Set in France during the 1800s, Delhomme becomes Frédéric Chopin's piano tuner. Historical novels blend fact with fiction. The fiction part is up to you—how you use your characters in your book to advance the plot or action. The facts are nonnegotiable, meaning you should provide enough true information about your characters’ quotidian lives to make them come alive. Earlier, I wrote about PERSIA—a framework for worldbuilding. The categories— political, economic, religious, so

Modern and hypothetical reconstruction of the painting by an unknown artist of George Sand and Frédéric Chopin...

How to Vet Vocabulary for Historical Fiction Pictures can be anachronistic too. When writing historical fiction, it is crucial to...

Costumes of Ancient Persia, Umbrella carriers, kings, noble Persians I’m kidding. Don’t go there, but do use the acronym PERSIA as a...

Franz Anton Mesmer I have completed my second historical novel about Franz Anton Mesmer, the precursor to hypnosis. (He has his own...

“Book ideas come from a place with no address,” says Nancy Burkhalter. Or sometimes one that becomes clearer only with time. In the early...

I once pitched The Education of Delhomme , to an agent who asked, “What percentage of your book is fiction and how much is fact?” How...

All writers are asked that question about a million times in their career. And there are probably just as many replies for each book they...

When I went to Poland and France to visit Chopin’s museums and birthplace, I thought it was an extravagance. Turns out it was...

Here is my tale of how I smashed my writer’s block to smithereens. I was writing a book titled Critical Thinking Now: Practical...

My inaugural blog post. Should I say something pithy, outrageous, funny, alarming? Kleenex, please, for my flop sweat. We writers are...