How Did I Get To Here

I've been thinking lately about the influences that brought me here, to the point of writing an historical novel. Yes, my preference for many years has been for science fiction, so a bit of head-scratching may seem reasonable. But in a few fundamental ways, they are very much related fields.

But instead of talking about those factors, I thought I'd talk a bit of about early influences. Around age 10 to 14, my life as a reader was established. I grew up in a house where books were always present. And given my childhood proclivities, I always found it preferable to curl up with a book instead of try to play ball with other kids.

What I stumbled on were my mother's book club titles, stashed in a trunk in the basement. Mom was an avid reader and her taste ran to the historical. My earliest introduction to fiction was by way of the novels of Thomas Costain, Eddison Marshall, Frank Yerby, and Kathleen Winsor. Opening those books---all hardbound from the Doubleday Book Club---was like opening a forgotten temple. Even the smell was fascinating.

As far as I know, none of these people are widely read anymore, and yet when I read newer works by people like Hilary Mantel, Ken Follett, Allison Petaki, or Tracy Chevalier the resonance is inescapable. We make and remake stories that matter from the stuff of our collective past.

It's not a stretch to see the same goals and impulses informing works by R. F. Kuang, Tristan Palmgren, Mary Gentle, or Tim Powers. Even some literary giants, like Thomas Pynchon or Richard Powers or Emily St. John Mandel or Margaret Atwood straddle the forms and create blended realities that do much more than the suym of their components.

I remember reading Yankee Pasha by Eddison Marshall---an adventure novel set at the time of the Barbary Pirates---and feeling completely immersed and carried away. The sensation was very similar (though different in key respects) to the thrill of stepping aboard a starship and visiting an alien world. History became my other favorite pasttime. Eventually I found my writing moving more in that direction, until finally---Granger's Crossing. Tracing the path from writing about traveling the stars to 1783 St. Louis would be a bit more tangled than I have time for here, but it has been very satisfying. Something for that 12-year-old who was reading Asimov and Michener at the same time.