September 21, 2016 • 38 mins
Tracy and Holly were joined by authors Bryan Young, E.B. Wheeler and Brian McClellan during Salt lake Comic Con for a talk about how authors weave real-life events and historical inspiration into their work.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. You'll hear that
again in a minute because we recorded it while we
were in Salt Lake City at Sala Comic Con and
(00:22):
we did a couple of live shows. Yep. One of
those shows was actually a panel where we talked with
authors who incorporate history into their fiction writing. We were
really really lucky to be at a convention that to
some amazing authors on hand who were willing to share
their process with us. This conversation covers everything from the
research process, to diversity and history to being kind of
(00:44):
precious about facts. I want to thank you Holly for
doing of the legwork on this panel. Um, Holly assembled
a great a great panel, some of them one of
them will be a familiar voice to listeners. And then
also a really interesting spectrum of how people incorporate history
(01:04):
into their writings, so you will get answers from a
wide range of sort of flavors of historical fiction. Yeah,
and I really should give some of the credit on
putting together that panel to m Ryan Call, who is
one of the amazing people that run Solid Comic Con.
I kind of put out a yell to him and said, hey,
we want to do this panel, and he gave me
(01:25):
suggestions on who might be good to talk to. So
thank you, thank you Ryan, thank you Solid Comic Con.
We had a wonderful time there. But we're going to
hop right into our discussion and then you two can
benefit from hearing about some of the interesting thoughts that
these authors had to share with us. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
(01:47):
Have something cool today, which is that we're going to
talk to some actual authors about historical fiction. Yeah. We
often get asked and by listeners like if we would
cover like a historical fiction book. And since that's not
really part of the purview of the pod casts as
it exists, we can't really do it as a regular episode,
but for special events like a live event like this,
we absolutely can. Yeah. And it also instead of talking
(02:09):
about an individual book and and it's historical influence, we'll
be talking about lots of writers and lots of books. Yeah,
we thought we'd take advantage of the fact that we
are at a at a place where we have several writers,
um and writers of historical fictions, So we thought what
better way to explore that topic than to talk with
them about how they actually create the fiction that people
(02:30):
like you love because it blends sort of the wonders
of imagination with actual historical fact. So first we're gonna
have each of our wonderful panelists introduced themselves, starting with
this gentleman to my left. He's not a stranger to
the stuff you mission history class, audience. UM. My name
is Brian Young, and I'm the author of a children's
(02:51):
illustrated history of presidential assassination, which is what I was
on for before. UM, but in the historical fiction realm.
My last book was called The Aeronaut. It was sort
of a steampunk World War One novel. And additionally I
write for star wars dot Com and star Wars Insider
in a lot for Star Wars and UH really like
(03:13):
researching history. My name is Evie Wheeler. I'm the author
of the Haunting of Springett hall Um, which might guess
by the title is not completely historically accurate. UM, but
UM also Born to Treason, which is a lot more historical,
is based on actual events and No Peace with the Dawn,
(03:33):
which is coming out in November. So my name is
Brian mcfallen. I did give a caveat when we first
talked about doing this panel that I write epic fantasy.
I don't actually write historical books, but I am very
heavily influenced by history. But then I add magic and
a secondary world to it. Um, but my books are
(03:54):
the powder Made trilogy. We were actually really excited to
have that breadth of a range of from fantasy that
is sort of historically flavored to all the way to
the other end of the spectrum to your books. So
we're gonna begin with a question that is open to
anyone on the panel. UM. I have become a big
(04:16):
fan of Carrie Greenwood's Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries books. I
like them quite a lot. And I noticed after reading
several which I am reading in order, that she started
to place notes along the lines of the one I
am about to read at the end of each book.
This says, this is a work of fiction. I have
researched it as carefully as I could. There are undoubtedly
(04:38):
some small errors of fact and timing, and one big anachronism,
which is that I unilaterally moved the flower parade from
nine to Please forgive me and do not feel moved
to correct me. Anyone else is welcome to email me.
