Mothers working in factories to support America’s war effort while their children roamed the streets at night provides a minor plot thread and a stroke of historical color in Dames Fight Harder, the sixth Maggie Sullivan mystery. It’s grounded firmly in the reality of 1940s Dayton, Ohio, where the detective… Read More »Working Women and Latchkey Kids in WWII America by M. Ruth Myers
My Gareth & Gwen Medieval Mysteries are set during King Stephen’s reign, a time full of turmoil because of the conflict between him and King Henry’s daughter, Maud (Matilda). Both claimed the throne of England and tore the country apart trying to get it. Maud was supported by her half-brother, Robert… Read More »The Reign of King Stephen by Sarah Woodbury
Every few months, a newcomer posts a query to the Historical Novel Society’s Facebook page asking about language and historical fiction. Typically, the poster wants to know how “historically accurate” each writer tries to be. Being a linguist, I find these discussions impossible to comprehend. Learning a past version of… Read More »A Few Words about Language and Time by Anna Castle
One of my readers asked me the other day about what daily life was like. My books are about the few days of adventure in between daily living—which is of course the point. When a character is time traveling back and forth to a medieval world, the bits in between,… Read More »Daily Living in the Middle Ages by Sarah Woodbury
For twenty years before I started writing novels, I was a radio and television broadcaster in Los Angeles, having worked for all three national networks and the local PBS station during that “other” career. I find, eleven novels and two nonfiction books later, that the skillset I acquired in that… Read More »Fact Vs. Fiction: Getting It Right (Even When You’re Making It Up) by CiJi Ware