(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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In this interview, Julie discusses how women’s history helped inspire her new historical mystery, Murder in Manhattan, which real-life person her heroine is based on, and more.

Name: Julie Mulhern
Literary agent: Gordon Warnock, Fuse Literary
Book title: Murder in Manhattan
Publisher: Forever
Release date: December 9, 2025
Genre/category: Historical Mystery
Previous titles: The Country Club Murders series and The Poppy Fields Adventures
Elevator pitch: An entertainment columnist with a wry wit and exceptional observational skills involves herself in the murder of a bootlegger in 1925 New York.

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What prompted you to write this book?

Decades that see enormous changes for women fascinate me. I already had a series set in the 1970s. The 1920s seemed the obvious choice for a new series. Watching an independent woman navigate casual misogyny (of course she’ll quit working when she lands a husband) as she drinks her way through Manhattan’s speakeasies (and writes about them) appealed to me.

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

The idea for Murder in Manhattan was one of several that I pitched to my agent. It sort of went meh, meh, meh. That one! It took me about a year to write the novel. And then came a year of being out on submission. After I signed the contract, things moved very quickly.

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

My heroine, Freddie Archer, is based on a real-life writer. Lois Long was an early hire at The New Yorker. She wrote several columns–my favorite being Lipstick, in which she regaled her readers with stories of New York nightlife. What a blessing to be able to access The New Yorker’s archives and read her columns. They were invaluable when it came to honing Freddie’s voice and sensibilities.

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

Freddie’s adventures take her from rooftop gardens to dilapidated buildings on the Lower East Side. Being separated by half a country and 100 years from 1920s New York meant lots of time spent on research. There were many rabbit holes (and I cannot resist a rabbit hole)—the Tenement Museums website claimed at least a day. I learned more about New York history than I ever dreamed I’d know. And, since I have a brain like a sieve, I am relearning it as I write the second book in the series.

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

I desperately wish I could have met Lois Long. I like to think we might have been friends (although Lois, who never turned down a martini, probably would have found me dreadfully dull). I hope readers will want to be friends with Freddie as she gets herself in and out of hot water and solves a murder.

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

It’s all about voice. I’ve read technically perfect mysteries that felt flat, and deeply flawed mysteries with voice for days. It’s the voice that keeps me reading long into the series.

The post Julie Mulhern: It’s All About Voice appeared first on Writer's Digest.

(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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Recently, I was scrolling online, and I saw a reader pose an interesting question: “Where is the history in my historical romances?”

Vanessa Riley is one author for whom her readers never have to ask this question. Although she writes in several historical subgenres—romance, mystery, and biographical fiction—each story feels both grounded in the time and full of imagination. “The reason I love the Regency is because I’ve read over 10,000 books in that era, written in that era, written by modern people for that era. I love it all,” she said. “And there’s room for so much more storytelling.”

Riley has become an expert in the Regency era, compiling research on everything from weapons to drugs and medications to furniture and fashion—and that’s not even touching the complex social and political climate that defined the Regency. Something that features prominently in her work is that the era was much more diverse than modern schooling and media have led us to believe.

“It shocks me that the truth is there if you care to know,” she said. “I revere history. I feel very privileged to tell these stories. … Everybody is entitled to tell the story the way they want to tell it. You don’t have to go cradle the grave like me, but be aware of the choices you make.”

She’s also passionate about showcasing women in her work—not just brave ones taking on enormous tasks (though there are quite a few of those!) but also funny women, messy women, women who love thrills and drama, women who see the world in ways that men cannot. “Women, I find, have that power of observation, mainly because we’re made to be quiet most of the time. So, we’re always observing and looking and observing and looking.”

Her dedication to walking the line between fact and fiction gives her readers the fully immersive experience of stepping right into the world of her characters, some of whom were real people. It’s these details that make her work stand out among the crowd and have earned her acclaim, including a “Good Morning America” Buzz Pick, an ABC “The View” Lit Pick, the 2024 Georgia Mystery/Detective Author of the Year, the 2023 Georgia Literary Fiction Author of the Year, and starred reviews from Booklist, Library Journal, and Publishers Weekly.

World-building is where we began our conversation.

Why is it so important to you to incorporate so much specificity in your novels?