And then she gets her email addressed. So I wondered,
(05:02):
for all these other writers of historical fiction, whether you've
had similar Uh. I need to correct things that are
historical parts of books that are actually fiction. I uh.
So I toyed around with historical fiction in college quite
a lot. I really enjoyed it because I love history. Um.
(05:24):
And this is the exact reason I don't write historical fiction. UM.
I am a Wikipedia writer, and I get a lot
of virals from other authors when I say this, because
I write in a fantastical world, and I do that
so that it's not this world. Uh. If I need
to research something, it's usually gonna be something like, you know,
the muscle velocity of a you know from the lock rifle,
(05:46):
you know, stuff like that. It's gonna be very specific
and easy to find. I don't do a ton of
digging uh, and try to be specific to a particular
year that I'm trying to copy. I try very much
to cap sure the kind of the feel of an era.
I want something to be you know, Napoleonic, but without
(06:07):
Napoleon and our own history, you know, muddling it all up. UM.
But I I had a huge fear when I started
my books that I would get a lot of that,
and it hasn't actually been a big problem. I've had
some history I've had one or two history buffs who
have said, you know, you're doing this wrong with you know,
like you know, your infantry formations, stuff like that. But
(06:30):
I I most of my feedback has been very positive.
I try to be um as precise as accurate as
I can be with my historical fiction, because it is
historical fiction, and there's always going to be someone out
there that knows a little bit more than you do
about it, and so you just you have to be
as as careful as you can and do as much
research as you can. We did have UM and No
(06:53):
Peace with the Down. I have a co author in
that book, and we do have a few things that
we UM knowingly put in there that weren't completely accurate. UM.
One of them was, UM, there were there were a
total of three African American women out of all all
the people that the US sent Overseas as a set
in World War One. There were three African American women
(07:16):
who went overseas. That was it. Those were the only
ones that were allowed to go, and they all went
with the Y M c A. And I thought that
their story was really interesting and I really wanted to
include like a mention or a cameo of them. But
they got there a little bit after. They got to Paris,
a little bit after my character left, and I just
I I had to fudge it a little bit and
(07:36):
have them be there, at least one of them be
there a little bit early so she could meet them
and have an interaction with them, because I just really
wanted to get their story in there a little bit.
So I but I do have a note at the
end that I say, yes, we know that this this,
this isn't right. They were a little bit later that
they got there. But sometimes when you just really want
to get a mention of something and they're kind of
(07:56):
like the moving moving the parade back by a year,
it's just the temptations a little too much to resist.
It reminds me of a game that I play a
lot of that is called Uh The Long Dark, and
it begins with this caveat that's like, we are aware
that wolves don't normally attack people, and you can sort
(08:17):
of hear that there there was some fatigue with that feedback,
but when they've decided to put it in there, I
think from my perspective, Kurt Vonnegut once wrote a book
that was interspersed with recipes for food because he wanted
to give a flavor of what the book kind of
felt like as you moved through it, and you put
a note in there about how none of the recipes
(08:38):
should be taken as literally. You shouldn't take his book
and go and do the recipes because they weren't accurate.
And then anyone worth anything would have the original recipes
and cookbooks on their shelves anyway. And I think that
that's sort of the flavor historical fiction needs to take,
uh in my opinion, because what you're trying to do
(08:59):
is contextualize and give a flavor of what that history
was like. And as a reader, you probably don't want
to say, you know that that fiction part means a lot,
and you don't want to say, no, this was innaccurate.
You know there needed to be more eggs than that recipe.
You know, I like that. Kurt Vonniguet could always find
a way to kind of like you people, which is
(09:23):
he's like, I know the recipes aren't right, you should
know better. He puts back on the reader, which I love. Uh.
The next question is for Emily specifically. You have a
pretty significant history scholarship background. You are not like a
layman in this world. Do you ever find it difficult
to diverge from the historical record as you're creating fiction. Yes,
(09:43):
it kills me. It's so painful. So I have a
master's degree in history, and I also have an m
l A and Historic Cultural Landscape, so I have a
lot of interest in that. I teach history at a
Utah State University and so so I do. I like
things to be accurate, and it's really it is painful.
