Freshly painted …the art of historical fiction.

Recently I noticed a review about one of my hist.romances which claimed some degree of anachronism – did people really bathe that much in the twelfth century? In fact my reading has shown there is a complete disparity of opinion over this issue, which meant I must make a choice. I did. I was writing fiction and I chose the scholarly fact that best backed what I wished to say.

I was also taken to task for using the word ‘puke’ because its roots are in the seventeenth century, which I knew. But I needed to imply a middle-aged woman vomiting up her insides on a ship journey. I could have used the word ‘vomit’ but even that dates from the fifteenth century. Exactly what words did they use for such a bodily function in the twelfth century? To substitute a word in Latin or Norman French or Occitan wouldn’t work at all. Nor would it be sensible in my opinion. So ‘puke’ it was. It’s powerful, short and sharp – exactly what this poor woman was experiencing. My feeling about language is that there must be a certain amount of leeway, especially if the story is enjoyable and is loyal to its timeframe. Then again, I suppose I could re-write the whole novel in Latin or Norman French…

Such things make me wonder why we can’t be more flexible both in reading and writing historical novels. Which made recent commentary by R.Clifton Spargo about the writing of the genre just the exact thing I wanted to hear:

• Through untold hours of research, you must investigate a past you didn’t live. And even though you don’t have ready imaginative access to the events, you must make them believable. A tremendous point upon which the adaptable new historical fiction writer will jump. Personally I think it makes for real freshness and excitement. Colin Falconer approaches his writing with exactly that idea and I wrote another post about his thoughts some time ago. In my own case, there are many aspects of the twelfth century which are argued about amongst scholars, or worse, where there is no evidence at all. The best one can do is endeavour to be loyal to one’s timeframe and then take a guess. One can’t be sure its an informed guess because the facts to back it up may not have been brought to light yet. So it is and will remain a ‘guesstimate’.

• Take your characters off the grid? Personally I love this idea. It is exactly what I think gives freshness to current independently published hist.fict . It has the capacity to scoop the reader up into a narrative beyond the more heavily laid down norm of the past. That must surely be a good thing. I think it stretches the art-form.
• Make your characters resemble people, not historical personages. Characters based on famous lives must behave in ways consistent with experiences their real-life models actually endured in history. And yet, you need to know those lives so well as to begin to forget them, much in the manner each of us forgets so much of our daily lives as we race through them. I love it when historical personages have pimples or boils, become constipated or shiver with cold, get drunk or admit to fear. I hate it when they are placed in the ivory tower of their own historical magnificence. I want to forget that Richard Lionheart was a perfect strategist. I love finding out from an author that as a youth, he might have dared a young girl to climb a fig tree hanging over a wall, knowing she could fall to her death. I want to believe that these people were as normal for their time as we might be for ours. Why not? Isn’t it what we want from our heroes of today – to know that the famous have a life that we can relate to. It’s the kind of thing that sells today’s weekly magazines after all. That Angelina Jolie has a history of breast cancer in her family, or that Kate Middleton has bad hair days or that Prince Charles hates seeing his tulips fold in the wind like mine.

• Make it new—‘there is no urgency to’ feel the urgency of repeating familiar detail. Here is a place only a novelist could go, where historians couldn’t. And so the reader can be given a reprieve from the info-dump that so many authors in both mainstream and independent writing still feel is necessary to the narrative. As a reader, I will always go to a scholarly non-fiction text if I want to find out more about the timeframe. Please, please, please I tell myself as I write – don’t be overt. Subtlety is the thing, Prue. Besides, is Spargo not saying that the novelist is writing fiction after all? Colin Falconer quoted Bernard Cornwell today. “If you are wanting to write historical fiction I always say, you are not an historian. If you want to tell the world about the Henrician reformation, then write a history book – but if you want an exciting story, then become a storyteller. Telling the story is the key.” 
• Thank you, Bernard and thank you, Colin.

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The Flying Carpet…

As the end of the first draft of Gisborne: Book of Knights rapidly approaches, space appears in the mind for new novels. I have three little rooms slowly filling and occasionally, when time permits, I hop on my flying carpet to travel from room to room to investigate the ideas.

I’ve always wanted to write a novel about Richard III’s timeframe, but not about the monarch himself. In preference, I’d rather concentrate on a tradesperson – about how what they do impacts on their life in the most stellar and harrowing way.

I’ve also wanted to write a novel where my protagonist begins in Venice at the time trade was expanding and beginning its rise to that of Mediterranean super power. I like the connection Venice had with Constantinople and the African coast: a connection made all the more powerful by reading Dorothy Dunnett’s books and thence moving to non-fiction texts to expand the interest.

And I’ve always loved books set in Turkey. Constantinople in the 14^th and 15^th centuries glows with heroic deed and misdeed and seen through the eyes of a female ingénue, could be fun. I remember trawling through my own memories of travel in exotic places when writing A Thousand Glass Flowers (set in a fantasy version of places such as Turkey, Tunisia and Northern India) and becoming inspired by the recall.

