Historical romance v Historical novel

Nicola Cornick has recently written an interesting blog piece about historical romance versus historical novels.
(http://nicolacornick.co.uk/blog/2015/03/when-is-historical-romance-not-historical-romance/)

Her lovely blog stimulated me to sort out my views on the subject.
I think both extreme ends of the range of books set in a historical period are easily recognised and acknowledged by all, but it is the section in the middle where controversy rages.

On the far left we have category romance, where the romance is the only thing the author and the reader, presumably, is interested in. Category romance specifically does not want sub-plots and sub-characters running off and doing interesting things, taking interest away from the hero and heroine. The author must focus on the couple in question. These days, interest does not stop at the bedroom door. More and more blow-by-blow encounters are detailed inside the bedroom - or the equivalent. It must be an age thing, but four and five pages of these encounters often have me skipping over them. But I digress. My taste in sex scenes may be a little less graphic, but that isn't what the post is about.

The other extreme is of course the literary end. These books are often three and four times longer and detail all sorts of other things beside the central romance - if there is one. C J Sansom manages to write almost 450 pages without a central romance featuring at all and I love his books. Cornwell's Sharpe has a few stabs at romance but there is so much more about daring-do, war and skullduggery. Writers like Forester, Clements, Winston Graham, Mitchell, Gabaldon and Parrish follow a similar pattern as we head towards the more middle of the range works.

This where the lines blur. Readers will put authors  in differing places on the line. Some will say Gabaldon is literary because she has great swathes about the American War of Independence in her Outlander series. So did Mitchell in Gone with the Wind, but in both those books, the central theme is the love affair between Claire and Jamie, and Scarlett and Rhett. We could be very analytical about it and put every title on a sliding scale of romance v literary-ness, but who has the time? Certainly not me! It is a task for each reader according to their personal taste, should they chose to do it.

The other thing that affects the argument is the male-female reading bias. In general terms, though not everyone fits into these divisions, men like action, women like romance. Men like tighter writing, women want feelings explained. Men's reviews still  seem to have more kudos than those written by women. Men, of course, review the Sansom, Forester, Cornwell "serious" type of historical novel. Perhaps they write better reviews? I don't think I've seen this type of historical novel reviewed by a woman, but they must, surely? If not, they ought to.

PS ~ Perhaps Byron had the answer when he said "Man's love is of man's life a part; it is a woman's whole existence." Follow that through and you have an answer to the basic question, though you may not like it.

VIKING SUMMER

First edit done, second under way and I'm thinking about a cover. Here's a snippet from what I think will now be called VIKING SUMMER. The story begins on the west coast of Scotland in 1036 AD and Eilidh's brother Domnall has just been caught stealing cattle. Finlay, as the newly crowned King of Alba (read ALBA IS MINE) and his good friend Hareth, confront him. They are part of the story, but the main protagonist in this story is Eilidh and her adventures.

"Four days later I stood in the hearth-hall with anxiety churning my stomach as my brother's familiar figure strode towards me. Unshaven, muddy and with his pale brown curls like a nimbus around his sunburned face, he frowned as he noted Bundalloch men loitering around the hall when they should have been at work in the fields and barns. His gaze came to me, questioning; then he saw the strangers beside me. His stride slowed and his frown deepened.

My hands gripped together beneath my breastbone. The King of Alba stood silent at my side. His unexpected arrival had brought women running into the dairy to tell me of the huge Viking longship approaching the jetty. I had stared at the tall, attractive man stalking ashore as if he owned Bundalloch. When I saw the gold circlet of kingship at his brow, I realised he did indeed own it and knew we were in trouble.

His dark good looks, self-confidence and the size of his entourage initially unnerved me, but pride came to my rescue. My gown might be plain, my apron spattered with milk and my hair unadorned, but until Domnall married, I was the lady of Bundalloch and knew my duties. Hurrying forward, I greeted the king and stuttered a welcome. He had smiled, dispersed his men around Bundalloch, and walked into the hearth-hall without having received an invitation from me.

Beside me the King of Alba dropped into the thane of Bundalloch's chair and made himself comfortable. The storm cloud gathered on Domnall’s face as Leod and their companions filtered into place behind him. Then, collecting himself, he took a quick breath, bent his head and forced out a sentence of stilted politeness. “I trust my sister has offered food and drink, Your Grace?”

