So, tell us what inspired your historical novel? > Likes and Comments

Read the story behind the story of ‘In A Town Called Paradox’ by Miriam Murcutt and Richard Starks. Just how this book, set in the 1950s when the Big Five Hollywood studios arrived in Utah to film their blockbuster movies, came to be written. ‘Making Movies in Moab’ by Richard Starks is a feature article published in the Sept/Oct issue of ‘Utah Life’ magazine.

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Amazon link: http://www.amzn.com/B08LG9XZL9

I'm not sure what started it other than just googling things about female spies during wartime which led me to Elizabeth Van Lew which led me to Richmond, Virginia which led me to the Libby Prison escape in 1864. All of the elements were there. It was a matter of putting characters there who could have been a part of all of it. A Disloyal Element

It grew from a couple of threads, one being how the coal miners of Alberta have stood for the working class for many decades, the other the restricted position of women at that time, hardly more than a century ago.

I visited some caves when I was in my teens and they stayed in my mind. Although I have not been back, I can still visualize them very clearly.

The caves were used by smugglers - and decades later it took my mind back to the days when smugglers supported whole communities and so the story of a naive girl grew in my mind on long car journeys.

I always enjoyed historical fiction but the eras I knew best (ancient Rome and English history) seemed to have more than enough people writing about it.

Then I read a history of the Byzantine Empire and have become obsessed with it.

Eileen wrote: "I always enjoyed historical fiction but the eras I knew best (ancient Rome and English history) seemed to have more than enough people writing about it.

Then I read a history of the Byzantine Emp..."

Anna wrote: "

I visited some caves when I was in my teens and they stayed in my mind. Although I have not been back, I can still visualize them very clearly.

The caves were ..."

Anna wrote: "

I visited some caves when I was in my teens and they stayed in my mind. Although I have not been back, I can still visualize them very clearly.

The caves were ..."

Historical fiction is infinite.

When walking in the Peak District, in England with a friend and her family, we came upon a ruined mansion. It was out in the wilds, no near a village. We wondered how it came to be there , and its history.
This stayed with me for decades, and then one day, after I'd become a writer of Fantasy, I decided to write about the family who had lived there. The initial character who came to me was in the 13th century, but I decided to go back earlier to where the original ancestor came to these shores from what is now Germany. He came as a slave.
This is now the first of what I hope will be a series following the family through the ages. It was Seth, the 13th century young man who built the original house, but there are going to be 3 books leading up to that. (2 are already published.)
So my fantasy writing has been put on hold for the time being while I delve into the early history of Britain.

I think that these comments show how getting out and about both physically, in your reading, or even in your Googling, can sow the germ of an idea for a book, or even the lay-out for a whole plot.
One of the other books I co-wrote with Richard Starks, 'Lost in Tibet', was born of background reading we were doing in preparation for a trip to Tibet. The story that became, 'Lost in Tibet' was just a one-liner mention in one of the books we read. Four, or maybe even five years later, it became the non-fiction book, 'Lost in Tibet', the story of five US airmen who were stranded in pre-Chinese Tibet during World War II.

Here, the sprawling forest bears witness to war, its floors still scarred by bomb craters from seventy five years ago. Here, in one of the rooms of the small cottage I call home, a mural painted by a German soldier is another, constant reminder of a little-known part of that war. And near the house, at the edge of the forest, surrounded by the shelled remains of workshops and bunkers, sits a V1 ramp, aimed at London.
“Here” is Normandy, a small village of some two hundred souls, thirty miles from the coast.
Researching the soldier’s name and regiment, talking to the elderly villagers, remembering my mother’s harrowing stories of fleeing the German onslaught in 1940 and the resistance work of my wife’s grandparents, my novel, 'Listen To The Colours', came to life, dark and spare, the story of two childhood friends separated by Nazi ideology, and a twelve-year-old French boy who’s not like other boys. Three distinct struggles to come to terms with loss and suffering and the absurdity of war, until in the waning months of the war, Germany’s deployment of its secret V1 weapon irrevocably entangles their lives in the forests of Normandy.

