Past, Imperfect

Why I write historical fiction

I’m often asked why I write historical fiction. Some people get confused by the concept; they get hung up on what is historical fact and what I make up, to the point that they can’t enjoy the ride. But a lot of people do enjoy novels that let them learn something new while also getting swept up in an emotional story (because rarely can nonfiction provide that kind of emotion).

Lately, I’ve come to the conclusion that my affinity for art (movies, TV, books) set in a historical time period is simply this: I understand the past better than I understand the present. And I’m more interested in the past than I am in the future, because the future is terrifying. (At least it is to me.)

Not that history isn’t full of terrible things. Of course it is!! But still I find myself wanting to live (through my writing) in a distant era when things seemed simpler. Even evil seems simpler, when you look at it from a distance. Easier to define. The bad guys are obvious and usually in the end, good triumphs over evil.

Today, it doesn’t always feel like that will happen.

So anyway. Historical fiction!! Did I ever tell you how I came to write it? I think I did—it was an accident, I stumbled into an exhibit of Victorian photos and found myself face-to-face with the inspiration for Alice in Wonderland.

I quickly researched her and discovered an amazing story with lots of unexplained holes in it, which is perfect for someone to novelize. I didn’t know this was historical fiction until my agent explained it was. I just thought it was a good story, my imagination filled in some of the missing pieces, and voila!

And I continue to look for great, untold stories set in a past that I feel more excited in exploring than the present. Too often, those stories are about women. Because for so long history has been written mainly by men—and white men, at that. So there are countless untold stories featuring women and people of color out there just begging to be discovered.

Or begging to be told in a new way.

That’s why I decided to write The Windsor Affair, which is my new book coming out in June. Lots of people are familiar with the abdication, in 1936, of King Edward VIII who gave up the throne for “the woman I love,” Wallis Simpson. To me, the interesting part of that whole scandalous event was the relationship of the two women at the heart of it. And that relationship hadn’t really been explored in either fiction or nonfiction. Wallis Simpson and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon were bitter enemies almost to the end but they had so many similarities! In a different time and place they might have been good friends.

Royal Mean Girls, or Royal Frenemies—that’s kind of a great hook for a book!

And in writing this, then, I got to live in a past that made sense to me—and appealed to me. Hitler was evil—of course. The Nazis were defeated—yay! Clothes were glamorous—Chanel! Dior! Norman Hartnell!

Gossip was delicious—you should hear what those two women said about each other! Women were stronger than their husbands—true for both couples at the center of this. But they had to wield their strength subtly—true for so many women today.

I think the best historical fiction provides both an escape and a realization that people 50, 100, even 200 years ago felt and hoped and loved and despaired the same way people do today.

But they did it in better clothes.

And that’s why I write historical fiction.