The research before the writing

Historical fiction is my favourite genre, and I love the research that goes into creating a fictional version of the past. What I hadn’t reckoned on though, was how much I relied on the baseline research I had done for the Max Falkland novels. I started writing Cold Crash in 2012, so it’s been a long time since I started off with British Library searches for 1950s London, Mull, and archaeology. 

I’ve started a new project set in Kentucky in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and I know next to nothing about Kentucky in that period. So as much as I desperately want to be writing, I’m back to doing basic searches for Kentucky and the 1930s and 1940s. It’s fascinating, and I’m learning a lot, but I also want to be writing! With Max, I knew enough that I could write a scene and then fill in any historically specific questions later. Now I have to delve into this new world before I can create any sort of a setting. That is less easy to do on a commute than writing!