Why Read Historical Fiction Set in Sixteenth Century France? 10 Reasons

In these turbulent times, as society reels from pandemic, natural disasters, and political turmoil, one might reasonably ask: "Why read historical fiction? And why, in particular, historical fiction set in sixteenth century France?" The companion question--why write it?--is one I've been contemplating as the world goes up in flames around me (I live in California, so that is not a figure of speech!). Over a series of posts, I will offer ten reasons why historical fiction set in Renaissance France is worth reading, not only for its entertainment value, but for the light it sheds on issues that continue to challenge society today.

Reason #1: ESCAPE

Reading has always been a way to escape the stresses and tension of daily life, and during the coronavirus lockdowns, people have turned to literature for a reprieve. After an initial dip, book sales are climbing steadily, with e-book sales particularly strong. Whether to distract themselves from their troubles or to enliven the boredom of being cooped up for months on end, quarantined readers are reaching for books more often than ever. Novels set in Renaissance France offer readers ample opportunity to escape the excruciating sameness of days in twenty-first century lockdown.

Do your eyes ache from staring at a computer screen for work or school? Watch journeymen printers pull pages on a Lyonnais printing press instead.

Need some exercise? Gallop through the forest as you hunt with the king.

Photo credit: Andy_Casrol

Tired of retracing the same path through your tiny apartment? Dance a galliard in the ballroom of a sumptuous château. (Be careful not to trip as you stare up at the gorgeous ceiling!) 

Photo credit: Zairon

An engaging novel set in a long ago era has the power to remove you from your present situation for a time, providing a refuge where you can soothe your mind and regain your balance. When everyday life becomes particularly stressful, historical fiction has a distinct advantage over contemporary fiction, for it does not simply translate lived difficulties directly onto the page. Instead of reinforcing and intensifying the malaise of all-to-familiar situations, historical fiction affords a larger perspective against which current circumstances can be better judged and more easily borne.

Even as it distracts and entertains, historical fiction reminds us of a certain truth, one that brings a good measure of comfort: no matter how bad things got in the past, when plague, famine, war, and poverty had consequences far more dire than they do today, societies not only survived, but eventually prospered. Reading a historical novel interrupts the constant stream of breaking news that bombards us with catastrophe to remind us that, in all likelihood, things will turn out fine in the end. 

And if we can laugh and dream and fall in love with a handsome prince along the way, all the better.

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Not yet convinced of the worth of Renaissance historical fiction? Be sure to return for Reason #2.

Interview with Karen Odden, author of A TRACE OF DECEIT

When I visited my intrepid agent Josh Getzler at HGLiterary last June, he offered me, as a parting gift, a selection of novels that he had represented. The blue cover of A DANGEROUS DUET (William Morrow, 2018), a Victorian mystery written by Karen Odden, immediately caught my eye. I so enjoyed reading it that when I recently saw Karen promoting her latest release, A TRACE OF DECEIT (William Morrow, 2019), I reached out to her on social media. Turns out we have a lot in common (besides our industrious and generous agent!). Like me, Karen has a doctorate in literature and writes novels set in the era of her academic specialty. Unlike me, she has been published three times over and has another book in the pipeline. She graciously agreed to answer some questions about her background, her novels, and her writing career. Sample her expertise and engaging voice in the interview below, and you'll be eager to read her exceptional mysteries for yourself. I know I can't wait to get my hands on A TRACE OF DECEIT!

1. Your three books all take place in London during the Victorian era (1870s). How did you become interested in this time period? Why does it fascinate you so? 

Years ago, I wrote my PhD dissertation at NYU on Victorian railway disasters. It probably seems odd to most of us, but people were obsessed with them—sort of the way we’re riveted by computer hacking or terrorism. Accounts of train wrecks appeared in novels, medical literature, newspaper accounts, parliamentary papers, legal trial reports, and so on. In order to understand their power in the public imagination, I studied Victorian literature and history, especially London during Queen Victoria’s era, 1837-1901.

But as I researched, the 1870s became my favorite decade because so much changed so rapidly in the social, economic, and political spheres. It was like someone set loose a rollercoaster car! Some of this is because literacy rates were rising, so people wrote, read, and talked about social issues more. But many of the debates of the 1850s and 1860s led to a swath of new laws in the 1870s. For example, traditionally under British law, a married woman was “covered” by her husband. This meant she could not vote, hold her own money, initiate a contract or divorce, or inherit property. In 1870, as a result of the Married Woman’s Property Act, for the first time, a woman could earn and keep her wages (shocking, I know!) and she could inherit property up to £200. It was one small but significant reversal of a huge social inequality. The Elementary Education Act of 1870 finally made education mandatory for all children ages 6-12. A series of safety and labor laws were passed to protect works in the mills and factories. Furthermore, new institutions such as the Slade School of Art (founded 1871) were opening to women. And the Franco-Prussian War (1871) tipped the balance of power in continental Europe from France to newly-united Germany—with results that we’d continue to see well into the twentieth century. Yet all this change occurred during a decade that was smack in the middle of the longest stable reign in British history. I find that so interesting.

2. What sparks a new book for you first—a character, a situation, or a setting? How do you work to construct a mystery plot? 

At the heart of each of my novels is a story I read or heard that clutched at me and refused to let go. As I researched railways, I found descriptions of people climbing out of burning carriages, horses trapped and screaming in stock cars, railway surgeons faced with hundreds of patients lying in the surrounding fields. So a railway disaster became the propelling event in A Lady in the Smoke. Similarly, when I was researching for A Dangerous Duet, I discovered the brilliant pianist Fanny Dickens (Charles’s older sister) was forced to leave the Royal Academy because she could no longer afford tuition. There were no opportunities for Fanny to make the money—and even if she earned it, she could have been forced to hand it over to her father to pay the family’s debts. It felt horribly unfair to me. A Trace of Deceit was shaped by painful stories of addiction, told to me by friends. And my next book is about the brutality of the African slave and ivory trades in the 1870s. In 2013, I read a book that included accounts of how Belgian agents would seize African women and children and put them in cages with no food or water, freeing them only when their husbands or fathers brought back the requisite 70 pounds of rubber. Now, seven years later, I’ll put this story to use.

3. Do you travel for your research? What has been your most thrilling discovery?

I had been to London a few times, even before I started writing books set there. My most thrilling discovery was Wilton’s Music Hall in Whitechapel—not far from where the Ripper murders took place. It is (so far as I know) the only standing Victorian Music Hall in London, and it’s an amazing space. If you’ve seen Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows with Robert Downey, Jr., you’ve seen Wilton’s. As Sherlock, Downey is chased all over the theater by a Cossack.