My nails dug into my palms. Of course I had. Did he think I was stupid?

“We heard you’ve been away on business,” the king said in a surprisingly deep voice. “To do with cattle, I think?”

Stiff as a pine, his fists clenched hard against his thighs, my brother said, “The beasts wander too far and must be brought back.”

A flood of sunlight lit the hall as the doors burst open to admit a vibrant young man with chestnut hair who strode across the rough earthen floor. “You've been raiding, Domnall,” he called out in a cheerful voice. “We've seen the beasts and watched you at work.” 

Re-reading the Outlander series

Gabaldon's books stand the test of time well. I'm enjoying reading them this time around (only my second venture into them) more than I did the first time. This may have something to do with the fact that I have more leisure time now to read them properly, word for word, instead of flipping through them to get them finished and go on to something else. The fact that I'm writing now may also have deepened my interest. 

As most of the female reading world knows, they are huge books, usually between 800 and 1,000 pages. Most agents and publishers frown on long books these days, so it will be interesting to see how long the last volume, scheduled for 2018, might be.
I'm almost finished Voyager, vol 2. This is the one where they sail for the West Indies to rescue Young Ian and I don't think I have read this one before. I often wondered, as I read later volumes, how they got to America with half their family around them. Now I'm finding out and along with that I'm discovering  some little bloopers. Yes, mistakes.  

They're not huge mistakes or typos, but because it is nice to know that even such famous authors who have huge publishing resources behind them can have the odd little typo, let me tell you what I've found. First of all she refers to Carter Bar as Carter's Bar. For those of you who have maybe never heard of the place, it is about 45 miles from me; the point on the A68 where the land drops over the ridge of the Cheviots from Northumberland into Scotland. If I checked historical maps I might find it was once called Carter's Bar - but so far all I've found is pubs and cafes in Edinburgh called Carter's Bar. 

The author also refers to "a bramble" from Jamie's mother's rose tapping against the window of Lallybroch. I've never heard of roses having brambles but evidently it is used in the US and people with more gardening experience than me assure me the UK catalogues hold a variety of bramble roses. To me, here in the north of England, we call  brambles those wild thorny shrubs that bear blackberries, and we go brambling.  On that point, I cannot accuse the US publisher of being incorrect. 

But when the author has Jamie and Claire sail from France to a port at Cape Wrath in the extreme north west of Scotland with vertiginous cliffs (there wasn't even a lighthouse until the mid 1800s) and no landing place, planning to pick up supplies at Lewes as they sail on to the West indies, I goggled. Cape Wrath is a hell of a place to get to today, never mind in 1760. The clansmen who rode there to meet them there were heroes! Read chapter 42 "We set sail" and then look at Cape Wrath on Google Earth. 

As for Lewes, it is unlikely that they had sailed from France to Cape Wrath and then proposed to sail south around Cornwall and back up the English Channel to Lewes to pick up supplies. Lewis, the northernmost of the western isles, however, would be on their way since they're sailing for Jamaica. 

Two pages on from this and there's an "exclamation of distate."

So many of the places mentioned in the story are real, but there are fantasy places mixed in, such as Ardsmuir prison. I never found where that was except she says it is on the west coast of Scotland near Coigach. Now, Coigach is the hill north west of Ullapool and there are islands off the headland where the gold could have been hidden on the seal's island. but my theory at the moment is that she uses genuine Scots names but not always as real places. It's become like a game for me to know which are which. Looking out for such things does not detract frm my enjoyment of the story; it's almost a bonus! Sad, I know!

Viking Scotland V

King Malcolm II

King Malcolm was for some time the most powerful man in the country. King Owen of the Britons of Strathclyde had died without issue, and Malcolm’s grandson, Duncan, was the rightful heir through marriage. The Four Kingdoms of Alba were finally united under one throne  -  and under Malcolm.

King Duncan I

Duncan was related to previous rulers through his mother Bethoc, daughter of Malcolm II. He became King in 1034. Defeated by the native English at Durham in 1040, he was a weak character and a poor leader. At a place called Bothganowan meaning "Blacksmith's Hut" in old Gaelic, (or Bothgofnane, Bothgofuane, or Bothgowan, today Pitgaveny near Elgin), his cousin, chief of the northern Scots defeated and killed Duncan, and took the kingship for himself.

