Deborah Swift's Blog, page 28

From Cinderella to Dorothy, the power of shoes to transform

Everyone has a favourite pair of shoes. For me it is a pair of shoes I got married in – black patent with black and white spotted bows on the front. I know, they may not be to your taste, but shoes are very individual things! You can tell a lot about a person, or […]

Young Adult Historical Fiction – an adult’s view

I was recently asked to give a talk at a conference about Teen and Young Adult historical fiction, and time being short, we didn’t get onto one of the most pertinent discussions about Young Adult historical fiction, which is, what exactly is a young adult? And when do you cease to become a ‘teen’ and […]

Historical Fiction – 10 Editing Tools. No 3 – The Sound of Time

In most of my novels the passing of time is something that is hard to convey in an era when nobody wore a watch, nobody had a mobile phone, and ways of telling the time were by sundial, candle calendar, or by listening out for church bells. Something that is really helpful to do is […]

Historical Fiction – Ten Editing Tools. No 2: Truth

When I am writing my first few drafts my main concern is to get the story out there, and for that reason at the beginning I tend to write in broad brushstrokes. This is especially true in the dialogue when things are getting tense, and I just want to progress the argument. I find I […]

Nettle Shirts and Cunning Women – herbal secrets of 17th century England

I have loved researching 17th Century botany and herbs for my novels, The Lady’s Slipper and The Gilded Lily. For both of them I have had to research the botanical beliefs of a society that relied on native plants for a good many things, including medicine, cleaning agents, and home-manufactured goods such as cloth. One of […]

Nettle Shirts and Cunning Women ��� herbal secrets of 17th century England

I have loved researching 17th Century botany and herbs for my novels,��The Lady���s Slipper and The Gilded Lily. For both of them I have had to research the botanical beliefs of a society that relied on native plants for a good many things, including medicine, cleaning agents, and home-manufactured goods such as cloth. One of […]

Five Novels of The English Civil War

My recommended read for this week is The Last Roundhead by Jemahl Evans. This is a one-off – you will read nothing else like it. Meticulously researched, this is the story of one man’s journey through the battles of the English Civil War. If you want to know what it was like at Edgehill, and […]

A Seventeenth Century Quaker Character

One of the main characters in The Lady���s Slipper��which has just been re-released, is Richard Wheeler. Like all my favourite characters he is determined, strong and capable, but unlike most other heroes when the novel opens he has just become a ���seeker after Truth��� or a��Quaker. Today we tend to view the Quakers as quite […]

Recommended Regency Historical Fiction – The House in Quill Court

Multi-award winning author Charlotte Betts is renowned for winning the Historical Romance category in the Romantic Novelists Association Awards, not once but twice. Having just finished The House in Quill Court I think that the romance label does her a disfavour, because readers  are expecting only a romance, and her books are always so much […]

The Secret of a Welsh Medieval Manuscript

I’m delighted to welcome Mark Noce to my blog today, introducing his debut novel ‘Between Two Fires’, which is set in medieval Wales. I was particularly interested in this book because by coincidence I was just reading recently about The Black Book of Carmarthen, (Llyfr Du Caerfyrddin) which is the earliest surviving medieval manuscript written […]