Photo credit: http://www.wiltons.org.uk

Wilton’s was created in the mid-1800s by John Wilton, who joined together three houses in Graces Alley to make the music hall. As I walked through the doors, I could smell the hops, and I tripped over a nail in the wooden floorboards. I went downstairs and prowled around the basement with its uneven floors and plaster coming off the bricks. Then I came up and looked at the music hall itself—the U-shaped room, painted blue, with gilt and turned pillars. Instantly, I could see Nell in her piano alcove, and the setting for my story began to feel solid.

Photo credit: Karen Odden

Photo credit: Karen Odden

That trip, I also went to the Royal Academy of Music, where I found the 1820s class roster with Fanny Dickens’s name and a plaque with information about her. The music hall industry arose too late for Fanny, but by the 1850s there were dozens of halls in London willing to pay for talent—though men made twice what women did. And so was born the story of the pianist Nell Hallam, who needs to earn money for her tuition at the Academy and dresses as a man to take a position in a Soho music hall.

4. Inspector Matthew Hallam, the brother of the protagonist in your previous book A DANGEROUS DUET, reappears as a main character in A TRACE OF DECEIT. Are you building a series featuring Matthew? Does Nell, the protagonist of DUET, figure in TRACE?

Nell appears incidentally in A Trace of Deceit, but I don’t want to do a “series” in the usual way. I do have a few secondary overlapping characters—particularly Tom Flynn, my shrewd, straight-talking writer for the (fictional) London newspaper, the Falcon. He is based on my high school English teacher, who was the first person who told me I could write.

Frankly, I don’t trust myself to keep a protagonist interesting (or to stay interested in her!) to the same degree, after her first book, when the “big” issue from her past is resolved. Besides, I’m a research junkie. I’ve explored railways, music halls, the London art and auction world, and now the African ivory trade … and assuming there’s a fifth book, I want to move on to another aspect of Victorian London.

5. What do you love most about your new heroine, Annabel Rowe? How does she frustrate you? 

I love Annabel because she cares. She cares about her brother Edwin’s well-being. She cares about honoring his memory by finding out who he was before he died. She cares about telling the truth in her paintings—representing people as they really are, rather than some idealized version.

I wouldn’t say she frustrated me, necessarily … maybe she should have! But from the outset, I knew how she had to change. As a child, Annabel grew up the fourth person in a house with a very intense triangle: her father was fiercely ambitious for Edwin, who resented his father’s demands, and her mother ran interference. Annabel was always the observer because as a child, it was safer. Even as an adult, her habit of observing kept her out of the fray, and it worked (up to a point) for becoming a painter. But over the course of the novel, she has to learn how being solely an onlooker limits her. She needs to find a way to deepen her engagement with the world, or she will never become the painter she could be … and she won’t solve Edwin’s murder.

6. What authors inspired you to become a mystery writer? How does their work influence yours? 

As a child, my family spent every Sunday out at my grandparents’ house where my parents played bridge and I was left to scavenge in my grandmother’s library. There I found all kinds of books—bodice rippers, mysteries, suspense! I was probably around eleven when I found Mary Stewart, Victoria Holt, and Daphne DuMaurier, and I’d say they were my first “adult” mysteries. (I had already torn through Nancy Drew, etc.) I loved the way these three women authors created vivid settings, fashioned young women characters who weren’t superheroes but seemed to have something in common with me, and had plots that wove together past tragedies and present events. I also loved how a single murder and a personal desire for truth could spin suspense for an entire book. A plot didn’t need to have fast cars and exploding buildings and bloodbaths to be a page-turner. The suspense for me came through the small scenes, the interactions among characters. Over the years, I realize I’m drawn to books that have some of these qualities—Tana French’s books and Stef Penney’s The Tenderness of Wolves are books I reread every year or two. As far as being influenced, I like to think my books place the reader in Victorian London, where they will hear “Oranges and Lemons” from the church bells and smell the tallow from the chandler’s shop. And my protagonists, young women amateur sleuths, all have to learn something from their past in order to move forward in their present, and to solve the mystery in front of them.

7. You have now published three mystery novels. What have you learned over the course of these three books? Do you have any advice for aspiring writers? 

Oh gosh. I could write a book just on what I’ve learned! But I’ll pick two things that stand out. First, it’s great to start with a clear plot idea (a railway crash, say). But I’ve come to realize the importance of spending hours and hours on backstories for my characters—even the minor ones. Then, after I write the first draft, I go back to my backstories and revise them, which in turn deepens my manuscript. I have separate pages for each character, and I write their histories from their point-of-view, although that information doesn’t all make it into the novel. The codicil to “backstories are vital” is that although backstories need to be in my head, they don’t need to be in my book.

Second, after writing, I trim. By my third or fourth draft, the manuscript is about 120,000 words—and then, when I feel my manuscript is “done” as far as plot and character, and all the details fit, and I love it exactly the way it is, I slash 20,000 words out. It inevitably makes a leaner, cleaner manuscript—and reducing redundancy, or even omitting a few lines here and there leaves room for the reader to fill in. Readers feel more engaged when they have to do some of the work … and I’ve learned to trust my readers. They’re smart.

8. What has been the most exciting moment of your writing career so far? Have you ever been ready to throw in the towel? What made you persevere? 

Eight years ago, before I found my agent, I nearly gave up. I’d been working on the manuscript for A Lady in the Smoke, and some YA manuscripts, for years. I just couldn’t find an agent to take more than a passing interest, and though I’d taken classes and read books on writing, I didn’t know what was wrong with them. I remember talking to my friend Jody Hallam (for whom Matthew Hallam is named) about how incredibly discouraged I was, and how I could write for another ten years and still get nowhere. The uncertainty was terrible. She urged me to find a free-lance editor before I gave up. Another friend, also a writer, recommended someone who helped me get the manuscript in shape for submission—and I sent it out to ten agents I found on Publisher’s Marketplace. I heard back from eight, and two eventually offered representation.

Like Annabel (and all my heroines) I had something to learn: I need feedback at various stages. My advice is to find a strong critique group, or a mentor who will work one-on-one, if that suits you. Join organizations such as Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America, who have resources to help you. And of course, keep writing.

The thing is, even if I had never found an agent or a publisher, I’d write anyway. I have dozens of notebooks and piles of manuscript pages and drafts of articles and essays that will probably never see the light of day. A friend asked me once, “Don’t you ever want to take a day off from writing?” I replied that it’s sort of like brushing my teeth; I could skip a day, but it doesn’t feel good. Honestly, I love writing more than I hate failing at it. And my reading and writing has brought me to a community with so many lovely, smart, talented readers, librarians, bloggers, booksellers, and writers that even if I never publish another book, I’ve won.

