elizabeth Chadwick

Just to say I've put up a new post on my blog about what it takes to produce a novel. Url here if anyone is interested. http://livingthehistoryelizabethchadwick.blogspot.com/

The Marshals as a family have been fascinating, Lilywhite and at one time I would have said William Marshal, no contest, but since discovering his father John, I have been particularly interested. John Marshal has gone down in history as the callous father who went back on his word and when his son's life was threatened with forfeiture because of it, said 'Do as you will. I have the anvils and hammer to get better sons than him.' He's also seen as a man on the make and a bit of an adrenalin nutter. But, when you begin looking at the evidence, a very different man emerges and it was particularly stimulating to write against the grain of popular 21stC thought and actually go with the medieval mindset and really think about the clues that we've been left. Added to my conventional research, I use psychic research too and 'knowing' John Marshal from that side of matters too, I really wanted to set the record straight. I do enjoy meeting and discovering the wide range of characters from the medieval past though. Roger Bigod who is the star of The Time of Singing, due out in October, has been a real sweetie and although very much a man, he is made in a different mould to John Marshal. It's been interesting to see the differences between the two men and yet both are great in their own way. I have enjoyed researching royal mistress Ida de Tosney too, who has shown me that not all royal mistresses were willing temptresses. A lot of coercion went on and there were as many victims as vamps. Hmmm... I guess I just love meeting people from the past in my research full stop. There is a wonderful folk band called Show of Hands. They have a song called 'Roots' which says 'Without Our Stories or our songs, how will we know where we come from?' I kind of feel that's what I'm trying to give the readers too - the stories that have been forgotten.

The historical accuracy is non existent - many of the scenes could never have happened in that period - and some of the sex in it is very much 20thC male fantasy grope stuff (yuk) but I can recognise that it's a page turner.

Just hang in there Icecream and do what you can. I started writing my first published novel The Wild Hunt when my youngest was 18 months old and I got there - it was accepted by a publisher when he was 3. I used to work at the kitchen table and in the play room and snatch moments when he was at nursery school or when they were both in bed. It was difficult though...

The collected Ghost Stories of M R James Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte The Hound of the Baskervilles by Conan Doyle

Stephanie Plum and Inspector Frost! Oh, and John Harvey's Inspector Resnick. I'm always fascinated by his sandwiches!

Hi Icecream! I have to say that I don't have special places that inspire me to write. I have special places I love to visit, such as Wiltshire and Shropshire and Wales, but as far as writing is concerned, I can write anywhere. The special place is inside my head and it goes wherever I go. When I was first going out with my now husband, we were teenagers and he played darts for an inner city pub. I used to go along to the matches and sit there in the midst of the smoky fug, writing in my notebook. What I do need is my own space in my head to think my own thoughts. When I had a young family and my head was filled with toddler-scribble it was pretty difficult, but these days it's not so bad!

Hi Inver, Yes, I have a study that's our converted 4th bedroom and slightly out of the way, so I get peace to write. I write at least 1,000 words a day, 7 days a week, but it's not 9-5. I can't work solidly, but function in swift creative bursts interspersed with procrastination on e-mail etc. I tell myself it's filling up the creative sump! I've been out most of the day, showing an American friend around the area, so I'm working late now to catch up. I work better towards the end of the day and I'm a night owl, so sometimes I'll work until 2 in the morning - but I may not have done that much earlier on. I would say I probably work at least 50 hours a week. Some of it is the actual novel writing, but some is blogging and other bits and pieces to do with the job that aren't actually the main occupation so to speak! Back to the coalface - today is likely to roll over into tomorrow being as I was skiving earlier...

Ah, that's the thing! I rarely read stuff thinking 'this is a bloke's book' or 'this is a woman's book' I just take them on their merits for what they are and read across the board. Then again, I can watch The Good The Bad and the Ugly time and again and recently loved Russell Crowe and Christian Bale in 3.10 to Yuma. Also I confess to being thrilled with a cowboy outfit and 6 guns that was bought as my Xmas present when I was 6!

My favourite novel of all time isn't a Western as such - it's a book about the 'Native Americans' It's called Hanta Yo by Ruth Beebee Hill and it's about a tribe of Lakotah Sioux on the eve of the coming of the White man. Just brilliant. There's Dances with Wolves by Michael Blake on which the film is based. There's author Dee Brown who does a Native American slant too. Creek Mary's Blood. There's Marilyn Durham's The Man who Loved Cat Dancing Paint the Wind by Cathy Cash Spellman - which manages to pack in nearly everything about 19thC American history going and includes quite a bit of Western stuff. I loved that one. Also Will Henry for readable Western adventure. http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/h/will-henry/ There's author Jeanne Williams - A Lady Bought with Rifles and others. Larry McMurtry as others have said too.