Because when I got started, there wasn’t a space for these types of stories. And today you say something is a fantasy and that’s a compliment. It wasn’t a compliment when I started publishing. I remember my very first agent was shopping a book and we got some of the best rejection letters. “We love her voice. Does she have anything else? We love this. We just don’t know how to market it.” …

They use that as a way to gatekeep and keep people from telling their stories or shaming people into telling the same story over and over with just different names because they want to be accepted. They want to come to the parties, they want to be in the club. I took a very different route. I looked at the history, and the history is crazy and funny and scary and humane in aspects that, at the time, just weren’t even being touched. And I said, “You know what, we’re going to play this game—because the minute you get a detail wrong, that’s how they used to exclude you from the club. So, it made me sharper, it made me dig deeper. And then you see this whole world of things that are just so interesting to me.

It made me strive to let you know this is the history. We can still have our tropes. We can still be funny. But we can ground ourselves in a history that is true, that may be different than what you have known and grown up [with]. But I think that’s the exciting part. Here’s another spin, another look. And then you get the doors open to stories you probably would not have seen.

You do not hoard your research. You have a website where anyone can go and read about the things that you have come across while writing all of your books. And none of this is even to mention your doctorate in mechanical engineering! Have you always been someone who finds joy in the research process?

Absolutely. … Too much is gatekept. There were people who’ve always encouraged me in the earlier stages of my career that if they had gatekept, I wouldn’t be [publishing]. And so that is my policy. … This goes back to the early days. People had never heard of this history, and I said, “Let’s put it out here. Let’s organize it so that it’s easy for everybody to see.” We’re [the] mothership now for all types of Regency, not just Black history but all types of history. We’re there for women’s activities, different political movements. If I can find it, I put it there.

[And] in my historical fictions … I have complete bibliographies in the back of the book.

Can you tell me a little bit about something that greatly surprised you when you were researching, and did you incorporate it into your work?

When you go back and read all these conceptions of how we think, how sterile history is, how black and white, and then you see there’s all these shades of gray. That always blows my mind.

… Talking about Haitian history, Queen of Exiles, the fact that she [Marie-Louise Christophe] was media stalked. I’ve found so many articles saying where she was staying, how many attendants she had with her, what her daughters were wearing, who was visiting them, all the different countries she was going to. Yet modern historians will say that she was poor and unaccepted because she was Black, and nobody bats an eye. All they have to do is look at newspapers, archives, or do a really good Google [search] and you’ll see that’s not the story. So far from the story.

You released two books this year. The first is A Gamble at Sunset, a historical romance, and Murder in Berkeley Square, a historical mystery. I cannot imagine holding both of those stories in your head and the kind of deadlines that you had to meet! Can you tell me a little bit about how you navigate writing and publishing such different genres so close together?

You have to know who you’re telling the story for—the purpose of the story—and keep that very, very clear. For my romance people, they want sweeping, they want epic. They want humor. They want chaos! [Laughs]

This is real history, but there’s distance. … You get to have all that in that context but I’m very clear this is a romance. There are reader expectations and happy-ever-after. Now we have to feel these people falling in love. But I’m gonna throw in as much foolishness as possible.

The fact that they are all somewhat in the Regency world makes it easier for me because the dress, the talk, the hairstyles, the political movements, I understand that intimately. And that’s the same regardless of if it’s a murder mystery or if it’s romance. They’re very different, but they share enough unique bonds that it’s a lot easier. If I were doing a contemporary and a historical, that might be more complicated because everything is different. It’s all about the pre-work that you do. And I do a lot of pre-work for these stories.

Something that your books have opened my eyes to is that for any kind of historical genre, not only does your setting have to be believable, but your dialogue has to be believable too. How do you navigate that relationship between staying true to the history of the language and making it so that your readers aren’t going to get lost or confused?

I’ve read a lot of books during that particular timeframe by the writers in that timeframe. Particularly Jane Austen. And what you understand is she’s telling a story. It’s not without contractions. It’s not without color and the humor of the times. There are political angles that we may miss, but people reading it then did not miss.

Particularly with Mansfield Park, they’re talking about the uncle having to go work on his habitations in the Caribbean, and she didn’t have to use the word slave or enslavement, but they all knew why he had to go. We missed that, or we choose to miss that piece because we have this fantasy that she wasn’t political, and she was extremely political, and that’s why her word survives. There’s a beauty of understanding the period that you are writing about and trying to get that right, but then remembering you’ve got present-day readers.

