Historical novels, and what they can do for you

Middleham Castle

I’m not very good at ruins.  I always think I should be – history’s one of my things, right? – but always find it hard to get past the bare stones to picture the building with roof and floors and hangings on the walls.  

I like those information boards that give you pictures showing what it might have looked like, but it's impossible not to walk around and wish you could go back and see what it was really like ...

Short of your very own time slip, the best way to get that sense is to read a really good historical novel.  I was at Middleham Castle last Sunday, and what might have been just an impressive ruin came to life thanks to Sharon Penman’s The Sunne in Splendour.  

(This was the book that literally changed my life.  I read it in Australia in 1986, and loved it so much that I decided I wanted to go back to university and study medieval history. While scratching my head about how I was going to pay for a PhD, I lit upon the bright idea of writing a romance, because everyone knew they were dead easy and made lots of money very fast ... er, wrong!  But that’s another story…)

Statue of Richard III at Middleham

The Sunne in Splendour is the story of Richard III, and if you ever want to be convinced of who really killed the princes in the tower, I suggest you read it.  I absolutely loved the way Penman takes the complex history of the 15th century and brings it to life. Of course a historical novel can never be totally authentic but when I’m reading a story I’m prepared to sacrifice history for engaging characters.  I want to feel as if I’ve been transported to another world which feels true and which helps me imagine what life was like in the past.  As a reader, I don’t want to puzzle over a document or marshal my statistics. I want the author to do the research for me and then show me in a way I can understand and remember.

Philippa Gregory does this brilliantly in her novels based on real historical characters.  The facts about Anne Boleyn are rehashed endlessly in documentaries, but the story Gregory tells in The Other Boleyn Girl is the one that rings truest for me because it’s the only one that touched me emotionally.  Only a novel can do this, I think.

Another of my favourites is The Road to Avalon by Joan Wolf. As you might guess from the title, it’s the story of King Arthur, but this is not the legend.  The story is absorbing and utterly persuasive. I defy you to read The Road to Avalon and not think at the end: Of course that’s how the legend must have started.  I’m always taken so completely into the world of Wolf’s Dark Age Britain that tears run down my face at the end, no matter how often I read the book.

This is what a good historical novel can do.  It can make you believe that’s how it was, even if every instinct as a historian says that there’s no way people in the past would have thought and spoke and acted that way.  Wolf’s The Edge of Light, about Alfred the Great, is also wonderful.

Are you a fan of historical fiction?  Do you like ‘faction’ or straight fiction?  Or do you like your history mixed up with romance or crime or (dare I say it?) the time slip fantasy?

Websites and scene planners

(Hadn't realised what a mess my screen looks!)

I am sticking to my schedule here, with 59,000 words under my belt, in spite of the distraction of getting to grips with all this new social media stuff.  

My new website, www.pamelahartshorne.com is up and running at last.  It needs a few tweaks still, but I was spending so long dithering over it that in the end I decided to just go with it as it is.  

Have a look anyway, and let me know what you think.  I wanted it to be quite different in feel from www.jessicahart.co.uk and I think it’s certainly that.  Of course, having only book to talk about as opposed to 58 makes a big difference!

I’ve also started the Pamela Hartshorne blog but it’s heavy going, and I’m struggling with Wordpress – it’s quite a relief today to get back to dear old Blogger!  What with the blog, the website and the constant logging in and out of Facebook and Twitter with my different hats on, it’s amazing I’m getting any writing done at all! 

But I’ve still got another 41,000 words to write before 2nd August so I need to keep at it.   The story is starting to come together.  I’ve found my scene planner very helpful in keeping track of where the characters are and what they’re supposed to be doing.  The order of some scenes has shifted and – phew! – the characters have started to move the story in directions I hadn’t thought of before, but the overall shape of the story has, so far at least, stayed the same. 

Forcing myself to consider what the scene is for and what changes in it was really useful, and I might try something similar with my next romance, although I can’t imagine it working in quite the same way when the ‘plot’ is emotional rather than physical.  

This is a Shitty Second Draft, so I’m concentrating on just getting the words on the page at the moment.  Once I’ve got my 100,000 words, the real writing will start.  That’s when I’ll need to add some texture to the story – and do some more of that research I was so determined to do at the scene planning stage … but I’d better keep that for my other blog.

Meanwhile, I’m off to get to 60,000 words before lunch ...

It's shoe time!

Some women love shoes, and some think they’re just things you put on your feet …

If you fall into the former category, get yourself over to the Harlequin Romance Authors’ blog right now for some fabulous shoes.  These are my jewelled sandals which make an appearance, but wait till you see some of the others.  Seriously, you need to check out Shirley Jump’s shoe collection!

As you know, I usually make a terrible fuss about writing blogs, but that one was great fun to do, and I am suffering from some serious shoe envy. 

