(Researching Your Fiction Like a Reporter.)

Zelda led me to Sara and Gerald Murphy (the inspiration for Nicole and Dick Diver in Zelda’s husband’s Tender Is the Night). I absolutely devoured Amanda Vaill’s Everybody Was So Young. It’s a fascinating biography of the couple and the era, but, by far, its most compelling character is Dorothy Parker.

Dorothy Parker began an obsession with the Algonquin Round Table and a need to access The New Yorker archives so that I could read the pieces Harold Ross, the magazine’s founder, solicited from his friends. It was in those archives where I discovered “Lipstick” and Lois Long, whose job description was essentially “go out every night, drink illegally, dance until dawn, then file copy while still wearing your evening gown.”

I eagerly read every word she wrote.

Lois could eviscerate the stuffy in a single sentence and describe a grimy basement speakeasy with such enthusiasm that one was tempted to find it immediately (never mind that it probably reeked of bathtub gin and poor life choices).

How did she manage to be sophisticated without being insufferable? How did she make one feel like her equal while making it perfectly clear that she knew every doorman, bartender, and bootlegger in Manhattan? And her voice? Wry, witty, and pitch perfect.

Then I realized what she was actually doing, and it got even more interesting.

Lois wasn’t reporting on speakeasy culture. She was selling it. Her columns were basically aspirational lifestyle content for illegal activity. “Here’s where to go, darling. Here’s what to drink. Here’s how to be one of us—glamorous, naughty, in-the-know.”

I’d reached the bottom of the rabbit hole, and I was thrilled to be there.

That’s where Freddie Archer was born. A columnist, not an earnest journalist pretending to be objective, but a woman with opinions, a platform, and taste (especially for Gordon’s Gin and couture gowns). Like Lois, she’s not just observing the speakeasies and cabarets. She’s complicit. She’s telling people where to find the best gin rickey and where the real fun happens. She’s both insider and enabler, participant and promoter.

I tried to give Freddie some of Lois’s sparkle—lipstick freshly applied, jazz in her bones, and ready for whatever the night brings. It’s a tall order. Lois set the bar somewhere near the Art Deco ceiling.

But then I had another thought: What if a woman with those wicked observational skills—someone who spent her nights studying people, reading rooms, noticing who was drinking with whom and why—stumbled onto a murder? What if all that sharp-eyed instinct that made her so good at skewering phonies and spotting trends got turned toward something darker? A woman who could dissect a speakeasy’s clientele in three paragraphs could probably dissect a crime scene too. And she’d have access to places and people the police never could. After all, everyone talks to a woman with a column.

And New York in the 1920s? The perfect stage, the perfect moment. The city was building skyward so fast that one could practically watch it grow. Money flowed like bootleg gin that absolutely nobody drank because that would be illegal (wink, wink). Jazz—glorious, vital, born in New Orleans and perfected in Harlem—became the soundtrack for a generation trying to dance away the memory of war. And Prohibition turned the entire city into one big secret, where the right password opened a world of illicit possibility.

The glamor still enchants me. Beaded dresses catching the light. Art Deco everything. Fur stoles, diamonds, lipstick in shades like “Dragon’s Blood” applied as an act of rebellion or seduction (or possibly both). There was a desperate gaiety to the whole era, a sense that everyone was savoring every smile, every dance, and every drink because maybe, just maybe, it might not last.

When I started writing Murder in Manhattan, I wanted to portray that glittering surface with dark undercurrents underneath—champagne cocktails and murder, beaded dresses and bloodstains. But more than that, I wanted Freddie’s voice running through it all. Her confidence that comes from knowing every speakeasy password in Manhattan. Freddie is a woman who’ll pause mid-murder investigation to note that the victim’s shoes are from last season. She treats crime-solving like she treats everything else: with a gin rickey in one hand, perfect makeup, and the absolute certainty that the world is her oyster.

Lois’s sharp wit and obvious delight in the jazz age came through with every word she wrote. Hopefully, Freddie does the same—even as she catches a killer.

I dove down a rabbit hole chasing Zelda, the Murphys, and Dorothy Parker and found Lois. Now I get to ask readers to join me. The gin is cold, the jazz is swinging, and the fashion is killer.

Check out Julie Mulhern’s Murder in Manhattan here:

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(Historical Fiction as a Heist of Its Own.)

Psychologists tell us that cracking codes, solving riddles, resolving conundrums, and uncovering the truth behind history’s most puzzling questions releases dopamine, the “feel good” neurotransmitter. And while we wait for the answers to these real-life enigmas, we indulge our captivation with history’s mysteries by reading historical crime fiction—excellent news for those of us who write it.

The mystery novel was born in the 19th century and grew up during the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, usually described as the period between the two world wars. Conventions of the genre include a puzzle to be solved (usually a murder); a secluded setting, such as a village, a country house, an island; a sleuth (often amateur); a limited cast of suspects; and plenty of clues and red herrings.

Today, hundreds of mysteries are written each year in the tradition and style of the Golden Age. Historical mysteries encompass four related sub-genres:

• Mysteries written in the past
• Mysteries written today but set in the past
• Mysteries set in the present with a historical crime or puzzle to solve
• Mysteries with dual timelines (past and present)

My own series, the Kate Hamilton Mysteries, falls into the third category. Kate is an American antiques dealer and appraiser who lives and plies her trade in the fictional Suffolk village of Long Barston. The antiques and antiquities Kate handles provide me with a natural way to delve into the past since these precious objects are literal time travelers.

What accounts for the enduring popularity of mysteries steeped in the past? Here are four reasons we continue to read them, to write them, and to love them.

Time Travel Without Antibiotics

Carl Sagan once said, “What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years…. Books break the shackles of time.”  

Most of us have considered the possibility of time travel. If it were possible, would you do it? My answer is usually “only if I could pop home periodically for a hot shower and a dose of antibiotics.” Nevertheless, the thought of experiencing the past in real time holds endless fascination for many of us, and until science bridges the seemingly impenetrable time barrier, the next best thing is immersing oneself in a book.