King MacBeth

The Mormaer of Moray, MacBeth (Mac Bethad mac Findláich,) claimed the throne on his own behalf and that of his wife Grauch, and formed an alliance with his cousin the Earl of Orkney. Respected for his strong leadership qualities, MacBeth was a wise king who ruled successfully for 17 years from a fortified castle at Dunsinane north of Perth. His rule was secure enough for him to go on a pilgrimage to Rome in 1050.

Duncan’s son Malcolm had fled to Northumbria after the defeat of his father and had never given up his claim to the throne. In 1054 with the support of Earl Siward, he led an army against MacBeth, and defeated him at the battle of Dunsinnan. MacBeth remained king, and restored Malcolm’s lands to him, but in 1057 at Lumphanan in Aberdeenshire on 15th August, Malcolm finally killed MacBeth and took the crown. He also married MacBeth’s widow.

Final check.

Easter has come and gone and the cul de sac is quiet. So many people have gone on holiday it is amazing. We stagger on, weeding the garden if it is sunny, hiding indoors if it is not.
DH contemplates mowing the front lawn but no decision has been made as yet. Grocery shopping has been accomplished, so the fridge/freezer are stocked again. We shall not starve!
True to form, one of my teeth began to ache as soon as it was certain the dentist would have locked up and gone home for a well-earned rest. I begin to think this toothache is psychosomatic as it always acts up when I can't reach any help - Christmas, hols in France, now Easter.

Editing is just about done. I'm thinking about THE QUEEN'S COURIER as a title, but am still trying to dream up a better one. This is the second story about Matho and his adventures as newly established courier. I suppose technically it is the third story about him, because he first figured in FAIR BORDER BRIDE alongside Harry and Alina, though in a minor role. It has rolled in at almost 94,000 words though at one stage before editing it was about 104,000. I think that means I'm getting better at editing! A few little tweaks, then print out and read through as a final check.

Rain, editing, dentists and holidays

 The rain goes on. We don't go for walks any more, Tim and I - we go for a splodge. Wellies a necessity, rain proof clothing a boon and off we go. In a strange way it is invigorating, and we can always come back to  nice warm house and a cup of coffee.
Good weather for editing, I hear you say. Well, yes, and I am. But I've found that I can only do so much before the eyes glaze over and I've stopped - the critical faculty ceases to operate. So at the same time as editing the beginning of the book Queen's Courier (the sequel to Abduction of the Scots Queen) I'm seeing the last few chapters through the critique group. This might sound as if it would be confusing, but it has advantages as well because each edit deepens the characterisation - or I hope it does - and refines the plotting. Working at both ends of the book means I am familiar with it in a way I wouldn't be if I was working from a-z each time.

This week I've had lots of dental visits, too. Three in a week is too much for comfort or a good night's sleep, but hopefully the root canal and the abscess are now history and I can banish the Paracetomols to the back of the drawer again.

Another good thing - we've started to think about holidays in France and possibly a week in Kielder Forest before the midgies emerge - and that means pre-May. They're nice thoughts to curl up with as I glance out of the window and contemplate the third walk of the day with Tim. Wish me luck - it's raining again.

Winter Casualty

Out walking today with Tim and came across what I hope will be the only casualty of winter. Couldn't see any injuries and no sign of a struggle. Beautiful little fox, and not very old. A touch of frost on his fur, since he was in the shadow of the tall hedge separating the fields. Tim sniffed and sniffed but made no effort to touch it.

Brilliant cold day with low sunshine making long, long shadows across the fields. At last the temperature is comfortable for walking fair distances at a decent pace. Lovely and warm inside my old Goretex jacket, fleece hat and gloves, but with my face freezing!  Quite a change to the last few weeks when the slightest effort has had me sweating because I dressed for November instead of the actual temperature.

Good weather for writing, too. Nice to be snug and warm inside my imaginary world. This time it is Victorian England with an art thief as villain. I'm finding it difficult to work in the crimes themselves and leave clues without giving away the whole thing. I fear I my have the timing of incidents out of sequence - or someone knows something when they shouldn't. Will have to read through very carefully before too long!