James Patterson is very canny in the marketing area and 'Misery Lit' as it is called is big on publishers' radar at the moment. The second title sounds as if it's from that genre and the first could be... Not my cup of tea personally.

I keep hearing about this one on different forums. Some readers are not at all happy with the ending although everyone seems to like the journey towards it. It's on my TBR

I found it a slow read, not in a derogatory way, but in a sense of being thoughtful and moving. I also didn't know much about the setting - ordinary people in WWII Germany so I found that engrossing too. I'd give it a creditable 8.5 out of 10 and a strong 4 stars were I to give it an Amazon ranking.

What's your most memorable encounter from the above? My most surreal moment was when I was first published. I had recently been filling shelves at a supermarket to make ends meet, and then suddenly found myself at Whitehall receiving a literary award from Prince Charles.... !! (didn't get his autograph though!)

Thanks Alison, I see you hale from Glasgow. I used to live near there many moons ago - in Newton Mearns!

I'm going to be totally useless on question one because I don't have a clue how you go about getting reference works published, nor how you go about writing them. I would think re getting published that there are some similarities in that finding an agent to represent you will be difficult but useful and that networking by going where agents or publishers are likely to turn up is a good idea once you're ready with your work because then you can pitch your book to them. It might be worth deciding what you are going to write about and then going to conferences or joining organisations were that sort of subject is discussed. Again, it might give you a lead into other things. I would also say in general terms that once you are ready to write, you should write something every day and keep a momentum going. Even if it's a hobby. After all, one page a day = 365 by the end of a year! The library question. In the UK authors receive a payment - starting at 99p and capped at

It all depends on the individual and I don't have that much advice to give because I write by instinct. I was born telling stories. As far as I'm concerned it's just something I can do without having to think about it. I would say imagine the scenes playing out like a movie in your head and write down what you see. Play 'What if?' with the characters and try out different scenarios in the head movie. It's basically what I did throughout my teens and childhood before I wrote anything down. I played my stories out in my imagination, often changing the scenario, introducing a new character, working out different beginnings, middles and ends. An author should write because it's fun and they should also read, read, read across all genres because so much of structure and technique is picked up along the way from osmosis.

I loved book one. What the author did particularly well was rack up the erotic (if that is the right word) tension between Bella and Edward without ever going below the neck. A lot of romance writers could learn a great deal from Stephenie Myer on that front. IMO it particularly hit the spot with reference to that swimmy, angsty, adolescent feeling of first love. I won't say it was a perfect novel but it's very rare these days for me to actually read while I'm stirring saucepans and supposed to be cooking - and Twilight did that for me. I wasn't quite a struck on New Moon, but it's still a page turner. I've yet to read Eclipse, but a reading buddy seems to think that characters 'chuckle' rather too much in it. Same reading buddy has raved over The Host, so I am definitely heading to buy that one!

Ah, this is a difficult one - and it will depend which version of Shields of Pride you have as to what you get! When I first started out, I wrote towards the romantic end of historical fiction, but not historical romance as such. Shields of Pride belongs to that era and the characters are imaginary but set against a background of events that actually happened - the Battle of Fornham for e.g. or the sacking of Nottingham. But Linnet and Jocelyn are imaginary. I have recently re-edited the novel with a new eye and tightened up its knicker elastic so to speak in the light of better skills and better historical knowledge. If your library book has a woman in an orange dress on the cover it's the new version. If it has a man and a woman with a shield in the foreground it's the warts and all older version. Since the early days I have moved on into the world of fictional biography. Think Philippa Gergory. Think Sharon Kay Penman. However my stories involve a lot more male viewpoint than Gregory and are set in an earlier period. A Place Beyond Courage, The Greatest Knight and The Scarlet Lion are all about the great Marshal family in the 12th and 13thc and based on detailed research. The forthcoming new hardcover, The Time of Singing is about a mistress of Henry II and a dispossed earl - again researched in depth. My earliest biographical fiction novel was Lords of the White Castle, about the legendary outlaw Fulke FitzWarrin of Whittington. Its prequel Shadows and Strongholds was my first bestseller, although The Greatest Knight is about to overtake it sales wise. So, bottom line. My earlier novels are of a more romantic and imaginary bent. My later ones as straight historicals in the classical mould. Hope this helps!!

