Coyote Con Transcript: Accurate Historical Fiction

Posted on 1:07 pm in Blog, Craft | 0 comments

This panel will give you tools to make sure your historical fact doesn’t make your reader throw your book across the room in frustration.

Following is the chat transcript from the Coyote Con panel on how to write accurate historical fiction. I joined fellow authors Nora Fleisher, Gary Inbinder, and Rachael de Vienne on Friday, May 21st. Deena Fisher moderated for us.

View this and other transcripts from all Coyote Con Panels at the Coyote Con website.
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[Deena] 11:01 pm: This is Accurate Historical Fiction with Nora, Gary, Teresa, and Rachael.

[Deena] 11:01 pm: Let’s start with introductions. Nora, want to start?

[Nora Fleischer] 11:01 pm: Sure! Hi there, I’m Nora Fleischer. I wrote Over Her Head for Deena at Drollerie–

[Deena] 11:02 pm: Over Her Head is a historical mercreature romance, and pretty awesome.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:02 pm: Thanks! And I’ve also written academic history about the early American middle class.

[Deena] 11:03 pm: Okay, moving on, Rachael, an introduction please?

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:04 pm: i’m a historian by profession, and i write fantasy fiction. Pixie warrior is published by drollerie press. i have a history book out and many articles in history journals

[Deena] 11:04 pm: And she’s working on the second book in the Pixie world.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:04 pm: pixies!

[Deena] 11:05 pm: Teresa, introduction please?

[teresawymore] 11:06 pm: Howdy…Teresa Wymore. I’ve written historicals set in Late Rome and the Old West. My education’s in classical languages, so I have a good foundation for my historical, Stilicho’s Son, and the fantasy, Darklaw, which has an imperial flavor. Also, I’ve written some shorts. But I’ve had to do a great deal of research in various ways which we can chat about tonight.

[Deena] 11:07 pm: Teresa’s book, Darklaw, will be out shortly.

[Deena] 11:07 pm: Gary, would you introduce yourself?

[Gary I] 11:12 pm: Hi, I’m Gary Inbinder, author of Confessions of the Creature, published by Drollerie Press, a speculative historical novel inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. I’m a review Editor at Bewildering Stories and my short fiction, articles and essays appear in BwS, Morpheus Tales, The Absent Willow Review, The Copperfield Revie and other print and online publications. I’ve posted a historical research outline on my blog garyinbinder.com. Please check it out! [Moved for clarity.]

[Deena] 11:10 pm: Okay, so, panelists: Do you have a special responsibility to be accurate when writing historical fiction?”

[teresawymore] 11:10 pm: Nope

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:10 pm: me meme! yes, you do …. if for no other reason than thatyour readers will spot the flaws and it will take them out of your story

[Nora Fleischer] 11:10 pm: In some ways, yes. I got in an argument with someone once…

[Nora Fleischer] 11:11 pm: Who I thought wrote a story that had a Confederate apologist slant.

[teresawymore] 11:11 pm: People read fiction for the characters and relationships. Everything else is background, but the more authoritative it seems, the more power your story has to capture the imagination. Notice I said “seems”. Most people won’t know the details of the period. Those that do will overlook the alterations if the story is good.

[Deena] 11:11 pm: heh. Teresa says no, Rachael says absolutely, and Nora says sort of.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:11 pm: One the other hand, I think there are things you can’t be accurate about because they’re just unknowable.

[teresawymore] 11:11 pm: Ths is why hollywood makes so much money on bad historicals

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:11 pm: i have a good example. … in pixie warrior the little pixie who saves the world drops a sword to kill a nasty creature. … in the first draft, i had the sword drop and impale the creature … then i talked to a medieval weapons expert

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:12 pm: and he said no no no won’t happen that way

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:12 pm: because of balance issues

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:12 pm: he woudn’t have been the only one to notice

[teresawymore] 11:12 pm: It’s true, it’s the details that really annoy me– all the people in Regency romances that die in “carriage accidents.”

[teresawymore] 11:12 pm: Instead of cholera.

[teresawymore] 11:13 pm: But I think it’s even more important to get the characters accurate for the period.