I hope the fox wasn't poisoned. It is a worrying thought when so many dogs walk the fields with their owners. Dalmatians are very greedy dogs, and Tim is no exception. He ate something nasty along the riverside at Hexham a couple of days ago, and vomited it back up before we finished the walk, but he doesn't learn....probably an old fish skin or carcase. Fishermen tend to leave them behind and I wish they wouldn't. There's nothing quite as smelly as an old fish head.

Adventures and freezing at Downton

Took Tim for a walk down by the riverside this morning and amused myself taking pictures of cobwebs on the gorse bushes. Boy! Have those spiders been busy! Do they do it all in one night, or is it the work of several days? Walked on, turned back to the car and realised I no longer had my phone.

Horrors! Not only an expensive item, but a gift from dh! I got Tim out of the car again, clipped on his lead and set off at a great pace back to the point of taking pictures of cobwebs. I had a clear memory of the spot and found it easily. Fortunately no one else is stupid enough to go off in the long wet grass among gorse bushes taller than they are, and my phone was lying where I presume it had fallen out of my pocket. What a relief!

So now I am happy to sit, and Tim is happy to sleep after double the normal amount of exercise.

Watched the final Downton last night. No more until Christmas. What amazes me is that inside those huge rooms, gentlemen wear (I'm guessing here - vests?) shirts, waistcoats, and tweed jackets and trousers. Ladies on the other hand, waft about looking pale and lovely in thin silk and chiffon. Their white skin has a beauty we don't often see in these days of suntans and the delicate set of a long neck on pale shoulders has a lot to recommend it.

Then we go outside, and the gentleman heave a mackintosh or overcoat and hat on top of their tweeds. Lady Mary and the other ladies favour thin-looking coats that often don't close up to the throat. I shiver for them. Come evening, the men have jackets, stiff shirt fronts and sometimes waistcoats while the girls once more shiver in silk with bare arms,and throats. They sport long leather or silk gloves which they remove at the dining table. I can only assume they have Danmart underwear to keep them from  hypothermia.

Days gone by

I never seem to have enough time these days. My blog used to be as regular as clockwork but it is a trifle hit and miss now, though I still try to keep to three posts a week. Today I'm in the unusual situation of having time to do it and groping for subject matter. Most frustrating.

We had the first frost of autumn last night. There might have been a tentative frost earlier in October, but it was so tentative it didn't last til midday. When I took Tim down to the river bank today, the ground was frozen. It's been soft and squishy up until yesterday and while Tim romped about and got muddy, I had to keep my eyes on where I put my feet. I still slipped a few times, but didn't go down. Tim, on the other hand, hit a puddle at full speed this morning and skidded off to one side. He came back to sniff the ice, so no doubt he knows what to expect next time.

This sort of weather makes me very glad to be living in the 21st century. I tell myself a Viking hallhouse could be very cosy with the central hearth blazing and everyone wrapped up in furs to keep warm while the harper told a tale or two. But someone had to go out and find the wood or peat, drag it back and keep the fire burning night and day. Someone had to go hunting so there was something to cook and eat. Trudging through snow in leather boots without the thick, textured soles that we're so used to today would be no picnic. Maybe they packed straw and wool inside to add insulation, but there must have been many frozen toes, chilblains and even frost bite.

People complained of chilblains in the fifties, (a painful, itchy swelling on the hands and feet due to poor circulation and exposure to cold) and scorch marks on the skin over the shins from sitting too close to the fire. These things were not unusual even in the early sixties. No doubt they were common in Viking days as well. Nowadays, does anyone under forty know of chilblains? Do they remember running to the kitchen to make a hot drink before hurrying back to the one warm room in the house? A trip outside to the coalhouse to get more coal - no one wanted to do it, and it usually fell to the man of the house. Going to an icy bed was unthinkable without a hot water bottle, and three people in a bed doesn't seem such a bad idea in context of  ye olden days. Body heat times three was not to be sniffed at. Pity those who had outside loos....all these discomforts are mostly forgotten now. But it is life as it was lived in historical novels.

