Welcome to Book Country, historical fiction writers!

--edited by Nevena Georgieva on 6/26/2013, 9:44 AM--

SALIGIA - Conversations with the Wandering Jew is a writing project that has been on my mind for a number of years. The basic idea is a retelling of the history of western civilization during the last 2000 years, from the viewpoint of someone who witnessed it all personally.

The main facts and events are historically accurate. The fictional parts are a few of the personae, some situations, and, of course, the narrator himself who is spinning the tale, a mystical figure of Medieval lore known as the Wandering Jew.

SALIGIA is a mnemonic of the first letter of the Latin version of the Seven Deadly Sins, as the narrator has divided his story into seven parts, each covering a specific sin and a given time period of history. 

The book is mostly done in a narrative way - a conversational piece - with the occasional flash remembrances of events of the past. So it should be quite easy and fast to read

--edited by Paulo Barata on 7/16/2013, 11:36 AM--

Hi to you both, @RCGravelle and @Paulo. Both of these books sound incredible. I love how ambitious both projects are. I will be sure to check both of them out.

Historical fiction is absolutely one of my favorite literary categories. I can't wait to start reading in this category!

Lucy Silag

Book Country Community and Engagement Manager

I just arrived here and am hoping to find people writing and reading historical fiction.  I recently completed a novel based in the 1990's war in the Balkans.  Titled "A Wound To The Soul" it is currently being represented but I have not received any statements of interest.  When I get ready to do another rewrite I hope to get it tested out here.  

I am currently working on a new work of historical fiction that is set in a ten to twelve year period of the 15th Century.  It involves the growth of the Ottoman Empire and its conflict with the West.  Main characters include a Venetian Merchant and his crew, a eunuch, several concubines, the pope, Janissary, condottieri, a Serbian woman who is placed in the Sultan's Harem, the long crusade of 1440 in which Serbia, Poland, Hungary, and the popes mercenaries drive deep into the Ottoman Empire and then the Sultan responds by killing nearly all of them at the Battle of Varna in 1444.  While this is the end of the book, it shown as the last obstacle to the Ottomans conquest of Constantinople.  

I invite any one interested to connect with me and I will be uploaded the first two chapters as soon as they are ready.

Most recently enjoyed historical fiction is "Doc" by Mary Doria Russell, and I found Roger Crowley's "City of Fortune: How Venice Ruled the Seas," the best history since "A Distant Mirror."

Hi Mwarhus! Welcome to Book Country.

The subject areas of your works are really fascinating, I am looking forward to learning more about them.

About to send you a connection request so that I can be in touch and connect you with other writers of historical fiction.

Glad to have you here, and please let me know if I can help you with anything!

Lucy

Book Country Community and Engagement Manager

Hi to all you wonderful critic friends, I am so looking forward to hearing from you.  Please review my latest book 'The Queen's Own Ulster Soldier' by Carmel Joyce. 

The main characters, John and his daughter Jane will take you on a splendid adventure through a number of countries and at a time when not all the details of historical events were disclosed in the newspapers.  I like to walk in my characters shoes, so to speak and so where they lived I have been to those very places around the world.  If you have never been to Port Elizabeth in South Africa or Belfast in Northern Ireland, you can trust what has been described of those places as accurate, though they have a Victorian flavor of time about them.

The genre is historically embedded in the Victorian era though the story does move on to the evolving world period of the suffragette movement.   Someone said to me once, how do you make your characters seem so real?  Guess what!  This is the easiest thing in the world  for me to do as they WERE real people who DID live in those historical times.

I just felt these characters deserve remembrance of playing their part on the world stage.  Nobody had breathed life back into them until now.  It is however, the old story of 'who came second?' - people only want to know who came First and like historical events, people only remember the names of the infamous. 

The sheer pleasure of finally extracting those characters and stories out of the head and onto paper can be oh so satisfying.

The really hard thing for me is not about writing or the research with each book as I find this so enjoyable,  no, it is finding like minded people who are prepared to discuss with me its content and make the next book more enjoyable for the readers.

Hi Carmel!

Thanks for posting about your book--I am very excited to take a look!

Just sent you a connection request; I'd like to send you a private message once we are connected that will give you some links to more resources for using Book Country.

Welcome and talk to you via PM very soon!