[teresawymore] 11:13 pm: Take Mad Men– the power of that show comes from the period restrictions on people like Joan Holloway, who should be running the place…

[teresawymore]11:13 pm: details matter … and they effect your character’s character … if you know what i mean …

[teresawymore] 11:13 pm: There are two kinds of historical fact–events and culture

[teresawymore] 11:14 pm: i don’t care about the events so much, but getting the culture/relationships right is paramount to me as a reader and writer

[Gary I] 11:14 pm: We should avoid anachromisms. But Steampunk and Mash-ups are a different matter.

[teresawymore] 11:14 pm: Nora…exactly

[teresawymore] 11:15 pm: That’s the dif between the old Kubrick movie of Spartacus and the current series Blood and Sand.

[teresawymore] 11:15 pm: Both got events wrong but the current version got the culture right

[Transcript break. Some small amount of text may have been lost.]

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:16 pm: you don’t use every detail you find, but it gives you insight into the era and people in your story

[teresawymore] 11:16 pm: Right…hahahah…no info dumps!

[Nora Fleischer] 11:16 pm: I find the idea of steampunk difficult… maybe because the only steampunk I’ve read was bad.

[Gary I] 11:16 pm: An accurate voice for the period is also important. You can get that from reading period literature.

[teresawymore] 11:17 pm: Steampunk is awesome and hard and i’min the middle of writing one right now.

[Deena] 11:17 pm: Is there such a thing as historically accurate steampunk?

[Nora Fleischer] 11:17 pm: I love the aesthetic. But I get caught up on, “that’s not physically possible”? Or “why would you have gears there, they’re nonfunctional.”

[teresawymore] 11:17 pm: The anachronisms define it.

[Gary I] 11:18 pm: I gave an example of a Victorian Chunnel. It could have been done. I think Brunel planned it in 1850s?

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:18 pm: in pixie warrior one of the main characters is a lumber camp cook. he is based on a real person that lived in my grandmother’s cabin. he was older than dirt and everyone called him “dingy bill.” i took his voice and experience as camp cook, and i think i made a believable character out of him

[teresawymore] 11:18 pm: Can well-written historical fiction be as accurate as non-fiction? Does it need to be?

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:19 pm: it can be, but it doesn’t need to be … you’re making your own world

[Gary I] 11:19 pm: I think in fiction the story always comes first, but it can be as accurate in its details and characters as non-fiction.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:19 pm: you get to fiddle with details

[Nora Fleischer] 11:19 pm: Yes. And there’s always a reason you set it in the past, right?

[Nora Fleischer] 11:19 pm: It’s the fun of writing characters with the peculiar restrictions they had in the past.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:20 pm: Or the fun of trying to imagine life in a less technologically advanced society.

[teresawymore] 11:20 pm: like all spec fic, it lets you examine the present through spotlighting a difference

[Gary I] 11:20 pm: Yes, and choosing the period is the jumping off point for research.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:20 pm: Or one with different rules in general.

[Gary I] 11:20 pm: In Confessions, Mary Shelley’s novel dictated the period.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:21 pm: Teresa, do you think your books are really about the present? Like the alien worlds on Star Trek?

[Nora Fleischer] 11:21 pm: TOS, I mean.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:21 pm: Because I feel like when I’m writing about the past, I’m writing about the past.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:21 pm: But maybe I’m wrong.

[Gary I] 11:22 pm: When I write about the past I believe I’m in the past. Is that wierd?

[teresawymore] 11:22 pm: They’re about relationships and choices…and those choices I examine by placing restrictions through time/alien worlds.

[teresawymore] 11:22 pm: Every story is an overcoming. I see spec fic in the same way, whether past or future

[Nora Fleischer] 11:22 pm: Gary, it shows a greater power of imagination than I have…

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:23 pm: … cultural details differ, but people are people. human emotions cross cultures and time … they don’t change. historical fiction borrows a setting, but the emotions have to be identifiable to your reader

[Gary I] 11:23 pm: Thanks Nora. I think its just living in the character.

[teresawymore] 11:23 pm: Right Rachael…although people have had very different sensibilities

[Nora Fleischer] 11:23 pm: Agree with Teresa.