It is hard to to step away from that. Even
when sometimes we just don't know things. There are some
(10:05):
things that no matter how much research to do, you're
never going to get that that detail or find that information.
And I will research it forever until I'm really really
sure that that that detail isn't out there, and then
I have to make it up. And it's it's scary
to do that. Because again, there may be that one
person out there somewhere that knows it and I don't,
and then they're going to come back and say, well,
you're an idiot because you didn't know this, and and
(10:26):
it just it is it's painful to change things or
to make them up, because especially when you've done so
much research to have it accurate and then have something
in there that that you know isn't That actually leads
really well into the next question, which is for anyone
on the panel who wants to answer, and I think
you probably would need to have very different answers. What
is your research process? Like, like I said, I'm a
(10:48):
Wikipedia researcher. You know, I try. I write very quickly.
I write in spurts. I'll write an entire novel in
just a few months after not writing for six months
because I'm just letting it percolate in my head. And
so to me, a lot of the times, if I
have to stop and go over and like look through things,
(11:10):
it derails my process completely. And so I'm I'm very
much about the pacing and the characters and the plot,
and I just kind of try to pound through it.
And my wife's my first beta reader. On everything, and
she gives me so much crap about it because she
loves doing research and she loves looking at all that stuff.
So oftentimes, you know, i'll be working on something, I'll
(11:30):
be like, honey, would you look this up for me
real quick, because I don't want to stop and do
it and I'll go back and change it later. But
uh yeah, so as limited as possible. But again, I'm
working in a second world, and I'm only going for flavor,
you know. I'm I'm aiming for something that's like like
more like a TV show would be that's you know,
(11:53):
in terms of historical accuracy, um, rather than being super accurate. UM.
I tend to start, UM. I find an idea that
I like, something that seems really cool, maybe a story
that other people haven't heard about, and I think, oh,
this is awesome. I have to tell this story. And
then I go and do the background research. So I
find um secondary sources, you know, books that just talk
(12:14):
about what life was like in this time period, and
I try to read the primary sources. I try to
read things that were written in that time period. UM.
If I can find journals and letters and things like that,
I I get really really in depth kind of the
opposite of Wikipedia isn't all bad, but that for me,
it would definitely be just a very base starting point.
So going back to those original sources trying to find
(12:36):
out and then as I'm writing, all ran into things.
You know, I'll talk about so many shoes and oh
do they have shoelaces or buttons? How did their shoes
go on? I need to find that out, or you
know what, what are they if they're celebrating a holiday,
how do they celebrate it? And go back and look
for those little details as I'm writing. Um. Sometimes I
do ride ahead and then go back and change it
(12:57):
later and check on it later. But um, but if
I if I do the research ahead of time, then
it's in my head enough that I can write quickly
because I do like writing quickly, and then go back
and fix the small things later. Um. I think for me,
I like to kind of research as I'm going in
that I'll do a lot of research to put the
story together. Reading history books. One of the things I
(13:20):
really love doing is is, uh, the two books I've
written that were historical fiction or alternate history fiction. Uh.
There are eras in which we can read newspapers from
that era and we can you know, you read how
people were writing, how people were quoted. Um, the ads
in those newspapers were surprisingly helpful because you know, I
(13:42):
would have never thought that tooth powder was a thing
rather than toothpaste or little details like that. Um. When
I was working on World War One stuff, I would
go over to the library and have my computer out
and I'd be working, but I just have, uh, I
pull out all the old big picture books with things
and just flipped through pages as I was going. UM,
(14:04):
And it was me trying to replicate sort of what
Martin Scorsese is he does in the editing room. So
on the editing room, Martin Scorsese has a monitor on
at all times with like Turner classic movies on it.
