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With Regency Rumours, once I knew the date and the main historical characters, I needed to know what the house and park were like at the time and glean what information I could about the real people who would appear in my story.
Usually I know enough about the period to start and then look up things as I need to—mostly using my research collection of almost a thousand books. I know now what I don’t know and have to be very careful to check: politics, for write every example, is a grey area!
When I go into completely new territory, as I did with a book set in 410AD, I established the chronology of the real events and wrote leaving blanks, or highlighting areas in different colours where I needed to go back and fact-check. What was the name of the road out of Rome the Visigoths would have taken? What was the layout of a public bathhouse? Were togas worn in 410AD? And so on. By doing that I try and avoid the research taking over the story and dominating my characters.
What one piece of advice would you give to a writer at the start of their career?
Not one piece, but three. Firstly, read everything you can get your hands on: first for pleasure and then with an analytical eye. Why did that make you laugh, make you cry, make you identify with the heroine or impatiently flick over a few pages?
Secondly, develop your writing muscles. Try and write every day, even if it is only a few paragraphs, and then apply that same analytical eye to what you have written.
And, thirdly, don’t despair if it takes a while.
No one manages to play a musical instrument, run a marathon or paint a great picture the first time they try. Writing is a craft and an art and it has to be practised.
