Writing Historical Fiction

My grandparents from Watauga County

I prefer reading and writing historical fiction, but writing it has its challenges. With my background in history (I was a history major in college at Appalachian State), I don't mind the research, until I run into gaps and snags. The internet has made information much more accessible, but I occasionally need a piece of information that I just can't find anywhere.

Wilkes Heritage Museum

This happened several times as I was writing my Appalachian Roots Series. I even visited Wilkes and Watauga Counties, North Carolina, to try to find some of it. Although I am writing fiction, I feel driven to be as historically accurate as possible. I tend to check and double check my information to make sure I'm not using terminology or items too modern for my time period. However, if there are some descriptive details I need to include in the story, and I can't find the facts, I'll fill in the gaps with my best (educated, I hope) guess, since it is fiction.

A recent example of trying to find the facts came when I was writing on my current manuscript set on the early Santa Fe Trail. I needed to know what Franklin, Missouri, looked like, but the town has been gone for almost 200 years. I could only find general information online, but no details. The libraries available to me had nothing I could use. I finally emailed some sites in Missouri, and a librarian at a state historical location copied and mailed me the exact information I needed. This portion in the book will only amount to about a paragraph or two, but I still wanted to get it right. I think my readers deserve that.

Because writing historical novels is so involved and time-consuming for me, I do write contemporary ones, too. It gives me a break from all the research. Although there's still some research involved, it's not as extensive. For now, however, I am working to get the four books in this Appalachian series published. Cleared for Planting is available now. The editor is reading through my revisions for Sown in Dark Soil. Hopefully the other two, Uprooted by War and Transplanted to Red Clay will follow. Then, I have eight more manuscripts already written, and I'm always working on another.

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