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Karen Odden served as an Associate Lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and taught classes in English language and literature at New York University and the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. She has contributed essays and chapters to books and journals, including Studies in the Novel, Journal of Victorian Culture, and Victorian Crime, Madness, and Sensation; for ten years, she served as an Assistant Editor for the academic journal, Victorian Literature and Culture (Cambridge UP); and she has written introductions for Barnes and Noble's Classics Series editions of books by Dickens and Trollope. Prior to receiving her Ph.D. in English, she worked as an Editorial Assistant at Harcourt Brace Jovanovich and McGraw-Hill, as a Media Buyer for Christie's Auction House in New York, and as a bartender at the airport in Rochester, where she learned how to stop being shy. She is a member of SCBWI and Mystery Writers of America. Her first book, A Lady in the Smoke, was a USA Today Bestseller and won the 2017 New Mexico-Arizona award for eBook Fiction. Her second book, from William Morrow/Harper Collins, is A Dangerous Duet, which won the New Mexico-Arizona book award for Historical Fiction in 2019; and her third Victorian mystery, A Trace of Deceit, was published in December 2019. 

Karen currently resides in Scottsdale, Arizona with her husband, her two children, and her ridiculously cute beagle, Rosy.

Learn more about Karen and her books by visiting her website.

6 Essential Truths about Editing a Novel, Learned the Hard Way

Revision is one of the most exhilarating and, at the same time, daunting aspects of writing a novel. Although typing “The End” does mark an important milestone—after all, you just created an entire world out of nothing—“The Beginning of the End” might be a more fitting tag. A successful novel must satisfy on so many levels (language, logic, characterization, world-building, theme) that is can take multiple passes get everything working together to maximal effect.

I recently finished revising, for the umpteenth time, a novel that I wrote over five years ago. Back then, after several rounds of revision, I sincerely believed the novel represented my best effort and could not be improved in any significant way.

How wrong I was!

The current version of this novel is so much stronger that I’m embarrassed I ever thought those earlier versions any good. In many ways, this latest version hardly resembles those earlier incarnations at all.

When I began writing fiction, I had no idea how important—and lengthy—the revision process was. Since I’m a plotter who writes very slowly, agonizing over every sentence, I naturally considered those sentences, and the chapters they comprised, more or less “finished” once I squeezed them onto the paper. However, once I started critiquing the work of other writers and seeing how their manuscripts evolved and strengthened over multiple drafts, my resistance to editing softened. I’ll now be the first to admit that only through extensive serial revisions can a novel reach its fullest, most satisfying potential.

Experience has taught me these truths about editing:

1. You can’t know the real story until you have the entire thing down on paper.

No matter how carefully you plan out your story ahead of time, new ideas surface during the act of drafting. The more you write, the more you discover about your story and characters. It is difficult to know exactly what you are working with until the entire mess is down on paper. Only at that point can you see the relationship of the parts to each other and to the whole. Over time, I’ve learned it's much more effective and artistically freeing to plow through the initial drafts of a story, focusing on plot and character development without getting hung up subtler issues, especially language. Once you’ve got a mass of lumpy brown clay on your wheel, you can begin to spin and tease and shape it into something beautiful.

2. If you have misgivings about some aspect of your story, don’t ignore them.

Listen to your heart, as the old song advised. If, once you have your initial draft on paper, something doesn’t feel right, figure out what it is and fix it. Don’t be afraid to change things up just because you wrote them a certain way first time around. I see now that in earlier versions of my novel, I had forced the plot in a certain direction because the story had too many characters. I had to distribute motivations and actions among them all, making it very difficult to fit all the pieces together in the end. I managed to do it, but this forced resolution never rang true. Removing a couple of characters crystalized motivations and allowed the resolution to evolve in a more natural and convincing way. I would have saved much time and mental anguish if I’d admitted earlier on that those characters, intriguing though they were, unnecessarily complicated the plot.

3. Focus on one particular issue per revision.

A single edit doesn’t have to fix every problem in a manuscript. Often, it is more helpful to read through a manuscript several times, focusing on different aspects with each read. For example, read through first for plot continuity and plausibility problems. Strengthen characterization on a second read. On a third, find ways to clarify theme. One of my last revisions, for example, focused solely on deepening a certain relationship in order to achieve a more emotionally satisfying dénouement. Although it is difficult not to polish as you go, try to save language tweaking for the final edit, after all cuts and additions have been made. You don’t want to waste time fixing awkward phrasing or repetitive wording in passages that might disappear for other reasons.

4. Other eyes are crucial in determining what's wrong with or missing from a manuscript.

After working on a novel for years, it is difficult to have enough distance to assess its flaws. A trusted reader, be it a well-read friend, a critique partner, or a skilled agent, can uncover issues and make suggestions that could lift your manuscript from good to great. It can be useful to have different people read subsequent drafts, so that their impressions are always fresh and not colored by what they remember from before.

5. Less is more.

This truth, the hardest for me to learn, is now the mantra I repeat over and over as I review my material. It is easy to locate and excise superfluous adjectives and adverbs, repetitive phrasing, and wordy transitions. However, less obvious things can bog down a manuscript: excessive internal thought, projection of future events, detailed stage direction, unnecessary description, filler dialogue. Over-explaining, my particular weakness, can also bloat a draft. Trust the reader to fill in gaps and make connections—readers want to play an active role in the construction of sense. The goal of editing it to remove the dross so that the gold can shine.

6. It can always be better.

Now, instead of dreading revision, I look forward to it. I embrace it as a challenge, rather than evidence of failure. It is exciting to see a strong, engaging text emerge from a flabby mass of words and ideas. Though he spoke of sculpting, Michelangelo's words capture the purpose and joy of editing:

"I saw the angel in the marble and I carved until I set him free." 

Free the angels in your own work! Happy editing.

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Do you have any editing tips or techniques to share?

Guest Post: How Many Sticks Do You Need For A Sacred Fire? by Susan Spann, Author of TRIAL ON MOUNT KOYA

How Many Sticks Do You Need For a Sacred Fire?

by Susan Spann

Writing historical mystery means balancing a fast-paced, often intricate plot with compelling, historically accurate details. To keep the plot moving, I often have to eliminate the bulk of my research--including many details I find intriguing. Occasionally, however, the decision what to keep and what ends up on the proverbial "cutting room floor" becomes more difficult.

Case in point: the Shingon Buddhist ceremonies in TRIAL ON MOUNT KOYA.

While researching the novel, I spent time on Koyasan, staying in thousand year-old Shingon temples and attending both worship services and the goma (fire ritual) that the priests still perform each morning just after dawn. As with most religious rituals, the goma involves detailed preparations, numerous books, bowls, and implements, and follows a carefully prescribed liturgical pattern. I discussed the ceremony with the priests, observed it closely, and took copious notes (and photographs, and video recordings) to ensure I understood it in detail.

As a result, the first draft of the goma scene in TRIAL ON MOUNT KOYA ran several pages--far too long--and I found myself debating exactly how many sticks I needed to build this particular sacred fire. On one hand, the goma is an integral part of Shingon worship. I needed the ritual in the book, both to create a realistic portrait of Shingon temple life in the 16th century and to advance some character-related elements of the plot. On the other hand, too much detail bogs down the pace and bores the reader. (Never a good idea.)