A well-researched and well-written historical mystery immerses readers in the fictional world, and the experience begins with the author. In a recent podcast, Anthony Horowitz advised authors: “Don’t stand on the edge of the book, looking as it were over the edge of the chasm. Live inside the book, looking around you. So what my characters see—what they smell, what they feel, the wind, the sunshine—if I am, as I have said, inside the book, I’m not thinking about these things. Not writing what they’re saying, I’m listening to what they’re saying.”

Authors who deliver a multi-layered sensory and emotional experience of the past allow readers to travel with them in a virtual time machine to worlds populated by characters so incredibly real we mourn their loss on the final page. Through mysteries steeped in history, we can travel to the 12th century with Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael or plunge into the swirling pea-soup fog of Victorian London with Sherlock Holmes and still be home in time for supper.

The Lost Art of Deductive (and Inductive) Reasoning

Solving crimes today is primarily a matter of science and technology. The recent theft at The Louvre in Paris is an example. Within eight minutes, start to finish, the thieves entered the museum and escaped with an estimated $102 million in priceless historical jewels. And yet they left their DNA behind on a helmet, a glove, and a stolen truck with a mechanical cherry picker. That DNA was quickly matched to suspects in the police databases and using additional forensic tools such as cell phone records and video surveillance, the police were able to snag the four suspects and three possible accomplices within days.

By itself, the investigation wouldn’t make much of a plot. It was too easy. Readers want conflict, misdirection, false leads, and reversals. We want to figure it out.

Those of us who write crime fiction must take modern methods of policing into account, of course, but what happened to good old-fashioned sleuthing? If everything comes down to science, is there room for the uniquely human art of ratiocination?

One of the appeals of historical crime fiction is the challenge of following clues and exercising our powers of deductive and inductive reasoning along with the sleuth. When the author plays fair with readers, every clue needed to solve the case is laid out for us—cleverly disguised, of course, amongst red herrings designed to point us in the wrong direction. Authors love to keep readers guessing, and we love it most of all when readers say at the end, “I never saw it coming—but I should have.”

Learning History the Painless Way

If I learned anything in my high school or college history classes about the Regency Era in England, I’ve forgotten it; but I’ve never forgotten the experience of being there through the novels of Jane Austen. “The historian will tell you what happened,” said E. L. Doctorow, the American writer of historical fiction. “The novelist will tell you what it felt like.”

Novels steeped in history bridge the gap between documented history and imaginative storytelling. Memorizing dates and facts may get you through your exam, but it won’t give you an understanding of what life was actually like in the past. That’s where the characters in our stories come in—presenting history through the power of personal narrative.

I remember helping my son, John, prepare for a high-school exam covering the history-changing sea battle in 1588 between the English navy and the Spanish Armada. John had zero interest in 16th-century European politics, ship construction, battle strategies, and the superiority of long-range canons and “hell-fire ships” over heavy siege canons and greater numbers. I soon gave up on the textbook and began to dramatize the scene, playing up the “near-miraculous” storm that kicked up in the English Channel, generating strong winds that pushed the heavy Spanish ships toward the North Sea. I knew I’d won when he started asking questions: What would have happened if the Spanish had won?

To be retained, history must fire our imaginations. Nina Wachsman, art expert and fellow writer of historical fiction, said, “The Mona Lisa didn’t become the most famous picture in the world until it was stolen in 1911.” Now we want to know who she was and what was behind that enigmatic smile.

In A Collection of Lies (2024), along with the unfolding plot and through the eyes and mouths of my characters, I layer in the history of the English Romanis, the lives of Victorian lacemakers, mid-19th century fashion, the art of historical textile conservation, the mires and bogs of Devon’s Dartmoor National Park, the Dartmoor ponies, and the vicissitudes of local British politics. Medicine, Mary Poppins reminded us, goes down better with a bit of sugar. History nerds (like me) would never call Hilaire Belloc’s “great panoply of history” medicine, but even we must admit that history goes down better when experienced through the eyes, minds, and hearts of characters we care about.

A Spot of Nostalgia

A final and major reason we love mysteries steeped in history is the human emotion of nostalgia, once described by novelist and screenwriter Michael Chabon as “the ache that arises from the consciousness of lost connection.” But a connection with what? The interesting truth is we often feel nostalgic for a past that never existed. Even our own lived pasts are commonly shaped and polished in our minds over time until they resemble the past we prefer.

Nostalgia is a coping mechanism. The anxiety produced by the uncertainty, complexity, and rapid change of modern life can be soothed by a few hours spent in an idealized historical period that delivers the simplicity, moral clarity, and predictability we crave. And because the human brain has the ability to hold two opposing truths simultaneously, we can enjoy our virtual visit to the past while knowing full well it is pure fiction.

In a talk given in 2016 at the St. Hilda’s Crime and Mystery Weekend, Martin Edwards, British crime novelist and leading authority on the crime fiction genre, said about the Golden Age mysteries: “[These books] take us back to a time that is perceived as gentler and more appealing. The reality of life in the Twenties and Thirties was very different, of course, but the past can often seem appealing. If you’re a commuter suffering on Southern Rail, for instance, it must be very tempting to escape into the world of Freeman Wills Crofts and Miles Burton, where murderers could craft their alibis safe in the knowledge that the trains would always run as per timetable.”

The pace of change today is overwhelming. No wonder we crave the comforting predictability of trains that run on time. The mysteries of the past and those written today in that tradition provide an escape from an increasingly chaotic and polarized world into the calm civility of an imagined past, satisfying our yearning for a world where logic prevails, puzzles are solved, evil is punished, and justice is restored.

Long may they live.

Check out Connie Berry’s A Grave Deception here:

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…start typing.

Hang on. Did you think we were referring to something else?

