From Fact to Fiction: An Enjoyable Ride

(left) NONFICTION: "Above Stairs"; (right) FICTION: "Providence," book one in the McBride Chronicles.

After years of writing historical nonfiction books, I am more than a little excited to announce my debut novel, Providence, the first in the McBride Chronicles historical family saga series, will be released later this fall.

Years ago, a very wise teacher once told me "only write about what you know."  Well, I always loved history, my educational background was in history, and I thought I was pretty good at it!

But how, I wondered, can anyone know exactly what it was like to live back in the past?

As a nonfiction book writer, I was more than a little familiar with researching historical figures and situations and then writing about them—the true facts.

Now as a fiction writer, I seem to be doing even more research, analysis, and investigation into living life in another century while at the same time trying to forget everything about life as we know it in the 21st century. It's no easy process!

For the past weeks, months, and even years while the McBride Chronicles series has been coming to life, I have found myself researching some of the following topics while trying to think and act like someone living in the 19th century:

• English orphanages
• Scottish fishing villages
• Working "in service" as a maid
• Early medicine
• Travel by sea
• Gold rushes in British Columbia
• Riverboat captains on the Fraser River (British Columbia)
• Maritime disasters
• Wars
• Love and courtship in the Victorian Era

Placing my characters in these settings has been a challenge—but a most enjoyable one.

For a fiction writer, though, research alone is not enough. Creating real-life flesh-and-blood characters is essential.

Over the next several months, I will be blogging about some of these topics. SO if you enjoy historical fiction as much as I do, I hope you will follow along on my adventurous journey.

Please read my blogs, leave a comment (good or bad), join my email list by signing up for my "freebies" (the first is "Poker Alice"), and watch for the release of Providence, my debut novel, to be published by Sandra Jonas Publishing, Boulder, Colorado.

​I hope you will be in for a treat . . .

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