Why I love Writing Historical Fiction

I spoke to my sister-in-law the other day and she couldn't understand how I could write novels that required so much research. I said "I love the research." Digging out those little gems of history and daily life, how people dressed, what they ate. Did women really not wear underpants in the eighteenth century (my preferred time period)? They didn't! Apparently this made it easier for the women to use the necessary (toilet) with all those stiff layers of clothing.
A fact that shocked me: the English washed their clothing in urine. They used urine for its acidic properties. I learned that on a visit to Shakespeare's parents' farm in Stratford-upon-Avon.

When I wrote my first novel, now titled Escape the Revolution, I wrote the story before my research and had to change so much, but found I enjoyed ferreting out the details. In my tavern I had a bar. I discovered there weren't yet drinking bars in 1790, so I had to change it. Pot-boys scooped out ale or beer from barrels in the kitchen and poured the drink into tankards to be served directly to the table. I triple checked these facts.
I still find many famous authors who put bars in their stories long before they appeared in history (the Victorian age).
I love the challenge of getting my details right. Of putting my heroines in a situation where they can't whip out a Smartphone to call for help. They must use their wits. Nothing is simple without modern conveniences.

In the days before the Internet (Yes, young people, there were those days) I utilized the library system for my research. I lived near Washington DC and traveled there to the Library of Congress Reading Room, an excellent resource. I was fortunate to be able to use their comprehensive library.

How fast does a horse travel in one day? (about fifty miles). Marriage rules and restrictions, the calling of the banns. All these things you must take into consideration when writing historical fiction. There were odd customs/fashions for women, such as mouse-fur eyebrows, and when they lost their teeth, a cork ball was stuffed in the cheek to fill out the face. Early in the 18th c. men wore rouge on their lips and cheeks, huge wigs--as did women--and high heeled shoes.

In one novel, Rose's Precarious Quest, I had a character who was a doctor in 1796. I had to request rare books by a Dr. Hunter to gain knowledge from that era. I also came across a fantastic website put out by Colonial Williamsburg on eighteenth century medicine. Domestic Medicine. I learned about the humors of the body (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood) and how they must be regulated to keep one well. The strange, often deadly remedies (as in mercury and white lead) used to heal the sick. However, the poisonous Foxglove plant was turned into Digitalis to successfully treat heart disease.

For my Canadian Historical Brides story, On a Stormy Primeval Shore, I had to research the province of New Brunswick. I must applaud my wonderful research assistant, Nancy Bell, who found me reproductions of historical documents on the internet.
 I learned so much about who settled this territory, who the native tribes were, the Acadians, Germans, Scots, English and the Loyalist Americans who fled the American Revolution. The struggles these people went through in a harsh climate.

It's a good thing I love all these details, the thrill of research. However, it makes me a picky reader when I catch the historical mistakes made by other authors.

To purchase this book and my previous novels  Amazon and All Markets

For more information on me and my books, please visit my website: www.dianescottlewis.org

 

Diane Scott Lewis grew up in California, traveled the world with the navy, edited for magazines and an on-line publisher. She lives with her husband in Pennsylvania.

I Shoulda Kept on Writin'

I began to pen stories at age five, or rather I drew the pictures and my mother wrote in the words I dictated to her.
I loved telling tales, writing of ancient Egypt and Rome (I'd just watched the moved Cleopatra). I also wrote with my best friend. Together we concocted a murder mystery ala Alfred Hitchcock (we'd just watched the movie Marnie).

We drew pictures to go with our stories and that was half the fun. My best drawing had nothing to do with my novels but was of my favorite cat, Lucretia. I might have been fifteen when I drew this.

When I started working in an office at eighteen, and was so efficient I had time left over, I wrote more stories and kept some. I read them not too long ago and one was very good.

But at nineteen I joined the navy and traveled all over, married, had children, and let my writing slide.

I should have honed my skills, taken classes, and kept on writing. I had a workshop with bestselling author Sherryl Woods years later, and she said in the 80s everyone was being published. I missed my chance, because I hadn't written through most of the 70s and throughout the 80s. I only picked it up again in the mid-nineties.

When we were stationed in San Diego in the late 70s, I should have taken creative writing classes, but somewhere along the way I'd lost the urge to write. An urge I once couldn't deny or ignore, it had burned inside me, compelling me to constantly spin tales.

I forced myself to write again in the late 90s, to see what I could come up with. My story meandered all over the place. I researched at the Library of Congress, got library loans, and stuffed all the fascinating details into my book. No internet for the average person existed yet.
I thought I knew everything there was about writing, but soon found out I knew very little. I had rejections galore.

My next move was to join critique groups and learn to edit my work. Busy with family and a job, years went by before I polished my first novel. A small press took it on, but their e-books were overpriced, and paperback prices outrageous. Finally, a good friend invited me to submit to my current publisher, BWL, and my first book, now titled Escape the Revolution, sold very well.

To sum it up, if you have a dream, pursue it!

My latest project is part of the Canadian Brides Series.

