A guide to writing and selling historical fiction, discussing a variety of topics including the different types of historicals, research, plot and character development, the integration of fictional people into historical settings, editing, and finding an agent.

Fight between Turks and Russians in the Caucasus in 1850's.

Historical fiction writers and historians are not the same. While a historian stands firmly planted in the present and looks back into the past, a historical novelist sets readers directly in the past and shows them forward. The job of a historical fiction writer is to make readers feel the victories and defeats, joys and pains, as if they were there. James Alexander Thom guides aspiring writers through the creation of historical fiction. He includes...

"Based on World historical guide by Daniel D. McGarry and Sarah Harriman White published 1973 by Scarecrow Press. This title annotates 'more than 6000 works ... Primary arrangement is by areas of the world, and then by time periods within each area.'" Booklist.

Presents the classical epic, glorifying the heroism of Charlemagne in the 778 battle between the Franks and the Moors. The Song of Roland, as Dorothy Sayers remarks in the introduction to this fine translation, is 'the earliest, the most famous, and the greatest of those Old French epics which are called Songs of Deeds'. Writing around the end of the eleventh century, and recalling an actual disaster in 778, the anonymous poet describes in detail...

Presents the true story of the building and launching of the Titanic and offers a "you are there" feeling when the steamship struck an iceberg and sank on her maiden voyage.