If you fall into the latter category ... well, I don’t know what to say to you, other than you’ll miss out on the chance of a bumper giveaway if you don’t take a peek.  We’ve got eight books to send to one lucky winner, and you don’t need to be a shoe fanatic to enjoy any of them. 

So what are you waiting for? I'll see you there!

http://www.harlequinromanceauthors.com/

Uh-oh, writing metaphor alert

Phew, what a relief to be myself again!  This double social networking identity thing is going to take some getting used to.  I have spent all week logging in and out of my two Facebook accounts and trying to think of something suitably sober to say as Pamela Hartshorne before skipping back to Jessica Hart and posting photos of my lunch.  To make matters worse, I keep losing my Pamela Hartshorne self between my page and my profile – I hate to think what that is a metaphor for! 

I was thinking of metaphors last weekend, in fact, when I was in Wiltshire helping my occasional other half create a cottage garden.  I thought I was going down to turn over the earth in some ready prepared flower bed and plant a border.  I should have known better. 

This is the garden before we started: 

Before

There’s a plant hanging over the fence from next door, and a climbing rose I planted years ago that has somehow managed to survive against the odds, but apart from that, nothing but some claggy, stony earth – and an idea of what a beautiful garden this could be with some grass, some structure, some plants, a patio (not to mention  somewhere to hide those &$£!$& bins!)  

John set about taking down the trampoline, clearing out the garage and preparing the patio, while I dug out the beds.  It was really hard going, but it had to be done, a bit like writing a Shitty First Draft.  Once the basic shape of each bed was there, I went over them again, digging out more weeds, getting rid of the stones, adding in bonemeal and compost, and – after two more days of hard labour – eventually putting in some plants in the pouring rain.

So this is the garden on Monday evening when we had, er, not finished at all:

After (in case you can't tell the difference!)

We had had grand plans of getting the patio finished, the fence repainted and the turf laid too, although quite how we thought we would accomplish all of this in two and a half days I don’t know! 

I know it looks like a spot-the-difference test, but we’d laid a lot more groundwork than you can see here.  The grass, the patio and everything else still need to be done, but the plants are in and growing and if the sun ever shines again this summer (please, God, let it be sunny soon!), we’ll see how they do.

I should have known that making a garden, like writing a book, can’t be rushed. Having an idea is all very well, but starting a garden or a story from scratch takes a lot of hard work.  Once the initial labour is done, you can add in all the food/compost or dialogue/character/tension/pace but even that isn’t the end of the process.  You still need to plant it/bring it all together, but when you do get to that stage, there are few things more satisfying.

At the end of every day I was filthy and exhausted, but I love making something from nothing, and even though the garden still has a long way to go, I can see how it will be and imagine sitting on that patio of a summer evening with the garden blooming around me.  

And that’s sort of the stage I’m at with my current book too.  I can imagine it finished.  Perhaps I’m still at the stage of digging out the borders, but I know it can be done.  Now, where’s my spade …

My split identity social networking strategy

Well, what a lovely time I had on Tuesday. Lunch was at Brasserie Max which I can totally recommend if money is no object. Important things first:  I had asparagus and a poached egg with champagne hollandaise to start, followed by the daily special, a pork chop with thyme jus.  Yum, yum, yum.   Oh, yes, and we talked about me, me, me.  Really, what could be nicer?

Jessica Hart

My fantasy about the publicist telling me not to bother about social media got a laugh, but as suspected, remains a fantasy. Starting next week (aarrgghh) I will be writing two blogs, one here as Jessica Hart and another as Pamela Hartshorne, for which I am going to have to reinvent myself and be serious and sensible.  No more wittering. No more holiday pics.  No more whingeing about the writing process.  Oh dear me, no.  We’re talking history and research and proper author stuff over there. 

Pamela Hartshorne: spot the difference?

Confusingly, this means that the real me will be carrying on here under an assumed name, while I assume a false identity to blog under my real name.  I’ve been trying to update this blog twice a week (in between holidays) but will have to scale back to once a week I think or my head might explode.

And then there’s Facebook. I have a very happy time on my Jessica Hart page but now I’m going to have to be a different person there too.  I set up a Pamela Hartshorne page some time ago in fact and currently have all of 2 likes (wonder who the other person is!)  - if you’re on Facebook and can bear to pop over and ‘like’ me, it would be much appreciated!  - and I've made a total mess of Twitter, twittering as @PamHartshorne but really Jessica Hart, and as a result am not sure WHO I am now. 

Still, it has to be done. Everyone says so.  I have a nasty feeling my split personality strategy is going to be a hard one to pull off, but I’ll have a go.  Want to take bets on how long I last before beating my head on the desk?  

So I'll be back in a week.  Be good until then, and have a great weekend.