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Far be it from me to criticize Jane Austen, but an unfortunate consequence of her popularity has been the assumption that Englishwomen living during the reign of George III spent all their time writing letters, attending card parties, and striving to make a “good match”...

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Since becoming a writer of historical fiction, I have gained a new appreciation of authors who can bring us closest to that imagined past. One such is Stanley Weyman, in his time an extremely popular novelist, and one who deserves a wider audience today...

Marshal Zeringue runs an interesting blog where he asks authors to comment on page 69 of their book - and how it relates to the rest of the story.

Rose applied the Page 69 Test to The Mistaken Wife .

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I do the same kind of research for fiction and non-fiction, although I use that research in a different way. Non-fiction and fiction have the same basic objective – to convince the reader of an argument. The non-fiction argument is the thesis, and the fiction argument is the theme. The difference is that the non-fiction thesis is obvious whereas hopefully the theme in a work of fiction is not – you work it out as you go along...

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I was speaking, recently, about my series of novels, which are set at the time of the French Revolutionary War. During the Q/A session, someone asked whether I ever felt my sympathies shifting from the British to the French. It was a very good question.