Deciding which details to keep, and which to cut, seemed difficult until I re-watched the video clips and reviewed my favorite photographs of the goma ceremonies I attended. The photos, in particular, captured the ritual's essence--flickering tongues of fire in a darkened room, the shadow of a Shingon priest on the drum that accompanied his chant, and the clouds of incense I could almost still feel coating the inside of my nose.

These sensory memories set a course for my editing. By focusing on my senses--especially what I heard and smelled--I stripped away the extraneous details, leaving what I hoped would convey the sights and sounds of a dramatic Shingon ritual, wherein wooden prayers are consumed by sacred fire and carried to heaven on incense-laden smoke. While remaining true, and accurate, in the details that remained, my scene no longer contained esoteric dogma, the Sanskrit words most readers would not understand, or heavily descriptive passages that did not advance the plot.

To my surprise, the scene did a better job of conveying the ritual after editing, even though I removed almost three-quarters of the original goma scene. Less really was more--more readable, more evocative, and more successful at conveying the drama and suspense of the fire ritual.

Apparently, you don't need all that many sticks to build a sacred fire after all.

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Susan Spann is the 2015 Rocky Mountain FIction Writers' Writer of the Year and the author of six novels in the Shinobi Mystery series. She has a degree in Asian Studies and a lifelong love of Japanese history and culture. She is currently spending a year in Japan, researching her next two novels and climbing Japan's most famous mountains for her first nonfiction book, 100 SUMMITS, scheduled for publication in 2020. She posts photos and stories about her travels in Japan at www.susanspann.com.

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Read my review of Susan's novel here. Enter to win a copy of TRIAL ON MOUNT KOYA here!

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Interspace: The Writer's Limbo

I'm giving it a name and a formal definition.

Interspace (n): the turbulent time between turning in a completed revision to a beta reader, agent, or editor and hearing back from said recipient; an unsettled period of waiting during which a writer's emotions fluctuate hourly between exhilaration and dread.   

Having entered interspace, I rejoice over finishing a project I labored over for years--even as I find myself lost without my familiar preoccupation.

I'm confident of having addressed all the points in the editorial letter, correcting things that didn't work, excising redundancies, adding new material to enrich plot and deepen characterization--even as I wonder if my efforts only uncovered further deficiences or fatal flaws.

I pride myself on having read every word aloud to check rhythm, flow, and precision--even as I imagine those words now echoing hollowly in other ears.

I congratulate myself for having pushed my craft to its limits and achieving things I never thought I could do--even as I recognize that true artistry (or even mere proficiency) stands more distant than ever.

I'm pleased with both the process and the product of my effort...

...but was it enough? Will the manuscript satisfy my reader's concerns, or has it only reached a futher stage of "almost-but-not-quite"? If more work remains, will I have the courage and strength to do it?

Until I hear back, I try to distract myself with neglected household chores, a teetering To-Be-Read pile, and friends I ignored during the intensity of the final push. I try to immerse myself in The Next Project, knowing how foolish it is to waste precious time. Yet it's hard to switch gears and settle into a new story when I don't know if I'm truly done with this one.

So I fret and I stew, amazed and grateful that anyone is willing to spend time with my words in the first place.

And no matter what the judgment ultimately is, I realize I'm one step closer to my dream.

How do you experience interspace?

Interview with Susan Spann, Author of THE NINJA'S DAUGHTER

Today I welcome my friend Susan Spann, author of the popular Shinobi Mystery series set in sixteenth century Japan. Susan has just published the fourth novel in the series. In THE NINJA'S DAUGHTER (which I reviewed yesterday), master ninja Hiro Hattori and Portuguese Jesuit Father Mateo investigate the murder of an actor's daughter from the Kyoto theater district--an investigation that soon reveals a mysterious golden coin, a forbidden love affair, a missing mask, and a dangerous link to corruption that leaves both Hiro and Father Mateo running for their lives. I hope the following interview with Susan will have you running to your nearest bookstore for a copy of THE NINJA'S DAUGHTER as soon as you reach the end!

THE NINJA’S DAUGHTER is set in the theater district of sixteenth-century Kyoto, with actors as primary characters. What about this milieu particularly appealed to you as a rich setting for a historical mystery?

Medieval Japanese culture was multifaceted, with each social or mercantile group coexisting but also living distinctly separately from the others. I love exploring a different aspect of the culture in every book, and the theater world had such fascinating customs that I wanted to bring it to life. For example, the custom that only men could act on the stage made women far less prominent in the acting guilds than they often were among merchant families. The idea that an actor’s daughter might not accept her societal role—and what might happen to her as a result—intrigued me, and that in turn gave birth to THE NINJA'S DAUGHTER.

What is your favorite scene from THE NINJA’S DAUGHTER and why? Which scene was the most difficult to write?

My favorite scene is one that actually didn’t appear in the original manuscript. My fabulous agent, Sandra Bond, read the completed story before we sent it on to my editor, Dan Mayer, at Seventh Street Books. When she finished reading, she sent me an email that basically said, “it’s great . . . but it needs another death.” Without giving away too much (or any spoilers) I added a scene in which Hiro and Father Mateo have to deal with an unexpected (and unwanted) body.

All of the scenes involving the victim’s family were difficult to write, because of their high emotional charge. The victim was a teenaged girl, and portraying that loss realistically was difficult, both in the writing and on an emotional level.

Last year you were able to travel to Japan for research. How have your descriptions benefitted from your sensory experience of Japan? Did cultural or historical discoveries influence the trajectory of your plot?

I adore Japan, and spending time there definitely impacts my novels. The biggest benefit is walking in the footsteps of my characters—seeing the temples and shrines that form the settings of many scenes in the novel helps me set the scenery in a more realistic and accurate way. For example, visiting Fushimi Inari shrine helped me recreate the nō play that takes place near the base of Mt. Inari in THE NINJA'S DAUGHTER.

I spent a lot of time researching nō theater and the performers’ customs, particularly the treatment of the special, often sacred masks the performers wore on stage. Although most of that research did not make it onto the page, my fascination with masks did inspire and influence one of the story’s major subplots.

Since I’ve never written a mystery, I’d love to hear how you construct one. Do you begin from a forward-looking “what if” sort of question or work backwards from a desired end result? Do you layer in different characters’ reactions and alibis in subsequent drafts or do you have most things worked out before you begin? As you write, how do you judge whether misdirection and red herrings are working?

Since I write series mystery, I already have my detectives and their basic world in mind before I start each book. Because of that, I normally start with the setting and work from there. THE NINJA'S DAUGHTER is unusual, because it was originally supposed to be set among the outcaste classes—butchers and tanners—but I switched it to a theater book about halfway through the initial draft when I realized my original setting wouldn’t work for the plot I had in mind. (Fortunately, I already knew I wanted to write a theater book, so it was more a matter of overlaying the theater on the existing skeleton than a total rewrite.)

