Ned Hayes asked Ned Hayes:

Do you have any rules you follow when writing historical fiction?

Ned Hayes As much as possible, I try to avoid making anything up from whole cloth or changing any history at all. Instead, what I try to do is weave my story through the threads of the existing history, and I try to have my story fill in the gaps in that real history. The historical fantasy writer Tim Powers has a name for this kind of work – he calls it “playing card tricks in the dark” – and I agree with his idea of not changing a single iota of the real history, but instead in trying to have your story weave naturally into the weft of the real historical narrative. I also try, as much as possible, to have my characters have a sensibility and a voice that is realistic to the time period and their station in life. I dislike historical fiction that does not actually show how people thought differently of their era at that time, compared to how we think of it now. One example in SINFUL FOLK is the fact that Mear, without question, accepts generally the Christian worldview, even though her background and training would today find that worldview antithetic to her heritage (when you read the novel, you’ll see exactly what I mean). Few people questioned that worldview, and if you did question it, you were killed.

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