Lucy Silag

Book Country Community and Engagement Manager

Hi!  I have just uploaded the first 3 chapters of a historical fiction work I have just completed called The Last Flight of Penny Tate.  The book is about a young man, Edmund Fitzhugh, who is sent to France on the eve of the U.S. entry into World War I to serve as an apprentice mechanic for an American combat pilot flying for the French army.  Edmund is grieving over the loss of his fiancée, Penny Tate, who died in an accident of Edmund’s causing.  He is trying to find healing while in a war zone that is coming ever closer to him and those he grows to love.

Anyway, no one has read it yet, and I am anxious to know what you all think, and I look forward to reading yours!

Thanks!

Shawn Morton

I just posted the first two chapters of The Road to Varna, a Historical/Literary Fiction.  While the subject of the book is the intrigue between the expanding Ottoman Empire and the efforts of Christian Europe to contain them, the story is told through minor characters; a eunuch, a Venetian merchant, concubines in the sultan's harem, an aging pope dictating his memoirs.  

I am most interested in whether the book gives you a feel for the times and if the characters are interesting.  Most of the action and a lot of the figures are historically accurate, but some characters had to be added to pull the pieces together.  It is only two chapters.  I hope you will check it out.

All of these historical fiction projects sound excellent! Thanks to everyone for continuing to announce them--makes it easy for other people interested in this genre to find stuff to read and review on Book Country.

Lucy

Book Country Community and Engagement Manager

Hello, and thank you for the opportunity to announce our work to potential beta readers.

I write historical legal thrillers set in Montana during the Civil War. I'm in the process of uploading The Ghost at Beaverhead Rock, to Book Country. It is the last novel in The Vigilante Quartet, four novels based on Montana’s early history, when gold, greed, and a vacuum of law led honest people to end the rule of terror in the gold fields. The central character in all four novels is a lawyer from New York named Daniel Stark. He originally comes to Montana in 1863 to get enough gold to rescue his family from disgrace and poverty that followed his father's embezzlement and suicide. In the novels, it is (and historically was) a place where ruffians ruled and murder was tolerated. Dan becomes the Vigilantes' prosecutor and participates in tracking down the members of a murderous conspiracy and ridding the country of them.

God’s Thunderbolt: The Vigilantes of Montana, won the 2009 Spur for Best First Novel from the Western Writers of America. My second novel, Gold Under Ice,  was a 2011 Spur finalist for Best Long Novel. The third book of the series, The Devil in the Bottle, about Joseph (Jack) Slade’s challenge to the Vigilantes, came out in early 2012. (I didn’t enter it in the Spur awards because I thought the deadline was two weeks later. You snooze, you lose.)

Hello, I am new to book country and have up loaded two manuscripts in both the historical fiction and science fiction genres. In this particular forum I wish to invite anyone who desires to read the complete manuscript called, 'Fish Camp on the River Road'. Though totally a fictional piece I set it during the great depression when there was a mixture of horse drawn wagons and automobiles on the byways of America.  

     As a resident of deep east Texas I often stared out my office window and wondered why the film industry did not make more movies in the beautiful east Texas and Louisiana area.  I was thinking how I could write a story for a low budget film set in our lovely region when an errant memory popped into my mind.  Back in the sixties, I went with my wife's family on a fishing excursion on the banks of the Neches River. As we left the highway to get to the river bank I saw a young man in a small fishing shack by the trail selling fish to anyone who passed by.  His hair was unkempt, his beard almost a week old and he was barefoot. Father in law took note and after we had fished, cooked dinner on the river bank and packed up to leave he had his wife to prepare and plate of country fired chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy and  creamed corn, with a large square of corn bread on top.  As we drove out he stopped and offered the meal to the fisherman.  The look of hunger, gratitude, and appreciation that moved across his face was forever imprinted on my mind. Thus was born Burford Stanton my main character.  I do not write film scripts so Fish Camp is written as a novel. It could be called historical fiction, literary fiction or drama/romance. Please enjoy.  

--edited by Rob Emery on 4/2/2014, 4:44 PM--

All quiet on the Western Front eh?

If there is anyone out there then please have a look at The King's Jew - only if you've got the time though.

Best wishes

Seems like I'm the only person in here!

Ah well, back to my book.

If anybody reads this - would you message me please? Thank you

Walks away whistling and kicking a tin can down the road. 

Hi Darius--thanks for posting about your book in this thread!

