One morning, I got to watch a destroyer and a littoral combat ship being hauled down to the naval dockyards, from the hotel. Another morning, I opened the curtains to nothing but grey. The marine layer gave us a wall of impenetrable fog.

People write historical fiction to clear the fog of the present by seeing it through windows of the past. Historical fiction promotes the idea the past isn’t that foreign a country, that it isn’t as alien as we might think it is, that time gives distance. Many authors use the past as a creative play space to examine and work out their thoughts about contemporary issues. They also examine how people in the past attempted to resolve—or not—similar issues.

I’ve never held to the old saw that history repeats itself. It merely appears so because human nature and imagination are limited and fallible. Self-interest is the great limiting factor. In other words, always follow the money—solid advice in 17th-century Venice, 18th-century London, and 21st-century Shanghai.

Also, Ovidia Yu, who writes the Su Lin mysteries that take place in WWII Singapore, put it: however terrible the events of the past, people survived it. There was a way to tomorrow. In some senses, historical fiction gives hope.

History and historical fiction are interpretive arts, the latter more so than the former. A historian takes a multitude of primary sources (evidence from the period) to support an argument s/he makes about her/his research issue. Historical fiction authors do the same thing, with one additional burden—write an exciting story with good characters and snappy dialogue. Given how much crime, broadly speaking, exists in history, historical mystery is a natural sub-genre.

All writers of history fight the battle between what the sources say (accuracy) and what romantic fantasies and/or legends exist in people’s heads. How we’ve been taught to think about history—historiography—does get in the way. For a century or more, history was about singular or great white men (and a few spectacular women) doing great things. Authors have been beating that notion back for some time now. Novels featuring women, persons of color, or LGBTQ+ characters can now be easily found.

In crime fiction, however, one thing remains the same—all sleuths must have the agency to solve the crime.

Another aspect of historiography—there’s an old idea that history progresses from point A to point B in a linear fashion (teleology). Well, no, it doesn’t. It’s more like a dance with one step forward, two to the side, one back, and then start the box over. Case in point—people today don’t necessarily want to remember that many PI novels of early 20th century dealt with anti-labor law, unequal divorce laws, industrial espionage, and religious con men and other grifters.

(For that last, see The Dain Curse by Dashiell Hammett and Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham, twice made into a movie).

How accurate should historical fiction be? I agree with Vanessa Riley, the author of The Queen of Exiles and the Lady Worthing Mysteries: We owe it to our children to be as accurate, as sourced, and as diverse as possible. She was speaking directly to the erasure of Black history (The Queen of Exiles is about the queen of Hayti, who was forced to flee to England when her husband was overthrown as part of the Haitian Revolution, which was a much six-sided civil war as it was a revolution.) The principle, however, holds in any context, even though, in writing, about 90% of research won’t make it into the book.

Women in any century have frequently had power, but usually not public power—that last is, mostly, a manifestation of the 20th century. (Those few spectacular women in the official record, like Elizabeth I of England or Isabella of Castile, might have something to say about that.) Still, most women, even wealthy women, held what’s called “soft” power. 

Richard Koreto, who writes the Alice Roosevelt novels and the Lady Frances Ffolkes mysteries, discussed how the Empress of China, Cixi, saw Alice Roosevelt as an American princess, a woman from a powerful family, and gave her equal status that helped bridge a cultural and diplomatic divide. Men couldn’t deal directly with the Empress, but Alice could and was, therefore, a means to convey American desires to the Chinese.

Overall, the authors had some advice and some warnings for would-be writers of historical mysteries—Historical facts form the skeleton of the story, but the fiction is the flesh, wherein you’re seeking the truth of the moment; The closer to now that you get, the more you have to watch out for the relatives of your historical characters; Get it as right as possible, especially with the real life people and places; Local museums and historical societies are huge resources, so make research librarians your best friends.

Visit, if you can, the places where you’ve set your story because this will enhance both setting and character; Sources of choice—the actual places you’ve set the story (foot research); talk to people (if you can); newspapers and magazines (if they existed), novels of the period; personal records such as letters, diaries, household account books; government records such as trial transcripts, tax rolls, terriers (medieval land surveys), census data, actual legislation; Double-check everything and use multiple sources/perspectives to get the fullest possible picture, for the simple reason that not everything you read is correct. (Every source has its own POV.)

