Last week I had a wonderful time discussing researching, writing and publishing at Sutherland Library with, from the right, Julieanne Miles-Brown, Isolde Martyn, Elisabeth Storrs, Diane Murray who chaired the event and myself. The title of the event was ‘Follow that Horse! All you ever wanted to know about researching, writing and publishing historical fiction’.

In regards to researching Diane asked each of us a number of questions including: What do you do when you have your story timeline all planned out, your characters and events all in place and you either can’t find the information you want or the information you do find conflicts with the rest of your story? What do you do if you cannot get the facts exactly right? How do you still make your story ‘real’ and what are your preferred methods of research?

On the subject of writing we discussed: When the research starts to run into months or years beyond your expectations, how do you maintain your momentum?  – how do you keep interested enough to finish writing the story even when you are totally over the character and the storyline?  And what is the average time it takes you,  from start to finish, once you decide to write a particular story, to get it to a final draft?

And finally on publishing the questions were: What is your particular winning formula for getting your books into print? How do you push your work out into the world? And for you is publishing about making money or seeing your story in print?

It was definitely a lively and enjoyable discussion and I was very pleased to be involved. I’m sure the HNSA Conference in September will be a resounding success. The countdown is on!