My road to my novel The Saint's Mistress was a long and winding path through books. I was reading a book called The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had, which recommended The Confessions of Saint Augustine as the first modern autobiography. That intrigued me, but I wasn't quite ready to tackle a book written by a fifth-century church father. A few months later, in the local library, I happened upon a short biography of Augustine by Garry Wills Saint Augustine, so I read that instead. In it, I learned that Augustine had a mistress of many years and that they had a child together. I was SO interested in her, but I couldn't find any information about her at all. So I decided that I would write her life story! As part of the research for my novel, I did end up reading the Confessions - twice - and it was every bit as daunting as I'd feared it would be.

I was administrative faculty at our local university and I went to a lecture on the architectural developments of Richmond after the Civil War (Reconstruction). The man that built an empire from tobacco and developed much of what we have today for infrastructure lived with a younger man. Neither ever married. While Lewis Ginter is famous throughout Richmond, even now, not many people know that he was gay and found the love of his life while he was in Manhattan. I carried those ideas around with me for two years before I wrote out the story. It will be out in the spring of 2021.

John wrote: "I was administrative faculty at our local university and I went to a lecture on the architectural developments of Richmond after the Civil War (Reconstruction). The man that built an empire from to..."

Thanks for sharing that. It adds a human touch to learn those stories that no one knew about. I too was influenced by Richmond. My story takes place there in 1864 during and after the escape from Libby Prison.

I've just posted the second in my series of blogs regarding how old photos influenced by story. This blog post is all about location, location, location.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

An isolated cemetery on a lone country road inspired me to write my first historical novel. Dates on the headstones testified to those who were buried there so long ago. I saw no recent graves. Yet someone cared enough to maintain their final resting place. My curiosity made me look into how the first settlers in that area might have survived when they came to the lonely Kansas prairie.

Gloria wrote: "An isolated cemetery on a lone country road inspired me to write my first historical novel. Dates on the headstones testified to those who were buried there so long ago. I saw no recent graves. Yet..."

I've always had a fascination with old cemeteries. The little town my father was born in in Wellsburg, NY had one of them. Some of the headstones were from the 1700s and had cause of death on them.

Another grave that fascinates me is of a child. The grave is under a pine tree in the corner of a cemetery, separated from any of the recent burials. It has a simple, small stone marking it. I've always wondered why it was situated so far from the rest of the graves.

Tombstones and cemeteries ... they sure influence your perspective on life and death, especially when you grow up among them. My father was a tombstone maker, a master mason. As for tombstone inspirations, I've posted a few short reflections on this on my Goodreads author blog, and you'll find more of them on my website www.jldupont.org under 'Blue Stone Memories'.

I came from a rural area where my brother has a community cemetery on a corner of the land they own. My parents, grandparents, and many family members are buried there. It also holds many from the surrounding community. It's been there for so many years that some of the older, simple stones are hard to read.

I have a thing for visiting convents in whatever city I am in. When I was on an archaeological dig on the island of Menorca, Spain I visited the 16th-century Cathedral and nearby convent. In one of the rooms off of the courtyard, I stumbled across several shipwreck stories. One, in particular, caught my eye. The General Chanzy sank in 1910 carrying over 150 passengers and only one person survived. It inspired my historical novel "Second Survivor". I love researching stories that are unique and fascinating.

Gloria wrote: "An isolated cemetery on a lone country road inspired me to write my first historical novel. Dates on the headstones testified to those who were buried there so long ago. I saw no recent graves. Yet..."

I love old cemeteries! If you can still read the inscriptions, many times they are filled with intrigue. Love this, thank you.

"... Unlike my native Flemish in which you’re simply called a tombstone maker, the English language offers two grand words to describe my father’s craft – "memorial mason" and "monumental mason" – though their definition in the Collins dictionary receives but a disappointing one-line explanation of “a person who makes gravestones and suchlike” (and after reading that, I honestly didn’t bother to check any other dictionaries).
Personally, I rather fancy the aptness of the term “memorial”, the adjective “monumental” conjuring too many images of Pharaohs, pyramids, “and suchlike”, dixit the aforementioned dictionary.
Needless to say then, that with a fair share of my father’s craft thriving on the inevitable finality of life and man’s wish to be memorialised, people dressed in black were a familiar sight around the house when I was a boy. These were the late sixties and donning the black to mourn a family member was still a well-observed and strict tradition in Flanders ..."
A sample from my Goodreads blog.

Leah wrote: "Gloria wrote: "An isolated cemetery on a lone country road inspired me to write my first historical novel. Dates on the headstones testified to those who were buried there so long ago. I saw no rec..."