Okay, but here’s the thing: Writing a book is not that dissimilar to planning a heist, especially when that book takes place in the past. Crafting historical fiction requires its writers to invade real life in a way that goes unnoticed by the historical record to unique spectacular effect. Get in, get out, don’t get caught is the name of the game, whether you’re writing the story of an Egyptian scribe, an 18th century schooner captain, or—as in the case of our upcoming novel, My Fair Frauds—two female con artists in Gilded Age New York. You want to reap rewards without making any alarm bells sound. In order to do so, you need to know your setting like the back of your hand.

Much like a criminal mastermind, writers of historical fiction need to answer key logistical questions. On this day, in this year, what is the layout of the setting? Where and when, for example, was the Patriarch’s Ball held during the 1883-1884 social season and how might one secure an invitation? Or in the case of our archaeology adventure, The Antiquity Affair, what would be the most appropriately large artifact to hide behind in the main gallery of the Cairo Museum as it was laid out in 1907? If characters needed to hide from criminals hunting them, such as in our Old Hollywood caper, The Starlets, could they realistically walk from the Monte Carlo harbor to the Palais des Princes? You need to know your story’s city layouts, your modes of transportation, and any obstacles in your characters’ ways. After all, a big job is worth nothing if you don’t land the getaway.

But first, of course…you need a crew, as well as a shared goal driving that crew to act. Now, here’s a key point of difference. Whereas in planning a seamless theft or con job, it is crucial to minimize drama between the key players, the opposite holds true in plotting a novel. The more interpersonal dynamite, the better. Which personalities would be the most ideally placed into this situation, but also personally impacted by being involved in the pursuit of this goal? How might their differing perspectives cause them to chafe against each other, or, conversely, to work spectacularly well together? What ripple effects might the flaws of your chosen players create in the otherwise meticulous plan you’ve masterminded?

Which brings us to the key element of any well-crafted scheme, whether criminal or literary: Be prepared for things to go wildly off script. Sometimes people don’t behave the way you want them to–even when they’re your own characters. The seemingly-solid foundation of logic you’ve built your plans upon can only be tested through the pressure of the moment–the day of the heist, the drafting and evaluating and rewriting of the book. It may seem simple to get a character from point A to point B in your outline, but when you sit down to connect those dots in prose, it becomes clear that it is not so simple in practice. At that point, you must be prepared to toss it all out and pivot. Stubborn adherence to the past plan can only lead to disaster in the bald light of the present reality. Also worth noting: Sometimes hiccups in the plan make for the most delightful plot twists.

If this all sounds rather stress-inducing and fraught–well, of course it is! If anyone told you writing a book would be easy, they were selling you a con worthy of the lying ladies of My Fair Frauds. But much like in a heist, those long writing days and nights of sweating the details, managing difficult characters, and poring over myriad plot complications all become worthwhile when the goal is achieved. The big win, the finished novel, that glorious The End, provides a particular kind of satisfaction that is worth its weight in gold.

Wow, you’ll say to yourself at the end. I can’t believe we pulled this off.

Check out Lee Kelly and Jennifer Thorne’s My Fair Frauds here:

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_____________________________

(Disclaimer: The above article is no way an endorsement of nor an indication of criminal activity on the part of either author. Grand larceny and fraud are crimes and very obviously wrong. We suggest you chase the thrill of becoming a mastermind by writing a novel instead.)

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(Find more Killer Writers conversations here.)

I recently caught up with Charles in Florida, where we talked about how he keeps history feeling alive on the page, how to avoid the dreaded “information dump,” how to make a time period breathe, and how the past can illuminate the present. What follows is one of the most insightful conversations I’ve had about the art of writing historical fiction and, really, about the timeless craft of storytelling itself.

“Charles, we’re going to talk about writing history as a living story, not as a historical document, but as something that feels alive even though it’s set in another time. My first question is: How do you decide which details from your research to use and which ones to leave out so the story keeps moving?”

“That’s always the challenge. Every writing class warns you about the ‘information dump.’ New writers love to show everything they’ve learned. They want readers to understand every bit of backstory and context. But what makes the world real isn’t a lecture; it’s the way characters live inside it. Their outlook, how they move, how they speak. I try to let that do the work rather than explaining it in three paragraphs of exposition.”

“So less telling, more living.”

“Exactly. I use dialogue wherever possible. There’s a wonderful old book called Show, Don’t Tell that captures the idea. Take something as simple as crank-starting a car. You don’t need to describe the full process every time, turning the ignition, setting the choke, walking around to crank the motor, but you also can’t have him hop in and drive off. The act itself tells you where you are in time. The trick is knowing when the detail matters.”

“When you start writing a historical piece, do you think of it as ‘historical,’ or does it feel present-tense to you as you write?”

“I live in the moment I’m writing about. When I’m working with Rutledge or Bess Crawford, I see them in their world. It’s as natural to me as breathing. The hard part is when the seasons in real life don’t match the book. It can be the middle of summer outside, but I’m describing winter in England. You’re trying to feel the cold, the stillness, the look of bare trees, and nothing outside your window helps you get there.”

“Writing characters who lived in another time…does that distance ever make them harder to portray as real, human people?”

“After nearly 30 years of writing these books, I don’t really think of them as ‘historical.’ I think of them as contemporaries, alive and working in their own year. That mental shift is important. The hardest part is transitioning in and out of that headspace. I’ll be deep in a scene, and the phone rings, and suddenly I’m yanked from 1919 back into the modern world. It takes a few minutes to find my way back in again. When you’re truly immersed, the story feels as real as anything outside your window.”

“A lot of historical novels try to capture every event of the period, and sometimes it starts to sound like a history lesson. How do you keep from letting that overwhelm the story?”

“By remembering what’s germane to the story and what isn’t. I stay aware of what was happening in the world at that moment, but unless it touches my characters directly, the reader doesn’t need to know it. I’m writing about people, not headlines. There are exceptions when real events naturally intersect with the plot. If Agatha Christie disappears and my story happens to be set in Harrogate at that time, that belongs in the book. But if the story’s in Cornwall, it doesn’t. Otherwise, you risk turning your novel into commentary or politics, and that’s not why readers are there.”

“I love how your settings become characters themselves. How do you achieve that?”