Funny story—I was working as a consultant on Sense and Sensibility, Hallmark’s reimagined movie. There’s this big ballroom scene. They have to come into the room in order by age, but for the scene they did, they needed these two [to enter together]. I was like, “This is the way,” and it was like, “Thank you, Vanessa, but we’re going with this.” [Laughs]

It’s a necessary balance. You get as much as you possibly can. But for the moment that you’re trying to show, it’s got to be crystal clear what is going on. Whether you’re in film or written word, the language has to feel authentic. …

Choosing how to bring the present world into this language to draw closer to the modern reader is a challenge, and I have fun with it sometimes. But there’s always still a misperception of how people wrote versus how they speak. … I’m very careful with that, and I try and give you as much flavor as I can of the times, but it has to be accessible.

Is that something you feel you are very focused on in your first drafts, or is that something you navigate more during the editorial process?

I have a three-plus draft process. First time I write this book is horrible. [Laughs] I’m getting from point A to point B. It’s white clothes, white rooms, white floors, white sky. And if it’s a murder mystery, I got the “When will the body show up? And why does it make sense for them to show up?” That first draft, that’s the two things I’m going for. Get from point A beginning of story to point B, end of story.

And how do we get there on the second and the third draft? We are tuning motivations. We are adding in the colors. We are sharpening things. The final revision is going through and looking at every spoken word as well as every thought that’s written in that book. Is it sharp? Is it going to leave a sting when the reader reads it? Magic happens in editing. And you cannot edit a blank page.

I relieve myself of trying to be cute and clever, and I’m getting to the end on those first couple drafts. Then once I get to the end, I go back over and we sharpen and we go back over and we sharpen, we go back over and we sharpen, and then we go back, we’re like, “Can I play a little bit? Can I just make this scene more impactful if I say less?”

Something that I personally really love about your work is that these women have real relationships with each other. Even if they are not the main character, they are a living, breathing part of the main character’s life. Can you explain a little bit about how you go about determining how much time to devote to these secondary characters on the page when you have a whole major plot going on?

It’s a fine balance, right? Sometimes we can’t see ourselves, and we need a strong voice to tell us or to share an opinion. Sometimes I use secondary characters to just be the elephant in the room. Like, “You’re trying to do X, Y, and Z, but do you see what is happening?” You need a vocal conscience. Sometimes these secondary characters are being that. That gives them more time. Sometimes they are the humor hits, right? You know, “We’ve just survived being killed. Let’s go get cheese.” [Laughs]

… In all honesty, we do life with people, not props. I want to feel that community. And it’s another way for me to make sure we round the cast out so people can see themselves in these books. Oftentimes we don’t or … diverse characters sometimes get relegated to the best friend, the wise-talking grandma, that smack talker, and whatever. Everybody needs to be relevant. And we all play a part in their lives.

So, this is how Lady Worthing works. This is how her world works. You take somebody out, her world is not the same. That’s an important thing. It’s by sitting down before you start writing, and, for me, really thinking about who these characters are, and at the end of the story, how would they change? How have each one of these people changed by the time you get to the end? That helps in the world-building, that helps to make every character dynamic. I’m trying not to put filler into any of these stories. Every moment has to count. When every moment counts, you are judicious in where secondary characters show up where and the roles they play.

In the Lady Worthing Mysteries, something that I love so much about Abbie is her past is coming and knocking, and she’s like, “I can’t be bothered with you right now. I have things to do. I’m busy.” [Laughs] How do you navigate this very lively character who is often trying to shuffle around parts of her life that she’s unhappy with and focus on the exciting things that are in front of her?

Abbie’s a complicated wreck, and I love her for that, right? She gets her real start because she’s curious. A man who’s invested in her father’s firm, Lord Worthing, is wrongfully suspected of embezzlement. She’s able to puzzle things together. And she’s bold enough that she lets the magistrate know what’s going on, and she appears to be right. [Laughs] That gets Lord Worthing free. Then that lets her godfather, who works for the prince regent, put things in motion. Now she’s Lady Worthing. She’s new in this creation of a title, and titles make people act certain ways. The fact that now she’s money makes people act certain ways, but she’s still Abbie.