I don’t agree that less is more in the historical detail. A writer needs exactly as much detail as is necessary to make the picture clear and the character real, yet keep the story moving. History is complicated, and it matters, so don’t give it such short shrift as to make it vague, inaccurate, or useless.

Do you need to include a bibliography? For those readers who get interested in the period through your book, it’s a convenient resource for them. Also given the times in which we live, It can also help reduce challenges to your novel, which is another reason not to use too little historical detail.

Reading historical fiction and going to conferences such as Malice Domestic and Bouchercon can help you get over any intimidation or hesitation you might feel about writing your own historical novel. Such conferences can hook you up with people in the field—authors, agents, publishers, and readers—who can be a great help to you. All you gotta do is go and seek and ask.

A former college professor, Karen Whitehurst holds a Ph.D. in British history from the University of Virginia. She currently resides in Maryland with one long-suffering husband, three naughty cats, and over one hundred houseplants. A writer of both historical mystery and SF & F, she is currently at work on a mystery set in 18th century England during the Gordon Riots.

For more information, visit her website.

The post History at Bouchercon 2023 appeared first on DIY MFA.

Where Malice Domestic promotes the traditional mystery with low levels of sex, violence, and gore, Bouchercon covers all types of mysteries. Agatha Christie lovers rub shoulders with Harlan Coben and Christa Faust fans. I go to both because historical fiction authors and readers will attend, but I go to Bouchercon to get my noir fix. And noir can definitely be historical—whether authors set their stories in the past as Scott Von Doviak in Lowdown Road (1974 Texas) or let their protagonists be haunted by the past as Faye Snowden did to Raven Burns in A Killing Fire.

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars/But in ourselves.” 

Cassius, in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, pithily names the source of all problems in noir, less so Gothic and hard-boiled fiction. Perhaps it’s the reason I love those subgenres, even if I don’t, probably can’t, write them.

Let’s discuss noir first. If we’re talking about film, it’s a style. Dark alleys, rain-slicked streets, murky atmosphere, shots down spiral staircases, reflections, shadows, shady characters who come to no good end. In film, think Out of the Past, The Sweet Smell of Success, Odds Against Tomorrow, and L.A. Confidential. That last is neo-noir, but really, was anything shot in daylight?

In fiction, noir has many definitions, and the authors at the panels I attended debated them all. One overrode all others—it always ends badly for everybody. Nobody gets away with it, even if it looks like they have done it. Additionally, in noir, the main character usually is a louse, but generally, she/he/they do bad things to worse people. Finding the truth of the situation is worse than not knowing. Dreamers turn into schemers. This definition goes along with my conception of noir—there’s no easy walk to Easy Street. Both film noir and noir in fiction are full of stupid, corrupted and corruptible, amoral people trying to hit the jackpot, so they can check out of the rat race. It never goes well. Something else I would add—there is no redemption here. History matters, personal history most of all, foreclosing any reclamation.

There was something of a consensus that the cops and PIs are not involved in noir fiction. The authors on the panels agreed noir was crime fiction without them. I beg to differ. Have they read James Ellroy’s La Quartet? Ellroy is completely traditional in this sense—the cops are just the other gang, better armed and funded.

Noir has two close cousins—Gothic and hard-boiled fiction. If I could draw a three-circle Venn diagram, there would be significant overlap amongst the three categories. 

Gothic, which these days means we’re talking about the American South, is all about an intense, emotional experience and buried secrets that corrupt everything and everybody they touch. These secrets are the point of overlap with noir because discovering the truth of these secrets is worse than not knowing the source of the corruption. Above all, people are willing to go to extraordinary, violent lengths to keep these secrets. 

Faye Snowden made an interesting point here—preachers are always corrupt in Southern Gothic. Don’t believe her? Read David Grubb’s Night of the Hunter. I cannot think of a more corrupt example than Harry “Preacher” Powell, unless it’s Elmer Gantry, but Gantry was a mere crook, not the murderous, hateful, but charming charlatan that is Powell. And definitely watch the film—Charles Laughton directed it, using Expressionism to capture the Gothic feel, and Robert Mitchum played Powell to his rotten worst.

