The Historical Novel Society UK 2024 conference

Rebekah Simmers has been interviewing writers who are presenting at the HNS 2024 UK Conference

RS: We are so thrilled that you will be joining us for the HNS 2024 UK Conference! What are you looking forward to about the conference? Can you share a teaser for your presentation?

DB: At the conference, I’m really looking forward to catching up with delegates I know and meeting new ones. For me, an important part of HNS conferences are the spaces in between presentations where you can share experiences with authors, publishing professionals and fans of historical fiction. On this occasion, I’m also eager to get to know Dartington Hall which I’ve heard is a fabulous venue.

I’ll be presenting a panel discussion for the Slice of Medieval Podcast along with my colleague, Sharon Bennett Connolly. We have three amazing guest panellists – all bestselling authors of medieval fiction – Elizabeth Chadwick, David Gilman and Matthew Harffy. Together, we’ll be exploring how to write stories in the medieval world and it should be a fascinating session.

Of the wide cast of characters in your novels, who has been your most surprisingly challenging character to write? Why? What strategies did you / do you use for these types of characters? 

In my nine-book series entitled, The Wars of the Roses, I followed a fictional family through a period of some thirty years. Of all the many characters that populate these books, the most difficult – and also the most rewarding – character to write was Eleanor Elder. Whilst her sister, Emma, was written as pretty much the archetypal fifteenth-century lady, I decided to write Eleanor as the opposite. She had to be atypical, yet not anachronistically so. Now I’m sure there are some readers who don’t warm to her rather… alarming personality, but I also know that, for many readers, she is their favourite character.

It wasn’t so hard to write Eleanor when she was young – the reader first encounters her when she is fifteen. The real challenge was to write her as she grew older when the wounds of her younger days – both physical and emotional – began to take their toll on her indomitable spirit.

What do you think it takes to have longevity across a writing career? Sanity? Fun? What’s an unexpected joy that came into your life from such a successful career?

What does it take to have longevity as a writer? Two things as far as I can tell.

Firstly, I do believe that writing has to excite you. If I stopped enjoying the whole process, I would give up tomorrow. But, more than that, I think you need a constant conveyor belt of ideas. Many successful writers I know have so many book ideas they’ll never be able to write them all. A steady supply of ideas for plotlines and characters is the lifeblood of an author. At the moment I can’t seem to stop having ideas – and long may it continue!

Where do you typically begin your research? Do you have a go-to resource? Has there been anything that you’ve researched for your writing over the years that made a huge impact on you or a novel or series that you were writing? That changed how you write or what you write? 

When I research a new story, I go first to the secondary textbooks then to the original primary sources, if possible. The first will give me a useful overview of a period, an event or an historical character. The sources will give me more of a feel for the events and people involved and, in addition, they will often provide interesting little anecdotes which I can use in my story.

I also like to visit the area I’m writing about and, for the most part, I’ve been able to do that. Though the landscape may have changed, there is still usually something to be learned from actually standing where the events of your story take place.

Doing all of those things is, however, not always easy and sometimes not even possible. When for example, I was researching The Last of the Romans series, there was almost no reliable information about fifth-century Britain. I was though, able to draw upon some of the most recent archaeology to help me reconstruct the world of post-Roman Britain – or at least a realistic version of it. Writing that series was a real challenge as it forced me to make some logical deductions about the events based upon very tenuous records. Take the landscape, for instance, what do you call the various features: hills, rivers, etc., when no actual names survive from the period? So, it was much more fiction than history but it certainly made me think!

How do you organize your story details across your series?

Writing a nine-book series with many, many characters spanning several decades was an enormous challenge. One aspect of that was ensuring consistency of detail throughout the series. I did this from the start by using a spreadsheet detailing all the characters – ages, features, abilities, etc. – and the places they inhabited. Also, I recorded storylines and character arcs to ensure that I got it right. This was essential, especially if a character returned to the series after a break – as is perfectly possible. The devil, as they say, is in the detail. So I had to be sure that I didn’t inadvertently change a character’s hair or eye colour from one book to the next. If someone was injured I had to make sure it was recorded so that it could be referred to in the future. Was it a chore? Not really, because these characters had become part of my life, so I wanted to do justice to them.

Is there a specific scene that you’ve written over the years that you feel especially connected to? If not a specific scene, a secondary story line that was a favorite to write? 

Probably the scene I remember most is towards the end of Feud, my debut novel. It is actually a collection of consecutive scenes centred around the bloody battle of Towton in 1461. I visited the battlefield before writing the scenes to get at least some idea of the topography and the scale of the battle. Whilst there were scenes of fighting, the whole sequence was really a long, tortuous pursuit at the end of which the various plotlines are resolved. What made it so difficult was trying to keep up the pace of the story while entwining the various storylines, involving different characters, together. Hopefully, I managed to make the denouement of the story as gripping as possible.

What can you share about what you are writing now? Or an upcoming release?

2024 has been an unusual year for me because by the end of it I will have released three books – each very different from each other. My new historical fiction series, set during the twelfth-century Anarchy, has already kicked off with the publication of Rebel Sword. By the time the HNS conference begins I will have another book out: Eyes Like Blades. Since the latter is a modern thriller – so, not historical fiction at all – it was a new challenge for me. I really hope readers like it.

Finally, just before the close of the year, Pen and Sword will be publishing my first ever non-fiction history book: A Guide to the Wars of the Roses. This presents the events in easily absorbed chunks and is aimed at students of the period and the general reader who wants to find out more about the wars.

So, a busy year. And what am I doing now? I am currently writing sequels for both Rebel Sword and Eyes Like Blades. You’re not a writer if you stop writing…

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Online tickets for the conference are available:

https://historicalnovelsocietyuk.regfox.com/online

Rebekah Simmers is a member of the HNS UK 2024 conference organisation team. Find out about her novel, The King’s Sword, on her website.