Deborah Swift's Blog, page 24
July 31, 2018
Author update Summer 2018
My blog has been somewhat neglected for the last couple of months because I have become involved in two exciting new projects, at the same time as releasing my second book in the Pepys Trilogy. The Black Death I am collaborating with a group of historical fiction authors to bring you tales from around the […]
May 29, 2018
Historical Fiction – The Ending is in the Beginning
How many of you have found a book has been ruined by its ending? Me too. Turns out that in fact we are hard-wired to wait for that pay-off, that final few moments of the story when it gives us its meaning. Here’s what a scientific experiment told us about endings: The Peak-end Rule The […]
February 14, 2018
Of Camels and Napoleon – Burke and The Bedouin
My guest today is Tom Williams When Deborah suggested I write about an object associated with Burke and the Bedouin (published by Endeavour Press), I really struggled to think of one. The story does feature the odd camel (there’s a clue on the cover) but I felt that an olivewood carving dating from a trip […]
February 11, 2018
In praise of the omnivorous reader
I have always been a voracious reader. I read anything and everything, and don’t care about genre as long as the book is well-written and appeals to me. So since the advent of e-books I am baffled by the idea that readers want to read the same book over and over. I’m also baffled by […]
February 5, 2018
The Silsden Hoard: West Yorkshire’s Mysterious Treasure
by Katherine Clements One coin marks the first to go A second bodes the fall The third will seal a sinner’s fate The Devil take them all… So recites Mercy Booth, the protagonist of my latest novel, recalling an old folkloric rhyme, remembered from her childhood. The ancient coins she refers to, with their […]
January 21, 2018
Fort Howe, protection during the American War of Independence.
I know I have many readers from Canada, so today I welcome Diane Parkinson to share her research for her new book ‘On a Stormy Primeval Shore‘. Over to Diane. In researching my novel set in New Brunswick, Canada, in the eighteenth century, I needed a fort for my heroine’s father to be stationed. Several […]
January 20, 2018
Historical Fiction 10 Editing Tips: No 10 Feigning Accuracy
I’ve had a reader take me to task – rightly – over an incorrect detail of clothing worn by the hero of my books, the 16th-century Italian philosopher Giordano Bruno, even while they seemed quite happy to accept the much more flagrant invention of turning him into a spy who solves murders. Stephanie Merritt (SJ Parris) […]
January 15, 2018
Riding with the gauchos – Burke in the Land of Silver
I’m delighted to welcome Tom Williams to my blog today, to tell us all about riding with the gauchos, and his new book. Burke in the Land of Silver tells the story of the doomed British invasion of Argentina in 1806 and the role that may well have been played by real-life spy James Burke. There […]
December 7, 2017
The Dressmaker’s Secret – puts the history into historical romance
If you are after a well-written historical romance, then this could be the book for you. Set in Regency Italy and England in the years from 1819, it is a story about a mother and daughter, Sarah and Emilia. Sarah is on the run from her past in England, and from her violent husband, but Emilia […]
November 30, 2017
Who remembers Shorthand?
Pepys wrote his famous diary in shorthand, and I wanted to try to get a feel for the way it might have been translated. Pepys used a method that was common at the time, invented by Thomas Shelton. Shelton taught his system for speed writing over a period of thirty years, improving it from the stenography […]