For the record, Gothic literature came from mid-eighteenth century England—think The Monk by Gregory Lewis, which has enough crime, religiosity, and overwrought emotion to last a lifetime and which has never been out of print—to New England, where Nathaniel Hawthorne did well with it (The Scarlet Letter) to the MidAtlantic, where Edgar Allen Poe (The Fall of the House of Usher) ran with it—Baltimore’s NFL team is the Ravens for a reason—and then to its natural landing spot, the Deep South. 

Why? Shakespeare wrote that the past is prologue. In Requiem for a Nun, William Faulkner disagreed—“The past is never dead. It’s not even the past.”

The original sin in the South is slavery. Having to grapple with this unresolved past plus things done and left undone in the name of religion, makes Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor easier to understand. Faulkner, who dealt with the horror and costs of slavery underlain by a stern and fervent Protestantism, social transgression, and obsession with death, laid the roadbed for modern Southern Gothic. Flannery O’Conner, herself Catholic and therefore something of a religious outsider in the South, wrestled with secrets, transgression, death, and the grotesque in her work. Religiosity and hypocrisy can combine to corrupt, making the South a fertile setting for terrible crimes, of which murder might be the least. S.A. Cosby and Attica Locke, in addition of Faye Snowden, have brilliantly plowed this ground.

(For more on Faye Snowden’s take on Southern Gothic: https://crimereads.com/southern-gothic-crime-fiction-a-palimpsest-and-primer/ )

If noir’s in the middle, with Gothic on one side, then hard-boiled is on the other side. It overlaps with a cynical narrative voice, a corrupt and vice-ridden world, and a world-weary protagonist who knows the score, but who plows ahead to expose the corruption. The difference? Noir starts with a tepid hope, which is crushed under the bad choices the characters make. Everything gets worse, and nothing works out. In hard-boiled, the protagonist gets out alive, if more shit-stained, more damaged, and the crooks, mostly, end up jailed or dead.

Like Gothic and noir, hard-boiled can be historical or contemporary, but the past is always there to haunt the characters.

It should be no surprise that the PI novel—America’s contribution to crime fiction with Hammett, Chandler, and Macdonald putting murder on the ‘mean streets’—is the backbone of hard-boiled fiction. The private investigator is an archetypal character. She/he/they are always an outsider, always a damaged loner, but the PI knows right from wrong, even when others don’t. Sara Paretsky said at the panel on the enduring popularity of the PI novel: “The individual voice still matters.”

The PI novel has moved a long way from the days of Hammett, Chandler, and Macdonald, whose white male characters, the Continental Op, Philip Marlowe, and Lew Archer, have given way to a broader, more diverse set of PIs, such as Gary Phillip’s Ivan Monk, Sara Paretsky’s V. I. Warshawski, and S. J. Rozan’s Lydia Chin, as well as broader, more diverse crimes and locations. After all, Assassin’s Orbit by John Appel involves Noo Okereke, a sixty-two-year-old PI, investigating a brutal assassination in outer space a couple centuries in the future. While it is more space opera than PI novel, it does show that PIs are far from dead in fiction—the whole point of the Bouchercon panel.

I didn’t just do noir and its cousins at Bouchercon. I went to several history panels, too. I’ll talk about them in the next blog on the biggest mystery convention of the year.

A former college professor, Karen Whitehurst holds a Ph.D. in British history from the University of Virginia. She currently resides in Maryland with one long-suffering husband, three naughty cats, and over one hundred houseplants. A writer of both historical mystery and SF & F, she is currently at work on a mystery set in 18th century England during the Gordon Riots.

For more information, visit her website.

The post Noir and Its Cousins at Bouchercon 2023 appeared first on DIY MFA.

I cannot think of a better one for the new or emerging writer (a term I dislike, but one with a certain utility) than Malice Domestic (www.malicedomestic.org). This is the annual convention/conference for readers and writers of traditional mysteries. Agatha Christie is the patron saint here, so no explicit sex, violence, or gore. The context and the consequences of the violence, usually murder, drive the stories here: so, no to James Ellroy and Karin Slaughter, and yes to Martin Edwards, Catriona McPherson, and Misty Simon.

As a convention, it’s fun and low-key. One author described Malice to me as a great, annual family reunion. I go to Malice to hang out with my friends. I go to find new authors and books tho’ I am the hardest sell because I am so eclectic (read mercurial) in my tastes. Also, my reading tastes lean toward the grittier police procedural, which can cross over the line to hard-boiled and noir, more Bouchercon and ThrillerFest. (I’ll discuss them at a later date.) I go to learn new things.

