were always rational, the process would be less interesting. But we all know the role that emotions play in decision making. Not just emotions, either: lies and coverups are as old as time. People routinely retell their stories after the fact, making themselves look better and their opponents worse. Even where documents exist, and in the period I write about they usually don’t, a novelist still gets to decide which of several conflicting explanations really drove a particular course of action and which alternative stories remain untold because those who lived them had no access to the written word. In medieval Russia, the setting of my novels, whole categories of people had no means to express themselves in writing: the poor (80–90 percent of society); women (the usual 50 percent plus); anyone who lost a battle with those in power.

And that’s just historical figures. As a novelist, I also get to invent people, which I like even better. I tell stories about women finding their own places in a wider world that wants only to turn them into obedient housekeepers and baby factories. Their roads to self-discovery vary according to their personalities. Nasan, a natural warrior, learns to expand her interests without sacrificing her essential self. Firuza, more conventional by nature, responds to the challenges posed by her brother’s incompetence by tapping unsuspected strengths. Maria actively resists change, only to discover that her new family with its weird (in her mind) expectations of wives provides a fulfillment she didn’t know she was missing. Roxelana uses her allure to manipulate men into doing what she wants.

Even the mothers, who’ve already made their peace with society’s demands, differ in their solutions. Natalia thrives in the role expected of her, managing a household of several hundred people and its associated estates like the small corporation it is. Sumbeka delegates her household tasks to others, ordering them hither and yon while she acts as her husband’s most trusted political and diplomatic adviser and the communications hub for their entire extended clan.

Researching these stories offers its own special joy. Oh sure, there’s the chore of plowing through weighty tomes festooned with notes—seldom a happy thought at the end of a long day’s work. So many of the tomes, too, fail to reveal the important things: what ordinary people ate and wore, how they thought about the happy and not-so-happy events of their lives, how they furnished their houses or talked to their children, what a particular piece of money would buy—never mind the all-important smells and tastes and sounds.

But oh, the magic of discovery! For me, the delight of research is stumbling over unknown or forgotten possibilities. The bandit chief who became a saint; the officially Muslim Tatars who continued to revere the clan spirits known as the grandmothers and tell tales of women warriors; the medical mysteries and herbal concoctions so useful for sending unsuspecting characters to their doom or into a trance; that odd, disastrous military campaign that took place at just the right moment to challenge a hero in unexpected ways.

It all feels like dipping a toe into the flowing River of Time. As people say when asked why small children love dinosaurs, “they’re big and they’re dead.” The past, too, is both vast and gone. This place where most of us wouldn’t want to spend our lives is fascinating to experience through a book, a film, or a TV show. And that’s why I write historical fiction.

About C. P :

C. P. Lesley is the author of eight novels, including Legends of the Five Directions (The Golden Lynx, The Winged Horse, The Swan Princess, The Vermilion Bird, and The Shattered Drum), a historical fiction series set in 1530s Russia, during the difficult childhood of Ivan the Terrible. Find out more about her at http://www.cplesley.com.

Website

Twitter @cplesley

Five Directions Press
Revised July 2018

Huge thanks to C P for being such a lovely guest 

we have loved having you on the blog today

Hist Fic Saturday ~ Author ~ Margaret Skea

On Hist Fic Saturday

I am delighted to welcome back to the blog

Margaret Skea

A very warm welcome, Margaret. Tell us why you love writing historical fiction...

Now here’s the thing – I’ve written short stories for more years than I like to admit to, and with some success. And over the years 3,000 words became my literary equivalent of a ‘comfort blanket’. There was absolutely no way that I thought I could ever write a novel - 100,000 words seeming far beyond my capabilities. 

But lightbulb moments generally happen when you least expect them. And so it was with me, when someone (whom I can’t now remember, but to whom I remain eternally grateful) said that a novel was only 30 short stories, without the trouble of thinking of a fresh location, characters, plot etc each time. And as said ‘lightbulb’ moment coincided with circumstances which gave me additional time and space to write, the first decision was made – a novel it was going to be.

Now came the hard bit – what would I write about? All my short stories up to that point had been contemporary, but I was struggling to think of any contemporary plotline that I wanted to explore in depth. But there was an event that however much I tried to dismiss it, kept popping into my head. There were two potential problems though – 1) it had happened in Scotland in 1586, a setting and period that I was rather less than familiar with, and 2) it was rather grisly. 

Looking back I can see a pattern – many of my contemporary stories are set in locations that I’ve never visited such as Kenya and Afghanistan and thus are as far removed from me geographically, as the Massacre of Annock is in time.

Source: Wiki commons

I’ve come to realise that I relish the challenge of transporting readers to a time and / or a place that neither I, nor (likely) they, have ever been.

So much for period, but what about topic? We all know the advice – ‘write what you know’. Yet on the face of it I appeared to specialize in writing what I didn’t know. Delve a little deeper though, and it became clear that there was a common thread that, in some guise or other, ran through most of what I had already written. That thread was conflict. Perhaps it wasn’t altogether surprising, given that my teenage years were dominated by the ‘Troubles’ in Ulster, so that what I knew in emotional terms was what it was like to live with an ever-present danger and the very real sense that each day might be my last.