And it's because he's just every once in a while,
if he gets stuck, he'll glanced down and maybe something
whatever is randomly curated on the TV there might help
him get to that next thing. So that's me flipping
(14:27):
pages on three or four history books as I'm working
through scenes and through details. And I found so many
great details that I was able to weave into the
story that way as it was coming together naturally, you know,
I I should mention that like I think for a
lot of authors, I know epic fantasy authors that are
very much like this for me, that that the inspiration
(14:47):
that comes from reading history is amazing. Um. And I
don't know if it qualifies as research because I'm not
looking for specific details, but I'm looking for something that's cool,
that's a wow factor from history that maybe people don't
know about, or or maybe that's familiar enough to people
that it's a good way to transport them into another world. Uh.
(15:09):
My first book very heavily inspired by the French Revolution.
My second book very heavily inspired by Zeno fans Anabassis. Uh.
You know, I try to pluck things that are really
cool and you know, twist them and use them in
my own way. That's exactly why I love listening to
this podcast, to be honest, because no, it's it's I'm serious.
(15:29):
And this is why I tell writers feel like every
time I talked to writers while you're on it, every
time I talked to writers at conventions, I tell them
that that it's the sort of thing whether they're listening
to this one specifically or or just something like this
in general. But there isn't one as good as this one.
Um that you guys are curating content. You guys are
(15:50):
curating stories that I wouldn't necessarily seek out in any way.
So I'm getting just one story after another that maybe
they don't connect, but they're making me think about things
and soaking in those cool things. There are so many
episodes that I just save and go back to later.
The fantasy book that I worked on, the the the Werewolf,
(16:12):
the French Werewolf episodes, you guys did. I listened to
those probably four or five times while I was writing
that book. I I know myself and another epic fantasy author,
Brent Weeks, are both huge fans of hardcore history and
listen to that religiously. Uh and uh. And that's a
great one for me for just just sitting there and
(16:34):
listening about you have that emotion of history and and
trying to pluck something from it. I also have it
on good authority that history podcasts are great tools when
you're running a D and D campaign figure out what's
happening to your players. So that's actually pretty a pretty
(16:56):
interesting research sample set. I like how when we asked
about how the writers prepare their research and what their
processes like. They all gave completely different answers about it,
which kind of illustrates exactly what we were going for
a wide range of styles and writing types. So now
we will pause for a quick sponsor break, and then
(17:17):
we're going to jump right back into this writer chat
from Solid Comic Con. The next question that I have,
I'm gonna start with Brian, but if other folks have ideas,
I also would like to hear from the rest of
the panel too. Uh. In the last few years, there
seemed to be more and more books that come out
(17:38):
and somebody will raise the question of uh, the characters
in this book are not very diverse, uh, and often
enough for it to be a pattern in The response
is like, well that was history. Uh, So I wanted
to see what your thoughts were on that. Brian. UM,
I think that that's kind of being a lazy writer,
to be honest. I think when you look at things like, um,
(18:01):
maybe the way women are treated on Game of Thrones
per se um that that's it's historical in one way,
that he was basing it off of one perspective of
medieval Europe, but it's his own universe, so there's nothing
that says that that the culture as it exists in
that sexist form needs to exist that same way in
(18:23):
his universe. Um, you know you that you can find
ways to work around that and and stand behind that
fiction shield and come up with ways to to put
that together. I don't think that's necessarily whey or a
way to acknowledge it. Um. You know a book I
worked on, UH that that isn't out yet or anything.
(18:44):
It's about filmmakers in the nineteen teens running from Edison's patents,
men who were thugs that were hired by Edison to
shoot up cameras and make sure nobody made films unless
they were paying him what was essentially protection money. And
it was a very male dominated industry. It was a
very male dominated UH era. But finding ways to incorporate
(19:10):
female characters in more contemporary settings, Like I said, you
just need to give the flavor of that history. You
don't have to. You don't have to. I don't want
to say that it's masking what that history was, but
it's including people now into what it might have been
and finding ways to do that that are creative. Yeah,
I I agree that it's it's lazy writing to to say, well,
(19:34):
everybody was white, everybody was straight, everybody was male. I mean,
you know obviously that one's not true, but but the
other ones aren't true either. The other ones aren't true either.
