So, you want to write historical fiction. You’re fascinated by history. You read a lot about history. You watch a lot of documentaries and movies about history. You listen to podcasts about history. You LOVE history. And you want to tell stories about people in...

Social media can be a powerful and positive tool for authors, but it can also be a minefield to navigate. What should we post? On which platforms? How often? And so on. For historical fiction authors, social media works best when we acknowledge two fundamental...

So you’ve made it over the first hurdle — writing the book. You’ve poured your life’s blood into a magnum opus so breathtaking that the Booker Prize committee will be beating down your door. But first! You have to get it published. There are a few ways you can get a...

Picture the scene: you’ve spent years working on your novel about a historical figure never immortalised in fiction. And then you discover someone else is publishing a novel about them. This situation is unique to historical fiction writers: when we fictionalise real...

Just as a reminder for everyone who was asleep at school - a primary source is a contemporary object or piece of writing. Stuff from Ye Olden Days of Yore. The Treasurer of the Chamber’s Accounts (Henry VIII’s soft furnishings bill–here if you’re interested) is a...

For millennia, humans and animals have coexisted in different ways - protecting each other, comforting each other, and eating each other. Whenever your historical fiction is set, if animals aren’t involved, you may be missing an opportunity to give your reader deeper...

If you’ve completed a work of historical fiction or are nearing that revision finish line, you might be thinking about ways to get your story out into the world. One of the best ways to get some attention (and some cool cash) is by placing in writing contests. Short...

Real life gets in the way. If, like most of us, you have a “normal” job in addition to your writing, or you have a family, kids, hobbies, or any other assorted drama that comes with being a human being at some stage your writing schedule has taken a slight knockback....

Historical fiction is a conjuring trick, an interpretation of bygone times which doesn't pretend or promise to present the absolute truth. Instead, writers of historical fiction reinvent the past, often venturing further than the known facts. They invoke a past to...

Many of us find that research is the best part of writing. We spend years hunting down every conceivable detail. Knowing how New York might have smelt on 4th July 1776, the taste of a roasted dormouse in Pompeii’s heyday, whether Cardinal Langton, author of the Magna...

When it comes to getting a finished manuscript out into the world, there are more avenues available than ever before. Self-publishing is no longer the domain of the downtrodden and the desperate, while traditional publishers are constantly on the hunt for fresh new...

Celebrations, feasts and traditions have always been part of what makes us human. They bound our ancestors to their ancestors and can do the same for characters in historical fiction. Some feasts are moveable; all can be moving, both to characters and to readers. Some...