Hi Enthusiast! I notice the cover of Twilight on your Avatar - brilliant book. I seriously fell for Edward Cullen when I read it. I'm hoping to read The Host soon. To your question. My interest in historical fiction was a gradual development over my teens and early twenties. The person originally responsible, as mentioned in an earlier post, was the character Thibaud from the children's TV programme Desert Crusader. http://livingthehistoryelizabethchadwick.blogspot.com/2008/04/tall-dark-and-handsome.html Once I embarked on the research, I was hooked and it went from there. If I wrote another genre, it would probably be fantasy or something along the Stephenie Meyer lines - although I have no intentions of changing at the moment. I do occasionally write short stories for magazines in a contemporary style and have had them published in such as Woman's Weekly, The Lady and The Sunday Express - but they are not a favourite part of my job. If I changed historical era I'd probably go earlier to Anglo Saxon or Arthurian. Definitely NOT Tudor. I think that particular era has just about reached saturation point.

I was mostly underwhelmed by what we got given to read at school - with a few notable exceptions. Books I remember reading as set tomes through my secondary education. The Oddessy - Homer I loved this one. One of the exceptions. Chaka the Lily - Rider Haggard - yuk The War of the Worlds - ho hum David Copperfield - put me off Dickens for life and one of the few times I bunked off reading a book - bleurggh Mansfield Park - Jane Austen nearly got given this for 'O' level. Had to read in the school hols - bleurgh. I still can't stand Jane Austen. Brighton Rock - Graham Green what we DID do for 'O' Level thank goodness. The Hobbit - Tolkien - I loved this one. A Kestrel for A Knave - ho hum. The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner - Alan Silitoe - yawn Sons and Lovers - D H Lawrence - 'A' Level. Yawn Wordsworth the Prelude - 'A' level. Huge yawn Chaucer - Prologue and the Merchant's Tale - 'A' level. Great stuff. Really loved it. Various Shakespeare plays including Macbeth, King Lear, Twelfth Night. Nooooooo. Hated it - well except for Macbeth and that was only because of the Polanski film starring the Oh so yummy Jon Finch. The Duchess of Malfi - ho hum Lady Windermere's Fan - Oscar Wilde - not bad. The Importance of Being Earnest - Oscar Wilde - enjoyed a lot Pygmalion - George Bernard Shaw - okay Various English/Scots Border ballads including Tam Lin and Edward Edward. For 'O' level - loved these a lot. Tam o' Shanta - Robert Burns - loved it The Ryme of the Ancient Mariner - Coleridge - quite liked. The Catcher in the Rye - okay Catch 22 - not bad.

I make my living as a full time author, but I would love to have been a commissioning editor - one of those who finds new authors. Then again it's a pipe dream. Editors have to be able to do so much more than be able to select the right manuscript off the slush pile! A friend with whom I used to work when we were young shop assistants always dreamed of owning her own book shop - she was 18 then and still doing her A levels. Now she's realised her dream. Here's her bookshop url. http://www.thebookcase.co.uk/aboutus.html

Hi Inver, Generally just over a year. My contracts are currently at 15 months which gives me a little bit of breathing space too. I've been immersing myself in the Middle Ages since my teens, so although I have to do quite a lot of research, I do have a bit of a headstart. If I suddenly decided to write a Regency novel I'd probably need about 10 years to get up to scratch! I think the more you know about a period the more you can bring it to life. That doesn't mean dumping the historical info into the novel like a text book, but it means that the characters will think and feel like people of their time. I write onto the PC these days. Time was when I wrote longhand - as a young mother I was forever jotting things down in a notebook in between changing nappies and dealing with small children. I prefer a desk top to a laptop though - more room and my elbows are less scrunched up! One of the other things I do, which isn't medieval, but does help inspire me, is use music as a key to developing scenes. I've just put a new 'soundtrack' up at one of my blogs. Here: http://elizabethchadwicksoundtracks.blogspot.com/

Many thanks madcow. Hope you enjoy it.

Thanks Nici! I was commissioned to write Daughters of the Grail by a TV producer (many moons ago). It never got made into a film or 3 part series, which is what he was hoping to do, but a novel did come from it - well before the Da Vinci Code and Kate Mosse's Labyrinth! It originally came out in the UK as Children of Destiny. The USA title was Daughters of the Grail and this is the one my publishers used for the re-issue, which I've re-edited. I usually write 'straight' historical, but this one has a very slightly fantasy element.