cacakerbamakhlukpolitik

As historical novelists, the Hoydens all spend a good portion of our writing time delving into the past and finding creative ways to bring it to life. I did that on my most recent project, but in a different way from my usual historical research. The project, His Spanish Bride , is a novella about how my characters, Suzanne and Malcolm Rannoch/Mélanie and Charles Fraser, became betrothed and married. At this point, I know Malcolm and Suzanne/Charles and Mel very well. One of the joys of writing about them is that their dialogue and interactions come very easily while at the same time I feel I'm always finding new aspects of them and their relationship to explore. Several of the books I've written about the Rannochs/Frasers have been out of chronological order, and I've always found it quite easy to pick up with them at different points in time. But in all the stories they've been married and the parents of at least one child. There are secrets between them, yet in man...

No, I’m not talking about the damage an author can inflict with one too many rounds of revising (though that would make an interesting blog topic in and of itself). I’m thinking of characters who are damaged by their past experiences, whether it’s a painful childhood, battlefield trauma, the morally ambiguous life of a spy, or a love affair gone tragically wrong. Which comes down to the focus of this blog--history. Whether it's real historical events, such as the brutal aftermath of the Siege of Badajoz, or fictional history, such as a lover's betrayal or parental neglect, the scars of the past create damaged characters. To explore and heal that damage, a writer has to delve into the character's history. As a reader and writer, I've always been fascinated by history, both real historical events and the history of fictional characters (I love sequels and prequels, seeing characters at differnet points in their lives, part of what I so enjoyed about the new Star Trek mov...