[Gary I] 11:23 pm: Yes, Agree

[Nora Fleischer] 11:24 pm: For example, families haven’t always expressed “love” in the same way.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:24 pm: Or marriage: the role of marriage has really shifted. Much less emphasis on security, more on emotional sustenance.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:25 pm: they don’t express love in the same way now, either. my german relations aren’t very much like the french ones. …

[teresawymore] 11:25 pm: hahaha! Shows you the stuff I write! I was thinking of violence and sex being dif

[Gary I] 11:25 pm: I’m writing something set in 1910 California. Different social mores. But then, there’s a succubus –
[Nora Fleischer] 11:25 pm: True.

[teresawymore] 11:25 pm: hahahah! Succubus…how’s that different than 2010 CA?

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:26 pm: pixie warrior is set in lassen county CA about 1918-1919

[Gary I] 11:26 pm: The succubus has a very different way of expressing love. same in 1910 as 2010.

[teresawymore] 11:26 pm: LOL

[Nora Fleischer] 11:26 pm: My Drollerie book was also early twentieth century! Is that Deena, or us, do you think?

[Deena] 11:26 pm: Not my fault!

[Gary I] 11:26 pm: Yeah, Deena. Do you like that period?

[teresawymore] 11:27 pm: Cool period. I love the art

[Deena] 11:27 pm: Um… yes?

[Deena] 11:27 pm: I do, actually.

[Deena] 11:27 pm: But I’d publish different periods if I had them!

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:27 pm: would anyone like to explain how to do quality research?

[Nora Fleischer] 11:27 pm: To Rachael: first, know the basic facts. Get yourself a textbook.

[Gary I] 11:27 pm: Quality research? Don’t rely on wikipedia for everything. grin

[Nora Fleischer] 11:27 pm: If you have a history professor friend, you can probably get one for free.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:28 pm: << is my own history professor friend

[Nora Fleischer] 11:28 pm: Because they will get ten a year from different publishers and they will say “Here! Take them! Please!”

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:28 pm: i tell my students to visit the child’s section of the library first if the topic is new

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:28 pm: get a basic book

[teresawymore] 11:28 pm: Books! Not movies. Websites if they’re universities.

[Gary I] 11:29 pm: Rachael, I always start with good general histories of the period. And literature, if there is lit. of that time.

[teresawymore] 11:29 pm: There are all these private lives books out now, the kind of stuff you didn’t learn in school

[Nora Fleischer] 11:29 pm: I agree on the literature. Sometimes it’s the best way to get the details of daily life.

[Gary I] 11:29 pm: And paintings, pictures, photos, plates etc. good for visualizing.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:29 pm: Project Gutenberg: free!

[teresawymore] 11:30 pm: Gutenberg is great

[Gary I] 11:30 pm: Project Gutenbergs excellent.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:30 pm: there are excellent resources on the web. google book, image results … the library of congress has free to use photos online

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:30 pm: there is a massive new york and related newspaper data base back to the 1820s

[Nora Fleischer] 11:30 pm: Also, don’t just read novels. Novels are godawful until about 1800, in my opinion. Read essays, newspapers, etc.

[Gary I] 11:31 pm: All sorts of photos on the internet. Historical societies, societies dedicated to particular historical persons, etc.

[teresawymore] 11:31 pm: I wouldn’t rely on any fiction for your own fiction

[Nora Fleischer] 11:31 pm: Oh yes, read poetry, too. And letters.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:31 pm: i have hundreds of 19th and early 20th century novels. most are just awful, but you get good insight into speech patterns.

[teresawymore] 11:31 pm: Dialect, speech pattern, slang…always dangerous

[Gary I] 11:31 pm: Yes, old novels of the period are good for dialogue. manners, etc.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:32 pm: and some are suprisingly good. The canadian writer Cameron is still worth a read and re-read

[teresawymore] 11:32 pm: so hard to get that right and not overdo it.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:32 pm: True, I’m just saying that novels weren’t the best thing people were writing until very recently. And old newspapers are fun! Smutty and fun!

[teresawymore] 11:32 pm: A flavor of the culture but clear enough for modern reader

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:33 pm: there are millions of pages of digitalized newspapers online

[teresawymore] 11:33 pm: Love old newspaper. Late 19th Cen was so pretentious

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:33 pm: some are pay sites and some are free. Library of congress has free online searchable

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:33 pm: google news archives is a combination.

