Moving On from Historical Fiction? Well, Maybe by Peg Herring

I once was a high school English educator, and I loved teaching Macbeth. When I decided to try writing a novel, that’s what came to mind, so I invented a girl in the thane’s household who had her own story to tell while his went on in the background. After two years of query letters sent by snail mail, Macbeth’s Niece was accepted by an agent. Two years after that, a publisher showed interest, and two years after that, the book was released. My career was on its way.

Except every published writer knows that isn’t usually what happens. The book got great reviews. It sold through (earned enough to cover the advance and costs), so the publisher was happy. I was a successful writer, but like gazillions of others I’ve met since those early days, I never became a household name.

“One book isn’t enough,” people said, and I hadn’t been sitting idle during those six years. I’d begun a series featuring another favorite historical character, Elizabeth Tudor. My publisher liked the idea, and I followed Elizabeth over her turbulent life, choosing titles that included the forms of address assigned to her as her status changed over time. Her Highness’ First Murder was released, again to favorable reviews, then Poison, Your Grace, and The Lady Flirts with Death. In the final entry of the series, Her Majesty’s Mischief, Elizabeth is finally queen, as she was meant to be.

After the first two Simon & Elizabeth Mysteries were released, however, my publisher went bankrupt. Hidden in legalese in the almost daily letters from lawyers was the news that I would never be paid for at least a year’s worth of sales. Once the courts were finished, the publisher released The Lady Flirts with Death, so I worked to finish the final book of the series, Her Majesty’s Mischief. Soon news came that they’d decided to pare down their genre offerings, deleting all mysteries.

I hadn’t put all my eggs in one basket. I’ve always written what interests me, and I’d done some other books that interested a different agent and eventually a new, much smaller but energetic publishing house. The series that interested them wasn’t historical, which for me was both a positive and a negative. I love the research involved in historical novels, but they’re more work than a casual observer might imagine. Bothersome questions keep popping up that call for in-depth reading, like “Did Elizabeth Tudor eat with a fork?” or “How would Macbeth have traveled to Scone?” Books set in modern times require research too, but not to the extent that dropping into a completely different time/place/society does.

So I moved on from historicals…sort of. I left Tudor England behind, but many of my books have historical, or at least vintage, aspects. I particularly enjoy writing about the 1960s, familiar to me but strange to many readers. My students used to ask why I didn’t go to Woodstock, and they were disappointed when I told them that at the time, I had no idea it was going on. They also asked if I attended antiwar protests in college, and I had to confess there weren’t any at my small university. Besides, I was busy studying Tudor England!

Even “newer” historicals require research. I’m currently working on a novel about the border crisis in Thailand after the Vietnam War. We didn’t hear much about it back then, but in many ways it parallels our current situation on the southern border: a number of very vocal residents don’t want to let a bunch of aliens into “their” country, but those aliens aren’t safe in their home country. The result is a huge, messy pileup at the border that creates problems no one knows how to solve.

History repeats itself, and that’s the great thing about writing historical fiction. If we only pay attention, we can learn from the mistakes of others. Writers of HF give us the opportunity to understand that, and the crises of the past give them the opportunity to create stories of love, struggle, and betrayal. While I’m not writing historicals as such these days, history keeps creeping into my work, because in essence, all stories come from “once upon a time.”

Peg Herring, September 9, 2019

Peg Herring is a writer from Michigan who also writes cozy mysteries as Maggie Pill. Her Simon & Elizabeth Mysteries are available in a boxed set, on sale in September for just $.99. on Kindle and other retailers