“Location is absolutely a character. Take Northumberland. It isn’t like Cornwall or the Midlands. Its history, its dialect, even its landscape come from different roots, more Norse, more Scottish influence. You can feel it in the air. When you walk those fishing villages, see the herring boats, smell the smoke from the kipper sheds, you realize the land and sea shaped the people. That’s why I always go there. You can’t fake that knowledge. ‘Boots on the ground,’ as I like to say. Walk the streets, talk to the people, study what makes their world unique. Then, when Rutledge walks into a pub and there’s an anti-submarine poster on the wall, the reader feels the war still echoing in that room. I verified that poster existed before describing it, but I didn’t lecture about the U-boats; I let the detail do the talking.”

Check out Charles Todd’s A Christmas Witness here:

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“That realism extends to language. Even within the U.S., dialects vary. Add another country and another century, and it gets even trickier. How do you make the language authentic but still readable?”

“Sparingly. I might include a few turns of phrase or period slang, but clarity always wins. Readers come to be immersed, not to decode. We’re storytellers first. If someone can’t understand a sentence because the dialect is too thick, we’ve lost them. So, I sprinkle just enough flavor to suggest the time and place, never enough to confuse.”

“Have you ever fudged on a historical fact, and how do you decide when that’s okay?”

“All the time…and carefully. Except for A Test of Wills, every book changes the name of the town. That gives me freedom. I might combine two real villages or move a manor house that existed elsewhere because it fits the story. I’ll base things on photographs or records when they exist, but if there’s no documentation, say, no surviving images of a police station’s interior, I create it. The key is plausibility. You don’t turn it into a tiled modern subway station. You imagine what fits the period. When there’s no record, no one can contradict you. It’s oddly liberating.”

“How do you handle outdated beliefs or social attitudes from those times, especially ones that would be offensive today?”

“With restraint and context. For example, in A Fearsome Doubt, Rutledge faces a woman who claims he wrongly executed her husband. That touches the question of capital punishment, but we don’t linger on the morality of it. In 1919, it was an accepted fact: if you were convicted of murder, you were hanged. Today it’s a debate. Back then, it wasn’t. I focus on Rutledge’s conscience, his need to be absolutely certain before accusing anyone. That’s the bridge between their world and ours. We’ve dealt with religion, abortion, class, all through the lens of that era. Understanding the social hierarchy of a small English village helps. In London, the classes rarely mixed; in a village, everyone knows everyone, from the lord of the manor to the rag-and-bone man. Rutledge has to move between both worlds, and his education lets him do that gracefully. It’s a study in empathy more than judgment.”

“You’ve mentioned the importance of detail but also the danger of overdoing it. How do you choose the right details to pull readers in?”

“The ones that characters would naturally notice. If Rutledge walks into a pub in 1920, I’ll mention that they’re drinking ‘government beer,’ the weaker ale introduced during the war. That’s the kind of small, lived-in truth that makes a world believable. But I don’t give a lecture on brewing regulations. A couple of words can carry the whole weight of history. It’s the same with a church. Rutledge might glance around during morning prayers and notice the architecture, but I won’t go into a timeline of who rebuilt it after the fire of 1623. Readers tune out. One vivid impression does the job of a page of exposition.”

“That’s where your worlds feel alive. They’re sparse in just the right way.”

“It’s about rhythm. Give them enough to see, then move. Let them fill in the rest.”

“Is writing in another time period essentially the same as writing any other story, or do you ever worry that the historical limits box you in?”

“Not at all. The limits inspire new stories. Bess Crawford was born because certain plots wouldn’t fit within Rutledge’s role at Scotland Yard. He could only take official cases. But we’d find clues that fascinated us, things a woman, a nurse, or a civilian might encounter, and we needed another character to explore them. A Duty to the Dead began that way: a dying soldier gives Bess a message for his family, and when she delivers it, their reaction makes no sense. That moral puzzle drove the book, and fourteen novels later, it’s still giving me stories.”

“That’s remarkable longevity.”

“The secret is curiosity. Every new book starts with, “What hasn’t Rutledge faced yet?” Sometimes he’s sent out by the chief constable; other times, like in The Gate Keeper, he happens upon a crime by chance. A man in a tuxedo lying dead in the road, a woman in an evening gown beside him—it opens up endless possibilities. The history doesn’t limit you; it focuses you.”

“Writers at Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference often tell me they’ve been researching for years and still haven’t finished their historical novel. They’re afraid to get something wrong. What would you say to them?”

“I’d tell them that the difference between a writer and an author is that an author finishes. Research can become a hiding place. You’ll never know everything. Finish the book anyway. The process of writing teaches you more than research ever will. I’ve known people who tinker for ten years trying to perfect one manuscript. Don’t. Write it, learn from it, move on. Even if it’s terrible, you’ve gained the experience to make the next one better. You can always come back later and fix the first, armed with everything you learned from books two and three. But you can’t revise what you never finish.”

“That’s wisdom hard-earned.”

“It’s the only way to grow. You can’t steer a parked car.”

“When you write about trauma, murders, war, loss, how do you decide how much to show and how much to imply?”

“It’s a fine line. Suggestion is often stronger than description. In A Cold Treachery, the family massacre is so brutal that the policemen refuse to go inside. I didn’t need to show the gore; I only had to describe the men standing under the eaves, unwilling to enter. Readers’ imaginations do the rest. With The Christmas Witness, it was the same. A man believes someone on horseback tried to kill him. The mystery isn’t just physical; was there a horse? It’s psychological: why does he believe he’s marked for death? His fear drives the story more than the act itself.”

“That’s where your work transcends history. It’s not about the era; it’s about being human in any time.”

“That’s the goal. The past is just the stage. The play is always about people.”

_________________________________

Charles Todd is the New York Times bestselling author of the Inspector Ian Rutledge mysteries, the Bess Crawford mysteries, and two stand-alone novels. Originally a mother-and-son writing team, Caroline passed away in August 2021, and Charles lives in Florida. https://charlestodd.com/

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(How to Turn Your Family Folklore Into Historical Fiction.)