Changing stories

I'm up to 12,000 words in a new Viking story and already I'm altering the synopsis to keep up with the way the story is going. Is this bad? I don't know. I read on blogs that some authors do full ten-page character analysis charts or use ennegrams and even horoscopes prior to starting a work, while others just sit down at their computer and think, "Ho hum, let's see what happens today." Frankly, for me, that would end up in a whole lot of trouble!

Those who advocate all the preliminary work on characters say you must have the characters clear in your mind before you begin, because the characters drive the story. I agree with the latter half of the sentence, but not necessarily with the first. I start with a rough outline in my mind of where the story will (probably, unless I think of something better along the way) go and who the characters are, but beyond that, they (and I) discover each other as we go along.

Sometimes the characters just don't react the way I thought they would, and rather than force them into a mould they obviously don't want to go, I feel happier bending the synopsis around them. The changes are not huge. The goal will still be met. Only the route will be different. After all, you don't get to know a friend all in one huge gulp, do you? So why expect to get to know a character before you test them in different and possibly vexing situations?
 (Sometimes I feel talking about characters I'm inventing "not wanting to go where I want them to" is nonsense, even pretentious rubbish, but that's another topic for another day!)

A little shameless

A little shameless self-promotion today - and why not? Looking back, Banners of Alba was a complex subject for a first book, but my heart was in it and I'm not telling porkies when I say it was a labour of love from start to finish.

Shakespeare was to blame, because he maligned the character of MacBeth for the sake of a play. It was a good play, but I decided to look into the story of the real MacBeth. There wasn't a lot of written history available to me, and so I had to use my imagination. Gradually the shadowy figure of the king who reigned for seventeen years and thought of Alba as one united country morphed into my version of what kind of man MacBeth might have been. Because it is fiction and not a biographical study (not at all!) I gave him a new name - one I could spell, and a Gaelic one whose spelling I had to check every time I used it.

If I wrote it today, I suspect it would be shorter, but it might just lose something in the process. Best to leave it as it is, I think.

Danger Zone

Danger Zone for writers: what is a chav? I’ve asked this question myself, and never got a definitive answer. The Guardian article proves the point – a chav is many things to many people. The fact that the answers are so widely different is worrying if you are a writer trying to pin down a facet of modern UK culture. Take a stance, depict your version in writing, and few will agree with you.

Writing historical novels is much the same. Try looking for the facts in primary sources, and you’ll discover that often they don’t agree in day or date, sometimes not even in year. (Aways tricky when the change over date from one year to the next used to be in the Spring rather than 1st January.) Names are spelled as the owner chose to write it that particular day. Mary Stewart, or Marie Stuart? If you’re an English speaker, you’ll probably go for the former. If you lean towards French, and her signature, you’ll go for the latter. Was her mother Mary of Guise or Marie de Guise? Was the birth on the 8th December, as most reports claim, or on 7th December as Leslie, who had special access to official records, states? Whatever the true record, and there may have only been minutes involved in a time when clocks were not as numerous as today, Mary always believed her birth date was the 8th. Even the date of her father’s death was in doubt for years until they found his coffin in seventeenth century with the death date inscribed on the coffin lid.

Reports came from military men in a hurry, who could be forgiven for mistaking the date of their letter, or the date of an engagement. I doubt they carried diaries or calendars in their doublets. They reported what other men told them, which may have been inaccurate or given a spin in the hope of impressing a master or commander. It is likely, and understandable, that even commanders put things in the best light when they wrote to King Henry VIII. Secretaries wrote what their masters dictated, even if they knew it to be a blatant untruth. Monks wrote pieces that would please their patrons. Private diaries can be wonderful, but it needs to be remembered that Chinese Whispers distort the most accurate report when it is handed on verbally until it reaches the diarist.

So, read widely, pick and choose, use your imagination and interpret the facts as best you can. There’ll always be someone who disagrees with you!

It's good to know

I finally got time to go back to the rules of fiction link I put up for you on my last post, and read through Hilary Mantel's ten points. Not that they aren't all good, but two of them struck a real chord with me, so here they are.

7 Concentrate your narrative energy on the point of change. This is especially important for historical fiction. When your character is new to a place, or things alter around them, that's the point to step back and fill in the details of their world. People don't notice their everyday surroundings and daily routine, so when writers describe them it can sound as if they're trying too hard to instruct the reader.