[Gary I] 11:33 pm: I was just watching BBC pproductions of Jane Austen, Henry James and George Eliot novels. You get a great sense of the periods.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:33 pm: new york times archive is free.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:34 pm: If you want to read a great pay site, I recommend these guys:

http://www.genealogybank.com/gbnk/

[teresawymore] 11:34 pm: if you join one of the newspaper aggregating sites with pay, be careful…i had a bad experience a few years ago and took forever to get cancelled.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:34 pm: ancestry.com is pay site

[teresawymore] 11:34 pm: so much is free but will take you time

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:34 pm: with newspaper archive

[Nora Fleischer] 11:34 pm: If you’re near an academic library, I recommend looking up all the databases that Readex has put together.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:34 pm: http://fultonhistory.com/Fulton.html is one of the best, mostly new york, some connecticut and NJ, digitalized books, rivers.

[riversway] 11:35 pm: what is Project Gutenberg

[Nora Fleischer] 11:35 pm: Project Gutenberg is an attempt to digitize every book that’s off copyright, where you can read it for free.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:35 pm: also books.google.com is good; google books is searchable; also www.archive.org, which is searchable by subject, title and text.

[Deena] 11:35 pm: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

[widdershins] 11:36 pm: is there a comparable Canadian database/bases, (or elsewhere in the world)?

[Nora Fleischer] 11:36 pm: Widdershins, I wish I knew about Canada, but I’m an American historian… I’ve come across things in passing.

[Jazzyartwriter2] 11:36 pm: During a class, The Historian as Investigator, the instructor told us to never consider newspapers as authentic for research. People don’t always tell the truth. If she was correct, wouldn’t the papers at least be of value for what was going on at the time? Was she right?

[teresawymore] 11:38 pm: I love sweeping generalizations. Newspapers are great depending on what you’re looking for. Essentially, ALL history is based on authority. Who you gonna believe?

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:38 pm: jazzy, historians use newspapers, but content is often off, wrong.

[Gary I] 11:38 pm: Newspapers do give you a good idea of what was going on, and the way people thought about events at the time. You can check facts in reliable history books.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:38 pm: but they can give you insights into what people thought and said, same with magazines.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:38 pm: Everything written can be wrong.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:38 pm: For me that was a terrifying realization!

[Gary I] 11:38 pm: And everything wrong can be written

[teresawymore] 11:38 pm: hee hee hee

[Nora Fleischer] 11:39 pm: The other thing that’s interesting about reading old newspapers is that it shows you that the purpose of a newspaper has shifted.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:39 pm: in my book on the barbourite movement, a 19th century millennialist religion, my writing partner and i were heavily dependent on newspaper articles, because that’s all there is

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:39 pm: you have to measure them against known events and beliefs

[Nora Fleischer] 11:39 pm: Look at old stories in the NYT– the tone was much more scandal-mongering in the 1800s. Like reading TMZ today!

[Gary I] 11:39 pm: Old adverts are good for learning how people lived. What they bought, like bilious pills, etc.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:40 pm: And newspapers used to wear their politics right on their sleeve.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:40 pm: yes, that’s why i mention Pears soap in pixie warrior and not dove …

[Nora Fleischer] 11:40 pm: Or on the masthead. Like, the “Republican Star,” or something like that.

[Deena] 11:41 pm: What makes historical fiction fail? What makes it less credible?

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:41 pm: bad writing makes it fail. … bad detail adds to bad writing

[teresawymore] 11:41 pm: amen rachael

[Gary I] 11:41 pm: What makes it fail? Have a Regency Lady say, “Wassup girlfriend!”

[Nora Fleischer] 11:41 pm: If I don’t believe in the characters, I’m going to start nitpicking details.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:41 pm: Regency gentlemen who swear in front of ladies.

[connieneil] 11:41 pm: You can go too far in the direction of period speech, though.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:41 pm: That’s a fail.

[Jazzyartwriter2] 11:42 pm: Something interesting, and awful, is going on in Texas right now. They’ve voted to change the curriculum in schools, i.e., one of the things is to not name the slave trade as the slave trade. They’re calling it something innocuous (spelling).

[teresawymore] 11:42 pm: Yes, jazzy and that revisionist spirit is not new but has been in the hisotryof our history, so again, what we’re gettign from history is always meddled
with

[Gary I] 11:42 pm: Dimme! Od’s fish! Sink me!

Deena] 11:42 pm: Jazzy: “Atlantic triangular trade”?

