Why I Write Historical Fiction -- A Guest Blogpost by Janet Oakley

 Janet Oakley, writing as JL Oakley, writes award-winning historical fiction that spans the mid-19th century to WW II. Her characters, who come from all walks of life, stand up for something in their own time and place: the Pacific NW and WWII in Norway.

When not writing, she enjoys delving into local history, looking for little surprises that tell a larger story of the area and the nation’s past, fodder far more novels or non-fiction pieces. She loves to garden, weave, and demonstrate 19th century folkways. She can churn some pretty mean butter.

Why do I write historical fiction? It would be easy to say out of curiosity, but I know the seeds of my passion began with my mom introducing me to her favorite historical novels, The Prince of Paupers and Captain from Castile—all played by heartthrob Tyrone Power in 1940s movies—and most importantly, family stories that reach back to the founding of my country. I was twelve when we took my 82 year-old Nana to Newburyport, MA to visit the 1670 tavern her direct ancestor had run in the seventeenth century. Seeing that ancient building, visiting the village green that celebrates the arrival of the ship that brought him in 1638, and seeing the grand home of his grandson built in 1702, left a deep impression on me. Here was the timeline of my family history that led down to the present, yet I wondered how my ancestors lived in those times.

My Nana’s own story of pioneering in the West in the late 19th century was a living embodiment to me. I hung on her stories that she sent to me in letters and told me in person. In elementary school, inspired by The Little House on the Prairie series, I began to write my own historical stories. While pursuing a degree in American History years later, I was honored to be an intern and later, a volunteer in the Smithsonian’s Anthropology Archives. One of my first assignments was to search early 19th century publications’ depictions of Native Americans. I was successful, finding the oldest one from the 1820s (an authentic portrayal), but as I was searching, I found scandals (Swill’s Dairy in 1850s D.C.), first account of Yellowstone in the 1830s, and terrible poetry and jokes, which I collected. My exposure to these early magazines and newspapers such as Frank Leslie’s Illustrated News, increased my curiosity and made me ask, “Why didn’t I know this?”

So why do I write historical fiction? I believe it’s to tell untold or lost stories. Though last year was the 90th anniversary of the Civilian Conservation Corps, FDR’s wonderful program that saved millions of young men and their families and built our state and national parks, few knew enough to celebrate the anniversary. Yet, the impact that program had on people during the Great Depression of the 1930s continued on into World II. Without young men learning to work together in squads to accomplish difficult tasks, America would have been six months or more behind getting our soldiers ready to fight. Tree Soldier, my novel about a young man struggling to redeem himself in the CCC in the Pacific NW, shows how the program operated and how it affected a local, mountain community. Timber Rose is about women climbing mountains in skirts in the same locale in 1907. More than half of the major mountain climbing clubs were made of women. They were part of the early environmental movement.  

One of my favorite untold stories are about Hawaiians in the Pacific NW, in particular on the San Juan Island, working as shepherds and laborers for the Hudson Bay’s Company during the 1850s and 1860s. Their contribution to the building of what would become Washington State should not be overlooked. Mist-chi-mas: A Novel of Captivity explores the dynamics of Hawaiians, called Kanakas, Coast Salish, English Royal Marines and the US Army when the island was under military occupation. The novel also explores society’s pressure on what a woman could and could not do. “Mist-chi-mas” means captive in Chinook Wawa.

In the last recent years, my focus on untold stories has been on Norway in WWII. When I first started to research my novel, The Jøssing Affair, many years ago, I was surprised how often American magazines such as Newsweek and Times reported on events happening in German-occupied Norway. Yet, all the WWII novels recently published seemed to be about the resistance and horrible events on the continent or the Homefront in the UK. Who knew that up 400,000 soldiers were deployed to  Norway, a country of three million (Berlin’s population in 1940)? That there were concentration camps in Norway and killing fields? How ordinary people resisted against Nazifying of their churches and schools? The destruction of Telavåg, “The Lidice of the North.”  I was fascinated by the leader of the Deaf Church’s role in the Resistance and the hearty fishermen on the West Coast who smuggled agents into the country and refugees out to Shetland. The psychopathic Henry Oliver Rinnan, a Norwegian who was Norway’s number two war criminal after Quisling. All untold stories. I am happy to learn that people visiting Bergen are now taking the time to go out to the wonderful museum in Telavåg because they read about it my novels.