You’re coming for a murder mystery, right? I am very clear, when you come for biographical fiction, you want a saga of a woman doing something incredible. It’s based on a true story. You come for a romance? You are coming for a romance. And when you come for a historical mystery, you are coming for the death.

You have Abbie. People are dropping dead around her … She is sharp; she’s observant. [Abbie’s] been able to channel that into reason and figure out what’s going on.

The politics of abolition are part of these crazy dynamics and how it affects a woman of color. A woman who has privilege is part of that integral story. And she’s always juggling. So, there are foils within her found family. …

Trying to balance all these various things, it’s not at all easy. But it’s enjoyable. I love writing her. She’s hilarious. I love her, and I hope people can really get to love her and her—I hope people get to see her world more and more.

At the end of Murder in Berkeley Square, you include an author’s note in which you state that this particular book is an homage to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None. Can you tell me about how that author’s note came to be and why you included it?

Every one of my books, I have an author’s note. This was something Beverly Jenkins taught me very early on. I had gotten some horrible review, I’m whining, and she was like, “Write an author’s note, babe.” [Laughs] Because, once again, people don’t understand the history and the author’s note helps it.

In this particular case, I love Agatha Christie, but I questioned things. And Then There Were None had several titles. The original one was almost a slave catcher point of what they would do to a Black person once they found them. … That has always affected me. Like, what [Christie] did with it was brilliant. You get wealthy people on an island, and you bump ’em all off, because they all deserved it. I think that’s brilliant. But the mechanism to get there is this toxic nursery rhyme.

I do a lot of research about the different rebellions in the West. I was like, “Well, wait a minute. What if the enslaved had a rhyme that they would taunt their owners with before a rebellion started?” And I could hear the rhythm in the background and almost my father’s voice that sang that rhyme. And I was like, this will prove a point. This is very interesting.

So, you get people snowed in, and all these wealthy men have gotten a piece of a rhyme that they have to put back together to figure out who’s next to be killed. It’s a way to say, “This is what I believe Agatha was trying to do.” I believe she was trying to make a point about what stirs people to violence, but in the language of our time, it’s bad now. … Some people distance themselves from the past or want to forget about the past and say, “That doesn’t matter.” So, let’s turn the tables. What does it feel like if that is a nursery rhyme people are being taught before they commit violence? So, it’s a different take. It’s a little sharper take than some of these some of these books. But I think it’s a very interesting one.

What last advice do you have for our readers?

Find the things that you like, find the parallels of things you like, and just add. There’s so much beauty. … Don’t limit yourself. I was doing Regency and bringing in all these extra worlds when it wasn’t cool. … I want to encourage everyone who finds their lane, who knows the stories they want to tell, to tell those stories, to perfect their craft, to study and learn, and to bring their A-game every time they get a chance. Every story has to be better than the last.

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In this interview, Nathan discusses how a passing comment from a family member in childhood led to his debut historical mystery, The Act of Disappearing, his advice for other writers, and more!

Name: Nathan Gower
Literary agent: Danielle Bukowski (Sterling Lord Literistic)
Book title: The Act of Disappearing
Publisher: Mira
Release date: May 28, 2024
Genre/category: Historical; Mystery
Elevator pitch: The Act of Disappearing is a dual-timeline novel about a haunting photograph that captured a woman’s death, and the young writer hired to investigate the incredible, heartbreaking story behind it, for fans of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, The Dollhouse, and The Last Story of Mina Lee.

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What prompted you to write this book?

Oh—I’m not sure I fully know the answer to this question. I generally find the creative process, even my own, to be opaque. But the seed of the idea came from a conversation I had with my maternal grandmother—my Mamaw—when I was a young boy.

This may be worth noting: Memory is a fickle thing, ever changing like light in a mirror maze. I’ve thought about this memory with my grandmother many times—even dreamed about it—so I can never be sure to what extent my brain has changed or overwritten it. But what I remember goes something like this: I was with Mamaw at a community festival in my small, western Kentucky hometown. We were sitting on the shore of the Ohio River, looking up at a truss train bridge stretched between Kentucky and Indiana. Mamaw was dreamy-eyed and distant, and she said absentmindedly, “I wonder what it would be like to fall from up there.” That moment was a bit shocking and scary for me as a child. What did she mean? What would make someone think such a thought, let alone say it aloud?