8 Description must work for its place. It can't be simply ornamental. It ­usually works best if it has a human element; it is more effective if it comes from an implied viewpoint, rather than from the eye of God. If description is coloured by the viewpoint of the character who is doing the noticing, it becomes, in effect, part of character definition and part of the action.

She says it so much better than me, but I realise that I have been trying to show all my description through a viewpoint character in my new stories Treason and Defiance. I don't always succeed, but I'm reassured to know I'm on the right track.

Historical v romance

Answers.com defines a historical novel thus:

"the action takes place during a specific historical period well before the time of writing (often one or two generations before, sometimes several centuries), and in which some attempt is made to depict accurately the customs and mentality of the period. The central character—real or imagined—is usually subject to divided loyalties within a larger historic conflict of which readers know the outcome. The pioneers of this genre were Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper; Scott's historical novels, starting with Waverley (1814), set the pattern for hundreds of others: outstanding 19th‐century examples include Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris (1831), Dumas père's Les Trois Mousquetaires (1844), Flaubert's Salammbô (1862), and Tolstoy's War and Peace (1863–9). While the historical novel attempts a serious study of the relationship between personal fortunes and social conflicts, the popular form known as the historical or ‘costume’ romance tends to employ the period setting only as a decorative background to the leading characters. "

Well, that sort of says it all. I can imagine the bristles rising all over the globe as romance writers and readers read the last sentence, but remember, girls, I didn't write it - I'm only quoting it!

I think there is a bridge between the two genres inhabited by less serious historical novels and more serious romance historicals. How deep a reader feels the bridge extends in either territory depends on personal taste. One woman might refuse to step on the bridge, and another might head a mile into the other territory. It is good that the bridge is there, because it means everyone can find the right level for them.

Is the black woolly creature in the pic alpaca, lama or vicuna? I can never remember which is which, but I hope this little creature (s/he was very young when I took his/her picture up near Harbottle in the autumn) is tucked away in a nice warm barn somewhere.

Authentically British

There’s an interesting post on Smart Bitches – here’s the link - here - which begins:
“Dear various American authors of historical romances who are trying very, very hard to sound authentically British,
It’s not like I’m the foremost Britpicker of all time. Not even close. But I’ve noticed a distressing trend among your ranks in recent days.”

Anyone who writes anything vaguely historic will find the letter and the comments that follow it entertaining, interesting and informative. I certainly did, and though I didn’t agree with everything, was astonished to learn that my understanding of cetain rude words was a little out of kilter to the norm. Comes of a sheltered childhood, I imagine!

The weather is ferociously cold here in the north east. Temperatures of minus three all day, and plummeting to minus nine and worse at night, is unusual. On the other hand, it is bearable with blue sky and sunshine. I am feeding the birds cracked peanuts, sultanas, mixed seeds and bits of bacon fat, and am amazed that they can tolerate such conditions. The ground is so hard there's no hope of finding worms. How do birds no bigger than a golf ball survive the long, dark nights? From four in the afternoon until eight the next morning - about sixteen hours in freezing temperatures?

Harbottle Castle

Start reading about castles and strange words start to bounce off the page as you carry on reading. Then you get to the end of the passage and if you are like me, ask yourself, “What did that actually tell me?”

The words are so specialised that no one but architects, and historians with a modicum of curiosity about old buildings will ever understand them. Authors can get tangled up in words like Gothic, Keeps, Tracery and Barbicans. I did, and I’ve spent the last two days digging around in the literature about medieval castles in an effort to understand.

Tracery, for example. It is intersecting ribwork in the upper part of a window. It can be used decoratively in blank arches, on vaults, etc. And that’s not all. Plate tracery is an early form where decoratively shaped openings are cut through the solid stone infilling in a window head. Bar tracery, introduced into England around 1250, where intersecting ribwork made up of slender shafts continuing the lines of the mullions of the windows up to a decorative mesh in the head of the window. Lost yet? I hope not, for we still must consider Geometrical tracery, Y tracery, Intersecting tracery, Reticulated tracery, Panel tracery and Perp tracery. Oh, and mustn’t forget Dagger tracery, Kentish or Split Cusp, and the intriguingly named Mouchette, a leaf shape which lies flauntingly off to one side.

