Researching for authentic historical details

Authentic details help to develop historical characters in the minds of readers. Sometimes, for example, my historical characters need to have dialogue about what is happening in their world. At other times, they may need to be reading a book or listening to music.  

I have a pretty good nondigital source for finding cultural details in history, called The Timetables of History: A Horizontal Linkage of People and Events, by Bernard Grun, based on Werner Stein’s Kulturfahrplan. The source begins with the year 5000 BC and progresses to 1978. In table form, it gives snippets of important people and events in the categories of History and Politics; Literature and Theater; Religion, Philosophy and Learning; Visual Arts; Music; Science and Technology; and Daily Life. So, if I have a character living in 1863 who loves to read and listen to music, I can very quickly determine what the literature and musical trends of that year would have been.

But wait!  This blog is about writing historical fiction in the digital age.  Here is a link to the U.S. Library of Congress site called This Day in History that gives information about events and people of the past according to exact date.  There are even links for “yesterday” and “tomorrow.” Of course, this source is limited to recorded history from the Library of Congress, but here you will find links to the primary resources (images and documents) associated with U. S. history.  For example, on this day in 1778, the Treaty of Alliance between the U. S. and France was signed in Paris.

Create a pdf file of your writing!

Today I experimented on the free site simplebooklet.com. I am thinking of writing a few historical picture books to share with my little grandsons, and I was looking for an interactive website that would allow me to do that. I signed up for the free Simple Booklet account, using Firefox as my browser (IE won’t work with this site). Then I was prompted to upload a pdf file, so I uploaded the first few pages of Writing Historical Fiction: Digital Age Advice, including the preface. You can also add text, images, audio files, videos, and links to each page of your booklet, and I will certainly try that for my grandsons.

It took a few minutes for the pdf to convert to the ebooklet, but when it was finished, I was prompted to click on a button that created a custom URL so that I can share my publication. Here is the link http://simplebooklet.com/writinghistoricalfiction

My PDF has been turned into a web optimized flip booklet that I can now email, share, and post the introductory pages of Writing Historical Fiction across the web. Of course, the free account means that my ebooklet will contain ads, but for a small fee, I can have the ads removed. Now, to get busy on that historical story for my grandsons.

Track your book's sales!

Whether your book is self published or traditionally published, it’s easy to track your Amazon sales on the website NovelRank. First, go to your book’s listing on Amazon and copy the link. Next paste the link in the box at NovelRank. The site then gives you your book’s sales rank for Amazon.com, .co.uk, .ca, and .de. You can check a box to add to add France, Japan, Italy (.it), China (.cn), and Spain (.es). Once you have added your book to the site, Amazon begins tracking sales. The site notes that historical data prior to listing your book to the NovelRank site is not available from Amazon, only NovelRank tracking data going forward. Once tracking begins, you will be able to see sales made per month. The free site also includes a FAQ link and a blog.

Writing historical fiction for young readers?

Do you write historical fiction for youngsters? Want to share your writing with young readers online? Or maybe you just want to read the work of others online. Wattpad is a site that allows you to browse the work of newbie and published writers. It contains work in all genres, including historical fiction, with a special appeal to young readers (teens). For the published writer, Wattpad might be a place to increase sales if you post a chapter and then include a link to the title in an e-store. Then a reader could go to the link and purchase your book.

The site is free, but you must create an account to use it. I was able to create an account via Facebook. I plan to use this site as a reader in order to discover what young people are reading and writing in the genre of historical fiction. I think an exploration of the material on Wattpad will inform me as I create my own historical stories for young readers.

New Year's Resolution

Did you promise yourself that you would get more writing done in 2013?  Me too. One of my favorite apps that help me to stay on top of tasks is iDoneThis. IDoneThis is an iPad and iPhone app and website that asks the question every night at about 8 pm: What did you get done today? Then a notepad appears on which you can list your daily accomplishments that you can later access when you want to keep track of them over a longer period of time. This year, I am going to use the app to keep track of how much time I actually spent on writing related tasks.  Then, at the end of the year, I will assess how well (or not) I kept my New Year’s resolution for 2013.

Dirty Jobs of the Middle Ages

Dirty Jobs of the Middle Ages

Researching Christmas Traditions?

Writing about Christmas traditions in your historical novel? Check out the info graphic at the Balsam Hill website . The timeline includes historical holiday information about culture, decorations, traditions and figures, from early origins to the early twenty first century. From this info graphic, I learned that my Civil War characters would have depicted Santa as the typical Nast character we know of today, all jolly and fat, er overweight. My characters would not have known about Rudolph, however, because he was not created until 1939.