You're welcome.

Gloria wrote: "Another grave that fascinates me is of a child. The grave is under a pine tree in the corner of a cemetery, separated from any of the recent burials. It has a simple, small stone marking it. I've a..."

About children's cemeteries - extract from "This Hallowed Ground" on my Goodreads blog.

"...There was, however, one part of the grounds which was strictly off limits – off limits for games; off limits for jokes; off limits for songs of any kind. When work had to be done in this section, dad and his men would doff their tight-fitting black berets, as if stepping into a church. It lay at the far end of the only road wide enough for a car or small truck to pass, the cemetery’s central alley, which ran straight from the gates all the way to the foot of a giant cross. But it wasn’t the cross and the agonising Christ that made hats come off. No. It was what lay around the cross, what rippled away from it in row after row of small graves fenced in by a neatly kept hedge.
The children’s cemetery.
This was truly Hallowed Ground.
I never played there. In fact, I only went in once or twice to look at the small, trunk-size graves, some plain, no more than a rectangle of bluestone ashlars surrounding a mound of earth with a simple cast iron cross at the head; others more elaborate, adorned with porcelain angels and cherubs or a Mother Mary and Child in relief.
As I said, I only went in once or twice. Somehow, it didn’t feel right. Maybe it was the giant cross and the tortured man looming over these little graves, crying out “why hast thou forsaken me” rather than benevolently saying “let the children come to me”...

A family member passes away; you inherit a late 19th century, brass-adorned steamer trunk; locked; no key. You pick the lock and inside you find ... stacks and stacks of family papers, letters, recipes, accounts, bills, spanning almost two centuries, a paper trail of ordinary lives and ordinary people. Except for one - a man called Samuel Bernard (1773 - 1853). From the fragmentary letters and documents he left, you discover he was a "savant", as scientists were called in those days, a chemist, who as a young man taught the not much older Napoleon Bonaparte chemistry, and followed the young General on what was one of the most ambitious expeditions of its time - the conquest of Egypt.
Research, reading, more research and reading, to reconstruct Samuel's Egyptian experience led to my first historical novel, and an unusal take on Bonaparte and life during his reign.

J.L. wrote: "Gloria wrote: "Another grave that fascinates me is of a child. The grave is under a pine tree in the corner of a cemetery, separated from any of the recent burials. It has a simple, small stone mar..."

The most heartbreaking of all - the children's graves. I always think of children as the future, not the past.

The idea for my novel Speaker for the God came to me as I was struck by the fact that Jeremiah never married but remained celibate—something quite alien to ancient Israelite culture. The Bible gives as reason for this a command from the Lord, but, being a modern human being, I couldn't help wondering what was going on in Jeremiah's psyche, and especially his sexuality, that led him to make this countercultural lifestyle choice. Out of this emerged my "revisionist" version of his life and career.

I was in a Jane Austen chat room, and this long thread lead from one thing to another, and the next thing you know, I'm 3/4 of my way through writing my next novel, retelling Emma from Jane Fairfax's point of view! But instead of trying to write just like Jane Austen, I am writing this as historical fiction. Jane doesn't mention WHAT music Georgiana or Jane Fairfax are playing. She never mentions current events. It's part of why her stories are timeless. But I'm not trying to write like Jane Austen…I'm trying to write like me.

good for you ... I like your approach ... write what you want and how you want ... give the reader enough clues and the rest will follow

Lewis wrote: "good for you ... I like your approach ... write what you want and how you want ... give the reader enough clues and the rest will follow"

Thanks! The problem with writing what and how I want is, it's harder to figure out how to find my readers. I'm not following all the advice about chasing the popular genres or keywords. I'd rather write a GOOD book that was worth reading than an okay one that is instantly forgettable.

Jeanette wrote: "Lewis wrote: "good for you ... I like your approach ... write what you want and how you want ... give the reader enough clues and the rest will follow"

Thanks! The problem with writing what and ho..."

My advice is to write the best book you can and don't worry about the marketing until after the book is completed ... it will sell or it won't, but you will have done something you can be proud of

I agree that it’s fruitless to look over your shoulder at readers when writing. For one thing, they often think they want one thing but wind up loving another, precisely for its surprise factor. For another, if you’re looking to go with traditional publishing that’s like squeezing a camel through the eye of a needle. I took a historical fiction master class earlier in the year, and the agents who spoke to us were ridiculously specific about what they were looking for: antiquity and the Middle Ages were out, Renaissance was only for famous authors, seventeenth century was okay but fading fast, Regency was right out, the U.S. Civil War and World War II were done . . . basically, it boiled down to them looking for Belle Époque, 1950s, and own-stories. Come on.