With most of my mysteries, including next year’s BETRAYAL AT IGA, I start with a setting—for that book, the mountain village that’s home to my detective’s Iga ninja clan—and then decide what kind of death would likely occur in that particular time and place. Since the Iga ninjas were assassins, and Hiro and Father Mateo are traveling there to keep the peace during tense negotiations with the rival Koga clan, the most alarming death I could imagine was the murder of the Koga ambassador, by poison, under conditions that made it look as if the Iga clan was responsible for his death. The rest of the plot, the suspects, and the story grew from there.

I write an 8-10 page outline before I start drafting, and most of the alibis, red herrings, and major clues get figured out at the outline stage. Once I start writing, however, the outline always changes. New characters show up unexpectedly, existing characters act in ways I hadn’t anticipated, and I often discover subplots and additional clues as I go along.

Hiro and Father Mateo have worked together now through four novels. How has their relationship changed since the first book? What obstacle/character flaw/cultural restriction poses the greatest threat to their friendship? Do you foresee a time when their mutual trust might become sorely tested?

Hiro and Father Mateo’s relationship has definitely deepened, and their friendship strengthened substantially, since CLAWS OF THE CAT. They’ve begun to trust one another more, which allows me to share more about them with readers (through their communications). Their different perspectives—Hiro’s pragmatism and Father Mateo’s faith—continue to be stumbling blocks on occasion, but their growing mutual respect allows them to get along despite their differences.

Their mutual trust will absolutely be tested in future books, starting with the next installment, BETRAYAL OF IGA.

Of the numerous secondary characters who populate your novels, which intrigues you the most? Has any character turned out very different from what you first envisioned?

I love writing secondary characters, because they can be so unique and so different—and because I don’t necessarily have to bring them back in every book. Many of them do surprise me, mainly by becoming more important to the story than I originally anticipated. In THE NINJA'S DAUGHTER, my favorite secondary character is the victim’s younger brother, Haru. The scene in which he saves a giant Japanese beetle runs a close second for my favorite scene in the book.

THE NINJA’S DAUGHTER is your fourth published novel. How have you progressed as a writer since penning the first, CLAWS OF THE CAT? How do you challenge yourself to improve and grow, especially within the confines of a series?

I try to improve my craft with every book I write (and hopefully, I succeed!). My dialogue skills have definitely improved since CLAWS OF THE CAT, and I think my characters have more depth now, too. I’ve learned to tap into deeper emotions, which was important for THE NINJA'S DAUGHTER.

From a series perspective, I don’t let myself get away with repeating tricks. Each novel has to involve a different kind of murder, in a different setting, and my ninja detective, Hiro, has to use a different kind of ninja skill or tool in every book. In the future installments, I’ll also be putting my medieval Japanese spin on a few classic mystery tropes, like the “locked room murder”—but presented in a fresh, new way.

What advice do you have for aspiring writers, especially in today’s difficult market?

To quote the movie GALAXY QUEST: “Never give up—Never surrender.” Publishing is difficult, and the journey to publication can be long, hard, and apparently never-ending. It took me ten years and five full manuscripts to find my agent and secure my first publishing deal. Many times, I wondered if the effort was worth it or if I should just give up. The problem is, you never know if the last rejection really was the last one, and the next response you receive might be the “yes” that you’ve been waiting for.

My advice is keep writing, keep believing, and keep pushing forward. As soon as you finish one book, start the next one. Each manuscript you write will make you stronger, and bring you that much closer to fulfillment of your dream.

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You can learn more about Susan Spann and her books at her website.

Weaving Witcheries

Researching a new novel today, I came across this poem. It featured in the February 1892 issue of The Californian Illustrated Magazine.

My Library

by J.W. Wood

Within these covers, homely tho' some be,

     Life's kaleidoscope is writ in varying stage,---

The tragedies of war and poets' melody,

     The mimicry of love, philosophy of sage.

Here warrior tells his deeds of valor o'er,

     With gallant knight who poised his lance for fame;

The antiquary fraught with mystic lore,

     The pensive lover sighing forth his flame,

'Tis here most strange and pleasant company;---

     The sparkling wit, the weirdly muttering crone,

A rondeau neat, a dismal threnody,

     Compose this mimic world in calf-bound tome.

__________

Here let me muse in silent reverie

     Amidst these mystic scenes of by-gone age,

And with the aeons past and aeons yet to be

     Weave witcheries for yet unlettered page.

I could find no information about the poet, but he or she perfectly captures (albeit in the hyperbolic language of the time) the task of the historical novelist--connecting past and future by "weaving witcheries" in the present. A wonderful image, especially with Halloween upon us. But whereas Wood's writer is trapped in "silent reverie" facing the "yet unlettered page"--suffering, in other words, from writer's block--I am about to embark on that curiously crazy endeavor known as NaNoWriMo, or drafting 50,000 words of a new novel in thirty days.  I'll be jumping four centuries and a continent for this new project and will need every bit of witchery-weaving skill I possess. Wish me luck!

Happy Halloween

Festina lente, or Hurry up and Finish already!

I promised to share some of the things I learned while completing what I hope will be the final revision of my manuscript before it goes out on submission to publishers. Although I'd heard many of these things before from other writers, it wasn't until I experienced them for myself that I realized how true they were. Here is what the intense, exhilarating and oftentimes harrowing experience of revising a four hundred page novel taught me:

1) It can always be better.

Never be satisfied -- that's my new motto. Passages that in the past I'd thought polished and perfected revealed flaws when viewed through the filters of time and distance. Sure, a manuscript can be good, even quite good, but would a little more effort make it really sparkle? Eventually, you reach the point where you have to stop revising either due to time constraints or the need to preserve your sanity, but until then, every word, every sentence should be subjected to careful and considered review.

2) Less really is more.

Cut, cut, cut. Words. Scenes. Characters. Extraneous dialogue. I was amazed at how much I managed to shave off a manuscript I'd already edited several times. Whittling away at the excess verbiage not only makes the words that remain shine like polished gems, but frees up space for deepening character and motivation and fine-tuning the plot. Scenes become all the more powerful when every word, every image, pulls its weight and contributes to the overall effect. 

3) Don't avoid the difficult scenes.

When my agent read an unfinished version of the manuscript last summer along with an outline of the chapters still to be written, she said, "You are going to include a scene where Characters X and Y confront each other and the balance of power shifts, right?" It wasn't a question. I knew such a scene was necessary but I'd left it out, hoping to write around it because it was going to be, well, so hard to write. Frankly, it scared the bejeebers out of me. At the time, I still lacked the plot element upon which the shift depended; moreover, I feared my writing skills weren't adequate to the task. But I couldn't deny it: having such a vital confrontation occur off-stage robbed the conclusion of emotional heft and eviscerated Character X's moral victory. Taking my agent's advice, I forced myself to write the scene. It definitely was hard going, but transformed the last quarter of the book. I can't imagine the ending having the impact it now does without it.