That As I was, it's it's just a history has
been whitewashed and we don't look. Even European history, there
were there were minority groups throughout racial minorities and religious
(19:54):
minorities and um, sexual orientation minorities. They were all there
out history. They were they were part of the lands,
the historical landscape. As as I was researching for Born
to Treason, it's a it's a Welsh Renaissance setting. And
as I was, as I was looking through sources for that,
I found a book called Jews and Muslims in Medieval Whales,
(20:15):
and I was like, well, there's another book I'm gonna
have to write, because that's awesome. You don't you don't
think about that, You don't think that. But they were there.
We just sometimes you have to look for them. And
so even if you're writing, I mean, definitely, if you've
got a fantasy setting, you can you can play with that.
You can include um, people of different of diverse groups.
(20:35):
But but even if you're doing, um, just straight historical fiction,
and it's very accurate, it's based on research. Those those
minorities were still there, they were just kind of being
hushed up, and they weren't necessarily getting a lot of
attention from contemporary writers or sometimes even from historians today
who are still sort of digging them up. And so
(20:57):
it is out there and you can and you can
include it, and there's not really a good reason not to.
If you're like, if you're creating a community that's in
a historical setting, Um, it's a really interesting thing where
you can find that many of these communities had their
own sources of of outlet where you could read about
what they were doing. Um. I've been researching for a
(21:18):
long time a story about the Japanese internment in World
War Two, and I'd read, I'd read all of the
sort of contemporary accounts and things. But it wasn't until
I didn't feel like I had a full picture, until
I actually found the daily newsletters that they were printing
on the inside themselves and hearing how they were describing
that that in their own words, that I realized that
(21:40):
the history we knew was just sort of the version,
you know, it's it's true histories written by the winners,
and the Japanese internment is no different. In seeing how
they wrote about it in their own words was was
incredibly enlightening. I'm also going to take a moment to
pitch the medieval the people of color in European art history.
(22:01):
Tumbler is great. It's so good. Uh. Number one for
constant examples all over our history of Hey, it was
not all white people. Uh. But then number two for
the occasional indignant response to someone being terrible. Yeah, it's spectacular. Uh.
The next question is kind of for everybody, uh, because
(22:22):
you all love history and you love writing fiction. I
know Emily talked about worrying that someone else might know
a thing out there that she didn't happen to unearth.
But I wonder, just for any of you within yourselves,
how often do you find yourself battling going the root
of fiction in a moment versus wanting to stay true
to a piece of history that you might be in
(22:44):
love with. UM. I mean, for me, really it is
about that that flavor. UM. I haven't written anything, um
that was so specifically tied or married to that history.
It was always in service to the story, especially with
that that story about the filmmakers kind of battling Edison. Um.
(23:06):
You know, there are very few accounts, uh, and and
it's weird how many different sources you have to piece
together to kind of put together a picture of what
that would look like. Anyway, So that finding the exact history,
like enough of the background in the setting, that's what
I was important. That was what was important for me
to stay true to, rather than any of the specific details.
(23:28):
But that doesn't mean some of it, most of it
happens in Sacramento, And that doesn't mean I wasn't looking
up like maps in which streets the street car lines
ran on, and what colors the street cars were, and uh,
you know where the hotels were in relation to where
they'd be staying or where their office would be, or
things like that. It almost sounds like for every time
you take creative license, you build up the actual factual
(23:48):
stuff on the other end of it. I've found that
as well that we um so no no piece with
the Dawn the World War One novel. Um, we wanted to.
It's it's actually about Utah Utah's in World War One
and what happened in Utah during World War One, and
so we thought, well, we're both we're both um, we
will teach it Utahs. The university were up in Cash Valley,
(24:11):
but northern Utah. The Shoshone were the Native Americans that
were there in that area before, and we thought it
would be interesting to include them because they have a
lot of history in the area. But it's one of
those that's kind of been whitewashed, and so we thought
this might be tricky to like, well, how are we
going to work them in? And it turned out like
there was there was so much information, like the first
code talkers. The first code talkers weren't the Navajo in
(24:32):
World War Two, they were the Choctaw in World War One,
and we were able to work in some some details
about that. And so so it doesn't often Actually you
might be worried that you're maybe gonna step step away,
but as you do that research, a lot of times
you find these really cool connections back to the original
story that just it fits really well in it. It
just builds the story up more. You know. I am
(24:55):
actually I have a terrible memory, which is one of
the reasons I don't actually discuss history with other people.