Ignore these words at your peril. Gothic windows are defined by their pointed arches, yes, but then there was the tracery.
I spent a happy day on Sunday prowling around Harbottle Castle in Coquetdale. A brilliant day, a lovely drive full of autumn colours, and a four mile walk beside the Coquet to round off the afternoon. The Castle had - you’ve guessed it! – at least one Gothic window, because remnants of the tracery have been found among the fallen stones at the bottom of the motte.

Tomorrow I shall hastily go through my already written pages and redesign my version of Harbottle Castle, ignoring the fact that my hero languishes in an upper story where a fire has broken out. Time to rescue him when I've sorted ou the windows.

And then, of course, there are all those other details I've discovered about the gate towers, the drawbridge. and the well in the inner bailey. I didn't know there was a drawbridge when I wrote the chapter!

Reality v fiction

A rare pic of me at the GNI last Friday. Interesting questions come up at the Girls' Nights In and the evening at Haltwhistle was no exception. How do we get our ideas? Simple question, but it makes you think, really think, about where ideas come from and how we execute them. Most historical writers claim to love history, yet there are some books being written today, someone said, that made her think that the writer didn't understand the period she'd been writing.

It is sometimes hard enough to understand our neighbours and next to impossible to understand people ten years younger than ourselves. Does any forty-year-old really understand why twenty-year-olds think as they do? What makes some of them get absolutely plastered? Why drink at home before they go out, so that they are half-way to plastered before they hit the streets? Why do they need artificial stimulants before they can have a good time? Why do football matches turn into battle zones? Why are bankers so greedy?

Understanding how someone living in Regency times understood her/his world is therefore doubly difficult. Then it was fear of French invasion and a strict code of manners and morals. In Tudor England, it is a struggle to understand the stranglehold the church had on minds and hearts, or why burning at the stake was thought to be such a cleansing thing. I wonder how many of us would die at the stake for our beliefs today? Are the Scots still The Enemy, as they were then? (I look at Alex Salmon and wonder) Or the Norman French, who overan England, and relegated the indigenous population to starvation, death or serfdom. We go there for holidays now and we're all great friends, so how can we really understand what it was like then?

All writers have a debt of honour to those who have gone before to get it reasonably right. Therefore, as many have said before me, heroines who live in 1803 and behave as if they live in 2010 are just not on.

Grey days

I've been doing a lot of reading lately.

Among the many historical reprints to hit the bookshop shelves in the last couple of years was a book by Margaret Irwin, first published in 1941 under the title The Gay Galliard. The new version is, as you might guess, on the shelves as simply The Galliard. It brings home very sharply the way novels have changed in the last couple of decades. The story of Mary Queen of Scots and Bothwell, told from Bothwell's point of view, and almost non-fictional in its approach. Lots of author asides, info dumps and the last chapter begins: "He never saw her again. That is why this story ends here..." and then goes on to tell the rest of their individual stories in two pages. The book is also a victim of computer technology in that certain words have been mysteriously changed, sometimes amusingly: modern becomes modem, avid becomes arid.

A Week in December is my first Sebastian Faulks, and I enjoyed the many sub-plots, including the hedgefund manager who single-handedly causes the banking crisis we're all suffering, the would-be terrorist, and the quick peek Faulks gives me into alternative computer worlds and best of all, RTranter, the bitter literary critic who longs for his own work to gain recognition. Well worth a read.

The pic is Corbridge peering down at the Tyne which is running a mite high after all the rain we've had lately. This afternoon we're going to have quick trip across to our nearest Borders bookshop to see if there is anything to buy for Christmas presents. All stock is for sale at half price, barring the three for the priceof two deals, so they say.

What not to do

Writers must write something that makes readers want to turn the page.

Therefore, plot must be number one in the list of priorities. So if we start with a thorny problem and a sympathetic character, we should be on the right track. The plot must thicken (like a good sauce?), the hero must be hindered in every possible way but triumphs in a surprising way that once you know it, seems inevitable.


Almost every How To Write Book I've ever read says such things. They say it in different ways, but say it they do. So you'd think that by now I wouldn't be writing about a hero, and then bring in his mother, father and three sisters and her cat and have them discuss their lives to date.


