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Edward Charles Novels in History |
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How Did You Start? |
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How did you begin writing historical novels?
I didn’t plan to write historical novels at all. I was 62 years old, semi-retired, and had recently moved to a new part of the world in East Devon. A chance remark during a visit to Shute Barton (National Trust) started me thinking about the possibility that Lady Jane had visited the house, which had belonged to her family in the years prior to her death. The research project led to a timeline and that led to a story. Just a bit of fun really. It was only when I realized that I had a 160,000 word book manuscript which didn’t work that I stood back from it and thought what I should do next.
The book didn’t work because it was written in the third person. As a result, a character who had been created simply as a narrator kept taking centre stage. I wanted to show the manuscript to my daughters but knew it wasn’t good enough to show them. So I re-wrote it in the first person and decided that the test of whether it was good enough to show them was whether it was good enough to get published.
Only then did I start to pursue the publishing route.
But what were the mechanics of writing your first book? How did you go about writing it?
I started by reading about a dozen history books on Tudor England and all the available biographies of Lady Jane Grey. From them I worked out a detailed (sometimes day by day) timeline. Then I worked top-down, filling in the details; how did they get there? How did she know that? And so on. That gave me a sort of warp and weft of people, places and events, the majority of which were real. My job then was to weave the presence of Richard Stocker into those events in order to act as our eyes and ears and to tease out the motivations which lay behind what happened. In the process, I ‘walked beside’ Richard and watched him responding to his experiences as they happened. That was the voyage of discovery part for me. I also learned a lot about Lady Jane and King Edward in the process and got to like them both. I found out a lot about Richard Stocker too.
What were the worst moments?
I first wrote the book (over about eighteen months, working two days a week) in the third person. One of the worst moments was realizing I had made a fundamental mistake. It took me six months glaring at it on a shelf to accept that I had to start again and rewrite the whole manuscript in the first person. Strangely, once I had decided to do so, it only took me four months, working two days a week, including editing.
What was the best moment?
Seeing it offered by Amazon and on bookshelves in Ottakars and Waterstones is pretty good, but getting the original acceptance email from Macmillan New Writing gave me the greatest buzz. Suddenly that said ‘this is for real’. However much faith you have in your own creation, it is hard to know if anyone else shares that enthusiasm.
What made you continue?
Once In the Shadow of Lady Jane was accepted, I completely revised my attitude. Now I wanted it not only to be published, but to be ‘a success’. I am experienced enough to know that dreaming of ‘having a bestseller’ was an inappropriate expectation. Instead I set myself two goals: to sell enough copies to get accepted for a mass-market paperback edition, and to make a sufficient profit for the publisher that they would be minded to accept my second novel.
Did you achieve both of these goals?
Yes, both were achieved within six months. Daughters of the Doge is to be published on 5th May 2007, the first anniversary of publishing In the Shadow of Lady Jane and that in turn will be published in paperback by Pan on 3rd August 2007
Have you made a lot of money from your writing?
Not yet.
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