Very much, because they'll be throwing facts at me and
I'll be like, yeah, that sounds familiar. Um, But I
have a terrible memory, and so I'll forget things all
the time, but I'll things will leak into my writing.
And I Uh. I mentioned before that my second book
was heavily inspired by the Analysis, and I didn't realize
(25:16):
that until after it was out. Um, because I loved
the anapsis as in Latin as a kid. We we
talked about a lot, and the teacher was given us
translations and stuff to read. And then I remember in
college being obsessed with it and loving it and wanting
to do something interesting with it. And then several years
passed and I hadn't thought about it for a while,
(25:37):
and I had my first book out, and then the
second book I worked on and finished and put it out,
and looking back at it when I started to do
publicity for that book, I went, oh, my gosh, a
army in enemy territory trying to make their way home.
I wrote something that's like the Analysis without even realizing it.
And so like, I think that's part of being an author.
(25:58):
And you know, even that doesn't necessarily write historical fiction. Uh,
And somebody that loves history is that it's going to
leak into their a lot because you're getting inspired by
other stories, and those stories don't have to necessarily be fiction.
My next question is actually for you, and it's along
those same lines. You've talked a couple of times about
(26:20):
how you don't really write historical fiction, it's more of
a historically inspired fantasy. Where do you feel like that
line is in your process? Um? The line, I mean,
I try not to steal directly because you know some
people might notice. But so I, like I said, I
(26:42):
have a terrible memory, So I'm forgetting the guy's book,
the name of the book or the name of the author.
But I read this amazing book. It was like something like, uh,
five Ways We Got to Now or something like that.
It was John Jon Stewart a few years ago, and
that's where I got it from. But one of the
things he talked about was cold the concept of cold
history work le Um, and he talked about this character
(27:02):
of this guy as this real person who basically brought
ice to North America UH and started selling ice UH
for the first time, and that became a big revolutionary thing.
And my next book has a character who is the
ice barred? And I stole that one directly. You know,
the character is completely different than the real historical person,
(27:24):
but the way they got to pa like their their
wealth and and the way things interact in that world
is extremely similar. Um. And I felt like I could
take that one because it was quite obscure but interesting
and kind of cool and and has that you know,
that realism to it because it's real. Hey, We're going
(27:49):
to include a couple of the questions from our audience
at the panel. We don't always include audience questions because
we like to keep some things in our lives show
sort of special for the people that attend there, but
we will include a well, because there were some interesting
questions asked and some interesting answers given. But before we
get to those, what do you say, Tracy that we
pause for a quick moment and have a word from
one of our great sponsors, Okay, al Rady. I felt
(28:17):
like we couldn't talk about a historical fiction without bringing
up the musical Hamilton's and I just sort of, I
don't know, I've I've sort of gone into the historical
and and there's there's stuff it's inaccurate, and um, about it,
but UM, I don't know. It's like it plays with
time and mixes the timeline around a bit, But UM
(28:39):
like to to sort of move the story forward and
to have a better flow of the story. So I
don't know really what I'm asking, just sort of what
are your thoughts. I had on a Hamilton's shirt earlier today.
She did It was the one from where Lemonwell Randa
was raising money and if you gave some money, maybe
you would win tickets to his last performance, which I
(29:00):
did not. Um who on the panel likes Hamilton's I
haven't been exposed much to it. You know. This is
where I make that blanket statement that gets booed. I'm
not a big fan of musical. Does it like singing?