Malice is so worth it—especially the author interviews. This year, it was Ann Cleeves, Vaseem Khan, and Hank Phillippi Ryan. Abir Mukherjee was supposed to be here, but he got quarantined in Britain due to Covid. (Did you think we’d heard the last of the virus?) However, with a little technical help from Zoom, Mukherjee joined Khan for their live-from-Malice podcast of the Red Hot Chili Writers, #99—Britain v America: the Indian Tea Party. (https://www.spreaker.com/show/red-hot-chilli-writers ). Once the tech started working—all hail the Marriot staff!—it was hilarious. No Malice is complete without a  presentation by Lucy Zahray, aka the Poison Lady, who will teach you how to poison your victims accurately. 

Don’t try using strychnine in Britain before 1819. 

This year seven or eight panels dealt with some historical topic. Historical mystery (hist-myst) generally falls in the traditional mystery category. I only went to four of these panels. After all, we can’t do everything at a con, no matter how much we want to do so; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Sometimes, the programmers have to set panels against each other in a time slot. Annoying, but it happens. Still, there’ll be at least one we’ll regret not going to. This year, I couldn’t make the one on the tension between historical fact and historical imagination (set against another historical panel) and one on thrillers wherein the past haunts the present (needed to eat—yeah, don’t forget to do that).

The panels I did make were quite good, so no need for teeth-gnashing. Most of the discussion involved authors discussing who their protagonists are, how and when they do research, and that very real tension between fact and imagination. 

Many of the authors created protagonists from the lower ranks of society, as one author put it, someone without authority or someone who is a social upstart. I can’t say my own protagonist is a social upstart, merely an outsider amongst the aristocracy. The outsider is another way to do it, and there were a few of those, like “the agony aunt.” (Agony in Victorian understanding means a problem, and such columns were published in the newspapers from the late 18th century. Lonely hearts letters, too.)

As to research, most do it before and during the writing process: one described going down the research hole for three months before writing, while another regarded research as nourishment during the writing. Yet, another described doing research after the first draft as “cleaning up after a party.” Overall, the authors did it throughout the process.

Take away: do what works for you, but without going down the research rabbit hole.

One of the moderators said historical novels are a good way to educate about history, particularly social history. Up to a point, I agree. In fiction, we’ve got to tell a good story with good, relatable characters. If there’s truth to be found here, it’s emotional truth. Those two objectives mean that sometimes accuracy’s going by the boards. Now, there will be times when we’ve got to make it up because there’s no documentation or there’s no way anybody could’ve had that experience, such as treating smallpox with red flannel or driving a Roman chariot.

Best question to the panelists in any session—What did you learn the hard way? The lessons gleaned—

• Don’t think it’s going to be too easy. It’s a long process (writing a historical novel).
• No guarantees on getting published. Do it because you love it. Have fun and entertain yourself, and then others. (Sound advice for any type of writing.)
• Don’t be too angry with the copy editor.
• It’s important the writer knows the historical details, but it’s not necessary that the readers know them.

And that wraps up the report from the 35th Annual Malice Domestic. Hope to see you there next year, along with Guest of Honor Sujata Massey, Lifetime Achievement Award winner Elaine Viets, and the toastmaster, Lori Rader-Day.

A former college professor, Karen Whitehurst holds a Ph.D. in British history from the University of Virginia. She currently resides in Maryland with one long-suffering husband, three naughty cats, and over one hundred houseplants. A writer of both historical mystery and SF & F, she is currently at work on a mystery set in 18th century England during the Gordon Riots.

For more information, visit her website.

The post History at Malice Domestic appeared first on DIY MFA.

Keeping in mind that historical novels need to do at least two jobs these days, here are the six basic categories of historical fiction:

Documentary

This category is defined by its historically accurate plot (all events are factually accurate) and cast of characters. 

Sharon Kay Penman’s The Sunne in Splendor takes the Yorkist side in the War of the Roses, sees it through the eyes of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who became Richard III. Another example would be The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. 

Romance

We’re here for the love story, for the star-crossed lovers—or in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, the time-crossed lovers—who eventually get together. That happily-ever-after ending is a requisite in romance. 