This is why I write historical fiction. 

 

Find out more about Janet an her books on her website: https://www.jloakleyauthor.com/

Why I Write Historical Fiction - Guest Blogpost from Scott Amis

Joseph Scott Amis retired from a thirty-year professional and business career in 2004. He has since devoted his time to medieval and Crusades studies and writing historical fiction. Until recently, Scott was a writer and features editor at Real Crusades History. A native Texan, he lives in Dallas.

 

Good question.  In junior high and high school, my best subjects were English, history, languages, and art. This should have told me something, but I never once considered studying to become an artist, architect, writer, or historian, and I certainly didn’t want to be a dentist or a lawyer.

Off to college, and years spent muddling through stints in pre-med, anthropology, and fine arts. After nine years of “in and out”, I surfaced in the real world with a degree in architecture. This proved to be a late but wise career choice, and I married and settled in soon after. And finally, my mom was happy!

My wife and I are both readers, and, in the days before the internet and Amazon.com, our Saturdays were often spent at the public library. My interests inevitably ran to history and historical fiction; my wife’s, to biographies of famous people, both historical and pop-culture. As time went on, I found myself dreaming about writing a novel, but what to write? As a “dyed-in-the-wool” Southerner - both of my great-grandfathers fought for the South in the US Civil War - and as a “boomer” whose parents and their generation were directly involved in World War II, those legendary conflicts would seem to be my favorite choices.

But, by then, my reading was almost exclusively centered on medieval history and the Crusades, and the 2005 first release of Ridley Scott’s epic “Kingdom of Heaven”, though deeply flawed, seemed to light a spark. I was going to write a novel about the First Crusade!

Aware that this project would require meticulous research and development of a polished style, I began with a short story about an ongoing conflict between neighboring feudal polities in late eleventh century France. The story was successful for my purposes, and became the basis for a fictional account chronicling a young knight’s adventures in France, beginning with his coming of age in 1086 through 1095 and the eve of the First Crusade, and ultimately, ending with his death in the Kingdom of Jerusalem thirty years later.

Having read my share of Crusades novels and a fair sample of scholarly works, I opted for an atypical approach. Instead of beginning with armies of eager Crusaders setting out for the Holy Land, To Shine with Honor commences in 1086, nearly a decade before Pope Urban II delivered his immortal address to the noblemen, knights, and commoners assembled in a field outside of Clermont in November of 1095. Thus, I hoped to show the everyday lives and struggles of people of all social classes in the unsettled and dangerous world of late eleventh century France, and the circumstances which influenced some to become Crusaders.

By early 2010, I had a 900-page first manuscript, and, after numerous rounds of editing and revisions, the first volume of To Shine with Honor was published in summer of 2016 to unexpectedly positive reviews and surprising literary recognition. The second volume continues to be a work-in-progress. Find out more about To Shine with Honor at: (hotlink to amazon page).

Find out more about To Shine with Honor at: here.

Blog Host Helena P. Schrader is the author of 25 historical fiction and non-fiction books, eleven of which have one one or more awards. You can find out more about her, her books and her awards at: https://helenapschrader.com 

Her most recent release, Cold Peace, was runner-up for the Historical Fiction Company BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023 Award, as well as winning awards from Maincrest Media and Readers' Favorites. Find out more at: https://www.helenapschrader.com/cold-peace.html

 

 

Why I Write Historical Fiction - A Guest Blogpost by Stephen Estopinal

 Stephen Estopinal grew up in the swamps and bayous of Louisiana. He graduated from  Louisiana State University (class of 1968) and was a US Army veteran (Combat Engineers 1969-1971). He joins me to talk about why he writes historical fiction.

I write Historical Fiction to introduce my readers to aspects of American History that are ignored in most textbooks. I was a living history volunteer at the Chalmette Battlefield National Park and a black powder expert. My infatuation with history, particularly the history of Spanish Colonial Louisiana prompted me to write a series of novels to bring that history to life. I am a descendant of Canary Islanders (Isleños) transported to Louisiana by the Spanish during the American Revolution. My books are based upon on extensive research as well as family oral history. My stories of Colonial Louisiana are from a Spanish point of view.