By kind permission of the author

The parallels of life in Ulster with the Cunninghame / Montgomerie feud in 16th century Scotland, a feud that was punctuated by tit-for-tat atrocities over a period of some 150 years, are obvious – the issues of tribalism, of diverse loyalties, of right versus expediency, and the impact that living within a conflict situation places on families, on relationships and on personal integrity. I could have written about all of those things in the context of contemporary Ulster, except that I couldn’t because it felt too close for comfort. So, instead, I chose to tell a similar story, at 400 years remove. 

If emotionally it was easier to write an historical novel, in other ways it was harder - the research for the Munro saga took several years initially, and isn’t over yet, but the more I did, the more I enjoyed it. Getting into the mindset of a different era is also challenging, as is striving for an authentic ‘feel’, but for me it is an effort worth making. I’m now writing my fifth historical set in the 16th century – a Scottish trilogy and the first of two set in Saxony are already published- and when I’ve finished the current novel, while I may change centuries and location, I suspect I shall remain writing historicals for some time to come. And loving (almost) every minute of it. 

Huge thanks to Margaret for being such a lovely guest on the blog today 


and for sharing her love of writing historical fiction 

 

Visit the author's Website

Follow on Twitter @margaretskea1


Amazon UK

Hist Fic Saturday ~ Elizabeth Woodcraft

On Hist Fic Saturday I am delighted to welcome to the blog, best selling author

Elizabeth Woodcraft

Welcome to Jaffareadstoo, Elizabeth, I'm so thrilled to have you as my special guest today

Do tell us about yourself and how you were inspired to start writing your novels

I began writing when I was at school so then I wrote mostly on Sundays because we weren’t allowed to go out to play on Sundays. When I started to keep a diary I was 12 and I would write every night, in bed, hunched over the pages, because I slept in the lower bunk of bunk beds. My sister slept in the top bunk. 

I began writing my crime novels (Good Bad Woman and Babyface) while I was still working as a barrister. The good thing about being a barrister is you’re always writing documents that attempt to persuade as well as interest and even entertain your reader. So you are always honing your craft because the judge will tell you pretty smartly if your argument isn’t logical or lacks an important part of the story. 

 

Most of the fiction I wrote in those days was for my writing class. The class at City Lit in Holborn in London, was held on a Saturday afternoon, so in the morning I would be scribbling away. I couldn’t tell anyone at work that I was writing because – really – everyone wants to be a writer and I knew people would just yawn and say ‘Yeah, yeah.’ But the day I got a two-book deal from HarperCollins I was so excited I went into my chambers and told them all. Well, everyone who was in the clerks’ room. Basically, it was the clerks, all the barristers were in court. Immediately their question was, ‘What’s it about?’ and when I said it involved a barrister and her chambers they all said, ‘Am I in it? Am I in it?’ And in fact, one of the clerks, Lee, was in the book, in one short scene. 

It was at a time in my barrister’s career when I was representing a client whose case had gone to the House of Lords – the highest court in the land (now the Supreme Court). I was about to leave chambers to go to the hearing and as I said goodbye to the clerks I said, proudly, ‘I’m just off to the House of Lords.’ Lee, one of the senior clerks, looked me up and down in my barrister’s smart outfit and said, ‘In those shoes?’ I thought that was very funny, although a bit disconcerting. Fortunately in court your shoes are usually hidden. But that was the quote that went into the book. 

I’d written the first book, then I had to write the second one. 

I cut back on my barrister work which was something I could do fairly easily, because barristers are technically self-employed, although long-running cases had a habit of getting in the way. But the second book got written. 

Now I have left the bar and writing is my first career. I have to say it’s a whole lot harder now to sit down and do it, because now I am totally the mistress of my own time. And there are all those other activities which are calling to me - going out for coffee, going to the flicks (watching a film in the afternoon when the cinema is almost empty is one of the greatest pleasures on earth), reading newspapers, books and magazines, doing a sudoku or two, and occasionally going for a short stroll (exercise). It’s a challenge. But it’s a great life.

Huge thanks to Elizabeth for being my guest  author today 

and for sharing her thoughts about her writing...

Elizabeth's latest novel The Saturday Girls was published

 by  Zaffre on 30th August 2018. 

 ✧Here's what it's all about ✧

It's 1964. England has shaken off its post-war gloom and the world is full of possibilities.

Best friends Sandra and Linda live on a housing estate in Essex. They are aspiring mods: they have the music, the coffee bar and Ready Steady Go! on a Friday night.

Having landed their first jobs, Linda and Sandra look set. But the world is changing rapidly, and both girls have difficult choices to make. As Sandra blindly pursues a proposal, Linda finds herself drawn to causes she knows are worth fighting for.

But when Sandra's quest leads her to local bad boy Danny, she lands both her and Linda in more trouble than they bargained for . . .

Here are my thoughts about The Saturday Girls...

The Saturday Girls evokes that special time in the 1960s when every suburban town had its share of trendy coffee bars and the most important question for teenagers at the time, wasn't about nuclear disarmament or The Cold War, but was, for them, far more significant... are you a mod or a rocker?

Best friends, Linda and Sandra, are typical teenagers, fashionable mods, from their C&A twinsets, to their neatly pressed grey skirts. They enjoy innocent nights out, lust after inappropriate boys and generally have a really good time. However, times are a-changing and when Linda and Sandra start to become more independent, they realise that life isn't always very simple.