[teresawymore] 11:42 pm: Hahahaha!

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:42 pm: public school and college texts are usually poorly written, wrong and misleading

[connieneil] 11:42 pm: Probably sticking as close to “proper speech” makes for a more formal/historical tone.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:42 pm: bad place to start

[Gary I] 11:42 pm: That was my Scarlet Pimpernel impression. Dimme sir, I say, wot!

[teresawymore] 11:42 pm: right connie

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:43 pm: yar, stand and deliver! or something

[Nora Fleischer] 11:43 pm: I once had a weird experience: a commenter wrote on something I’d written that he’d lost faith in the characters because I put slaves in 18th century New York city.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:43 pm: He didn’t seem to know that there were slaves in the northern states…

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:43 pm: but there were slave in 18th century ny

[teresawymore] 11:43 pm: public education…

[Nora Fleischer] 11:43 pm: And I think that slavery was legal in New York until about 1815…

[connieneil] 11:44 pm: The abolitionists were working more from a religious point of view.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:44 pm: So what’s really tricky is writing something historically accurate that goes against people’s preconceptions.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:44 pm: readers are funny people. i got a bit of fan mail that said they loved the play off little red riding hood. … and i’m reading it and thinking, “what play off little red riding hood?”

[Gary I] 11:44 pm: There was also feudalism in old New York. The Dutch Patroons. Lasted until the 1840s.

[teresawymore] 11:44 pm: yes nora! That’s why worrying too much about accuracy can kill the story

[Nora Fleischer] 11:45 pm: What isn’t about Little Red Riding Hood, really? I mean, it’s the central metaphor everywhere:

[Nora Fleischer] 11:45 pm: Luke Skywalker= Little Red

[Nora Fleischer] 11:45 pm: Darth Vader= Big Bad Wolf

[Nora Fleischer] 11:45 pm: Obi-Wan: Woodsman

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:45 pm: well, they focused on a little red coat that someone tried to make my naked pixie wear. Not too much of little red in that, except the color of the coat.

[Deena] 11:46 pm: Real-life people in fiction: good idea or not?

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:46 pm: sometimes

[teresawymore] 11:46 pm: Sure

[Gary I] 11:46 pm: The Star Wars characters were archetypes.

[teresawymore] 11:46 pm: best revenge

[connieneil] 11:46 pm: Good, but if they’re a primary character, walk *real* careful.

[amyleigh07] 11:46 pm: depends on type of story you’re telling.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:46 pm: in one of the stories in pixie2 king edward 3 appears

[Nora Fleischer] 11:46 pm: I usually won’t put real-life people in, because I’m not interested in the major figures of American history as characters…

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:47 pm: i think it works well

[teresawymore] 11:47 pm: Adding real people gets you immediate credibility, but more scrutiny

[connieneil] 11:47 pm: And make sure it’s plausible that they’re where the story puts them, I had a heck of a time justifying Da Vinci being in a particular place in Italy at a particular time.

[connieneil] 11:47 pm: Had all sorts of encyclopedias and history timelines open.

[Gary I] 11:47 pm: Confessions has Mary Shelley, Byron, Shelley and a bunch of old Russian generals.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:47 pm: yes, and you have no idea what i went through to find out how tall Edward III was and the colour of his hair. about 6 1 or so and reddish brown.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:48 pm: I don’t usually use real people, because my history writing is about non-famous businessmen, and so is most of my historical fiction.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:48 pm: Even if mine were real, no one would recognize them!

[Nora Fleischer] 11:49 pm: Agree with Teresa above. I generally react negatively to real-life people, because my
nitpicker goes off immediately.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:50 pm: I guess I feel a greater responsibility to get it accurate, than I would with a fake person?

[Jazzyartwriter2] 11:50 pm: If I’m not mistaken, a few years ago a burial ground of blacks was found in NY – or one of the eastern states. They proved they were from slave times.

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:50 pm: new york city, jazzy

[Nora Fleischer] 11:50 pm: NYC, yes!

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:51 pm: near city hall

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:51 pm: guys, i’m going to have to leave … in the secret life of every pixie there are odd things, such as being a reserve deputy. … i’m going to be late if i don’t get on the road now.

[Deena] 11:51 pm: bye Rachael!