During this final rewrite, I realized that a similar show-down between two different characters, a show-down I had again purposely avoided writing, was necessary to explain and justify one of the character's later actions. Having learned that it is possible to ignore those niggling voices of inadequacy and plunge headfirst into a heated emotional conflict one would run screaming from in real life, I wrote the scene. It's now one of my favorites and adds a healthy bit of emotional complexity to the dénouement.

Moral of the story: don't take the easy way out. Stretch yourself, technically and emotionally, by writing those scenes that challenge you in the deepest ways possible. Both your manuscript and you as a writer will be all the better for it.

4) Trust your gut and give rein to your subconscious.

If your instincts tell you that a scene doesn't work, or a character's actions fail to convince, or the plot has sprung more leaks than a colander, listen. Better to wrestle with such issues in early drafts than to ignore them and have to contort or rewrite large chunks of the story later in order to correct the flaws. But as you work to rectify the problem, don't force things; allow your subconscious mind time to assess the true nature of the problem and sort through possible solutions. Given the number of times I've abandoned a scene in despair, only to come back to it later with the perfect solution in hand, I'm convinced that my mind continues to work on the problem when I'm not consciously thinking about it. In fact, I often come up with stronger, more creative ideas when I'm not actively trying to produce them. It's your story--trust your mind and heart to find the most effective way to tell it.

5) Keep the momentum going, but don't rush.

You need to have the story fresh in your mind to make proper connections between chapters and to layer in additional emotional or thematic depth; working in fits and starts makes such shading and fine-tuning all the more difficult. I found it a great help to reread the entire manuscript start to finish before I began revising in order to have the shape of it fresh in my mind. Once I started to revise, I did as much as possible every day and tried not to let more than a day go by without working.

However, revising a large project like this has a rhythm of its own that must be respected. At the beginning, excited and eager, I moved along at a steady clip. Things slowed down towards the middle, and at times I thought I would never finish. Once over the hump, I began to get antsy and just wanted to be done. Knowing that I might get less discerning the closer I got to the end, I decided to edit the last quarter of the book out of sequence. I jumped ahead to revise the last section before returning to polish the third. This way, I wasn't tempted to let things slide in the all-important concluding chapters in a rush to finish. I am so thankful I chose this path and credit to it the energy I still had to recast and rewrite the ending of the novel.

When I was a child, I embroidered a picture of a tortoise surrounded by the motto "Slow but steady wins the race." Little did I know that forty years later this would become my writing mantra. If publication is the prize, I still haven't won it, but I'm getting all the closer, one step/page/manuscript at a time.

I'm Back!

To my faithful readers:

No, I have not been abducted by aliens. I have not succumbed to beriberi or bubonic plague or even a common cold. I have not fled civilization for life on a deserted isle. I have not entered a cloistered convent, become an undercover spy, or fallen into a coma.

I revised my novel.

That feat occasioned -- necessitated -- my absence here. I realized that if I ever hoped to finish that monster, I needed to ignore everything else and attack it with all my heart, all my mind, and all my attention.

It was a bloody battle, but last week I planted my pennant in the beast's breast. I won.

At least I think (I hope ) I have.

Vittore Carpaccio (1502)

I thought I'd finished before. In December, after four years of work and numerous revisions, I sent what I considered the final version of the manuscript to my agent. I was ready to go out on submission the very next day.

Unfortunately, said agent was not as impressed with my opus as I was. She and her assistant had several suggestions: some tightening here, some developing there, better management of the suspense throughout...

After two weeks of despair -- I mean, if it would have been better some other way, I would have done it that way from the beginning, right? -- I set aside my disappointment and got back to work. Maybe they had a point. Maybe their suggestions would make a good manuscript even better. Maybe I'd been so happy to "finish" that I'd overlooked some inherent weaknesses I knew were there but suspected might be too difficult to fix.

I set to work.

Once I started changing things, I realized they WERE right. It was a big job (I still suspect I might have changed more than even they intended), but once I started fiddling, the cascade effect set in. Change this, you have to change that. Enlarge this character's role, you have to adjust the role of this other one. To increase the tension here, you need to tighten the strings way back there.

I can't tell you how many times I was ready to give up. I wrote myself down blind alleys, only realizing they were blind after writing dozens of painstakingly crafted pages. I rearranged events in new combinations, thinking I'd solved one problem, only to find I'd created a different one somewhere else. I focused so much on creating suspense that the novel started to stray from its original identity and turn into a murder who-done-it, something I'd never intended it to be.

I wallowed in the mess, seemingly stymied at every turn. I thought I would never, ever finish. I started to wonder what I'd done that merited such excruciating expiation.

But somehow it happened. I panted on, pushing myself to the end, my brain hurting worse than my lungs, and I finished. I'D WRITTEN AND REVISED A SECOND NOVEL, one I could be proud of. I hit "send" at 2 am Pacific time, thrilled that the finished product would pop up on my agent's screen as soon as she logged in that morning.

Will this publishing story have a happy ending? That remains to be seen. For now I'm biting my nails, waiting to hear back, wondering whether the manuscript is finally be ready to go out on submission. If not, more tweaking awaits. If it is, then I face the torment of submission.

But at least now I'm satisfied that the story can't be told any other way. I've given it my best effort all around. I am so glad my agent encouraged me to keep working on it, because not only did the manuscript turn out better in the end, but I learned so much in the process, things that will help me write an even better novel next time.

I'll share some of these things soon.

But in the meantime, I want to thank you for not abandoning my poor neglected blog. I have exciting things planned for the coming weeks, now that I'll have the time to post again regularly.

And I hope that in the not-too-distant-future I will have good news to share.

A happy ending.

In Which I Reveal My Project, Process and Aspirations

Today I am participating in the Monday Blog Tour about writers' projects and processes. Many thanks to poet and YA science fiction writer LJ Cohen for tagging me!

1. What am I currently working on?

At present, I am putting the finishing touches on agent-suggested revisions to my historical novel set at the opulent court of François I in the winter of 1539. As François's arch-enemy Charles V of Spain arrives for a crucial state visit, three women--a painter, the king's mistress, and an artist's model--become embroiled in a web of rivalries that threatens the very peace of France. Narrated from the alternating perspectives of painter, patron and painted, the novel plumbs the world of the court artist and exposes the forces that transform the worthiest of ambitions into the most vicious of rivalries.

2) How does my work differ from others in the genre?

With a Ph.D in sixteenth-century French, I hope to offer a depth of research and a sensibility that will bring the early modern world fully alive. I present a broader, continental perspective on the ever-popular Tudor era by focusing on the court of François I, Henry VIII's personal and political rival, a man as equally fascinating and ambitious as the English king. François dreamt of transforming France into a New Rome of art and culture, and my novel centers on his efforts to build at Fontainebleau a palace to rival the glories of Italy. My work will appeal to readers with a penchant for France as well as readers of Tudor fiction who are looking for something different.