The author writes with confidence and enthusiasm, and as she explains in her notes at the end of the book, this was her time and the diaries she kept and her vivid memories have stayed with her. I was too young in the sixties to understand what it was like to be a teenager on the cusp of adulthood, with momentous change all around, and so this story certainly helped to bring time and place alive in my imagination.

I travelled back to a newly progressive time when boys with Lambrettas and girls with beehive hairstyles would meet and chat over coffees to plan their nights out. Futures would be decided and yet, for some, life wasn't always very kind, the ugly stigma of illegitimacy, and the unfairness of being ostracised for being an unmarried mother was still very much in existence, and the race to the altar, to be a wife was, for some girls, their life's ambition.

I really enjoyed being whisked back to suburban Essex in the 1960s in The Saturday Girls and I am sure that the author has more stories of this fascinating time to share.

His Fic Saturday ~ Author ~ Jasper Barry

On Hist Fic Saturday 

I am delighted to welcome back to the blog, Jasper Barry, author of  That Deplorable Boy

Matador
March 2018

✧A warm welcome, Jasper, tell us why do you write historical fiction ✧

I suppose it's the challenge. Like all novelists, I want to draw the reader into a world that they can see, touch, smell. But for me, driven by my addiction to nineteenth- century European history, that's the vanished world of Belle Époque France. And, because I'm also hooked on the period's literature, I use as my model the nineteenth-century novel, with its expansive reach into all walks of society and its characters battling against rigid rules of class and morality. 

The Miremont novels, The Second Footman, and the latest, That Deplorable Boy, don't dramatise specific historical events - although, if there's a crisis, like the 1882 crash of the Paris Bourse, it will feature in conversation. My aim is to place my characters firmly in the world of the time and make you feel what it was like to live then. But I've added a contemporary touch: the troubled love affair central to the novels is between two men, Armand de Miremont, a rich middle-aged marquis and Max, a handsome but unscrupulous young man of dubious and mysterious origins. 

Homosexuality was not illegal in 1880s' France. But it was still condemned and carried the risk of ostracism and blackmail. How easy is it to hide an illicit affair when you live in a house full of keen-eyed servants? And, in That Deplorable Boy, Max and Miremont's difficulties are compounded by the arrival of Miremont's estranged wife, Aline, who has brought his virginal younger daughter, Juliette, to Paris to make her debut. 

Miremont is torn between his jealous obsession with Max and his duty to be an upstanding father. Max, although promoted from footman to secretary, finds himself in social limbo, viewed by Miremont's family as no better than a servant, but scorned by the servants as "jumped up". He is, in the words of Old Jouvert, the sinister ex-butler, "neither fish nor fowl," and soon he is at risk of losing even this questionable status. 

As with The Second Footman, That Deplorable Boy balances life in the opulent salons of the Hôtel de Miremont with what goes on in the servants' hall - the squabbles between Miremont and his wife have a direct impact on the servants, greatly increasing their work, setting them against one another and, in the case of a new livery that makes them look like wasps, driving them close to rebellion. There's a ball too, but this one does not happen as if by magic; we see it from the point of view of Max, who is given the unenviable task of organising it to Mme de Miremont's satisfaction. The ball, of course, like all the best balls in novels, provides the spark that ignites the final slow-burning but devastating crisis of the book. 

When I began writing the Miremont novels I imagined I wouldn't need to do much research, as I was well up on the historical background. After all, the key thing is getting the characters and their motivation right and many of the conflicts they grapple with are no different from today's - social inequality, prejudice, sexual abuse, the pain of discovering the truth about your parentage, the agony when your heart tells you one thing but your conscience another… But, in fact, to make the setting for these conflicts as authentic as possible, I've been researching ever since. 

I like to be able to visualise things. It's a wonderful excuse to go to France, to the countryside for Miremont's estate, Beauvallon, and, of course to Paris - one task for That Deplorable Boy was to find out how long it would take Max to walk from Saint-Sulpice to Montmartre. Often I use paintings and old photographs, for instance for the book's skating scene on the frozen lakes of the Bois de Boulogne, or the ball's fête galante costumes. The section of the novel set in Beauvallon required research into 1880s' farm machinery. The internet is also a boon, but for the novel's fencing bout, having watched numerous YouTube videos, I found a very helpful fencing academy, so I could feel what it was like to wear a mask and hold a foil and where I learned to my delight that fencing is like chess, but with weapons. 

I like to be able to see things I'm not necessarily even going to mention: where people stand in a room, how they move across it. I once spent forty minutes wondering how a character in a servants' room without a fireplace could dispose of his cigarette when ashtrays were not yet invented - until I remembered there was a candle, and candle holders had a tray for spent matches, whereupon I could happily forget the cigarette and get on with the scene. 

So yes, it's a challenge to recreate the past. But it's also fascinating. 

 

More about That Deplorable Boy

The long-awaited follow-up to The Second Footman. 

A modern take on the nineteenth-century novel, set in 1880s’ France and full of period detail and atmosphere. 

Who is Max Fabien? Is he the loyal secretary and faithful lover of the marquis de Miremont? Or a handsome but unscrupulous trickster, who regards lying as an accomplishment and any sexual quarry as fair game? 