Well, decades later, one day during the height of the pandemic, I had a dream about that conversation with Mamaw, and when I woke up, an image came to me—the bleeding edges developing into focus like a Polaroid: a woman falling from a train bridge, clutching a baby to her chest. I wrote down an early description of what I saw, and that description became the opening image in the book, the hook that grounds the rest of the story. To be clear, the book is not about my grandmother or any other member of my family—but it does touch on issues that are very important to me personally and within my family history—issues like depression, anxiety, and parental responsibility.

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

Once the idea took hold, I wrote the book quickly—in just under a year, mostly during lockdown in the early stages of the pandemic. But as often is the case with debuts, the process slowed quite a bit after I went from the private world of writing to the public stage of seeking publication; querying for representation, working with an agent on revisions and edits, going on submission, etc. All told, the process from idea to publication has taken a little under four years—and yes, the book has changed tremendously during that time!

There were tweaks and changes along the way, but the biggest change involved the narration of the book. When I first started outlining, the story was told from two alternating points of view. But as the book found its voice, I knew the story demanded many more perspectives—so the historical timeline of the novel moved from one narrator to an ensemble POV, with a complex web of plots and subplots to better elucidate the central conflict of the book.

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

The Act of Disappearing is my debut novel, so you might say that the entire journey has been one big “learning moment” about the publishing process. For years I was writing inside a vacuum, so when I began working with my agent (the incomparable Danielle Bukowski) and eventually with my editor (the brilliant Meredith Clark), I learned just how collaborative the publishing process must be. But a pleasant surprise for me was learning, despite hearing horror stories to the contrary—how smooth and organic that collaborative process could be. Perhaps this is only because I’ve been fortunate enough to work with publishing professionals who share my vision for the book so well.

The biggest surprise for me has been how meticulous the publishing team has been about finding the perfect title and cover design for the book. Without exaggeration, we considered more than 50 titles—and at various points in the process, we had decided on a “final” title five or more times … only to hit the drawing board again. A similar process ensued with the cover design. In the end, I’m so glad the process was as thorough as it was; I think we landed on the perfect title and cover!

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

The only real surprise in the writing process came quite early for me: I knew the story was a mystery, an investigation of a woman falling from a train bridge in the 1960s; but I didn’t know which of the characters was the woman who fell. The early writing process was full of discovery and surprise—for me, as the writer—as I learned the story I was telling.

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

We all come to books with our own lived experience, our own complex histories, our own worldviews—so I’m not sure I’m in a position to say what I hope any particular reader will receive from this story. But I will say this: The Act of Disappearing is a story about generational legacies, small-town secrets, and found family. It’s a story about the vicissitudes of mental health. It’s a story about how personal tragedy and communal loss are outweighed only by the mercies and forgiveness we give each other—and afford to ourselves. Above all, I hope readers will find it to be a riveting page-turner that delivers on its promise to captivate, surprise, and satisfy on many levels.

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

Don’t waste your time chasing a publishing trend or writing what you think the big publishing houses want to see. Think of the story that you desperately want to read—for yourself, for your own pleasure—and then write it. Above all, live inside this conviction: there is a story out there waiting to be told—a story nobody else on the planet has the capacity to tell—waiting for you to have the courage to tell it.

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In this interview, Monica discusses what inspired her new historical mystery, The Brightwood Code, her advice for other writers, and more!

Name: Monica Hesse
Literary agent: Ginger Clark
Book title: The Brightwood Code
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Release date: May 14, 2024
Genre/category: Historical mystery
Previous titles: Girl in the Blue Coat; They Went Left; The War Outside; American Fire
Elevator pitch: Edda’s job as a WWI Hello Girl turned disastrous when she made a secret, deadly mistake while trying to connect a crucial telephone call. Now she’s back in America, working as a Bell operator, when a mysterious voice contacts her begging for help—and Edda realizes that the plea is tied to the wartime past she’s tried desperately to forget.

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What prompted you to write this book?

I’m always interested in exploring massive historical events from the perspectives we never learned about in school. Hello Girls were the first American women to serve in an official wartime capacity—the Army needed bilingual telephone operators who could facilitate calls between European and American troops, and they ended up turning to young women who already spoke French and who could be trained to work the equipment. These women served on the front lines, in earshot of exploding bombs, but they were never officially enlisted as military, and it took decades for their contributions to be recognized.