[Nora Fleischer] 11:51 pm: Bye, Rachael!

[Rachael de Vienne] 11:51 pm: have fun and visit me at http://wardancingpixie.blogspot.com/

[Gary I] 11:51 pm: Bye

[teresawymore] 11:51 pm: awesome rachael

[basletum] 11:51 pm: Bye Rachel!

[riversway] 11:52 pm: thanks Rachel ;take care

[Nora Fleischer] 11:52 pm: Canada, above: this looks interesting: http://www.genealogysearch.org/free/bcanada.html

[Jazzyartwriter2] 11:53 pm: Thanks Rachel

[basletum] 11:53 pm: In Ohio, the place where I used to live at was once a Northern concentration camp during the Civil War. Not only were northern slave master placed in it, but their slaves also. Nearly two thousand died from disease and malnutrition in it.

[Gary I] 11:54 pm: Civil War prisoner camps were nasty. Andersonvills, Libby < Blue Island.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:54 pm: Wow. Which reminds me: the Parks Service does great work in public history. Don’t forget the public historians!

[teresawymore] 11:54 pm: sounds like there’s a good story there

[basletum] 11:54 pm: Yeah. The whole area is haunted, too.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:54 pm: Scott, is this a place you can visit? What can you see?

[Gary I] 11:55 pm: I read “Andersonville” years ago. I think it was Mckinley Kantor?

[basletum] 11:55 pm: Nora: it’s mostly just a bunch of houses along Eakin rd now. Everything’s pretty much been paved over and built on.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:56 pm: Scott, that’s a shame.

[connieneil] 11:56 pm: re: real people–would you rather have a real person or someone slightly disguised based off a real person but who is identifiable?

[teresawymore] 11:56 pm: i like it out in the open because otherwise it seems as if the writer is hiding, unsure, afraid

[teresawymore] 11:56 pm: be bold…put it out there

[widdershins] 11:56 pm: @Nora… thanks for the Canadian hit …. Kage baker wrote that wonderful series of nine or so books beginning with “In the Garden of Iden, where her fictional characters operate in the ‘shadow’ of actual historical events… that is, they can act as long as they don’t affect ‘recorded’ history.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:57 pm: Connie, what’s the person there to do?

[Jazzyartwriter2] 11:57 pm: Even when you don’t use a real person, someone might claim you put them in the book. I had that happen with my first mystery and the man who claimed this didn’t resemble any of the characters.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:57 pm: Why does he need to be in the novel?

[Gary I] 11:57 pm: I used some real people in Confessions. But most of them were very well known. That opens me to fact checking by some readers so I had to be careful with my research.

[connieneil] 11:58 pm: Perhaps your main character is in attendance at Appamattox, odds are he could run into someone real. Or he’s dropping off courier items to a major officer.

[teresawymore] 11:58 pm: i figure if someone’s reading you closely enough to compare facts with another source, bonus

[Nora Fleischer] 11:58 pm: Here’s another Canadian site, this one looks great! http://www1.canadiana.org/

[connieneil] 11:59 pm: Or if there’s politics, it could easily involve someone real, if you’re closely following a country’s history.

[Nora Fleischer] 11:59 pm: If he’s there to add verisimilitude, or a sense of the presence of history, I think that’s fine.

[Gary I] 11:59 pm: Of course, in Mashups you have Queen Victoria hunting demons.

[teresawymore] 11:59 pm: yes!

[Gary I] 11:59 pm: And Abe Lincoln killing vampires.

[teresawymore] 11:59 pm: no rules, but then not historical ficiton either

[Nora Fleischer] 11:59 pm: I liked Esther Friesner’s use of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, and Queen Victoria in her novel whose name I can’t remember.

[connieneil] 11:59 pm: One book I read involved the heroine bribing one of George IV’s mistresses

[basletum] 11:59 pm: Ah! I remembered! Camp chase!

[Nora Fleischer] 12:00 am: But if it doesn’t act like the real person, why have them there? I keep thinking of Mark Twain in Star Trek, TNG: what a loathsome mockery of the real thing.

[Gary I] 12:00 am: Many historical novels place real people in fictional situations.

[connieneil] 12:00 am: How do you know they’re not acting like the real person?

[teresawymore] 12:01 am: i kinda like mark twain in tng

[Nora Fleischer] 12:01 am: Because a guy who made his primary income as a lecturer wouldn’t have that horrible creaky old coot voice.