Miremont’s heart says one thing, his jealousy another. But his obsessive passion for the boy must remain a dark secret—no easy task when his estranged wife and their younger daughter arrive in Paris for a prolonged visit. 

Soon the strain begins to tell. The Hôtel de Miremont becomes a hive of gossip, mistrust, intrigue and deceit, and Miremont is faced with an impossible choice. 

Meanwhile the grim secrets of Max’s past continue to haunt him. Has the time come for him to claim his not-so-rightful destiny? 

That Deplorable Boy is the second book of the Miremont trilogy, charting the course of a gay love affair between an aristocrat and a former servant in late 19th-century France. Rich in period detail and set in the grand châteaux of Paris and Burgundy, the novels explore the suffocating social codes of the time and the conflicts and dangers they bring for those who must live outside them.

About the Author

" Since writing (an appalling) first novel at boarding-school by torchlight under the bedclothes, Jasper Barry has spent a lifetime writing, in advertising, in journalism and as a novelist. Barry lives in London with too many books and three obstreperous cats." 

Website

Twitter @JasperBarry2 #ThatDeplorableBoy

 ✨ Huge thanks to Jasper for being my guest on the blog today ✨

His Fic Saturday ~ Author, Juliet West

On Hist Fic Saturday

I am delighted to introduce to the blog the Historical Fiction writer 

Juliet West

A warm welcome to you, Juliet. Thank you for spending time with us today. Please tell us a little about yourself and how you got started as an author.

I grew up in Worthing, West Sussex. I went to the local school and sixth form college then studied history at university. Afterwards I trained as a newspaper reporter and worked in Dorset and Hampshire before moving to London. It wasn’t until my mid-thirties, when I was married with three children and living back in Sussex, that I started to write fiction. I joined a local writing group and later took a creative writing MA at Chichester University, where I focused mainly on short stories and poetry.

Finally, in 2010, I started to write my first novel, Before the Fall. I didn’t have an agent and I certainly wasn’t confident that the book would ever be published. It was just a challenge that I set myself – I wanted to write a novel before I was 40. In fact, I finished in 2013 when I was 42! 

To my amazement I found an agent very quickly, and signed a contract with Pan Macmillan. Before the Fall was published in 2014 and The Faithful is just out in paperback.

Without giving too much away what can you tell us about The Faithful?

The novel is set during the 1930s and it’s a love story that follows the lives of Hazel and Tom, who are teenagers when they first meet in 1935. Tom is a Londoner who has been dragged along to a seaside camp organised by Oswald Mosley’s blackshirt movement. Tom wants nothing to do with the camp, but his mother supports Mosley’s fascists and insists he comes along for the ‘holiday’. On his first day in Sussex, Tom meets Hazel, a local girl who knows nothing about the blackshirts. There is an instant connection between Tom and Hazel, but their romance proves to be less than straightforward . . .

Hazel is the main protagonist of The Faithful. Tell us about her and why you decided to write her story?

When I looked at old pictures of the blackshirt camps held in Sussex between the wars, I was struck by the number of young women taking part and wondered what could have possibly attracted them to join the British Union of Fascists. I imagined that some of them might have been vulnerable in some way, and became easy prey to the clever propaganda of the blackshirts. Even if they didn’t embrace the politics, they might be seduced by the sense of belonging and the security that being in a ‘gang’ can offer (even when that security turns out to be illusory).

So the idea for Hazel’s character was really borne of that curiosity. Hazel is an only child of wealthy parents, but her mother, Francine, is totally disinterested in her and spends as much time as possible with her lover in London. When the novel opens Hazel is bored and longing for excitement . . .

Whilst you are writing you must live with your characters. How do you feel about them now that the book is finished? 

Once a book starts to take off the characters live in my head quite vividly, and they do feel real in many ways, because sometimes they surprise me and go off on tangents that are totally unplanned. I don’t think there’s anything mystical about this: when you sink into a chapter or a scene it’s natural that the subconscious begins to take over.

I have a fondness for every character in The Faithful – even the flawed ones. One of the challenges I enjoy is trying to pick apart the seemingly incomprehensible actions of people who are not necessarily ‘bad’. This is what I’ve done in both novels – tackled quite difficult, dark subjects, not to excuse them in any way, but to gain some level of understanding. 

The Faithful is set in the mid-1930s. In researching the background to the story did anything leave a lasting impression on you?

Hazel is sixteen when the novel opens, but I didn’t want her to be totally ignorant in terms of sex education. I wondered what books might be lying around (or stashed away) in the 1930s family home. I knew about Marie Stopes’ Married Love, but then I discovered Ideal Marriage by Theodoor van de Velde. This was published in 1926 and became a massive worldwide bestseller. Fair to say Ideal Marriage is quite an adventurous sex manual, and the emphasis is most definitely on women receiving their equal share of pleasure. We have this image that everything was terribly buttoned-up before the 1960s, but the success of Ideal Marriage shows this certainly wasn’t the case!

When combining historical fact with fiction it must be quite a challenge to get the balance right. How do you manage to achieve this without compromising on authenticity? 