With self-publishing it’s about finding your niche audience and convincing them to give you a try. Goodreads is pretty good for that. I try to think outside genre—I love and write like the retro female writers of the first half of the twentieth century in England, so I market to other people who read those things (fortunately, there’s a group for that!).

Jeanette, I’ve always felt that Emma should have been written from Jane Fairfax’s point of view! I feel that some of the psychology that went into the character of Emma Watson in Austen’s fragment The Watsons went into the character of Jane. Did you know that others have written books from the same point of view? I think the first was Joan Aiken. You have an audience of voracious readers in Austenesque fiction, certainly, and are lucky to have several publishers that specialize in Austenesque and are more approachable than mainstream publishers. Though Austenesque fiction at the higher end is breaking through into the mainstream—have you read Molly Greeley’s The Heiress: The Revelations of Anne de Bourgh, for example? And there are quite a number of others.

Now that I’ve found this thread, I’ll say a few words about the question at the top—what inspired my novel. I’ve just published the first in a series of stories with different characters and storylines that are set in the same neighborhood in the same year, 1800. The idea got its start when I visited a small town in southern England to do research into Jane Austen’s connection to the place. I found no traces of her, but discovered a lot of other interesting people and events, so I have set about to tell their stories! The whole series is imagined as a portrait of a specific place and time. (It’s called Darking Hundred and the first book is Coldharbour Gentlemen, about smuggling.)

My style of writing is quirky, and as I mentioned in the previous post it is inspired by the middlebrow authors of the first half of the twentieth century in England—Angela Thirkell, Elizabeth Goudge, Margery Sharp, Stella Gibbons, and so on. These are the books I love above all, and there can never be enough of them for me so I set out to produce more.

Of course, it is axiomatic in historical fiction today that there must be more grit than charm, so I am out of step when I reverse that ratio. So be it. I use the charm to ease readers who love, say, BBC costume dramas into a deeper understanding of the era and its issues.

Abigail wrote: "I agree that it’s fruitless to look over your shoulder at readers when writing. For one thing, they often think they want one thing but wind up loving another, precisely for its surprise factor. Fo..."

Writing to please agents is like writing to please readers...they like your book, but they want you to make changes. Once you make the changes, they don't like your book anymore...

Is there any way you can send me information about the agents you were talking to? I have an unfinished MS set in the Belle Epoque! Even though whatever I write will fall in with my experiences before, it's worth at least talking to them!

Congratulations on being in the pocket! The agents who spoke to us weren’t really saying what they personally were looking for, but simply what they believed publishers were looking for. You can do searches for agents looking for historical fiction titles in both the USA and UK, and probably anyone would give a Belle Époque novel extra scrutiny. That said, the agents were Cate Hart (based in Nashville, TN) and Giles Milburn, based in London. Be sure to check their Web sites before approaching them on the assumption they would be interested.

I first met Sir Anthony Standen in George Malcolm Thomson’s biography of Sir Francis Drake. “The time had come when Walsingham was no longer satisfied with news that came to him at second-hand, whether from Santa Cruz’s kitchen or from the Governor of Guernsey’s reports of the gossip on Breton ships or in Rouen taverns. He needed an accurate and detailed stream of information about the number of Philip’s ships, their tonnage, the sailors who would man them and the soldiers they would carry. Thanks above all to Standen, he got what he wanted.”
My mother’s maiden name was Standen, so I became intrigued by this potential ancestor, an Elizabethan spy. I read his ODNB entry and was captivated, but I kept asking myself why did he do that, and how did he do that?
So to answer those questions I wrote my debut novel. I have since discovered on Ancestry that Sir Anthony is my 11th Great Uncle.

What fun, to get obsessed with a character and then find out he’s family!

Thanks Abigail, I had to change some names. I hadn’t known the name of Anthony’s brother Edmund’s wife, so called her Ann. Having done the research on Ancestry I found that her name was Dennis. Apparently Dennis was a popular woman’s name in the 16th century. I couldn’t see a modern audience accepting Dennis as a woman’s name, so made it Dennise.