The questions were repetitious and unfeeling. “What’s your name? Where do you live? How old are you?,“ were asked of and answered by Ella and her mother Esther, all over Indian Territory. They traveled by wagon with their children on rough and treacherous terrain from Muskogee to Colbert to Ardmore, to appear before the Commissioners and abide by the law, so that their allotment could be assigned. Some of these trips took days to get there, only to be grueled with the same indignant interrogation. I had to create outlines, sometimes as many as five or six at a time, trying to piece together where they were and how they got there to answer maybe an hour of questioning.

From the outlines, I went to formulated timelines adjacent to these interviews. The written files that had been copied were often out of chronological order, and the only way I could put everything together like a puzzle, was to begin my research on Ancestry and then to further my investigation, I had to invest in the research application of Newspapers.com. Ancestry had over 70 pages of these interviews, and they were chronologically correct. To fill in the writing of what happened in-between these interviews, I had to rely on the newspaper articles of that time period.

Newspaper was the basis for my research and writing process. They told the story if you knew how to use this application. I was not familiar with filtering down my research until I realized that I was just too broad in my scope. I started to narrow down, filtering to particular papers of that time period and area, i.e., the Tishomingo News, The Denison News, The Indian Journal, The Daily Indian Chieftain, and The Purcell Register. By placing names of my ancestors in the research query of these papers, I uncovered some revolutionary stories about my great aunts at Bloomfield school. Newspapers are much more explicit in their storytelling. Especially in that time period, including verbiage of eloquent presentation.

From the Tishomingo News, 1904: “Judge Garrett is a gentleman, in every conceivable sense of the term, a man whose integrity is unimpeachable and unquestioned and possessing among other admirable traits of character the knowledge that he is but a man, while he is a lawyer of exceptional attainments yet is modest and reserved.”

Thus, this type of description gave me the opportunity to build my story into a cinematic introduction to Ella and the people she knew around her.

Aiding in my writing were journals and notes written by my three great aunts: Minnie, Bessie, and Romey. Romey was the last to die in 1982.  I was a young mother then, living in Ohio and teaching at a small regional university. When Aunt Romey died, I flew back to Oklahoma and helped my mother close out her Aunt Romey’s estate. Aunt Romey was poor and lived in Chickasaw housing in Ada, Oklahoma. She had left almost everything to my mother, because she had no children, although she was always known to be extremely close to her half-brother, Houston. Romey was 17 when Houston was born to her mother, Ella, and stepfather, John.

In Romey’s closing of her accounts and paying some bills, my mother and I found numerous journals and old artifacts that helped me understand her life better. She had been married to an oil man, who left her oil leases in Carter County, which in turn went to my mother from Aunt Romey’s wishes in her will. I kept all that I could of what would be very helpful memorabilia for my later writings in my book. I later learned in my research that Houston was raised by Ella but was actually Romey’s child out of wedlock.

Again, research is hard, especially if it is your own family. I would not confess that I often wanted to stop because some of the findings were very painful. I kept reaching out to others on ancestry that would fall under my mother’s side, or Native American side, and I was fortunate to find the great-great-granddaughter of my great-great-grandmother, Esther’s sister Lottie.

Rosemary also lived in Oklahoma where I live now and we would often meet up, sometimes in Oklahoma City at the Oklahoma Heritage Museum and do research together. We met one time at my ranch with a 16-foot roll of butcher paper and began to outline our family tree. There were so many marriages back then. Native women were not widowed long. They felt they needed a man to survive, and once a husband died, from an accident, ill health, or ill-fated demise, they married soon after that. Children were not raised by single parents in that time period.

My next research took me to the mapping department with the Chickasaw Nation. There I was able through my grandfather’s roll number, Harry, and Ella’s roll number. They received roll numbers from the Dawes Commissioners, just like a social security number. The roll number that my grandfather Harry had is my roll number and my children’s roll number. No new roll numbers were ever created after the work of the Dawes Commissioners. The allotment plots of land were vividly displayed with these roll numbers, and I was able to see where this property was located on rocky terrain over by Turner Falls.  My husband and I traveled there and walked around Hickory Creek and found Mountain Lake, which is all a state park now for the city of Ardmore. It was definetly a piece of land that could not take care of crops or feed cattle and horses.

The last phase of my research took me to Ardmore, Oklahoma, to the court clerk’s office to view the records of when and to whom Ella and her son, Harry, sold their allotments. It was there that I discovered the scoundrel who purchased their property and within a few days it was recorded being sold again to another man for one dollar. It was obvious a middleman was being dishonest in order to obtain their property.  From that moment my writing flourished with a grit of anger. It was obvious that many men saw her as less, but it never broke her spirit.

Where Birds Land evolved into not just an historical fiction, but a testimony of identity and survival from Indian territory to Oklahoma statehood. I wanted not only to honor my great-grandmother’s story, but every First American who carried history on their shoulders and was never written into it.

Check out Mary Ruth Barnes’ Where Birds Land here:

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(Reclaiming Alternate History.)

That’s when I decided to write a fictionalized book inspired by her story. After many rough drafts, endless edits, and lots of creative writing, I wrote the manuscript that is now my debut historical fiction novel published by Sibylline Press: Whistling Women and Crowing Hens.

Do you have a family story, figure, or folklore you’re itching to write about? I’ve learned a lot about weaving family stories into fiction, and I hope you’ll find these lessons useful if you’re starting this journey.

To begin, gather all you can about your family’s specific story.

Use old photographs, scrapbooks, newspaper articles, and letters if you have them. Read through these carefully with an eye for the heart of your story, which may be different from the folklore you’ve been told all these years.

If you can, interview living family members to get their perspective around the family folklore or person that has inspired your interest. Do some preliminary research to learn about the era surrounding your family’s story. If you’re focusing on a particular person, Google their name to see what comes up and be sure to scroll past the first page. Sometimes the good bits are in the pages that don’t rank as high in SEO!