I am quite careful about research, and try to weave actual events into the narrative, rather than invent fictional incidents to serve the plot. The real history can be so rich and fascinating that there’s no need to dream up fictional scenarios. Having said that, there are occasions when I’ll make a balanced judgement and include an invented (plausible) detail, such as a soldier’s helmet washed up on Aldwick beach after the Dunkirk evacuation. After all, I’m a novelist not a historian – creativity is allowed!

Macmillan
Paperback
26 July 2018

As England is pulled towards war, the secrets within two families threaten to tear them apart, in the new novel from Juliet West, The Faithful . . . July 1935. In the village of Aldwick on the Sussex coast, sixteen-year-old Hazel faces a long, dull summer with just her self-centred mother Francine for company. But then Francine decamps to London with her lover Charles, Oswald Mosley's blackshirts arrive in Aldwick, and Hazel's summer suddenly becomes more interesting. She finds herself befriended by two very different people: Lucia, an upper-class blackshirt, passionate about the cause; and Tom, a young working-class boy, increasingly scornful of Mosley's rhetoric. In the end, though, it is Tom who wins Hazel's heart - and Hazel who breaks his. Autumn 1936. Now living in London, Hazel has grown up fast over the past year. But an encounter with Tom sends her into freefall. He must never know why she cut off all contact last summer, betraying the promises they’d made. Yet Hazel isn't the only one with secrets. Nor is she the only one with reason to keep the two of them apart . . . From the beaches of Sussex to the battlefields of civil war Spain, The Faithful is a rich and gripping tale of love, deception and desire.

Read my review of The Faithful here

About the Author

Juliet West worked as a journalist before taking an MA in Creative Writing at Chichester University, where she won the Kate Betts' Memorial Prize. Before the Fall, her debut novel, was shortlisted for the Myriad Editions novel-writing competition in 2012. Juliet also writes short stories and poetry, and won the H. E. Bates short story prize in 2009. The Faithful is her second novel. She lives in West Sussex with her husband and three children.

Find out more about Juliet and her writing on her website 

Follow on Twitter @JulietWest14 #TheFaithful

 Huge thanks to Juliet for being my guest today and for sharing her thoughts about 

The Faithful

The Faithful is available to buy from Amazon UK and other good book stores

Hist Fic Saturday ~ Kate Braithwaite

On Hist Fic Saturday

I am delighted to welcome back to the  blog the historical fiction writer

Kate Braithwaite

Kate has just published her latest historical novel, The Road to Newgate and I am thrilled that she has taken the time to talk to me about why she writes historical fiction.

Why I write historical fiction by Kate Braithwaite

It sounds a bit daft, but in all honesty I started writing historical fiction because I couldn’t think of anything to write about. I had wanted to be a writer for years: as a total bookworm and English graduate, I had grown up believing I would write my own novel one day. But what about? I had no idea. Over the years I would make the odd stab at a short story or opening chapter only to abandon it when I realised, pretty quickly, that I wasn’t a literary genius and stellar prose didn’t pour out from me in the way I imagined it might. That was how it was through my twenties. I did very little writing - but a lot of thinking about writing. I did a lot of walking around observing things and choosing the words I would use to describe things – that blind girl on the train that was wearing a watch, that abandoned bingo hall with broken windows, the adult student I taught who always wore four cardigans and hadn’t washed for a year – but no book was on the cards.

Then I had children. Even when I was pregnant I remember thinking that this was it. If I didn’t get to it, I was never going to produce this imaginary book. While I was pregnant I decided I would get cracking on writing something serious but still, I didn’t do it. Instead I carried on working and daydreaming. But after my son was born and I was on maternity leave I picked up a second-hand copy of The Sun King by Nancy Mitford. In it, I read about the affair of the poisons that threatened to engulf Louis XIV’s court in the 1680’s. Here was something to write about! I had carried around in a notebook for years with a cutting from a newspaper article about Fay Weldon. She said, to paraphrase, that writers should write the books they want to read. I knew I’d love a book about the affair of the poisons. Finally, I had something to write about.

Fireship Press
September 2016

Of course, there are other reasons why I write historical fiction. I love the genre and have always loved a good story, set in the past, particularly one where I can learn something new along the way. I’ve always gravitated toward reading crime novels too – from Agatha Christie to Ian Rankin and PD James, I enjoy a mystery and a darker side of life (in fiction mind you, not reality!). These two loves have really informed the kind of novels I write.

And having now written two historical novels, I can also say I write them because I enjoy the whole process. My stories – my work in progress included – tend to be based on real events and people so there is a great deal of research and puzzling out why people did what they did and what kind of characters must they be to make the choices they made. Part of the historical novelists job is to join the dots and fill in the gaps in a plausible manner. I love that! Another key part is to write a good novel. The facts are important but the story needs to work within the novel form or readers might as well just pick up a narrative history book. That’s the part that probably challenges me the most. I hope I’m getting better with each book I write.

Crooked Cat Books
16 July 2018

London 1678.

Titus Oates, an unknown preacher, creates panic with wild stories of a Catholic uprising against Charles II. The murder of a prominent Protestant magistrate appears to confirm that the Popish Plot is real.

Only Nathaniel Thompson, writer and Licenser of the Presses, instinctively doubts Oates’s revelations. Even his young wife, Anne, is not so sure. And neither know that their friend William Smith has personal history with Titus Oates.

When Nathaniel takes a public stand, questioning the plot and Oates’s integrity, the consequences threaten them all...