Evie Dunmore’s late Victorian romp, Bringing Down the Duke, fits the classic romance guidelines. Outlander is a time-travel novel, but c’mon, we came to Scotland with Claire for Jaime.

Mystery/Thriller

In mysteries, the reader gets the clues as the detective does; half the fun of a mystery is trying to solve the who—or why—dunnit ahead of the detective. 

In thrillers, we strap in for the roller-coaster of emotion, usually clinging to the protagonists’ shoulders and urging them not to do something massively unwise, which, of course, they do. 

The best mysteries/thrillers incorporate both elements.

In Ovidia Yu’s The Frangipani Tree Mystery, teenage sleuth Su Lin deals with murder, clue by clue, in the Straits-melting pot of late British colonial Singapore. Robert Harris’s Munich is a novel of an intrigue that fails, making it almost as much tragedy as thriller. Kate Quinn’s The Alice Network is an espionage novel that takes place in two wartime periods and contains a high degree of romance.

Alternative History & Historical fantasy

Alternative history is used as a technique for teaching history. Historical events are not inevitable, nor do they move inexorably from point A to point B in a linear progression. To break those mental blinders, alternative history changes an event and asks how that event would change history.

In Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, the Axis won World War II. Harry Turtledove’s Guns of the South runs with the idea that a bunch of time-traveling Afrikaaners bring Robert E. Lee AK-47s to win the Civil War.

We can do the same things in fantasy by adding magic or supernatural elements. In Ars Magica, Judith Tar addresses Pope Sylvester’s reputation for magic while John M Ford’s The Dragon Waiting makes the Byzantine Empire a dark threat to Renaissance Europe, stopped only by one surprising man.

Biographical

Biography is best when it takes the life of a person to reveal the unknown and/or to investigate a time period and a society.

Anya Seton’s Katherine illuminates England during the Hundred Years’ War through the life of Geoffrey Chaucer’s sister-in-law, Katherine Swynford, whose liaison with John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, helps produce the seeds of the War of the Roses. 

More recently, Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, in The Personal Librarian, have laid open both the accomplishments and sacrifices of Belle daCosta Green, the Black woman who curated J. P. Morgan’s fantastic collection of books, manuscripts, and art, all whilst having to pass as white.

Adventure

Sometimes, pirate/nautical and western fiction are separate categories. Why? They’re all adventures, involving some kind of quest and lots of action. 

CS Forester’s Hornblower novels or the Aubrey and Maturin novels of Patrick O’Brien fit here; Louis L’Amour’s Sackett series is both western and family saga. Sarah Elisabeth Sawyer’s Tushpa’s Story, about the Choctaw experience of the Trail of Tears, also fits.

Multi-period epics and sagas

Any novel by James Michener or Edward Rutherford fits here. Their novels cover centuries, if not millennia. Multi-generation family sagas fit here, too, like North and South by John Jakes, or the “life” of a chateau, which covers centuries, in Stephanie Dray’s The Women of Chateau Lafayette.

I add two other categories of historical fiction: 

Literary

Literary fiction tends to push the boundaries of what the forms of literature can support and/or takes a hard thematic stance. 

Alice Walker’s controversial novel, The Color Purple, uses what she called Black folk speech or Ebonics to tell, in epistolary form, Miss Celie’s story of reclaiming her power. Gayl Jones, in Palmares, tells the story of Almeyda, an enslaved woman, both Black and Indian, who escapes to Palmeres and then journeys to find her husband. Jones pushes language and form in bringing into focus the greed, violence, and passion of colonialism.

Horror

This category will sometimes be called Gothic because these stories, which began in the 18th century, usually involve overwrought senses, paranormal elements, and terrible deeds. A spooky house is almost a requisite. Suspense is key in this genre, and so they’re sometimes classed with mystery and thriller.

Patrick Süskind’s Perfume, set in 18th century France, takes one man’s ruling passion and turns it into obsessive depravity and murder. The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas, set in 19th century Mexico, has the spooky house, folkloric magic, and deadly deeds. 

And that wraps up our tour of the categories of historical fiction. Some are easier than others to publish, but there is something out there for everyone’s taste.