Lucy

I maybe should have a hall pass to be lurking about the historical fiction area? Yes, I am shopping a cozy mystery novel at the moment, and prepping for Nanowrimo to create the sequel. But - and here's the reason for the venture down another rabbit hole, I am also starting a historical literary fiction novel. Set in 1703 Japan and loosely based on the true events of the 47 ronin, this Chūshingura story will involve an honorable man forced to make a choice: ignore the truth and stay within the hypocritical government of the Shogun to enjoy a better life, or do what he knows is right, yet ironically be forced to live a bigger lie the rest of his days. Where's Alistair Cooke when you need him?

My goal is to post one scene per week as a forced break from my mystery writing. Stay tuned. Hope to set it up with the first entry by the end of next week. Working title: The 13th Samurai.

DJ! That is so exciting that you have all these projects in the works. I love historical fiction so I can't wait to see THE 13TH SAMURAI develop.

Keep us posted!

Lucy

Ok, so this is a mere three months later but....I write historical fiction with a twist. "Reign of the Holly King" is a book I wrote in 2002 that I am just now finishing for publication by...ME! It has been reviewed by some of the best editors in the industry who like my writing and especially my dialogue. BUT historical fiction can be a hard sell so it's hard for an agent to pick up. My specialty is medieval/Renaissance history - which makes writing fiction a little difficult. You want to use the language of the time but nobody from this time will understand it. It is likewise regarding terms for food and clothing. Who knew you would have to come up with a "modern" way to speak of one's underwear! LOL Anyway, the academic side who majored in this at university  loves the research while the F. Scott in me loves the prose.

That said, "Holly King" is set during the Wars of the Roses (a term coined in the mid-1500s). It focuses on a relatively obscure duo: Jasper and Henry Tudor, uncle and nephew respectively. Edward IV sits on the throne, but as was the case during the dynastic period in English history, his place is not assured. Henry Tudor's claim to the throne is even more tenuous, but he is the one the Lancastrians favor in the struggle for power. Several bloody battles had been fought by the time Henry turns 14 and the stakes are high, since Henry was already taken hostage by the Yorkist Lord Herbert. Jasper and his faction decide that Jasper and Henry should flee to France until things have calmed down and to attempt an alliance with Louis XI, a really odd duck. As fate would have it, his ship runs afoul of the weather and they end up at Le Coquet in Brittany. Francis, Lord Dreux, controls that duchy and despises Louis, so Jasper and Henry make the perfect political prisoners. But Francis' daughter, Fleurie, takes Jasper by surprise. He falls in love but has to balance his political duties with his personal desires. This is NOT a romance, but there is a romance element in it. It combines elements of mystery, thriller, and good Tudor history into one fast-paced package that the modern reader will enjoy. The sequel, "Reign of the Oaken King" is a work in progress and traces Jasper's illegitimate son, Gabriel, through his adventures at the court of Henry's son, Henry VIII.

Hey, Lisa--so wonderful to hear that you are planning to publish your work!

This thread is actually meant for historical fiction writers to post about books available to read here on Book Country. I hope you are planning to put up at least an excerpt so that we can read it!

Lucy

Just posted a new draft of my Samurai story. It has been slow going, what with a Nanowrimo mystery in the Underwood right now, but I am enjoying the challenge of fact-finding. And it seems that there is something to prove historically accurate in almost every sentence.

This draft is only 5,200 words or so. Plenty more arc to get through come December, but take a read if you have a few minutes. Thanks!

http://www.bookcountry.com/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=7136

http://www.bookcountry.com/Bookdetail.aspx?BookId=8253

Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jack Hubert. My pen name is my Hebrew name Jacob Ben Zwi.  I have been writing first drafts of novels since 1980 as a means of reducing stress, and now that I am retired after 59 years of work I wish to do something with my writing. I am hoping that those of the group who read Historical fiction will review the novel or parts of the novel called SHLICHIM translated from the Hebrew meaning GOD's MESSENGER and advise me on  how to improve this novel. A full summary of the novel has been included with the uploading of the novel. Thank you Jack Hubert  

The Mitzvah (in its true sense the word means righteous deeds) of ensuring that an aged Holocaust survivor whose funeral I attended and what was spoken of by the RABBI's and other Holocaust survivors whose life I listened to as treasurer of my synagogue led to this novel. Relating these words to the deeds of the human world is the story of this novel.