Margaret George: I didn't know I was! I wanted to write a "psychobiography" of Henry VIII, to show the world he lived in, the people he had to contend with, what shoes he had to put on and what they felt like. Voila: I ended up with a historical novel!
Karen Essex: I have always loved and studied history, but was never writing historical fiction that interested me. I was interested in retelling Kleopatra's story from her point of view, rather than the Roman point of view which led to her demonization these last two thousand years. My goal was to get readers to rethink how powerful women are portrayed in history and in fiction, and to conclude that there is another point of view that has remained untold.
Kevin Baker: I never really set out consciously to write "historical fiction." I wonder if it even should be such a separate category in our literature. Did the Greeks, for instance, consider The Iliad and The Odyssey to be "historical fiction," or a founding myth that still engaged their society?
I have had a deep and abiding interest in history since my mother bought me my first book on the Civil War, when I was still four years old. I started writing fiction everyday when I was 18. My first real attempt at historical fiction was my last novel, Dreamland, which I decided to pursue after watching the great Ric Burns documentary on Coney Island, sometime in 1993 or so.
Glen David Gold: When I wrote the first paragraph of Carter Beats the Devil. I'd never tried it before and had no particular affinity for the genre. In fact, I had a bit of a horror of it. Ian Frazier has a wicked and completely unfair parody of it, "The Stuttgart Folders," in which he breaks down historical fiction as a repetition of scenes in which a famous person sits in itchy wool, looking out a window of a famous place, and musing on his or her accomplishments. I really haven't read much of it since writing Carter, either --- one major exception is Sarah Waters --- but I love writing it. Which strikes me as somewhat bizarre. That said, I have always liked nonfiction history writing quite a bit.
Tayari Jones: I don't know if I was so much interested in writing "historical fiction" as I was interested in writing this particular story. It turns out that my final product can be described as such, but I was really interested in uncovering the real people behind the historical events and headlines.
Megan Chance: When I was very young. I'd always wanted to be a writer, and as a young reader, I loved historical stories. It seemed a natural progression to start writing them myself.
Bernard Cornwell: Probably as a teenager. It's an old truism that we write what we want to read and I had an insatiable appetite for historical novels.
Matthew Kneale: I started off writing two contemporary novels before I thought of writing about the past. I studied history at university and my fascination for it never stopped, so it seemed the perfect thing to combine two passions, history and storytelling.