About the Author

Kate Braithwaite grew up in Edinburgh but now lives with her family in Pennsylvania. The Road To Newgate is her second novel. 

Website

Twitter @ KMBraithaite 

Facebook

Huge thanks to Kate for spending time with us today and for sharing her love of writing historical fiction.The Road to Newgate is available to buy from Amazon UK  and other good book stores.

His Fic Saturday ~ Pam Weaver

 On Hist Fic Saturday I am delighted to welcome to the blog, best selling author

Pam Weaver

It's a real thrill to have Pam as my guest on the blog today sharing her thoughts about why she writes historical fiction..

My mother was a great story teller. I grew up listening to her tales from the past. Neither of us realised but she was doing the foundation work upon which I would start to build my reputation. I would listen to the same story over and over again and never get tired or bored. She’d create the scene, explain the dilemma, build the story to a crescendo but always leave me with a satisfying conclusion. 

Was story telling in my genes? The truth is, I have no idea. My mother adopted me. 

My mother was born in 1912 and life was very different back then. However her story telling was so vivid I felt like I could have been there. I quickly learned that no matter when we are born, we all have the same dreams, the same aspirations and the same longing to be loved and accepted. Because I loved her, I was always rooting for her in the stories she told. I felt the same indignation, the same pain of insult, the same frustration or the same glow of romance as she spoke. It was only as I grew older, I realised that as a child of the 1950’s and 60’s my attitudes and opinions were shaped in a different forge. It wasn’t long before I would cry, ‘You never should have put up with that, Mum,’ or ‘I would have told her to sling her hook.’ And she would just smile and say, ‘That’s the way things were back then.’

I never did have any great love for the dry facts of history but I am fascinated by the people. What made them tick? Why did they accept patterns of behaviour that we would never condone nowadays? When I write, it’s great fun to imagine myself in the same room as my character, but thanks to the years of listening to those often repeated stories, I know I have to be very careful to leave my 21st century mind, attitude and conditioning away from the page. 

In my first book, my character stayed with her pig of a husband and tried to make the best of it. A reader told me that she’d lost patience with her. ‘What an absolute wimp!’ she complained angrily. ‘Why on earth didn’t she just walk out on him?’ I would say, the answer to that question is simple. 

In this day and age, any wife leaving her husband can find support outside the marital home. The women of my mother’s generation had no such luxuries. A woman couldn’t even rent a flat without the signature of a male guarantor on the agreement. The man might be her local doctor or bank manager but I would hazard a guess that those men would be far more likely to tell her to go back home and be a dutiful wife, than they would be willing to stand surety for her. And if she had children - Oh, don’t get me started on that one!

There’s been plenty written about kings and queens or notables in high places but I’m more interested in the unrecorded people of history and the ordinary women who in turn became extraordinary – like my mother. I my humble opinion, they were the ones who really won the war. The men may have been fighting, but the women kept the country going, brought up the next generation and found a strength of character which is still much admired. To fully comprehend what that meant, as I write, I try to immerse myself in their times. And what fun that can be.

We are lucky enough to have a wealth of research material at our fingertips. The Internet, the local library, and old newspapers have given me a real insight into the ordinary life of the time. Added to that, the rest of the world and his wife have written their memoirs. Best of all, I love talking to the people from that generation. It’s wonderful when they’re in full flow and then they say something in all innocence which gives me a real insight into their lives. I remember a 90 year old telling me that during the war, all the petrol they used on the farm was tainted pink. ‘If you were caught using pink petrol in your car,’ she went on, ‘you’d be in big trouble.’ 

‘Oh that didn’t bother us,’ scoffed her 93 year old friend sitting next to her. ‘We used to filter our petrol through the gas mask. When it came out the other end, it was normal colour.’

What a gem! And yes, I did use it in a book. 

So why do I write historical fiction? First and foremost because I love it and then because you learn something new all the time. 

About the Author

Pam Weaver is a bestselling author of saga novels set in Worthing, including There’s Always Tomorrow, Better Days Will Come, Pack Up Your Troubles, For Better For Worse, Blue Moon and Love Walked Right In. Pam’s inspiration comes from her love of people and their stories and her passion for the town where her novels are set. She is married with two grown-up daughters and lives in Worthing.

Here's more about Pam's latest novel

Sing Them Home

Pan Macmillan
June 2018

A German aircraft crashes into a house in Worthing, and causes complete devastation to the local community. Three strangers meet for the first time that day – Pip, Stella and Lillian. Lillian’s little girl Flora has been hurt in the crash and is rushed to hospital. As she comes through her ordeal, she finds her mother and her two new ‘aunties’ by her bedside.

The three new friends quickly bond over shared experiences; all their husbands are overseas in the fighting forces. They also have the same love of singing and soon form The Sussex Sisters, Worthing’s answer to the Andrews Sisters, to boost morale in in dance halls and canteens all over the south coast.

When D-Day finally arrives, it’s the promise of a brighter future they have all been longing for. But the men that return home are altogether different from the husbands they waved off. How will they respond to their wives’ new-found fame? How will the women live alongside these distant, damaged men? With secrets, revelations and surprises on the horizon, the friends will need each other more than ever.

Huge thanks to Pam for being such  a lovely guest on my blog today and for sharing her love of writing historical fiction with us.

