Will your story be in our tenth anthology? ... Four words which created a legendary story ... -~-~- Picture this: a mother and her four children walking through the streets of Edinburgh as the night begins to close in. They are looking for a room for the night, but each house is full. The stone buildings seem to grow darker as the streetlamps throw out as much shadow as light. Finally, one of the proprietors offers a positive response and the family hurry inside, into a cramped room with metal bunkbeds, but nonetheless comfy mattresses. Frightened at these new surroundings, concerned that she has brought her children into an unsafe surrounding, the mother puts the children to bed and tries to persuade herself to sleep. The room inside is darker than the putrid orange glow of the sporadic streetlights in the world beyond the curtains which are masking the window, and she once more checks the lock on the door before climbing into her own bed. Then it happens. Knock-knock-knock. Willing h...
The events of the past week have brought home to me just how important the personal aspect and view of history are.
One of the key questions I have both asked other authors and been asked myself, is whether there was a specific character they identify with. For my own part, I've always answered that there is a little bit of me in all my characters. And it's true. I have never based a character totally on myself because I have never belonged to a point in time except my own, I can't know how I would react!
Now, I am less than a decade from my own lifespan encompassing the general 50-year gap for an historical fiction setting - a scary thought! Suddenly, my own early adventures are starting to sound like something from a historical novel.
A few weeks ago, Crowvus published Child at the Pantry Door and, at the end of the month, we will be publishing the next issue of our journal Hooded: Memoirs. The personal aspect to both of these books is a crucial resource to historical writers in the future. They will be akin to the use of letters and diaries in building reliable characters and settings.
Child at the Pantry Door is hugely significant to me on many levels. It encapsulates - not only an individual's journey - but the echoes of countless generations of my own family as well as those families we have brushed shoulders with over my four-and-a-bit decades. I do remember taking a course on Food and Feasting through the Ages which was truly fascinating, but I'm not sure I learnt anything more than what is so comfortably detailed in Child at the Pantry Door. Food is such a significant thing. It defines key moments of our lives (think: Christmas Pudding; Birthday Cake etc...) and yet it is something historical writers often either overlook or use as a chance to perform an info-dump. Taste is a largely missed sense in writing, despite being a highly evocative one. The kitchen has always been an integral part of life. We, as historical fiction writers, should never neglect this.
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