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

LOL. The idea actually began as a whole other book. I’d written a draft of a different novel, which I loved a lot—but I kept getting stuck on my main character’s backstory. It wasn’t going to make a huge appearance in the plot, but I needed to know her story for myself. At one point I thought, Hmmm, what if she was previously a Hello Girl? And then from that moment on, I didn’t want it to be a minor backstory, I wanted it to be a whole book.

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

The whole history of telephone operators in the U.S. is completely fascinating. When The Brightwood Code takes place, this would have been a fairly new profession for young women—the first telephone operators in history were teenage boys, but they were eventually decided to be too squirrelly and unreliable. Telephone companies thought that women might be a better fit, but at the time the only respectable professions for young women were nurse, librarian, and teacher. So, companies like Bell waged a really intentional campaign to both recruit young women and also to convince their families that connecting telephone calls was a good job for nice girls. They required all of their new employees to remain single, and they put tea carts and pianos in the breakroom so that young women could carry on their classical music studies.

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

Of all my books, The Brightwood Code is the most straight-up, page-turning mystery I’ve ever written. It’s set in the past, but the themes of young women trying to navigate a complicated world feel completely current.

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

Write.

It’s the most basic advice, but I can’t count the number of aspiring writers I’ve met who have been carrying around an idea for years and have never put anything to page. The only way to figure out whether you can do it is to do it—and remember, it doesn’t have to be good yet. You can make it good later, in the second or fourth draft. But the words on the page can’t be good if the words on the page don’t even exist.

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Several of his pieces have also been anthologized, most recently “Heatwave” in The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2021 (ed. Lee Child). His debut novel, Death and the Conjuror, was published by Mysterious Press in 2022. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

In this post, Tom shares his love for golden age detective fiction, the pros and cons of complex plots, and more.

Name: Tom Mead
Literary agent: Lorella Bella (LBLA)
Book title: The Murder Wheel
Publisher: Mysterious Press
Release date: July 2023
Genre/category: Murder mystery
Previous titles: Death and the Conjuror
Elevator pitch for the book: Illusionist turned sleuth Joseph Spector returns to investigate a string of sinister, interconnected mysteries backstage at a run-down theatre in 1930s London.

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What prompted you to write this book?

The Murder Wheel was written very soon after I finished the first draft of Death and the Conjuror. This was during 2020 and 2021, at the height of the nationwide lockdowns here in the UK. My writing was a wonderful means of escape during that troubled time.

I’d already written several short stories featuring my detective character, Joseph Spector, that were prompted by my love of classic, golden age detective fiction—particularly locked-room mysteries. So I plotted and drafted the first two Spector books as a kind of natural progression from the short stories, out of a desire to take on a fresh challenge.

Once I got started, I knew that I had too many characters and mysteries for a single novel. And since most of my favourite authors (John Dickson Carr, Agatha Christie, and Ellery Queen, for example) wrote long-running series, I decided to start writing the second mystery as soon as I finished the first; to try and keep the momentum going, and to keep generating new ideas through reading and research.

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

I submitted my final draft for The Murder Wheel in March 2022, but to be honest I can’t really remember when I first started coming up with ideas for the book. It was probably pre-pandemic, back when I was working full-time and scribbling notes whenever I had a spare moment. Realistically, it must have been five years between my initial ideas and the finished piece.

And yes, there were many significant changes throughout the process, from the mechanics of the mystery and the relationships between the characters all the way to the structure of the story itself.

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

Too many to list here! Because I wrote the first and second books purely for myself, it was a decidedly steep learning curve once I set foot in the world of professional publishing.

Inevitably, it came as a shock to the system when I started thinking more practically about the books and how readers would respond to them. But I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the way different editors and artists have embraced the project, as well as the positive reactions from readers.

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

I tried a few different things with The Murder Wheel, as I was keen for it to fit the tone of Conjuror while providing readers with something fresh. So I experimented with different themes and narratorial voices, and made a deliberate effort to surprise myself with a lateral approach to plotting.

This was a handy means of stimulating new ideas. Inevitably, I wrote myself into a corner a few times, but the great thing about writing deliberately complex plots is that there are always plenty of threads for you to unravel.

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

I hope it will entertain them, amuse them, and give them a challenge. But above all I hope it will immerse them in the world of the Golden Age of Mystery.

