Are you interested in writing historical fiction? Here is a simple prompt to get you started: 1. Choose a historical event that you find interesting and research it for half an hour. Setting yourself a time limit for the research will minimize the chance that you fall down a rabbit hole in your research! 2. Create a character who may have a unique perspective on this event. This may not even be a person who experienced the event firsthand. For example, imagine the historical event you choose is Dunkirk.The character you choose could be the granddaughter of a soldier who fought in the battle, or, a fisherman who aided in the rescue of Allied troops - and perhaps your story begins with the discovery of [...]

If you had asked me back in 2020 which genres I preferred as a writer, I would have said fantasy, science fiction, young adult, middle grade… anything but historical fiction. But then I discovered writers like Kristin Hannah and Kate Quinn, and I became hooked on the genre. Historical Fiction plunges the writer into an alternative world – not a fully imagined one, as fantasy does, but an alternative world that actually existed, and yet on some level must still be invented,  since we can never know what it was like to be there. Historical Fiction is a great way to step inside the shoes of people whose lives were so different from our own, but whose dreams and hopes were just the same. Reading [...]