Real life gets in the way. If, like most of us, you have a “normal” job in addition to your writing, or you have a family, kids, hobbies, or any other assorted drama that comes with being a human being at some stage your writing schedule has taken a slight knockback....

Historical fiction is a conjuring trick, an interpretation of bygone times which doesn't pretend or promise to present the absolute truth. Instead, writers of historical fiction reinvent the past, often venturing further than the known facts. They invoke a past to...

Many of us find that research is the best part of writing. We spend years hunting down every conceivable detail. Knowing how New York might have smelt on 4th July 1776, the taste of a roasted dormouse in Pompeii’s heyday, whether Cardinal Langton, author of the Magna...

When it comes to getting a finished manuscript out into the world, there are more avenues available than ever before. Self-publishing is no longer the domain of the downtrodden and the desperate, while traditional publishers are constantly on the hunt for fresh new...

Celebrations, feasts and traditions have always been part of what makes us human. They bound our ancestors to their ancestors and can do the same for characters in historical fiction. Some feasts are moveable; all can be moving, both to characters and to readers. Some...

You’ve researched, you’ve developed your characters and plot, and you are ready to write. Perhaps you’ve already begun writing, but something is not working. It’s difficult to pinpoint, but the feeling of your story doesn’t seem authentic. How can you capture what it...

Even taking into account titans like Bernard Cornwell, the vast majority of historical fiction authors are women. As are their readers. Now, you should be incredibly suspicious of anyone who claims to be an expert in masculinity. Chances are, they are trying to sell...

You just might have an invaluable writing tool in your pocket or sitting on your desk right now. A smartphone. It’s a modern gadget with a key function that can have a fantastic impact on your life as a historical fiction author. It has on mine. From note-taking to...

The idea that another language gives us a second soul comes from Charlemagne. As a polyglot and ruler of a multilingual territory, he understood what other languages meant to individuals and to societies. Tolstoy understood it too. In War and Peace, his aristocrats...

For many writers, marketing a book is the hardest part of the publishing process. It requires us to go out into the world and smile at people and make them like us — all the reasons we chose to become writers in the first place (not). And after a while, all the book...

Women are the primary buyers and readers of fiction today, so it’s unsurprising that many writers choose to center their historical novels on women characters. Not only is writing about women a savvy marketing decision, it’s also interesting—historical novels about...

If you’ve spent any time lurking on the web recently, you’ve probably come across the intellectual debacle that is ChatGPT. It’s an AI processing tool that can generate written content in seconds, and writers are… concerned.Is AI the death knell of human creativity?...