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

When I’m in the right frame of mind, I can write very quickly, and I really think that’s the best way to get things done. So I’d suggest that you set yourself a daily word count and stick to it.

Don’t worry about the quality of what you’re writing—you will inevitably focus on that during the subsequent editing process. Instead, focus on getting your story down on paper from beginning to end. You can think about the rest later.

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Writing a historical novel requires a lot of research. A daunting amount of research, for those whose hearts aren’t set aflutter by primary documents. The idea of going to all that effort, only for an inaccuracy to trip up my story put me off the entire endeavor…until I encountered A Spy in the House, by Y.S. Lee. Set in the Victorian era, it’s about Mary, a biracial orphan rescued from the gallows who goes on to become a spy. As the book shook loose my preconceived notions of what historical fiction was, I began to wonder what historical fiction could be—and the Jane Austen Murder Mysteries were born.

I like to describe Pride and Premeditation as an ahistorical mystery retelling of Jane Austen, with Lizzie Bennet as an aspiring barrister who wants a career, not marriage. Writing this book allowed me to work within a beloved world, but it also required a bit of trial and error as I figured out how to write a historical novel when the very premise went against history. Over the course of writing Pride and Premeditation and its two companions, Sense and Second-Degree Murder and Manslaughter Park, I’ve learned a few things about writing ahistorical fiction that I’m happy to share.

Order Tirzah Price’s Manslaughter Park today. 

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Know your time period

I’m sorry to inform you, but writing ahistorical fiction doesn’t excuse you from the research. It’s possible to write a novel that only uses the skimpiest details of the time period as set dressing, but I’d argue that those novels aren’t very satisfying. History is teeming with fascinating details, unconventional figures, and complicated conflicts. Use those to your advantage as you research.

Research is also a layered process: You want to know enough going in to feel confident about starting, but it’s also okay to not know everything. In fact, don’t assume you know everything. The most interesting historical discoveries occur when you ask, “What if…”

Be deliberate about your changes

In writing, we’re often told you need to know the rules in order to break them. The same holds true for ahistorical fiction: You must know the historical facts in order to throw them out. Disregarding historical fact or context can feel incredibly freeing in the moment, but be aware that every change you make will have a consequence in the logic of your world—and in the mind of your reader. Some changes might not raise eyebrows, but others might require more grounding in your reimagining.

An early draft of Sense and Second-Degree Murder received the feedback that the young ladies were doing an awful lot of running about London unchaperoned. While I was tempted to shrug off that feedback and make their independent comings and goings a nonissue, doing so would cause the premise of this Regency society to unravel. Instead, I brainstormed ideas with my editor to show the characters actively pushing boundaries, and in revision I highlighted the risks they took do so.

Decide how your character will work with—and against—convention

I write novels about girls inspired to act because they’ve experienced injustice. It’s tempting to give them modern perspectives on social justice issues, but no one comes to their beliefs with thoughts fully formed—we’re shaped by our experiences. When it came to giving Austen’s heroines a more overtly feminist outlook, I also had to consider how living in the Regency period would influence their opinions and actions.

As a result, the emotional journeys of my heroines are about reconciling the tension between modern and historical values, and their books highlight social injustice in the Regency era while also shining a light on the women who find happiness despite society’s constraints.

Consider what narratives you’re upholding

We all know that history can be oppressive. In changing up historical fiction, we have a duty to carefully consider the narratives we construct to ensure that we are not doing further harm to marginalized groups. We must be mindful of how certain historical attitudes have harmed people of color and LGBTQ+ people throughout history—and continue to permeate into today’s society. This isn’t to say that bigotry cannot be a part of your ahistorical novel, but make sure that it doesn’t go unchallenged.

Have fun with it!

I wrote my series because I love historical fiction and I love mysteries. Anytime I felt stuck or blocked in by the historical norms, I tried to keep in mind my favorite elements from both genres, the things that I took pleasure in as a reader. What tropes make you smile when you read them? How can you subvert expectations, or indulge readers? It’s okay to experiment with language and scenes to write something that will delight a modern reader—they are your audience, after all!

Writing ahistorical fiction allows readers to connect with history in a new way. It can be fun, irreverent, thought-provoking, but if done well, it helps readers to empathize with people from another time and place, and deepens our understanding of history from a very human lens.