 

Blurb: In 1784, Englishwoman Amelia Latimer sails to New Brunswick to marry a man chosen by her father. Amelia is repulsed and refuses the marriage. She is attracted to a handsome Acadian, Gilbert, a man beneath her. Gilbert fights the incursion of Loyalists from the American war to hold onto his heritage. Will they find love when events seek to destroy them?

 

E-book and paperback are available at Amazon and All Markets

For more information on me and my books, please visit my website: www.dianescottlewis.org

 

Diane Scott Lewis grew up in California, traveled the world with the navy, edited for magazines and an on-line publisher. She lives with her husband in Pennsylvania.

Places Everyone! - by Anita Davison

I have never tried to attribute my invented characters to real people before, which was an interesting exercise. My protagonist in Envy The Wind is young woman, whose rebellious side has been suppressed for most of her life by circumstances. When she finally breaks free, Grace discovers she is not quite so sure of herself in her strange surroundings, and that not everyone who is kind is sincere. Hard lessons for us all to learn in life.

Her romantic interest is a man who, like Grace, had a privileged upbringing, but he too has had to move away from the path prescribed for him into unknown emotional territory. He is attracted to Grace, not just physically, but because she has a vulnerable side which makes him immediately protective. He recognises her need to be content with her own choices before he makes his move, but his natural instinct to make decisions for her get in the way and cause a few misunderstandings.

So attraction, sparks and conflict – which actors could convey all those things on screen? Interesting.

Then there is the supporting cast – a feisty Irish girl who throws caution to the wind and travels thousands of miles for her ideal life, only to find she has to handle disappointment and begin again.

Then there is the villain of the story, a man unused to being thwarted so he plans his revenge. But then villains shouldn’t be all bad, so I had to guard against using a generic stereotype" and thus weakening my story. 

This is what I came up with in order of importance:

Grace - Shailene Woodley – American actress chosen purely on looks as her features possess a pure quality which I imagine would translate well to an Edwardian girl.

Andrew Jardine - Tom Burke - English actor better known to theatre goers though also played Athos in BBC’s The Three Musketeers and Dolokhov in War and Peace. Both this parents are well known actors and his godfather was the late and beloved Alan Rickman, another of my favourites. Tom isn’t your usual slick dreamboat, but he has an animal magnetism about him, his looks enhanced by a very sexy cleft lip, which if I was Grace, would find impossible to resist. 

Charles Keogh - Edward Norton – I first saw him in the film ‘The Illusionist’, or maybe not the first but it's the one which struck me the most. He has a chameleon quality in that he can portray both sympathetic and villainous characters to perfection.

Aoife - Rose Leslie – Scottish actress from Game of Thrones and Downton Abbey with the archetypal Celtic red hair and green eyes, but with a determined strength to her jaw when challenged.

John Cahill - Michael Kitchen - Mature English actor with a quiet, controlled speaking voice and a gentle manner which engenders trust from first meeting. Grace discovers she can rely on him to giver her unbiased advice when she reaches Canada. He's a man who has proved himself in life and has no agenda where Grace is concerned.

Nostalgia by Anita Davison

Nostalgia is defined in the dictionary a wistful desire to return in thought or fact to a past time in one's life, a home or homeland; a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time.

I feel my venture into historical fiction writing began as ‘a wistful longing’ but more for a time I didn’t personally remember as much as one I immersed myself in voluntarily. I have never lived in Edwardian England but all the images, videos and stories I discovered and devoured with enthusiasm made me want to recreate in my stories.

The pleasant aspects are easy to incorporate, like the beautiful and feminine clothes, gentle manners and a respect for others which sometimes seems lacking in modern day life. Not so much the rudeness of strangers, but the fact a gentleman was expected to act in a certain way.

As a matter of course he would show respect to and be protective of a lady, any lady, not just a relative. He would always doff his hat, offer a seat, or escort a female onto a train etc. Putting aside the fact men regarded women as weak, unreliable creatures with little intellect, their outward behaviour was attractive.

The more cruel aspects of life in the early 20th Century are harder to incorporate into a story without the risk of alienating readers – In one of my books a character who had been universally loved by my readers was suddenly regarded as a heartless, misogynist, condemned for his adherence to the principles of the day.

Then again, an Edwardian man who accepts his wife wants a career and refuses to stay at home all day polishing the floors would have been considered weak and unmanly not to have control of his household. Women didn't run their own lives, even wealthy ones; a difficult view to portray and keep the characters identifiable to a 21st Century audience.

I'm sure I wouldn’t have been so keen to go back to 1900 when I was younger, but now the idea of spending my day in gentle pursuits, arranging dinners and flowers with a bit of embroidery and visits to my dressmaker, taken to and fro by a chauffeur appeals - provided I would be born into the right strata of society to achieve this.

Mind you, my dinner conversation would be frowned on as I would have been an ambassador for politicians like Keir Hardie who advocated a tax be put aside from wages for free schooling for working class children and pensions for the elderly – ideas ridiculed at the time by the ruling class. They would probably have had me bodily removed from Simpson’s dining room for such views – not the main one of course as women weren’t allowed in there – at all.

Perhaps the western world in 2017 is a better place to live after all, especially for women.