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Vintage postcard of Preston from my ephemera collection; depicts the River Ribble (top left), docks (top right), covered market (centre), parish church (bottom left) and Fishergate (bottom right).
I write historical fiction, both novels and (occasionally) short stories. I have experimented with assorted time periods, but at present I am focusing on the Victorian and early Edwardian eras, and will be doing so for the forseeable future, as this is where my greatest passion lies.
I am often asked why I write historical fiction. I don't know if this is something that all historical fiction authors are asked, or if my relatively young age makes people wonder where my attachment to the past came from, but I shall do my best to answer anyway. I say do my best, because I'm not really sure how I can explain it, other than as a result of my interest in Victoriana. We're all exhorted to write about our passions, after all, apart from by those insufferable bores who would like fiction (of all things!) to be restricted to writing what we know - how dull.
I read my first historical novel when I was about seven or eight. It was a Victorian-era children's story by Penelope Lively, called Fanny and the Monsters. (Yes, I know!) In hindsight, it was my first exposure to the kind of story which is now my favourite to read or write; namely those set in another era, with a female protagonist who goes against the grain in some way; in this case the ten-year-old Victorian girl Fanny Stanton, who dislikes the gender roles of her time and prefers fossils to dolls and palaeontology to needlework. I still like that book.
My interest in times past has been an ongoing and intensifying thing - when I first started high school I really enjoyed history classes (as much as I could enjoy anything at school), until the syllabus became dominated by war and the dates of specific battles. My interest was then and still is in the history of society, and how things affected individual people, rather than the minutiae of the machinations of politicians and monarchs. I can also bore everyone within five yards very quickly if someone voices one of the several misunderstandings counted among my pet hates, such as the belief that Victorian people were all but asexual.
I have a particular fondness for the history of those who have been dismissed throughout the years, hence my interest in the lives of women and those not counted among the privileged few of the aristocracy. This, and my interest in the harsh realities of the past, are probably what sets the kind of historical fiction I write and enjoy apart from the typical period romance.
SIDENOTE: No, I do not think I was reincarnated, or 'born in the wrong century', for that matter. The latter is an expression that seems to be bandied about a lot among people with a passion for history, and while I can understand it as a romanticised concept, I can never bring myself to say it about myself because I wouldn't swap generations of sociopolitical, scientific, ethical and medical progress just for a prettier wardrobe. I love visiting Victorian Britain in my writing, but I wouldn't want to live there.
Blog meme about the writing process (opens in new window)