Today, I’m delighted to welcome J G (Jane) Harlond to the blog to tell us about writing historical fantasy stories.
Secret agents, skulduggery, and sea voyages… Creator of the infamous Ludo da Portovenere, J.G. Harlond writes page-turning historical crime novels set during the 17th Century and the Second World War. Each story weaves fictional characters into real events. Jane also writes Viking-age historical fantasy drawing on Norse myths and legends.
Prior to becoming a full-time fiction author, Jane was involved in international education and wrote a number of school textbooks for Oxford University Press. After travelling widely – she has visited or lived in most of the locations in her novels – she is now settled in her husband’s home province of Andalucía, Spain.
We all know it’s different from alternative history stories but what IS historical fantasy? Over to Jane!
Most readers of any fictional form knowingly suspend disbelief and accept what they read as real for the duration of the novel. Readers of quality historical fiction trust the author to tell stories involving real people and events, and accept the fictional element required to create scenes and relationships between protagonists.
Historical fantasy – such as novels by Guy Gavriel Kay, or G.R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones (which rests on a good deal of real history) – involves a slightly different transaction. As readers we become more actively engaged because to a lesser or greater extent we have to make-it-up in our own mind’s eye. Something those of us with an over-active imagination can really enjoy.
I came to historical fantasy late in my writing career. Friends had recommended books by G.G. Kay, but I didn’t start reading them until a couple of years ago. I’ve always enjoyed fantasy of the Lord of the Rings kind, but Kay’s books are much more about people living in a similar yet very different world to ours. A world with two moons for a start. They also contain a lot of history. The Lions of Al-Rassan, for example, is classified as fantasy but it’s one of the best books on Spanish history I’ve ever read. Kay captures the power politics, racial and religious struggles of Moorish Spain so well that I lived every word, sensing that this is what it must have been like.
This, for me, is where historical fiction and fantasy come together, offering a clearer insight or meaning to the past.
Writing my new historical fantasy series involves much the same process as my historical crime fiction. I do a lot of background reading, follow up curious events or details, and make reams of notes. This is then consciously, or otherwise, modified for my story. Compelling content is vital, but the devil is in the small details required to make something entirely unknown credible.
Runestone, Uppsala, Sweden
My new Doomsong series is set in an imaginary early-medieval period; what used to be known as the Dark Ages. Like mainstream hist-fic, it includes an issue modern readers can relate to. This, I believe, is one of the strengths of historical fiction in any of its sub-genres – crime, romance, war. The past can be presented in such a way that it sheds light on what is happening now. If the author is any good, the reader will empathise with the protagonist(s) and understand their hopes, fears and challenges.
This all sounds very academic, and I certainly didn’t set out to do this in The Doomsong Voyage. Initially, I was writing a story loosely linked to The Doomsong Sword for my grandchildren. But the idea did come to me after I reviewed a Viking history Children of Ash and Elm by Neil Price (Basic Books, 2020). I then went on to read other non-fiction on the Viking epoch, largely because I spend time in Sweden each year, and I grew up on a Viking battlefield.
The novel opens with the threat of a major climate catastrophe caused by the eruption of a volcano, which actually happened in the early-medieval period. The ash cloud made life for Scandinavians even more difficult than it already was, bringing in a Fimbulwinter – a never-ending winter – forcing people to seek a new home on fertile land.
With this threat looming (in the story), a young man named Finn sets sail on a Baltic trading knarr (a type of Norse merchant ship used by the Vikings) to locate a pirate named Ice-heart in the Middle Sea. The pirate is a clan leader, who has the knowledge and personality required to persuade his people to leave all they know and cross the ocean to find a better life. Finn is accompanied by a strange girl with amber-green eyes, who is always nearby when something drastic happens. And as the pirate is not called Ice-heart without reason, dangers abound. . . To say more would be a spoiler.
Vejer de la Frontera
Having lived on the Mediterranean coast in Italy and Spain for more than half my life, I was familiar with how the Vikings sailed and raided as far as the Levant, and how they established camps in Frankia and Hispania. The fictional voyage also includes a version of Al-Andalus. My independent state of Barbalus came from staying in the hill-top town of Vejer de la Frontera.
Gradually, as I was writing, more and more documented history crept into the story and it stopped being only for young adults. There is good deal of magic in it, though. Back in those so-called Dark Ages people firmly believed in magic, shape-shifting, enchantments, and the inexplicable power of gods such as Odin/Woden.
The story developed in a number of un-planned ways, and it wasn’t easy to get right. Once it was finished, however, I could see how it would make a series – and, very fortunately, so could my publisher.
The next story is taking me back home to North Devon in the British West country. As I mentioned, I grew up on a Viking battlefield. Historians dispute who fought whom and when, but there is little doubt there were at least two battles on the stretch of land between Northam and Appledore on the River Torridge.
Whether Hubba (Ubbe) really did lead thirty-three dragonships into the estuary (as stated in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) I do not know, but it makes for a terrific story.
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Connect with J G Harlond
Website: https://www.jgharlond.com
Twitter: @JaneGHarlond https://twitter.com/JaneGHarlond
Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/JGHarlondauthor
Penmore Press: www.penmorepress.com
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What’s The Doomsong Voyage about?
It is long ago in the Cold North, in a time when folk believed in the power of the gods and magic, when families lived on freezing land and some set off a-viking for treasure.
Master Odo, the Wanderer, tells young Finn the Tale-maker that a terrible weather catastrophe is about to happen. Finn must find a pirate named Ice-heart, currently raiding somewhere in the Middle Sea, and return with him. Ice-heart is a clan-leader, only he can lead his people to safety.
Master Odo gives Finn the legendary Doomsong Sword, and a warning. His voyage will be perilous, he will be tested, and a powerful enemy will try to stop him.
But Finn has help along the way – from a strange girl with amber eyes.
Buy the The Doomsong Voyage here: https://books2read.com/u/mBLNOv
and its predecessor The Doomsong Sword here: https://books2read.com/u/bwOE2Y
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, is now out.
Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines and taste world the latest contemporary thriller Double Identity… Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. As a result, you’ll be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
Thank you for hosting my post, Alison. Back to work now.
And thank you for such an interesting post!