3) Why do I write what I do?

A life-long lover of France and French culture, I want to share the fascinating things I've learned in the course of my academic studies with a general audience. As a reader, I am always eager to find historical fiction set in early modern France, and am usually disappointed in my search--this rich period has hardly been plumbed! As a writer, therefore, I am following the advice writers so often hear--to write the books I myself would love to read. (Of course, I hope others will love to read them, too!)

4) How does my writing process work?

I've written two complete manuscripts, and the approach was slightly different for each. In my first manuscript, every character, with one exception, was a fictional creation. Wanting to explore the challenges that faced a woman with literary aspirations in the sixteenth century, but having no interest in writing a fictionalized biography, I took a historical situation and setting and, using the poet Louise Labé as a model, created my own cast of characters and plot. (Note--Not the best of strategies in a historical fiction market that thrives on books about "marquee" figures.) With my current manuscript, I changed tactics--nearly every character is historical, as well as the dramatic events I recount. I was lucky to discover during my research a happy coincidence of character, situation, and conflict that provided the framework of a plot whose gaps and motivations were just begging for elaboration.

As for my day-to-day writing process, it's pretty consistent and definitely far from glamorous. Once I drop my son off at school each morning, I sit in front of my computer writing and revising until it's time to pick him up in the afternoon. I work again in the evening after he's in bed. I write linearly, working from a loose outline, and am a slow, perfect-it-as I go kind of writer. No pantsing or go-with-the-flow first drafts for me! My outlines are fluid, however, as I often discover new ideas and possibilities as the story progresses and the characters develop. I am lucky to have the support of several dedicated writer friends, with whom I often check in during the day via email or Facebook as we work towards our separate goals. They help keep me on track, as does my husband, who has read every word in every draft of both novels and provides invaluable input on what does and does not work. I am sure he's as eager as I am to begin the submission process!

5) Nominate two authors to continue the Blog Tour.

I nominate Arabella Stokes, writer of sassy romance fiction with a Southern flair, and Laura Bradbury, a fellow francophile who has written a memoir about leaving a prestigious legal career to renovate a decrepit, revolutionary-era ruin in Burgundy. Their installments will appear on their blogs on Monday, April 14. You can read LJ Cohen's tour contribution here. Thanks again for the opportunity to participate and share a glimpse of my writerly world.

Sixteenth Century Quote of the Week

photo credit

Never was there a greater need to aid poets than now.

Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549)

Queen, religious reformer, writer

Letter to Anne de Montmorency, 1536

The Moan Zone

After watching my alma mater get soundly beaten in the National Championship game Monday night, I was feeling down. Very down. Especially since, on the writing front, I have officially entered the Moan Zone.

The Moan Zone is a specific, generally unavoidable stage in the process of writing a novel. Like the "red zone" on a football field, which covers the last twenty yards before the goal line, the Moan Zone comprises the last quarter of a novel, those final ten or so chapters that precede "The End."

diagram from Sports Morsel

First-time novelists don't expect the Moan Zone, and even seasoned writers forget. After all, you, the writer, have already moved the ball (your manuscript) eighty or so yards down the field. Maybe it wasn't always smooth going, but enthusiasm and discovery powered you forward. Your characters pulled together, your muse juked the best defenders, the refs made all the right calls. You ground out hundreds of pages, pleased with your progress, impressed with your skills. Now the goal line beckons, tantalizingly close. Just a few more plays and you'll score what's sure to be a best-seller.

Then you hit the Moan Zone.

All of a sudden, you feel deflated, exhausted, scared. Those last twenty yards stretch longer than the eighty you've already traveled. The characters who played seamlessly on the trek downfield turn ornery and fumble-prone, misreading cues, dropping passes, flubbing routes. The antagonists loom larger than ever, fused in a chink-free wall, determined never to allow the ball into the end zone. The seats behind the goal post are filled with opposing fans wearing t-shirts that read "Your novel stinks like old cleats!" and "Even your mom won't read it." Your cheerleaders snarl and snark, tossing aside their pom-poms and chanting "Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah!" through their megaphones to confuse and dispirit you even more.

The play clock ticks down as you try to devise the perfect play, a clever route past these obstacles. But the game plan that seemed so brilliant, so clear-cut in the first quarter is now a tangled mess of dropped themes, dead-ends and forgotten details. Instead of coalescing, the threads of the novel break formation, zipping about like fans storming the field. You bang your head against your clipboard, cursing your ineptitude. You're convinced you've lost control of the team. There's nothing left to do but punt.

The Moan Zone is a painful, frustrating, messy place to be.

But, if you've done your job right, it's exactly where you want to be.

Look at it this way. You've spent the last three hundred pages making life difficult for your players, complicating their relationships, foiling their plans, lobbing problem after problem at them. You've stumbled onto plot twists you never envisioned--never could have envisioned--when you first stepped onto the field. Motifs and metaphors have bubbled up from your subconscious. Backstory has offered new insight into character. Tangents have multiplied and gained importance. Now you find yourself drowning in possibility, despairing over how to make it all fit together in the final chapters. Don't lose heart! Instead, rejoice in the challenge--the riot of ideas shows you've delved beyond the obvious, the straightforward, the cliched; you've pushed yourself and your material to exciting, provocative places. Of course it's going to take effort to bring everything to an effective close, but that's what makes a great game. If you knew who was going to win before you started, why bother playing?

When you reach the Moan Zone, you must ignore the jeers and groans and listen to the story. The story will offer its solution, but only if you silence the defeatist voices and let it speak.

So buck up and buckle down. If writing a novel were easy, everyone would pen one. Only two teams play in the National Championship, and they didn't get there by freezing at the opponent's twenty yard line.

Best thing is, when you write a book, you get unlimited downs. If a play fails, scratch it and try something else. Go back to previous plays and make adjustments. Repeat the opening kick-off as many times as you need. Unlike a real game, you can do things over and over until you get them right.

If you up your game in the Moan Zone, you'll not only cross that goal line--you might even take home the trophy.

Now crank up the Fight Song and let's play ball.

photo credit: Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

Forbidden Fruit

First grade. Late October. Art class.

Assignment: Draw a pumpkin. Not any pumpkin, but the "follow-the-teacher's-instructions-EXACTLY-so-they-all-look-the-same" kind of pumpkin.

Little parochial-school me did as she was told. I'm a fairly decent artist, so my pumpkin actually resembled the ripe orange fruit. But that pumpkin looked so lonely sitting there in the middle of the page. A page with room along the margins. Plenty of room for me, lover of words that I was even then, to prove that I not only knew how to draw a pumpkin, but I could spell it.