My first novel was El Tigre de Nueva Orleáns published in 2010 and approved for sale by the National Park Service at the Chalmette National Park Visitor’s Center. It has been followed by a novel nearly every year. Incident at Blood River was published in 2011, Anna in 2012, Escape to New Orleans in 2013, Mobile Must Fall. in 2014, Pensacola Burning in 2015, Solitario; Bootlegging on the Bayou in 2018, The Man From Red Hill  in 2018 and Beneath the Bonnie Blue Flag in 2021. These novels are all historical fictions of 18^th and 19^th Century. They tell the story of the Isleños settlers in Louisiana and their struggle for survival. Published under the label Libros Isleños of Gonzales, Louisiana, writing historical fiction has provided me with an enjoyable hobby and a means of keeping the diverse history of colonial Louisiana alive.

Find out more about Stephen Estopinal and his books here.

 

Why I Write Historical Fiction - A Guest Blogpost by Martin Campbell

 Martin Campbell was born in Greenock, Scotland.  He worked as a psychologist and university lecturer in London, New York, Edinburgh and St Andrews. His first historical fiction novel, Sailor’s Heart, is available in paperback, Kindle and as an audiobook from Amazon. His next book 1856: Croton Oil and Pecuniary Profit will be published in June 2024.

Besides writing, Martin also enjoys sea fishing and playing poker, with little returns on either of these activities.

I write historical fiction by accident.  I am not a historian, nor a novelist.  I am a psychologist.

Five years ago, while walking around the largest artificial lake in the UK, surrounded by the largest man-made woodland in Europe, I met a very old man, a fellow walker.

“Terrible what they did to those poor sailors down there,” was the first thing he said to me, pointing at the lake and shaking his head. 

It was a choice between checking my watch and quickly moving on, or finding out what the hell he was talking about. 

That random comment about sailors became, for me, a research interest, then an almost obsessive need to know about a little-known aspect of WWII naval history.  I discovered that the British Admiralty had set up an onshore psychiatric facility, HMS Standard, to "recycle" Royal Navy sailors who had broken down.  These were men who had suffered “nervous exhaustion” or “combat stress” in battle.

It took me two years of research in naval archives and psychiatry journals to sort out historical fact from fiction and to find out what happened to sailors at this facility.   The fact was more incredible than any fiction. 

The remains of HMS Standard now lie at the bottom of the lake, Kielder Water, after the valley was flooded when a dam was built.

My first thought was to publish my research in one of the many reputable psychology or history journals, where the story would be read by a handful of academics and students and just as quickly forgotten.  The more research that I did, however, the more I became convinced that this important piece of history should be made more relatable and, above all, more accessible to a wider audience.

I had the basic historical facts about what was referred to in academic writing of the time as The Kielder Experiment, or A Submerged Site of Therapeutic Endeavour.  These facts alone told a remarkable story, but I was keen to fill in the gaps.  I wanted to explore the background to “the experiment”, the people involved, their motives and emotions. 

In my professional life, I was familiar with research methods: systematic reviews of evidence, testing hypotheses and investigating causal relationships.  To write a readable dramatization of real events at HMS Standard needed a very a different approach to research, however.  What was required were fine details, minutiae of the past that described and explained why the people–the doctors, the navy officers and the sailors of the time–behaved the way that they did.  My exploration of the WWII medical and historical records, revealed little information about day-to-day life in this isolated facility, set in moorland, 30 miles from the nearest town. 

There were many aspects of local and national life during wartime that I had never considered until I began writing.  What did people wear, how did they speak, what did they eat, how did they suffer during the war, what were their attitudes?  The most important of these questions, for purposes the book at least, was how the general public and the Royal Navy viewed sailors who were no longer able or no longer willing to fight for their country in a time of war.  Were they men who had reached a psychological breaking point, in need of treatment and recovery?  Or were they all just cowards, malingerers and poltroons, not to be pitied but despised?  Are these views different today?

HMS Standard in NE England was where 842 men who had broken down at sea were received and "processed" between 1941-1944.  Some men were never returned to duty.  These were the basic statistics that got me started in writing historical fiction.

I can honestly say that I have learned as much about “human nature” in all its forms in my five years of historical research and writing as I have from my thirty years working as a psychologist.

I hope that readers learn as much from the book Sailor’s Heart as I did from writing it.

 Find out more about "Sailor's Heart" here.