For example, my Grandmother Verna had saved a few Swarthmore Chautauqua circuit brochures. I had no idea what “Chautauqua” was so I spent days reading blogs, dissertations, newspaper and magazine articles, and more. I knew my grandmother was a member of the Versatile Quintet for her Chautauqua circuit but I needed to do more research to understand how the quintet worked together, where they stayed while traveling, etc. The Versatile Quintet characters began to form in my mind, sparked by the brochures and all that I had read through my research.

Next, start developing the characters for your novel based on the key people in your family’s story.

You might decide that the POV is different from how the family story has been told all these years. You’ll need to identify your protagonist(s) and antagonist(s) or create those characters. The facts can give you a framework for your story, but you’re going to need to add splashes of fictional color to make your story sing! Most people’s lives don’t follow the classic “hero’s journey,” so you’ll have to fictionalize how your main character changes and grows in your story.

This is where your creative ideas and “what ifs” can be used to enhance each character. I recommend writing out character sheets for each person in your story. You can use what you know from looking at photographs to build physical descriptions. Maybe you know a bit about their personality and mannerisms from what you’ve heard from your family. Then you can add invented characteristics to make each character believable and well-rounded. Most family stories don’t include the emotions or the intentions of the people involved. So, you’ll need to consider the motivations for your fictionalized characters, too. You may have to simplify facts in some places and embellish in others!

When I started writing, I wanted my protagonist, Bertha (Birdie) Stauffer, to have seven siblings like my Grandmother Verna. After writing a few scenes, I realized that including so many supporting characters muddled the story. So, I changed it so Birdie had only two siblings, a sister and a brother. I used characteristics from all of my grandma’s siblings and several things I made up to create these and other characters in my novel. It took practice and much editing to figure out what facts were important to keep and which ones I didn’t need for my story. And it was challenging at first—I had to admit and honestly own that Birdie was not Verna. Once I did that, I was able to write more freely and the story flowed much better.

Next, you’ll need to lay out your plot.

Most family stories are enough to get your idea going, but you’ll have to add more tension and higher stakes to get to a complete novel. This is where I found myself doing the most research. For me, it was important to stick to historic timelines, cultures, and events that actually happened in the era of my story.

I’m not a big plotter, so I spent time playing “what if” this happens to my protagonist to move the story along. I knew my story would end differently than my Grandmother Verna’s life story. Based on my research, many women in the 1920s were experiencing new freedoms and finding their voices for the first time. I decided my protagonist, Birdie, would find her independence and voice—so I used the research to create a storyline of how she went from a naïve, oppressed small-town girl to an independent modern woman. I was able to keep in the facts that first intrigued me about musical whistling and Chautauqua circuits yet build on them with my research and creative writing.

Every family has stories that have been passed down through the generations. These stories can enrich our fiction with little known facts or events that were not included in our history books. Creative writers have been taught the “write what you know” adage for decades. I’d like to add to that—write what you’ve been told—because it’s rewarding and interesting to write your family history into its own story!

Check out Melora Fern’s Whistling Women and Crowing Hens here:

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Writer’s Digest University is pleased to present a one-of-a-kind online event for historical fiction writers! On December 12-14, 2025 our WDU Historical Fiction Virtual Conference will provide expert insights from bestselling historical fiction authors. Spend the weekend learning techniques for honing your craft, then optionally receive a personalized critique of your query letter from a participating literary agent.

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(Writing Historical Fiction Based on Wartime Holland.)

The inspiration for Only I Can Save Them came from a newspaper article that made me want to discover more behind the known facts. The article was about the extraordinary cache of photographs and film footage taken during the Second World War inside a place called Westerbork in the Netherlands. Because of the research I’d already done on wartime Holland, I knew that Westerbork was a German transit camp, where the majority of the country’s Jewish population were transported by train, before being sent onwards in cattle wagons to Auschwitz and Belsen-Bergen concentration camps to their deaths.

This was no ordinary exhibition of wartime photographs. Never before has such a comprehensive visual account been created of life inside a German-run camp. This was the work of the German Jewish photographer Rudolf Breslauer who was the official Westerbork photographer.

However, it was a job that came at huge personal cost. The Germans forced Breslauer to give up his successful photography business in Amsterdam and move with his wife and children to Westerbork to work for them. They didn’t pay him, but promised him certain privileges, which didn’t materialize once the gates of the camp clanged shut on Breslauer and his small family.

Who was Rudolf Breslauer?

Breslauer was born in Leipzig and fled to the Netherlands with his wife and children after the Nazis staged a nationwide riot against the Jews on what became known as Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass. Synagogues were burned and thousands of Jewish businesses were vandalized, while many Jewish people were killed.

Breslauer believed that life would be better in Amsterdam, but how wrong it proved to be. After the occupation of Holland, the Germans turned against the Jewish population, implementing rules and regulations to make their lives impossible. It was all part of a bigger plan to drive the Jews out of the country. But the Dutch people were ignorant of the bigger plans the Germans were concocting—the systematic rounding up of Jews from their homes and businesses who were herded onto cattle trucks bound for Westerbork and the concentration camps.

Westerbork’s camp photographer took risks to convey the truth

Rudolf Breslauer was initially employed to take photographs of the thousands of new arrivals at the camp. But the kommandant saw an opportunity to present Westerbork as a model camp for propaganda purposes. So he ordered Breslauer to use his camera to record what he saw around the camp: pictures of children doing schoolwork, prisoners working in the Nazi-controlled workshops, prisoners playing football and even taking part in theatre productions specially put on for the entertainment of the kommandant and his entourage.

Increasingly, Breslauer was under pressure to produce the material his boss demanded when all around him he saw misery and suffering. And then he was given a ciné camera to take even more footage. He began to film in secret, away from the Nazis’ gaze. His footage of prisoners gathering on the platform to depart Westerbork on cattle trains for Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen are an astonishing eye-witness account on what the Nazis were really up to.

