Roy Blomstrom, author of SILENCES: A NOVEL OF THE 1918 FINNISH CIVIL WAR, will be speaking to the Writer's Circle, a Thunder Bay writing group, on November 27 at 7 PM at the Waverley Branch of the Thunder Bay Public Library.
Among the topics: why write about this war and how did he do it, and why set half of the book in the summer of 1955 in Port Arthur.
And, underlying all of them--how do you DO it? How do you write a historical novel?
His answer: Start with an event in history that you are, yourself, interested in. Read a lot about it.
Then develop a central character who will be changed by this thing. Who is he (or she), where does s/he start, and where does s/he end.
Then do more in-depth and focused research on the time period and places.
My way of writing it--the actual writing part--is to try to organize it in your head, and then just start.
Once you have a chronology of the character moving through the event, you can play with the order of events--add a prologue or tweak the order in which the reader learns about events.
It's that easy, and that complicated.
Another of Blomstrom's books--this one NOT about the Finnish Civil War--is on the schedule to appear in late 2019.