That sort of minor change seems perfectly legitimate to me. I moved a historical character out of the house he was living in to a more remote farm he owned for the sake of the story.

Thanks Abigail. Having got to know my central character I then strolled slowly forward through history looking for events he might like to get mixed up in.

You’re a good host!

The initial inspiration for my two completed novels about the ancient Numidian king Masinissa originally came from learning about the enormous historical popularity of the woman he loved, Sophonisba, within the arts world. Although she lived in the third century BC she was, alongside Cleopatra, the most popular female figure for dramatic depiction during the Renaissance period. There have been numerous plays and painting of her and there have been 15 operas and 2 ballets made about her life. She and Masinissa were also central characters in the very first epic movie in history, Cabiria, which played to audiences worldwide in 1914. Since then, there has been very little representation of her in any art form. I thought I would try to revive a little interest in her and Masinissa's story.

I have been fascinated with China for some time, in particular how China turned itself from a poor backward country into a major and wealthy world power. Having recently completed my three novel trilogy covering the Holocaust years, I have now turned my attention to writing a novel which will explore US/China relations beginning in the 1960s, seeking to identify crucial decision points in which my fictional characters can participate. It's a huge project, one which will take at least several years, but I do enjoy reading the history and shaping a story.

Big subject!

Abigail wrote: "Big subject!"

yes ... much to learn ... and think about ... and then turn into a novel people will want to read ... challenging

My mother's father had a bit of Native American blood, so I gravitate toward articles about them. I read one detailing how the Choctaw people, recently displaced (Trail of Tears), helped the Irish people who were starving during the Great Potato Famine. I started looking at the famine & how it was a completely avoidable disaster which came about largely because the English government wouldn't help the Irish farmers, who they deemed as less than human.

A few days later, my cousin passed some genealogical research on to me and I realized my father's family had lived through the famine before they emigrated to the US. Though my grandmother had died before I was born (of causes unknown, but probably the long-term effect of starvation), I wrote THE WINDS OF MORNING to honor her and her family.

What a lovely inspiration, Gifford! But a very painful bit of history to write, both about the Choctaw and about the Irish.

This has been a fascinating thread and I have enjoyed reading it. I thought I would give my 2 cents before the topic was closed (or, perhaps, my 3.1 cents given the current rate of inflation!).
I am a poet by nature, so I tend to concentrate on theme first, then setting and plot. And so it was with The Life and Redemption of Teddy Miller: Combined Edition. We have all heard the old trope before: 'I would do anything to save the life of someone I love.' But that made me wonder, is it ever possible to do too much?
So, I have my theme, which also drives the plot. The setting? That is easy. I have lived in Virginia for more than 30 years. Here, we walk with the ghosts of thousands of people who gave up their lives for something they felt (rightly or wrongly) was bigger than themselves. Walk into any patch of woods and you are likely to come across old gun pits from the Civil War; and while blood no longer stains the fields, to this day it still nourishes the crops that grow there.
To explore the theme, I chose a boy just entering manhood. He would try, at any cost, to prevent his father from being executed for espionage. The results of this obsession drive the novel to its conclusion.
I think you can explore complex themes without being pedantic, so I populated my novel with interesting characters good and bad who test both my hero's courage and his ethics. There is also a female character whom I believe is one of the strongest and most interesting in recent literature.
Happy reading and stay well.

Your approach sounds similar to mine; my book also centers on a boy whose courage and ethics are tested. But “rightly or wrongly”?

I tried to respond earlier but I think it went off into cyberspace and disappeared. If it reappears, I apologize in advance.

Abigail went right to the heart of the problem for any book about the Civil War: dealing with the morality of the cause for which each side was fighting. Most people would say it was 'wrong' to fight for a system that promoted slavery and segregation. Sure. But what about the people who did not see the fight as about slavery, but rather the southern states' rights to self-determination and the natural resentment people had of those who would force their beliefs and culture on them through invasion and subjugation? Some would say it was still wrong as it was impossible to ignore the issue of slavery, a seemingly inextricable part of southern life with deep moral and financial significance. So, "rightly or wrongly" was my way of letting readers have their own opinions, whether I agreed with them or not.

Got it! I admit my perspective is skewed from having family roots in a place that refers to that conflict not as the Civil War but as the Great Rebellion.