14 Thursday Jul 2022
Posted in Scribbling
Once upon a time, there was a Small Writer with a Huge Deadline.
The Huge Deadline was still rather far away – and that was perhaps the heart of the problem. Had it been looming large, roaring nearer and nearer, the Small Writer would have been writing like mad, and piling up a nice daily wordcount, and biting her nails, and drinking tea by the gallon, and generally doing what she was supposed to do… Continue reading
07 Thursday Jul 2022
Posted in History, Scribbling, Stories
Remember when, back in January, I told you that I was experimenting with the idea of a Draft 0 for A Treasonous Path, and I’d let you know how it worked for me? Well, it would seem it worked well enough, because I’m doing it again. Six months later, and I’m at work on Draft 0 of Tom’s third book – for now TW3. Continue reading
09 Thursday Jun 2022
Posted in Books, History, Lostintranslation
Tags
Adelbert von Chamisso, German language, Karl Stählin, research, Sir Francis Walsingham, studying languages
Do you speak German, o Readers?
Now, Italian is my native language – and I find it beautiful. Also, as you can probably guess, I love English very much. I also like French and Spanish.
German… not so much. Continue reading
08 Friday Apr 2022
Posted in Scribbling
Because I’m busy tweaking things, and filling gaps, and this sort of things in TW2*, yesterday I up and asked my mother’s physiotherapist what the best entry point would be for a stab wound in the back.
“I want it to quickly give the victim breathing trouble,” I explained – and, having spent half the morning poring over medical journals, even spouted that I probably wanted a bad case of tension pneumothorax… Continue reading
27 Thursday Jan 2022
Posted in History, Scribbling
Tags
Historical fiction, languages, names, naming characters, research, spelling, Tom Walsingham Mysteries, writing
Yesterday I spent a good deal of time perusing lists of names of Guild members in 16th century Bruges. It’s one of the many wonders of the Internet that you can find this sort of thing for the asking… and, as I said, I ended up spending a good chunk of the afternoon going through list after list, copying the promising ones in my notebook – one column for given names, one for family names – trying them out for size, and even involving a Dutch-speaking friend for a sense of how a few of them would be pronounced… Continue reading
11 Thursday Feb 2021
Posted in History, Scribbling
A few months ago, as I was working on Road to Murder, I found trouble in the form of a French town called Montreuil sur Mer.* Well, for various reasons, my sleuth Tom Walsingham finds himself spending a night there, much against his inclination, and I needed to have a good idea of the place for that… Continue reading
27 Thursday Sep 2018
Posted in History, Scribbling, Stories, Theatre
Tags
Before Shakespeare, Historical fiction, James Burbage, National Archives Blog, research, The Theatre, writing dilemmas
As I was busy completing the la(te)st revision of my novel before pitching it at the HNS Conference in Scotland, I came across this lovely article at the National Archives Blog.
And so I learned that, while I’d always assumed that people walked to the Theatre via Bishopsgate, Bishopsgate Street and Shoreditch, this was not the case. Not that the Burbages wouldn’t have liked such a straightforward route to their playhouse – but there was opposition from the local landowners – particularly from the Earl of Rutland, who effectively blocked the easy access… Continue reading
09 Thursday Aug 2018
Tags
Annie Whitehead, Henslowe's Diary, historical novels, Internet, Mercedes Rochelle, Philip Henslowe, research
There is no doubt that, when it comes to researching historical novels, there is a Before the Internet and an After the Internet.
I daresay the same applies to a lot of fields – but let me stick to mine: I’m old enough to remember a time when, if you were Italian and wanted, say, to read Henslowe’s Diary, your best option was a trip of several hundred kilometers – to read the book in Bologna or Venice, supposing someone had told you that Nineteenth Century copies of JP Collier’s edited version were to be found there at all*… Continue reading
30 Saturday Sep 2017
Posted in History, Scribbling
I think I’ve told you already how Writer Unboxed is one of my favourite writerly sites. That’s mostly because it provides a wonderful mix of thought-provoking discussion and practical stuff, musings and resources, theory and exercises… All of it interesting and useful. Continue reading
16 Tuesday Aug 2016
Tags
I told you about Bryher’s The Player’s Boy, didn’t I?
Well, to this lovely, melancholy novel my Paris Press edition adds a wonderful afterword, consisting of a letter that Bryher wrote to a friend to explain her fascination with Elizabethan literature and history. It’s a charming little piece about growing up, reading, cultivating one’s imagination, finding strength in literature and history, and being slightly eccentric… It’s well worth reading in its entirety.
My favourite part, though, has to be the final musing on the historian’s perspective: Continue reading
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