You can discover more about Pam's bestselling sagas by clicking here

Hist Fic Saturday ~ Susan Grossey

On Hist Fic Saturday I am excited to welcome back to the blog  historical fiction writer

Susan Grossey

Susan has just published her latest historical novel, Faith, Hope and Trickery and I am thrilled that she has taken the time to talk to me about why she writes historical fiction.

Why I write historical fiction by Susan Grossey

When you think of the Regency period, what comes to mind? I’m guessing that you’re now imagining Jane Austen, or perhaps the astonishing confection that is the Royal Pavilion in Brighton, or maybe the rather portly George IV, or even any one of dozens of heated romances with titles like “The Wicked Marquis and the Innocent Maid”. And if I say “historical detective”, is it Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot who leaps into view? A genre that you rarely see is a mash-up of the two – Regency detective – and yet this is precisely the space in which I find myself writing.

I cannot claim to have thought of it myself. Rather, the timing was foist upon me by real history. In my day job I work as an anti-money laundering consultant (basically, I advise institutions on how to avoid criminal money) and I was doing some research for a client into the history of banking fraud. And I came across the story of Henry Fauntleroy, a London banker who took advantage of his clients’ lack of understanding around the latest financial technology – share certificates – to pinch their assets. He was caught in 1824 and put on trial, at a time when fraud carried the death penalty. (Those were the days….) His story formed the basis of my first historical crime novel – “Fatal Forgery” – and when I realised that I had fallen in love with my narrator, Constable Sam Plank, I decided to write six more books about him. And there he was, firmly anchored in the Regency period.

But if it was not my choice, it was certainly my very great fortune – what a gift of a period! The two strands that thread through all five of the novels I have written so far (there are two more to go) are policing and finance, and both were experiencing enormous, exciting change in the Regency period. In policing terms it was post-Bow Street Runners and pre-Metropolitan Police, with London kept in check by magistrates and their constables (of which Sam is one, based at the magistrates’ office in Great Marlborough Street – now the Courthouse Hotel). And in finance, people were coming to terms with all sorts of innovations: share certificates, paper banknotes and amazing investment opportunities (railways! gas lighting!). As you can imagine, there is tremendous scope for writing about all sorts of financial crime.

So why do I love living in the past? First of all, I love research. I live in a university city with access to the most amazing library, and I like nothing more than a day spent in the newspaper archive or the rare books room, looking at actual publications that someone handled and read in the 1820s. It’s like putting together the most complicated and satisfying jigsaw, with every detail that I learn helping to make the picture that little bit clearer. I can take nothing for granted. Even writing a simple sentence like “Sam sat down with his wife after dinner and she poured him a welcome cup of tea” involves all sorts of checking. When did men of his class eat their main meal in the 1820s? Did they have cups? Did they have tea? Did they have it every day, or was it a special treat? And you know what readers of historical fiction are like – they expect to get both a story and reliable information for their money, so I’d better get it right!

And secondly, I have always preferred the past to the future. I have probably read no more than a handful of novels set in the future, whereas my shelves (stairs, tables, footstools...) are groaning with historical fiction. I like to learn as I read, and I like to escape. Nothing allows me to do this quite as effectively as good historical fiction. Like all readers I have favoured eras: I’m a sucker for anything eighteenth century, and went through quite a long phase of “first world war but on the home front”. But when it comes to my own writing, I’m drawn back time and again to the Regency – so why not tie that wonderful white cravat, gentlemen, or adjust that feather-trimmed bonnet, ladies, and join me.

Susan has written five Sam Plank novels, set in subsequent years in the 1820s: “Fatal Forgery”, “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”, “Worm in the Blossom”, “Portraits of Pretence” and “Faith, Hope and Trickery”.

   

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
March 2018

Rose Welford, the wife of a bootmaker, is smothered in her bed in the summer of 1828. Her husband quickly confesses to the crime, claiming that a message from beyond the grave told him to do it. At ever more popular gatherings in fields, factories and fine houses, a charismatic preacher with a history of religious offences seems to be at the heart of it all – but who, and what, can be believed when fortunes are at stake? 

In this fifth novel in the series, Constable Sam Plank is drawn into matters beyond his understanding when his wife Martha hears a message of her own and his junior constable Wilson makes a momentous choice.

Susan has her own blog here

You can purchase her novels (in paperback and various e-editions) here

And you can follow Sam himself on Twitter, where he appears as @ConstablePlank

Huge thanks to Susan for being my guest today and for continuing to entertain us with the wonderful Sam Plank Regency Crime series.

Hist Fic Saturday ~ Anne O'Brien

On Hist Fic Saturday I am excited to welcome back to the blog 

best-selling historical fiction writer

Anne O'Brien

Anne's latest book Queen of the North is due to be published on the 31st of May by HQ and I am thrilled that she has taken the time out of her busy pre-publication schedule to talk to me about why she writes historical fiction.

Why I write historical novels by Anne O'Brien

My most vivid  memories of childhood are those when I visited historical monuments.  My father was a keen historian so holidays were spent in ruined abbeys and castles, iron age hill forts, roman villas and stately homes.  His enthusiasm was contagious.  I loved the atmosphere, the sense of stepping back into the past.  Sometimes the vibes were so strong that they remain with me to this day.  The floodlit plainsong shivering through the ruins of Fountains Abbey.  A cold wind-swept day on Hadrian's Wall, the rain beating down.  The winding staircases in Caernarvon Castle, leading up to dramatic views. 