P-U-M-K-I-N 

I scrawled beneath that merry orange globe.

It looked so cool.

So cool that Robert, sitting next to me, wrote the same thing on his.

The teacher, however, did not think it cool.

Remember, this was forty-odd years ago, back when "invented spelling" was not tolerated, much less encouraged.

Besides, I had not only disobeyed the teacher's instructions, I had tempted a classmate into sin. (Did I mention my middle name is Eve?) Had I been older, I'm sure she would have marched me right off to confession.

Instead, she took my paper and Robert's and tore them to pieces in front of the entire class. A strident warning to any of the other students who might have contemplated following us down the path of verbal insurrection.

The mute, proper pumpkins she hung the around the perimeter of the room. For the next few weeks, every time I looked up I was reminded of my transgression. Forgive me, Father, for I have misspelled.

But I didn't care. For the first time in my life, I had used the written word to declare my independence. I had refused to let the expectations of others stifle me. It was a heady feeling.

I look back on that incident and frankly, I'm surprised. Surprised that teacher didn't scare my love of words right out of me. Surprised I ever had the guts to pick up a pen--or crayon--again.

If anything, it only made me more determined to use them.

Perhaps my quest for publication is nothing more than a desire to prove to Miss Fitzgibbons that now I can spell. But I don't think so. It's more than that. It's a declaration of who I am.

I'll prove the naysayers wrong. Someday, I'll hold a published novel in my hand and this time they won't be able to wrest if from me.

I wonder whatever happened to Robert. I don't remember his last name.
Maybe it was Ludlum.

photo credit: Evan Swigart

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"SCHOOL" was the prompt Susan Spann suggested to our writing group this week. The other members' posts can be found here, here,  here, here, here, and here. Join us! Link back to your own memory of or meditation on school.

An Anne by Any Other Name: What to Do When Historical Characters Share the Same Name

In the novel I am currently working on, this sentence:

François said to Charles, "Never cross Anne."

could mean sixteen different things.

Yes, you read that correctly. Sixteen.

You see, in this novel there are four François, two Charles and two Annes: four different subjects who could be counseling one of two characters against annoying either of two others. The King could be warning the emperor not to vex the royal mistress, or the court portraitist cautioning the prince not to betray the grand master, or perhaps it is the Arabic-speaking Italian painter tipping off the prince about the duchess... If I've done my math correctly, readers of my novel could understand the aforementioned sentence sixteen different ways.

Did I intend to confuse and confound them?

No. That's simply what happens when historical characters bear the same name.

At one point or another, most writers of historical fiction face the challenge of how to differentiate between historical characters who share identical given names. The task is not trivial, since readers will abandon a book if they are unable to keep its characters and their relationships straight. Writers of contemporary fiction avoid the danger by endowing their characters with unique and unusual names that distinguish them from every other member of the cast (and imaginary characters, unlike modern children, are not burdened with having to repeat and spell these original names aloud each they make a new acquaintance). Writers of historical fiction, however, are bound to respect the given names of their historical characters if they wish to remain true to the historical record. In early modern Europe, convention forced parents to choose baby names from a restricted roster of saints, historic figures, and ancestors; in some regions, the birth order of the child limited these options even further. Just as an author of historical fiction has little freedom in choosing which characters figure in the action of the historical events she recounts, she has even less leeway in deciding what to call those characters.

These circumstances can result in the author having to tell a tale involving, ahem, four François, two Charles, and two Annes, with a Catherine thrown in for good measure.

The problem becomes even more complicated when one takes into account other issues, such as the fact that historical figures are often referred to by different names in different countries and that what the characters call each other is not necessarily what the narrator must, or should, call them.

So what can an author do to prevent her reader from becoming hopelessly befuddled? Here are some of the strategies I've employed:

1) Provide contextual clues. 

It happens that one of my Annes is a man (the duc de Montmorency) and the other a woman (Anne d'Heilly, the duchesse d'Étampes). So if a passage describes the cut of Anne's gown or examines Anne's duties as Grand Constable of France, the reader should be able immediately to surmise which Anne is in question. Likewise, one of the four François is king, the other three artists; the king would probably not bemoan the laziness of apprentices, nor the artists debate the details of a peace treaty. Setting (boudoir versus council chamber, throne room versus studio), interlocutors, topic of conversation, actions and inner dialog should all offer clear indications as to the identity of the characters. If not, there is more wrong with the scene than faulty nomenclature.


2) Use honorary titles and/or place names instead of given names.

In my novel, I usually refer to Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, as "the emperor," "Charles-Quint," or "le Hapsbourg" in order to distinguish him from the king's son, Charles, the duc d'Orléans. Since another duke figures prominently in the action, I cannot, except in precise circumstances, refer to the king's son as "the duke"; I must call him "Orléans" and the other duke "Montmorency."Anne d'Etampes, on the other hand, is the only duchess, so she enjoys the privilege of claiming that title and avoiding confusion with Anne de Montmorency. As two of the Italian artists are Francescos, one becomes Boulogne (French for the man's city of origin, Bologna), and the other goes by his last name, Pellegrino. Using honorary titles or designating characters by their place of origin avoids the problem of identical given names altogether.

3) Substitute nicknames.

Another way to simplify the problem is to invent or unearth nicknames for your characters. As King François's best friend and his lover are both Annes, I have him call his mistress by the diminutive form of the name, Annette. Anne d'Étampes and Orléans, when speaking of their common enemy Anne de Montmorency, refer to him by a private nickname known only to them--"l'Autre" (the "other" Anne). One of the artists, François Clouet, goes by the historically documented nickname Jamet. Both he and his father, Jean Clouet, used the nickname interchangeably throughout their careers (much to the chagrin of art historians). In the novel, I restrict use of the nickname to the son, thereby distinguishing him both from his father and from the other two artists named Francesco.

4) Provide a list of characters at the beginning of the book.

It is particularly helpful to include, for the reader's easy reference, all the titles and nicknames associated with each character throughout the story.

5) Ensure that the names of fictional characters are different from each other and dissimilar to the overused historical names.

When creating fictional characters to round out a historical setting, endow them with distinctive, memorable names. Like any good modern parent, I found obscure, yet historically documented, names for my fictional characters: Tiphaine, Agnolo, Sandro, Faustine. Little chance, I hope, of the reader confusing them with the more prominent Annes, Charles and François.

Final words of advice: once you, as author, decide how to distinguish between similarly-named characters, BE CONSISTENT in the terms you use. Don't refer to a character one way in the first chapter and a different way in the next. Of course, characters will refer to each other in varied ways, depending on their social status and degree of intimacy; again, decide how each character will address the others and do not stray from those conventions.

Your readers will not only thank you, but might even remember your name.

*********
Readers: How do you prefer to see an author handle this issue?

Authors: What devices do you use to avoid name confusion?

I'd love to hear your suggestions!