Fiction helps to fill in the gaps

Reading about this extraordinary man and what he achieved was enough for me to think I could turn this into compelling fiction. But the article raised an interesting question over why Breslauer featured his wife, daughter Ursula, and son Stefan in his photographs. I wondered if he was under such pressure to deliver images of happy smiling prisoners that he used his family to model for him. It’s a shocking but not impossible scenario, but imagine what he must have been going through, knowing that if he failed in his task, he and his family would almost certainly have been deported to the death camps.

Did he believe that only he could save them?

I believed he did. But sadly, time was running out for Breslauer and the remaining Jews in the camp. Despite his desperate efforts to protect his family, they were all deported on one of the last transports out of Westerbork.

Breslauer’s daughter survived

Intriguingly, the curator of the exhibition managed to track down his daughter, Ursula, the sole survivor of the Breslauer family who were sent to Auschwitz. She settled in Israel after the war, where she married and had four children and 12 grandchildren.

The in-house photographer persuaded Ursula to make the journey to Westerbork, where he took a portrait of her beaming for the camera. He hung it at the entrance to the exhibition beside a portrait of her younger self as a child.

In interviews before her death in 2020, Ursula revealed that she helped her father develop pictures in the small darkroom above the reception center, which the commandant used for lavish parties attended by his officers and wives.

She was aware her father took photographs of the event. At first, she believed he was collaborating with the Germans, which made her ashamed of him because she didn’t know why he would agree to do it. It was only much later when she was grown up that she realized he did it to save his family from the weekly transports to the concentration camps.

Check out Imogen Matthews’ Only I Can Save Them here:

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As a child, I was captivated by the stories told to me by my mother and aunts about growing up in the Philippines and during WWII, as well as the stories of my aunt who went to Italy to voice train with their nonna, a former soprano who traveled the world performing with the Grande Compagnia d’Opera Italiana. At every visit, stories were shared about their loving father and family, their love of music, the fun and mischief they had, and their overcoming of harrowing times. All of it had a profound effect on me.

(5 Myths of Writing and Publishing Success.)

After college, I did editorial work for a publishing company and later worked as a communications coordinator for a school district. Writing was a part of my life. After having my children, I began freelance writing. I enjoyed writing articles and essays. But my mom’s story bubbled inside me, waiting to be written.

Slowly, I made my way into fiction. In 2010, I entered a short story into a fiction workshop. To my surprise, it was accepted. Noted short story author, Janos Shoemyen, ran the workshop and went back and forth with participants’ on their stories beforehand. The day of the workshop, we arrived, stories in hand, to read an excerpt selected by Shoemyen. Reading my writing to an audience was a new experience for me. The responses of the other writers sparked confidence in this fledgling fiction writer. Afterwards, Shoemyen kindly kept in contact with me to discuss writing. His great generosity and his encouragement to move ahead with my mom’s story bolstered me. His words echoed Madeleine’s.

After this, I participated in another short story workshop that took place over several months. It was a wonderful experience, and I began sending my stories out for publication. After many rejections, that initial story was published in a literary journal, followed by several others.

Years earlier, my mom had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. My curiosity about her life continued to grow through the many years she suffered. Then my closest friend, like a sister to me, died unexpectedly. Her loss shook me to the core. It was also oxygen to the glowing embers of my mom’s story. I felt an urgency to better understand my mom’s life as she was no longer able to share her stories.

After reeling from my friend’s death, I began researching the war in the Philippines. I also spoke with my aunts and godmother. Their kindness and generosity in sharing their experiences and memories of my mother encouraged me, and later helped shape the story that has become my debut.

I spent several years researching before I was confident enough to begin writing. In late 2015, I plotted the story then started writing. I finished the manuscript in mid-2016. Writing the last words, I felt an immediate sense of closure and finality. The characters’ voices that had lived in my head as I wrote were quieted. I celebrated with my husband, son, and daughter. Then I sought out a developmental editor. After reviewing the manuscript, this gifted editor sent me her editorial letter, and I got to work. I enjoyed this time and learned so much. I wrangled that manuscript into what I hoped would be a story desirable to agents.

Around the same time, I joined two organizations, the Women’s Fiction Writers Association and the Historical Novel Society. It was uplifting to meet other aspiring writers as well as some established authors. I swapped manuscripts with other members who acted as beta readers.

The story, set initially only in the Philippines, was one I believed would benefit from the broad reach of traditional publishing. So in 2018, I began querying agents. I received several full and partial requests, but no takers. The response was promising but bewildering. I dug in and revised the manuscript from its third-person limited omniscient point of view into a deeper POV and continued querying. This was met with a similar response. Discouraged, I paused my agent search. Meanwhile, I submitted the manuscript to a competition. I was delighted when it was selected as a semifinalist. Its placement was a boon as it spurred me on to continue pursuing publication.

After a lengthy setback due to unforeseen life circumstances, I determined to learn what would make the manuscript marketable. I contacted another editor I’d learned of from one of the workshops, one with significant experience. She asked to see my first pages. I was thrilled when she offered to assess the manuscript. Working with this fabulous editor was an invaluable experience. It was after this that I added a second POV, that of the protagonist’s older sister in Italy. At first I was reluctant, as I’d hoped to use it for a future manuscript but I pressed on. I’d already begun researching Italy. Now, I dove into research for this new narrative. Then, I started writing. Initially, this POV was written as journal entries. Eventually, I rewrote both narratives from the third person into first person.

Including both the younger and the more mature voice turned out to be the answer to my querying dilemma. Signing with my agent in early 2023 was a watershed moment. Later that year, I was overjoyed after meeting my editor and signing a contract with my publisher.

Along the way, I’d heard the advice to aspiring authors to set aside your first manuscript and move on to another. Wise advice that has served many authors. But, in Madeleine’s words, this was “the story that had to be written.” It simply wouldn’t let me go. Writing for publication has been a journey. I’m enormously grateful to everyone along the way who helped and mentored me.

My mom’s story inspired In the Light of the Sun. The idea that this story might encourage and inspire readers is beyond gratifying.

