History Made Fun

I grew up in an educated and rather well off family setting. My father was a Cultural Anthropologist, my mother a Sociologist. My paternal grandfather died when I was young, but my grandmother was the love of my life. I was always looking forward to visits to her house in St. Louis. She had taught history and English to high school students during WWII. The love for all things historic rubbed off on me, as did the urge to major in Anthropology AND English with a concentration in Creative Writing. Then, being the glutton for punishment that I am, I began writing not one but two works of Historical Fiction and published an anthology of poetry.

Now several years and lots of gray hair later, I still have the same intense fondness for writing historical fiction that I did when I was a child. The fun comes when someone reads my work and wonder out loud if what I had written really happened or not. Ellis Peters has been the model for my writing style and source of much of the factual data that I have verified and used in several of my works. In many cases the history of the Dark Ages is almost indistinguishable from fable, and since such ignoble Historical characters as King Henry VIII demolished most of the monasteries and killed or imprisoned most of the bards of the day, one has a greater degree of latitude than one choosing to set a piece in any other time period.

As a college student I coined the the phrase "factual fiction" to analyze Ellis Peters' novels for a class in literary criticism. I did so because as a reader one is not distracted by anachronistic details. That is the sign of a Great writer. I only hope that readers of my own works are left in the same enjoyable spot.