When I set up the Pinterest board early in 2012 for A Thousand Glass Flowers, I became filled with joy at the colour and depth of subsequent images. It is the perfect depiction of the fantasy world within that novel but in addition, it continues to inspire and enthrall. I often return to the board and just click through the pins. It’s like sitting on my flying carpet and being taken on a sensual ride through a bazaar filled with the scents of cumin and turmeric, of hashish and ma’sal, or jurâk. Of men in keffiyeh and bisht, and women in kameez, thawb or abbaya. Of rainbow silks and food that thrills the palate. Of simple things like plump dates, sultanas and figs.

Recently I read two novels set in Istanbul. One was by Colin Falconer – a dark narrative called Harem,  about the insidious machinations of the hourie Hurrem within the courts of Suleiman the Magnificent. I am yet to read its sequel, Seraglio,  but look forward to it as a further revelation of a timeframe that has its own fascination.

The other novel, and one I am still reeling from in terms of pace and intrigue is the cracking A Thief’s Tale by SJA Turney. Brilliant. Loved every minute of it. And so excited that it is to be a trilogy. Turney’s book is set in the fifteenth century Ottoman Empire and is filled with the basest political intrigue. But it balances the cruel outcomes with street cred of the most jaw-dropping kind. There are chases through ‘old’ Istanbul that could sit comfortably with Dorothy Dunnett’s brilliant 5 star ‘rooftops of Blois’ chase. And Dorothy Dunnett aficionados will know exactly what I mean.

So…

I’m enjoying my carpet ride at the moment.

Tell me, where is your carpet taking you?

NB: all images of paintings taken from Wikimedia Commons.

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Spinning facts to make fiction…

The unearthing of Richard III’s remains has redefined how we all view history. To think that the body, hastily thrown in a grave 600 years ago, was unearthed at a time when forensic study can offer so much detail reminds me of the phrase ‘let there be light!’.

It also raises the question – how much history will be changed by such examination?

Every researcher, every academic, every archaeologist in a chosen field is finding detail that can explode facts from the past, turning them into myth, turning them into fictitious detail.

Highly successful historical fiction author, Colin Falconer  recently said ‘…those who argue for historical accuracy lose their ground … because it is impossible to know exactly what happened…’ and whilst I may have taken his comment out of context (he was in fact commenting on the background to the harem, and the relationship between Suleiman and his great love, Hurrem), I think he makes an extremely valid point.

None of us were there.

We can appreciate and study artifacts, buildings, art and writing of the times, but we are surely none of us so naïve as to assume that spin-doctoring is only a twenty-first century phenomenon. Take the case of Richard III. Presented after his death as something partway between the Devil and a monster, academics are now beginning to explode the myth.

I am confident this would have happened consistently right through history, depending on what legacy those in power wished to pass down through the ages. In addition there are also lesser known facts that can be dissolved before our eyes…

For example: in reading http://www.sharonkaypenman.com/medievalmishaps.htm I discovered this: “Sometimes apparent inconsistencies in my books are not errors, merely reflect information newly discovered. Sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that Eleanor has shed two years since Here Be Dragons and my first mysteries. It was always assumed that she’d been born in 1122, but Andrew W. Lewis in “The Birth and Childhood of King John: Some Revisions,” published in Eleanor of Aquitaine; Lord and Lady, very convincingly demonstrated that she was actually born in 1124.”

Which brings me to my own thoughts as I research and write the story of Guy of Gisborne and Ysabel of Moncrieff in the twelfth century. How can we be so pedantic as to assume that the fact we are reading in a fiction is right or wrong? There may be interpretations, spin-doctoring or a plethora of information that may not even have been sourced yet.

Take the case of velvet. I wanted my own characters to dress in velvet. Penman is quite adamant about this: “In Here Be Dragons, I draped Joanna and other female characters in rich velvet gowns. I later found out that velvet was not known in the 12th century.”

So I did my own research and found this:

‘Velvet production became firmly established as an industry in the Middle East and eastern Europe by about the tenth century. The most skilled weavers came from Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus; when the latter was conquered by France in 1266, many artisans were forced to flee to continental Europe. Most settled in Lucca, Italy, already a major centre for the production of fine woollen textiles, thus allowing for the spread of velvet-weaving techniques further north into much of western Europe.

Moorish Spain was a second major centre of velvet production; it had been manufactured there since 948 AD, and various velvet-weavers’ guilds and organisations served to ensure the industry’s prosperity.

The first reference to velvet in England came in 1278…’

So perhaps in the context of England, Penman is right, but as far as my characters go, they have hovered in Aquitaine, have seen Saracen traders come and go, and more lately they have passed along the southern seaboard of Europe in the Middle Sea and are currently in Cyprus. Would it not be likely that traders right along the seaboard would have traded such fabrics to the noble and wealthy? Especially as Moorish Spain produced velvet from as early as 948AD? I prefer to believe they would. Can I substantiate that claim? No. There are no extant invoices from twelfth century merchants stating they sold so many ells of velvet to this or that noblewoman.

This is where fiction can take a basic fact and stretch it smoothly to fit a storyline, so that the folds drape seamlessly and light wafts and weaves through the dense nap. There will be some readers who say: ‘How dare you? You cannot play with facts like that!’

And I say, history is becoming malleable, the more that research is carried out. Should we as readers and writers not bend a little too?

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