Writing Historical Fiction

Here’s an excerpt from an interesting article by Julie Bosman, “Loved His New Novel, and What a Bibliography,” in today’s New York Times about the practice of including bibligraphies in novels: “It’s terribly off-putting,” said James Wood, the literary critic …

Today a fellow by the deceptively friendly name of “Bob” left me a one-star review on my Amazon page. In a nutshell, Bob thought there were too many characters, too many facts, not enough action, and not enough descriptions of …

Finished reading Katherine Howard, a 1969 novel by Jessica Smith, yesterday. Like the other historical novels I’ve read about this foolish but intriguing young queen, it was somewhat disappointing, though I admittedly didn’t have huge hopes for it. Though the …

Both on this blog and on other sites I’ve visited, the question of historical accuracy in historical fiction has come up. As I said in one of my earlier blog posts, I think it’s the reader’s ultimate responsibility to check …

A series of rules for writing various sorts of historical fiction has been circulating in the blogsphere. Here’s a link to the original list, created by Alan Fisk and posted on Sarah Cuthbertson’s blog: Sarah’s Bookarama: The All-Purpose Rules for …

I posed this question on a group I belong to, but got no response, so I thought I’d post it here in hopes of getting one. There are many novels featuring characters who first appeared in classic novels. Jane Austen’s …