When I first set out to write a novel about vaudeville at the turn of the 20th century I found little advice on methodology. Each novelist, it seems, hacks his own route through the wilderness of history. The research process for historical fiction is private; sparks are often kindled years before formal work begins. Sometimes it's […]
I’ve come to believe that the image is the original source—the most primary of sources. It seems to me that we move, in writing and maybe in other arts, from the image to the word—and that the senses are inextricably linked or tangled with both image and word. The portal from writer to reader seems to […]
Katherine Ashenburg and I talked together at the first WIR event on February 6. She's a delightful conversationalist: interested, informed and acute. We talk about fashions and approaches in historical fiction, and the origins of my current research for a new novel, The Difference.