I wouldn't drivel on endlessly and get to page 120 without so much as a hint of what the storyline will be once I get around to it.


I won't be writing a prologue where my hero stares at a flower, gazes through of a rain-drop covered window, walks through the long grass and contemplates why his life is not running as it should.


Indeed no. I should know what the chase is, as they say, and cut to it at once. No pages explaining what I want to tell, why the hero is as he is on page one or what terrible history happened to make him the way he is.

So, consider the opening lines of my wip:
Matho Spirston stood at the door of the tiny cottage athwart the hill at Halton and surveyed the countryside with pleasure. Small and poor though the cottage might be, it was a start. He folded his arms, leaned idly against the door jamb in the late sunshine and gazed south. The roof of Aydon Castle, where he had spent so much of his life, was visible above the tree tops beyond the meadows. Further south, the hills of Durham rose like a humped blue quilt across the horizon and somewhere in between, the river Tyne ran unseen west to east through the valley.
This was his territory, where he had reigned as undisputed leader of the gang of children who fought and played together among the scattered farms, cotts and cabins that composed the Aydon Township, and where his father had put him into service with Sir Reynold Carnaby, Lord of Aydon, five years before.
But things had changed since then, and would change further. Both his father and Sir Reynold were dead, one in the Rising of ’37 and his patron last month after a long illness. Then three weeks ago Alina and Lionel Carnaby had stood with Matho at his mother’s graveside.
A warm feeling filled him at the thought of the two elder Carnabys. They were still his friends. On their uncle’s death, most of his holdings went to their father, Cuthbert Carnaby and Lionel now had lordly duties of his own. If Lionel said the cottage belonged to Matho, then no man would question it. It was the least the family could do after he’d helped Harry rescue Alina from the clutches of the reiver Johnny Hogg.
She was married to Harry now. Matho shifted, settled his shoulder comfortably against the wood. One way and another it had been a grand summer, full of life and adventure and all because Harry Wharton turned up in the locality.
Now the dust had settled, the humdrum days threatened to return and Matho sensed boredom creeping into his life. Already he found himself glancing at the horizon several times a day, vaguely hoping for something more exciting than drilling the local farm lads into guard duty around Aydon Castle.
As if he had conjured something out of the air, a small figure rode across the field towards him. Matho squinted against the sun, but no insignia betrayed the identity of the rider. Still, as the distance lessened between them, Matho recognized the familiar set of the wide shoulders and long limbs. A grin stole across his face at the sight of a daft cap with its jaunty ostrich feather curling back in the breeze. He shook his head. Harry was always the lad who liked his fancy clothes.
Matho straightened and strolled forward.


Oh, Lord. I can see the red pen glowing, leaping up and down on my desk. There is work to be done. What would you change, if you were me?

From Historical to Horror

The Man Booker prize, awarded last night, went to Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall. I shall wait for the paperback, or the library copy, as I haven't had much success with reading Ms Mantel in the past.

The most interesting thing about the final six for me was the fact that they were all historical novels. Hopefully, this may mean the genre will open up again after being on the back foot for a few years.

Paranormals rushed into the market place and must have helped push historicals to the back of the queue. It was interesting to see how many historical writers added a paranormal twist in the hope that the new "young" market would read them. I'm not so sure the market was or indeed is "young" in the sense of teenagers or people in the early twenty something bracket. The paranormal novel has been around for years in different guises - sometimes called gothic, sometimes horror, sometimes horrid. When I worked in public libraries, I was amazed to find that the most popular section of the non-fiction was true crime - how murders were committed, with gruesome details. Now I suspect forensic crime has taken over - any modern librarians out there to testify?

People, perhaps only those comfortably situated, seem to have always had a need to be scared. It might make for a good dissertation to discover if the need for horror in reading matter diminishes in times of war and other disasters. As real life becomes more comfortable for so many in this modern age, it is perhaps not so surprising that horror and paranormals have flooded onto the market.

I long for good, solidly researched historical novels with a story to tell, and sadly the library shelves are full of titles I've already read. The Plaidys, Barnes and Heyes currently being re-issued are fine if you haven't read them, but I wish the twenty-something publishers would remember that lots of people were around the first time the books came out - and those folk are still here and looking for a good read!