A former college professor, Karen Whitehurst holds a Ph.D. in British history from the University of Virginia. She currently resides in Maryland with one long-suffering husband, three naughty cats, and over one hundred houseplants. A writer of both historical mystery and SF & F, she is currently at work on a mystery set in 18th century England during the Gordon Riots.

For more information, visit her website.

The post Categories of Historical Fiction appeared first on DIY MFA.

I blinked. Say what?

How can we have a clue about where we’re going if we don’t know where we’ve been? 

Historical fiction can take us to the foreign country that is the past, can make us see it, experience it, care about it because we see it through the eyes of characters who live in their present, our past. It humanizes and makes understandable what looks mysterious and inhuman and avoids the distance of academic history.

Historical fiction is any piece of fiction that takes place in the past. This definition leaves out so much and leads to hanging a contemporary story on a historical backdrop. That’s Hollywood.

When is the past? 

For both history and historical fiction, the past begins fifty years ago and marches back to the age of the Rig Veda, farther back if you want to get into archaeology and paleoanthropology like Jean M. Auel did.

You must have sources. You must do research. 

Both are key to making the setting, the time and place wherein the characters live, breathe, act, procreate, and die. Setting is the most important choice a writer makes because setting drives every other choice. The story, like the Devil, is in the historical details—meaning my writing instructor missed the trireme, the cog, the galleon, the tea clipper, and the steamboat.

Writers of historical fiction engage in world building. We recreate, as much as possible, the ethos and culture of a past era. Eighteenth century England is not late eleventh century Song Dynasty China, but both are real, plausible settings for historical fiction. We can set our stories in London or Birmingham, which are actual places, or in a fictional small village in the northern part of Song, China, about to be overrun by the Jurchen people. Either way, the story has to make sense in the context of the setting.

The plot can be completely fictitious or it can hang on actual events. 

Usually, it’s a mixture of fact and fiction. All of the people, events (political, cultural, religious), and even disasters have to arise from the context of the period. My murder mystery takes place during the Gordon Riots, which happened over the course of a week in London, in June 1780. The murders, which the Riots don’t hide, are fictitious. The subsequent solving of the case keeps within the medical and legal knowledge of the time. 

Whether they are fully fictional, based upon real persons, or actual historical people, the characters have to think, feel, and act as people really would in the period. 

They can have a range of behavior and beliefs—staid, proud, people-pleasing, Catholic, atheist, feminist—but it all has to be period-specific. It should also consider class (better-termed rank before Karl Marx) and gender within the context of the chosen time period. 

No matter the era, everybody operates within a constructed social framework. If the characters step outside what’s acceptable, there will be consequences, some of which can be quite severe. Conflicts between and among characters, or with society itself, drive the plot; therefore, they should be the kind that people of the time would’ve faced.

Theme, universal concepts such as revenge, love, death, piety, will be revealed through the characters and the conflicts, but will be true to the setting.

Language is the toughest question in historical fiction because it goes to voice, both of the narrator and of individual characters, and to tone and diction. 

How “period” do you go? For an eighteenth century story, do I use “natural philosophy” throughout or can I intersperse “science”, which didn’t enter English until the early nineteenth century? 

Yes, the characters should all speak in language appropriate to the period, to their rank/class, and to their gender, but their language has to be natural. With actual period language, which includes the grammar, a little goes a long way. With foreign languages, a sentence or two leaves the impression of fluency. Generally, stories set in ancient times are understood to be translated. Even if you can write it, nobody wants to read a story in Latin or Sanskrit. 

This caveat is even more true for slang and dialect. Both can be distracting or hard to read. If you can’t get the slang or dialect right, you’ll take readers right out of the story or, worse, offend them. “Hammered” isn’t slang for drunk in seventeenth-century England, and the Harfoots’s Irish accents in The Rings of Power offended many. The latter goes to too many (one would be too many) patronizing and/or demeaning depictions of the Irish by English-using writers.

And watch for my next blog featuring examples of the many different types of historical fiction.

A former college professor, Karen Whitehurst holds a Ph.D. in British history from the University of Virginia. She currently resides in Maryland with one long-suffering husband, three naughty cats, and over one hundred houseplants. A writer of both historical mystery and SF & F, she is currently at work on a mystery set in 18th century England during the Gordon Riots.
For more information, visit her website.

The post Historical Fiction: What is it? appeared first on DIY MFA.