Research | Alison Morton Author

Characters in setting

Rounded, multi-layered characters are essential if you want people to be engaged in your story. Reading is an emotional trip and we want to gasp, shiver, feel rolls of warmth, resentment, sympathy, fear, loss, and triumph as we turn the pages.

Superwomen are fine in some contexts – we like a bit of pushing over […]

Helen Hollick: Writing the past

What happens when a historical fiction writer turns to crime? No, I’m not talked about me and the Mélisende crime thrillers, but Helen Hollick who has just published her third cozy crime. But she can’t shake off the historical fiction writer’s magic cloak. Her 1970s set series feature heroine Jan is the result.

Over […]

Evie Hawtrey - From history to mystery

Evie Hawtrey – woman of mystery – describes herself as a Yank by birth but a sister-in-spirit to her fierce and feminist London detective, DI Nigella Parker. Evie splits her time between Washington DC, where she lives with her husband, and York, UK, where she enjoys living in history, lingering over teas, and knocking around […]

David Ebsworth: The holistic approach to historical novel research - from Alicante

I’m delighted to welcome the return of David Ebsworth to the blog as this week’s ‘writer abroad’. DAVID EBSWORTH is the pen name of writer Dave McCall, a former organiser for Britain’s Transport & General Workers’ Union. He was born in Liverpool but now lives in Wrexham, North Wales, and in Alicante, Spain. David took […]

Tracey Warr – Writing medieval fiction in southern France

Photo by Sara Perry

Continuing our series about English-speaking writers based in Europe and their ‘terroir’ – the place where they live. How does it affect their writing? This week, it’s Tracey Warr who lives near Albi in southern France.

She has published five novels set in early medieval Europe. Her first […]