4 Lessons Learned During My Publication Journey

Invest in Learning

Writing a novel is a marathon. Just as you’d train for such an event, learning is crucial. Take classes, participate in workshops, and find a critique partner or group. You need others to help you hone your craft, to embolden you on this long road, and to help you learn the business of publishing.

Be Generous

Swap manuscripts, excerpts, queries, and pitches. It’s helpful to you and those with whom you swap writing. The journey is always more enjoyable with others than alone.

Be Willing to Pivot

Pivoting, when you’ve spent thousands of hours working on a manuscript, takes sheer willpower. But saying yes to things you may not have expected is essential to moving forward.

Take Time to Celebrate

With each draft finished, my family and I celebrated, often with Sanders Bumpy Cake. Michiganders know what I’m talking about—that chocolatey cake with buttercream tunnels glazed with rich chocolate ganache. Bumpy cake or not, be sure to celebrate the wins along the way. You’ve accomplished something truly amazing, and it’s worth celebrating before you continue along your journey to publication.

Check out Angela Shupe’s In the Light of the Sun here:

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In this interview, Tamar discusses how fulfilling one life dream helped lead her to another—writing her debut novel, Restitution—her advice for other writers, and more.

Name: Tamar Shapiro
Literary agent: Dani Segelbaum, Arc Literary
Book title: Restitution
Publisher: Regal House Publishing
Release date: September 30, 2025
Genre/category: Literary fiction; historical fiction
Elevator pitch: After the Berlin Wall falls, German American siblings, Kate and Martin, are faced with a difficult decision: Should they try to reclaim the house in East Germany from which their grandparents fled in the 1950s? But a house is never just a house, and the family secrets they discover drive Kate and Martin apart just as divided Germany is coming together. 

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What prompted you to write this book?

Like my narrator Kate, I grew up in the U.S. with a German mother. Also like her, I have spent my life moving back and forth between both countries. Restitution is not autobiographical, and yet the story very much grew out of my experience of always feeling a little torn between these two homes, of always wanting to belong in both.

My mother came from West Germany, and I had no connection to the East until the early 1990s, when my parents moved to Leipzig. I absolutely fell in love with the city over decades of visiting them, so much so that at the end of each trip I loudly bemoaned that I might never live there myself. Then, in 2017, my husband, kids, and I finally made it happen. We moved to Leipzig too, albeit only for a few years. Having achieved one dream, I decided I would grab the chance to fulfill another: I would use the time in Leipzig to write a novel.

I already knew what I wanted to write about. During the decades I spent visiting Leipzig, as well as a stint living in Berlin, I had witnessed first-hand the way the scars of Germany’s division into East and West, as well as its flawed reunification, persisted to this day. I wanted Restitution to tell the story of one ordinary family shaped by these losses, disruptions and hopes across generations and continents. I believe the questions Restitution asks are as urgent today as ever: What remains when people leave entire lives behind? What happens when personal histories are erased? And what—if anything—can heal these wounds?

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

I remember the exact moment I decided I would write a novel about these themes. I was in Iowa City for the Iowa Writers’ Workshop Summer Program, sitting at a picnic table in North Market Square Park, shortly before our move to Leipzig, when the idea first hit me. I began writing right there at that bench, and despite years of revision, some of those early Iowa seeds are still recognizable in the book. I signed my contract for publication six and a half years later in December 2023.

I knew early on how I wanted the book to begin and end, but the details in between changed countless times. I completed the first draft while living in Leipzig, so I had the opportunity to do first-hand research, including many conversations with friends who had grown up in the East, as well as with their parents and neighbors. I also read as much as I could—novels, histories, legal treatises. Everything I learned informed what I wrote, so I was always updating and refining. But the core of the story—the relationship between Kate and her brother Martin—remained constant throughout.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

Absolutely everything about the publishing process has been a learning moment. I came to writing later in life after a long nonprofit career. I’d finally gotten to the point where I felt completely comfortable with who I was professionally, and then I was crazy enough to jump into this new world I knew nothing about. I’ve loved every moment, but it has definitely been an adjustment. The hardest thing to learn was how to let go. I could have kept working on this book forever, and I am very grateful to my publisher for prying it out of my hands. The best surprise along the way was discovering how warm and supportive the writing community is. Sharing writing with others is such an intimate and vulnerable act, and I am grateful for the new friends I’ve made who are not only willing to treat my writing with care and love, but also to share their writing with me.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

I’d often heard writers say that they wrote because they couldn’t not write. Before I began working on my novel, this never made much sense to me. There were so many alternatives to writing. After all, I’d loved my nonprofit work on housing and community development. If the novel didn’t work out, I thought, then I’d just stop writing. So, I was very surprised to discover, halfway into my book, that I, too, could no longer imagine not writing. I’m now well into a draft of my second novel, and writing has become my daily joy. I love the challenge of crafting sentences such that every word feels just right. I have fun puzzling my way through roadblocks and figuring out how to get unstuck. And I learned that I particularly love revision, because it’s through the process of rewriting again and again that I finally discover exactly who my characters are and what it is I want to say.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

Restitution is a family story, and I hope that readers will be drawn in by the family dynamics, especially the complicated sibling relationship that is at the heart of the book. It is also a novel about belonging, about the desire we all have to feel at home in a place and about the many ways this can go wrong. Of course, Restitution is specifically focused on the lingering impacts of Germany’s East-West division and its subsequent reunification. When I look around at what’s going on in our world today, I am convinced there’s still so much to learn from this period in history, especially the way political decisions can breed personal resentment and create societal divisions that are extremely difficult to repair. But Restitution ends on a hopeful note, mirroring my hope that our broken world will see better days.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Don’t give up! There is so much rejection in the writing world, and I know how awful it can feel to be sending queries into a black hole. One way I dealt with this rejection was by setting little goals for myself. For example, every time I received a rejection, I immediately sent out another query or submission on the very same day. That way, I could go to sleep focused not on the rejection but on the fact that I was moving forward. The good news is that there is very likely someone out there who is interested in your story. You just need to keep trying to find the right person while at the same time continuing to find joy in the writing itself.

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