cacakerbamakhlukpolitik

In the beginning… Wait a moment, what is the start of a historical novel? Of course, it’s when things get interesting for the characters but when and how much should the novelist start feeding the historical backdrop into the story? How do you hook modern readers on the story without losing them in dry details about an era that ended before their grandparents were born? I admit I’m pondering this as I write the proposal for a new historical fantasy. Writing any story’s beginning is brutally hard for me – don’t even get me started on penning opening lines! – and I usually go through five or six tries before I get a scene that I like. While I was tearing out my hair, it occurred to me that historical authors might have to consider a few more tricks when starting a book. After all, we have to sneak in backstory for our setting – things like war (Waterloo, anyone?), legal principles like women’s rights, wildly different styles of clothing and shelter, and so on – all while rapidly suc

Hurrah! THE DEVIL SHE KNOWS is published today! It's my last book with Kate Duffy, too, God bless her soul. I hope she's up there smiling. I tried to come up with something clever to talk about for today's post. But all I can think about is Kate thinking long and hard when I told her I wanted my heroine to swear she'd committed adultery, during a high-profile divorce trial in the Old Bailey. (So very not the thing to do, according to all the romance tropes!) Then she looked me in the eye and said, "We can handle that. Go for it." Thank you, Kate! This one's for you. Even a devil deserves the good love of a woman... After avenging the murders of his family, Gareth Lowell headed west to put his demons to rest. Though several years have passed, he still carries the weight of his sins and doesn't believe he deserves to be loved - even by the beautiful Portia Townsend. He's known Portia since she was a young girl, and though she's blossomed into a

Writing a historical novel can sometimes be an excuse to spend more time exploring a minor historical figure and moment who’s been evading you. I’ve written six westerns and spent a fair bit of effort trying to understand the Apache Wars which ravaged the Desert Southwest during the later nineteenth century. Great Indian war chiefs emerged from those bloody conflicts and are still remembered today – Cochise, Geronimo, and more. I’ve centered entire books on my heroes and heroines’ relationships with those big names. But my research kept highlighting one man: Victorio, the greatest Apache war chief of all – possibly the greatest Indian war chief. I needed to write about him. So when Portia, the heroine of my upcoming historical THE DEVIL SHE KNOWS, needed to be young and silly but gallant, too, in the face of danger – I grabbed an episode from Victorio’s career. Victorio was the chieftain of the Ojo Caliente (Warm Springs) Apache, who fought beside Mangas Coloradas and Cochise. B