I'm dashing about, doing laundry, making packing lists, getting the red nose and antlers put on our car, and trying to get organized before we leave for South Carolina and more book research.  Blog posts may be a bit spotty for a few days, but I'll check in as often as possible. In the meantime, here are a couple of views of "Rudolf the Red-Nosed Redcar,"  in case you see us tootling down the road.

  

I also wanted everyone to know that there is a special Cyber Monday offer on the Katzenhaus website. If you fill in your name and e-mail address, I'll send you a coupon code.  You can then take that code to Smashwords and download a free copy of Beyond All Price in any e-book format -- HTML, Kindle, Apple iBook, Sony, Kobo, or Nook. 

If you haven't read Nellie Chase's story, now's your chance.  If  you already have your copy, give this one as a gift.

I asked my history class at the Open Studies department of Edinburgh University, who have been attending a course with the somewhat provocative title ‘Rome Caput Mundi: Curia, Cardinals and Courtesans 1300 to 1590’, to give me their thoughts on historical fiction.  More particularly I wanted to know what they thought about including it on the course reading list.

The answers I received covered the full range of opinion: clearly some were horrified by the idea while others possibly thought my questionnaire a waste of time, or had more pressing engagements at four o’clock in the afternoon.  Presumably those motives, and the fact that I had premised my request by saying I would not be lying in wait for them after class, accounted for the absence of answers from about half the class. However, we had a lively discussion before class ended and some of the written answers were enlightening.

Yes, historical fiction was a useful way of getting into the atmosphere of the time, or ‘setting the scene’, as well as revealing ‘the way of living, perhaps indeed the ways of thinking.’  Many agreed that it offered an excellent quick introduction to the dramatis personae of any given period. Although at least one person felt that a greater danger was posed by television historical series and films: an interesting point because they were content to rely on an author’s written interpretation and their own imagination while reading, but not on the visual, ‘less reliable’ interpretation in films and TV. 

Some gave examples: Dorothy Dunnett, an Edinburgh writer, was a favourite for one student who wrote: ‘irrespective of the “romantic” central characters, she leaves her readers very familiar with the geography of mid-15 century Bruges, the relationships between the traders, even how goods were transported. I learned what a “cog” was from her books!’ 

Historical crime was also popular: C.J. Sansom was noted by two or three as having enticed them into history.

One person commented on what she termed ‘cross-over’ books that manage to keep a foot in both camps: she cited John Guy’s ‘jolly good’ biography of Mary Queen of Scots which she was prompted to read following a course she took at the university this summer.  ‘Something by Philippa Gregory or Alison Weir’s book on Katherine Swynford are good cross-overs.’  However, she also added (as did two or three others) that Wolf Hall is ‘unreadable’.   (Someone described it as ‘incredibly tedious’ – but then you can’t please everyone).  However, for academic writers, the ‘revival of well-presented narrative history can be a plus – although it can be at the expense of analysis.’

A difference in the focus between academic history and historical fiction was identified by three people, also because we had been talking about it in the discussion. When talking about whether literary authors and academics learn from other, someone commented that ‘each reinforces the other. Academics tend to concentrate on the elites, while fiction [and he was thinking particularly of Sansom] provides more insight into ordinary life.’   Someone else also commented that ‘fiction can use isolated facts as a source of story and then use conjecture to elaborate on them’ – very true.  The crossover between fact and fiction was also debated: ‘some supposedly academic material, presented as fact, is fiction: i.e. theories of authorship of Shakespeare’s plays.’ 

At least one person noted that our understanding of history, or of any one period, is constantly evolving in the light of new research, and that it is also affected by our changing understanding of our own times.  However, the fact that some historians are turning their hands to historical fiction was generally seen as a money-making wheeze (no harm in that!): ‘Historians write fiction for money, which is fine if they can write good fiction!’  The same person underlined the fact that ‘historical fiction is not correlated to academic history’, adding that ‘fiction should be about people … imaginative and exciting’.

In conclusion, on the question of the popularity of historical fiction and whether it threatens academic history, various people stressed the importance of understanding where the boundaries are.  I liked the student’s comment that ‘It may be a problem in schools, but not beyond.  No harm in making history accessible, so long as it is accurate.’   This was reinforced by another who wrote that he would read historical fiction as course reading, ‘if I had confidence in the sources – otherwise it’s pure escapism’. Well, that’s the pot of gold at the end of the historical fiction rainbow, isn’t it?

Lucinda is also Features Editor for Historical Novels Review, the quarterly magazine published by the Historical Novel Society.

Here's one more excerpt from Carolyn Howard-Johnson -- this time on what to do if you win an award for your book.

A list of things authors should do with their awards once they’ve won them appeared in the first edition of The Frugal Book Promoter and, because that information is so important, it appears in the just-released second edition, too. Here is the list authors (or folks in any business, really!) will want to keep for the day when they have an award they can use to help with their branding.

I like to think of myself as a writer of fiction and a poet. So I had a tendency to resist the e-book landslide when it first came tumbling around the ears of creative writers. But then—thankfully—my past retail experience took hold. (See my how-to books for retailers at www.howotoditfrugally.com/retailers_books.htm.)

I realized that that authors are retailers. We sell books. We sell our books to agents. We sell books to publishers. We sell books at the back of the room when we speak. We sell books on online bookstores. We’re selling books when we do book signings or workshops. And I remembered that old retail maxim: Give your customer (in this case your reader) what they want, when they want it, and let them pay for it the way they want to.

E-books are all electronic but they come in all sizes from whitepapers (short how-tos or informationals) that should, by all rights, be called e-papers to full-blown books. Some are given away. Some are sold. They are offered as .pdf files, ready for readers to read on their screens or to be printed out. E-books can also be downloaded to multimedia readers. Surely one of these iterations can be used to your advantage.

I believe that every book should be issued as an e-book—either only as an e-book or in addition to the paperback iteration. Here is why:

1. When your book is published as an e-book, in addition to a traditional have-and-hold book, you let your readers get your book in whatever form they want.

2. You let your customers who want to read your book immediately get it fast.

3. People who live in other parts of the world can access your book without the wait and without the shipping expense.

4. E-books can also be published fast. Once written, I was able to have the first edition of The Frugal Book Promoter ready to use as a syllabus of sorts for my UCLA Extension Writers’ Program class in less than thirty days.

5. You can update your book fast. Maybe you discovered a last-minute typo in your novel. Books on tech, as an example—require frequent updates.

6. E-books can be offered inexpensively to starving students or budget-conscious readers.

7. The number of pages is not an issue; you can include whatever you think best fills the reader’s (or your story’s) needs.

8. You can reach niche markets without much upfront expense. That means you could take a book aimed generally at marketing and refine it to meet the needs of the publishing industry. Or the retail industry. Ahem!

9. An author can publish an e-book absolutely free.

10. But mostly—tada!—e-books are great tools for promotion.

And just how do you use an e-book to promote or drive your writing career? Lots of ways.

I’m sold on e-books. I even make the poetry chapbooks I publish myself available as e-books (www.howtodoitfrugally.com/poetry_books.htm) . People who love poetry take their Kindles when they travel to Paris as readily as people who read nonfiction business books.