But what about the people who lived there?

I am now privileged to write about the lives of these people from the past, to recreate as far as it is possible their lifestyle, their relationships and the influences that made them into dynamic characters.  I have chosen to write about medieval women, because it seemed to me that they were given so little time and space in most history books.  Mostly they are a brief paragraph, or sometimes simply a footnote.  It pleases me to bring them from the shadows into the spotlight, to clothe their skeletons and make them rounded individuals with emotions and opinions.  History does not often open this door for us.  It is my pleasure to do so.

Even more enjoyable is to put them into  their place in history.  What is happening in the world around these women of the medieval court, and how does it affect the lives they lead?   While their menfolk are negotiating, fighting, killing and being killed, manipulating for political gain, what are the women doing?  These were intelligent women, often well educated, from powerful families   History might not give us their thoughts and words, except for the few women who were writing, but I am certain that they had them, as I am certain that they were not silent when their families were torn apart by uprising and treachery.  We should be able to enjoy these women in all their complexity.  That is why I write historical novels.

So why did I choose to write about Elizabeth Mortimer?  Her husband played a far more important role than she did.  Here's the reason why she has joined the panoply of my historical heroines.

 

Some of my favourite scenes in Shakespeare are those in Henry IV Part One between the magnificent Hotspur and Lady Kate (Elizabeth).  It is a relationship full of politics and power, one of conflict of personality and also of flirtation, of love and affection.  As a couple they are very appealing and dominate the scenes in which they appear.

Hotspur, Sir Henry Percy and heir to the Earl of Northumberland, was such a vivid, mercurial, glamorous figure in our history.  The perfect hero.  Brave and courageous, winning glory on the battlefield, he was also flawed, bringing his own downfall.  He was more than tempting to write about.  But what about Lady Kate?  If I continued to follow my passion to write about medieval women, looking at history from a woman's viewpoint, who was she?  Had she anything of importance to add to the medieval scene?  Would she be a suitable heroine to give depth to a novel?

Historically Lady Kate was not Kate at all, but was Elizabeth Mortimer, one of the powerful Mortimer family that ruled over the Welsh Marches where I now live.  I am surrounded by Mortimer castles, so immediately Elizabeth was of interest to me.  Great-grand-daughter of King Edward III, Elizabeth inherited royal Plantagenet blood through her mother Philippa, daughter of Lionel Duke of Clarence, King Edward III's second surviving son.  This placed Elizabeth in the very centre of the struggle for power from the Mortimer claimants to the English throne, after the death of Richard II and the usurpation by King Henry IV.  All royal cousins, this would be another compelling family saga of power and treason, of betrayal and death.  The Mortimer Earls of March had a strong claim to the throne even if it was through the female line.

Even better, Elizabeth's story would also draw in a whole spectrum of exciting characters.  Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, cunning and ambitious, determined to keep Percy hands on the reins of power in the north of England.  Owain Glyn Dwr, the great Welsh Prince, driven to take up arms in his struggle for Welsh hegemony.  King Henry IV, the Lancaster king, fighting hard to stabilize a dangerously uneasy country after the death of Richard II.  And then Thomas de Camoys, a most sympathetic character who played a large part in The Queens Choice.  What a marvellous set of characters to engage with, not to mention Hotspur himself.

So why was I compelled to write about Elizabeth?  Because of her Mortimer blood, she was a woman who deliberately took on the role of traitor in support of her nephew Edmund, Earl of March.  She would know at first hand the resulting struggle between family loyalty and a desire to pursue what she saw as the rightful claim to the crown of England, despite all the pain it would bring her.  She would also learn the constraints on her freedom,  common to all medieval women.  It is a story of loss and acceptance, of love and tragedy.  How could I resist such a marvellous tale?

Such is history, and why I write it.  The stories are better than any I could make up, not least the one that is unfolded in Queen of the North.

HQ
31 May 2018

1399:

A year of great upheaval in England.

England’s crown is under threat.

King Richard II's hold on power is undermined when exiled Henry, Duke of Lancaster, returns to reclaim his inheritance and ultimately the throne.

For Elizabeth Mortimer the succession is clouded with doubt.  With King Richard dead in Pontefract Castle, there is only one rightful King by the law of inheritance – her eight-year-old nephew Edmund, Earl of March.

But many, including Elizabeth’s husband, the mercurial Sir Henry Percy known as Hotspur, heir to the Earl of Northumberland, do not want another child-King.

Questioning her loyalty to the new King Henry, Elizabeth places herself in conflict with Hotspur and the powerful Percy family, but to concede to Henry's claim challenges all her Mortimer principles.

This is one woman’s quest to turn history on its head.

A tale of love and loyalty, of tragedy and betrayal.

Will Elizabeth be prepared to pay the cost of personal and family ambition?

Huge thanks to Anne for being such a lovely guest and for sharing her love of historical fiction with us.

Queen of the North will be available to buy from all good book stores on the 31st May 2018


You can read my book review here

Amazon UK

Find out more about Anne on her website and Facebook

Follow on Twitter @anne_obrien #QueenoftheNorth