[teresawymore] 12:01 am: no history there, but the time travel was cool

[Gary I] 12:01 am: Star Trek had Lincoln too. Figthing alongside Jim Kirk.

[connieneil] 12:01 am: I don’t think Trek counts.

[Nora Fleischer] 12:01 am: Okay, obviously this is a matter of personal bias, but not scientific fact on my part, but AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.

[connieneil] 12:01 am: Red Dwarf had Gandhi with a machine gun.

[teresawymore] 12:02 am: i think authors get known for the kind of history they write–accurate, entertaining, blend

[Gary I] 12:02 am: Heh

[teresawymore] 12:02 am: you can focus too much on one or the other

[teresawymore] 12:02 am: if i want completely accurate, i’ll read nonfiction. Peter Brown writes awesome history of late Rome.

[jaleta] 12:02 am: Red Dwarf also had Winnie the Pooh and Queen Victoria in that episode. I believe Pooh was blown up with a grenade.

[Nora Fleischer] 12:03 am: Not Pooh! No!

[Gary I] 12:03 am: Teresa, you’ve written about ancient Rome. The recent series Rome made up lots of stuff, but then we don’t have much about the period that’s verifiably accurate.

[teresawymore] 12:03 am: if i want a good story, i’ll let inaccuracies pass for the sense of transport

[jaleta] 12:03 am: Off screen, it was hysterically funny.

[widdershins] 12:03 am: oh no!…. exploding Pooh… Poohs don’t like being blown up!

[teresawymore] 12:03 am: depends on the period of rome you mean. most popular stuff is early rome

[connieneil] 12:03 am: Harry Turtledove’s alternate histories are good, I think. I liked the alternate Civil War one.

[Jazzyartwriter2] 12:04 am: Tell me Pooh came back to life.

[teresawymore] 12:04 am: we have a great deal from 5th century AD, my fave

[jaleta] 12:04 am: But SF is not historical fiction. It was never meant to be.

[Nora Fleischer] 12:04 am: Zombie Pooh?

[Gary I] 12:04 am: The stuff about Octavian’s mom, Atia, was all made up.

[widdershins] 12:04 am: Pooh is immortal

[teresawymore] 12:04 am: so much of our knowldedge of rome comes through secondary sources like Gibbon

[teresawymore] 12:04 am: the 19th century really revised ancient rome for us

[Gary I] 12:05 am: I read Suetonius and Livy. In tranlation of course. grin

[connieneil] 12:05 am: Victoria has a lot to answer for in terms of how history got interpreted. She had Definite Views.

[teresawymore] 12:05 am: Suetonius is like our TMZ

[connieneil] 12:05 am: Are there many primary sources for Rome?

[Gary I] 12:05 am: I Claudius relied heavily on Suetonius

[connieneil] 12:06 am: I was just thinking of I Claudius.

[connieneil] 12:06 am: Wonderful book.

[teresawymore] 12:06 am: yes…imperial laws, monuments, all the classic writers you heard about in school—all this from the upper class of course

[Gary I] 12:06 am: And Cladius the God, the sequel

[widdershins] 12:06 am: See… I told you Pooh was immortal…. there’s a sequel!

[Nora Fleischer] 12:06 am: That sounds like a fun read…

[connieneil] 12:06 am: I believe Agatha Christie based “And Death Comes At The End” (maybe) one some notes found on ancient pottery shards.

[Nora Fleischer] 12:07 am: Unfortunately, I need to leave, too.

[connieneil] 12:07 am: Bye, Nora.

[Gary I] 12:07 am: Bye Nora!

[teresawymore] 12:07 am: a great deal of the image we have of rome is through secondary sources that have given us “talking points” or a lens through which to see it. that’s why i like spartacus blood and sand so much…very different and more accurate

[Gary I] 12:08 am: I read Spartacus. Howard Fast

[connieneil] 12:08 am: I liked “Gladiator” for the wardrobe and sets, because it wasn’t all white togas and marble. Romans liked their colors.

[teresawymore] 12:09 am: The fiction writer’s job is to entertain. Don’t let boring or unknown history get in the way.

[Thanks and goodbyes were said as everyone suddenly rushed the doors and the session ended.]