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The post 5 Tips for Writing an Ahistorical Novel appeared first on Writer's Digest.

You’re going to spend considerable time and effort immersing yourself in the era you choose, so make sure it’s one that interests you. It’s true that some time periods sell better than others in this genre, and these can shift with the trends. But chasing a trend can also backfire, particularly if it’s not an era or subject that inspires you. Writing is difficult enough at times without dreading it because you chose a premise that bores you, and chances are this will also be evident in your writing.

When it comes to research, do your due diligence.

Read widely and varied on the era and subject you’re pursuing not just the specifics of an event or person. In order to make your historical world authentic, you’ll need to be familiar with a broad range of background information, from what they ate and drank to how they dressed, socialized, spoke, viewed the world, and much more. Primary and secondary sources are always best. Check the bibliography at the back of any especially helpful texts to find what resources they used that might also aid you.

Allow history to enhance your mystery and vice versa.

Some moments in history are better suited to certain types of crimes, just as some mysteries will better illuminate a particular historical event or figure. Make your historical and mystery elements work in synchronicity to maximize their impact.

Get creative with your investigative methods.

Depending on the time period of your novel, few or possibly none of the forensic detection techniques we’re so accustomed to in our modern world even existed. This means your protagonists have to be innovative in order to solve the crimes committed. This also offers you much more room to play since there may be little or no standard procedure for your detectives to follow.

Avoid stereotypes.

Never assume that you already know how a certain person or group acted, thought, or spoke. Approach each character as a unique individual with their own backstory, hopes, and motivations. This will help keep you from descending into caricature.

Make your characters accessible and relatable.

This begins with a firm grasp of their psychology and what makes them tick. People are people across time. Even the most contrary or horrific behavior can be boiled down to its essence to make it understandable—albeit perhaps not tolerable or acceptable—to the modern reader. But be careful what language you use to avoid anachronisms.

There are almost always exceptions to every historical rule.

And writing fiction allows you to play in those gray areas. But your readers won’t care how good your research is if you can’t convince them why your character or event could be that exception. A skillful writer can keep their readers so absorbed in the story that they will believe these concessions.

Use dialect sparingly.

Local and regional dialects can give a great deal of charm and flavor to your characters’ dialogue, but when overused, they become a terrible distraction. If readers can’t smoothly read over a sentence and comprehend it, they might become frustrated and be yanked out of the story. This is something to be avoided at all costs.

Find the rhythm of your era.

The language of every time period possesses its own unique flow, cadence, pitch, and intonation. You can find it by reading primary sources written during that era, particularly letters, journals, and diaries. You can hear it in the music composed at that time. You can feel it by understanding the popular dances. Or in more modern eras, watch it played out on film.

Make good use of etymology and slang dictionaries.

An excellent etymology dictionary is indispensable to a historical author. It will help you navigate which words and phrases are too modern for the time period of your book. You can also find many wonderful slang dictionaries for particular eras or situations which can add another layer of color to your story.

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Describe your settings through the filter of your narrator’s point of view.

We each have our own unique strengths, interests, and perspectives, and these affect the way we see the world. Your characters should be the same. You should also keep in mind their class, culture, and education level, as these will shade vocabulary, knowledge, and the manner in which they prioritize the objects in the world around them.

Know the proper forms of address.

If you choose to use characters with various titles and ranks, be they royal, aristocratic, or military, be certain you understand all the rules governing them. There is a great deal of nuance involved with such protocols, and they change from century to century, so don’t stint on your research in this area or rely on tertiary sources who may have gotten it wrong.

Don’t let the historical elements derail the propulsion of the mystery plot.

The mystery should be the driving force of the story while the history adds depth and layers to its complexity. In your enthusiasm for the history being highlighted, it can become all too easy to let it overshadow and bog down the mystery plot. Keep your pacing and elements of suspense in mind to keep the reader hooked, and when in doubt, trim extraneous information that isn’t absolutely necessary to the reader’s understanding of the events, characters, and plot.

Recognize that you’re fallible.

It’s impossible to know everything, and equally impossible to read all of the research materials you might wish to in the limited time available, especially if you’re an author on a deadline. The stark truth is, oftentimes we don’t realize exactly how little we truly grasp of a certain topic until we learn otherwise. Give yourself some grace, and simply strive to keep getting better by continuing to expand your knowledge base for future books with additional research.

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