I don't. It's not that I don't like music, It's
(29:21):
that I don't like watching people sing because you can
see inside their mouths and it's iggy, and when they emote,
they tend to make faces that are private time faces,
and I'm not comfortable with it at all. So I
have not partaken of the Hamilton's juice yet. I was
(29:44):
gonna say, I think what you see with with Hamilton's
and any any historical fiction is uh. Alfred Hchcox said
that fiction is life with the doulbits cut out. And
so every choice that someone is making when they're adapting
history into a fictional story, they're making those sacrifices and
changes to tell a better story, to get you too,
(30:05):
as a storyteller, to try to get you to emote
or feel for things, or have empathy this way, or
make you think about things in this way. And so
history isn't like that. History is much more objective depending
on the source, and historical fiction isn't that. So, so
I think that's where it's great that we have stuff
like Hamilton's. Hopefully it takes people the next step to
(30:26):
actually learn, like, well, what did they what did they ignore?
What did what didn't fit into that story? What didn't
fit into that narrative? Yeah, the the the entertainment or
wow factor, Uh is a balance that I think all
writers are trying to reach because you're, yeah, you Sometimes
you look at something you say, I need to fudge this,
(30:48):
but it's gonna be so cool that nobody cares. Uh.
So sometimes you can make things better by doing that,
and sometimes you have to go to the obs direction.
Sometimes you say, uh, you know what, this could be cool,
but I'm not gonna be able to pull it off
in a way that makes it satisfying. Uh. And you know,
obviously something like Hamilton's fudging works, and I think, um,
(31:11):
it's I think it's good to remember anytime you're looking
at any kind of history, including your great, big published
history textbooks and things like that, someone is telling you
a story. Someone is selling you a story. They want
you to to believe that history was the way they
said it was. And it's it's a little almost creepy
to think about that, like, because it's history had happened, right,
(31:34):
it's just the stuff that happened, But it's always being
told as a story, and it's always being retold. And
that's why historians have jobs, is because we're retelling history
over and over again and understand. And sometimes it's things
like uncovering the Jews and Muslims who lived in medieval
Wales and nobody's written about them before. And sometimes it's
just just new takes on things. It's new information, but
(31:55):
someone's always twitted. Someone's always telling you that story, and
their own biases are in a historians as biased, if
not more so, than anybody then as everybody else is.
And so I mean, yeah, you look at something like Hamilton's,
people go in there, I think knowing that it's not
a accurate I mean, we don't even know if Alexander
Hamilton's had a great singing voice. So so there's an understanding.
(32:20):
I think when you go into fiction and there's you know,
different levels of fiction. If it's a musical, we're gonna
expect things to be condensed and change. If you're reading
historical fiction, maybe we expect it to be a little
more accurate, but there's still that fiction aspect. And even
when you're reading like academic history, it's it's still has
its own biases and it's still a story. They're still
(32:40):
telling you a story. I love Hamilton's. People started writing
to us about Hamilton's really before it became a really
well known thing, like definitely before the cast album came out,
and before it just every time he turned around on
the internet, Hamilton's was in front of you. Uh, And
I was like sure, it's I'm sure it's fine. And
(33:01):
then when I finally listened to it, I got super excited. Um.
And there has been some discussion about it being used
in classrooms which I think is a really cool idea
because some of the history that it goes over can
frankly seem really dry, like the whole thing about assuming
state's debts. Who is really fascinating by that? Um? But
(33:23):
then I also think it's a really good opportunity to
talk about us some of the social issues that were
present at the time. Like there's a whole song about
how there was no one else in the room when
it happened. That was Thomas Jefferson's room. I'm pretty sure
that there were enslaved people serving that dinner, and so
like there's simultaneously the thought process of the folks who
(33:44):
hear that song for the first time and don't think
of that, and the people who really were in that room,
and we're just having unguarded conversations around human beings that
they sort of forgot were there, who were actually serving dinner,
which I think is a really amazing opportunity to like
explore things like that, So not just so much to
get the facts of cabinet rap battles, but to talk
(34:07):
about all of these other more nuanced things that kind
of rise up. That didn't mean to make that fun,
that was an accident, but you know what I'm saying.
I mean, I'm just excited that it gets people excited
about history. So even if I'm not into it, that
that means nothing. I love how passionate people are now
about wanting to learn more. So that's the magic. Once again,
(34:35):
I want to say a huge thank you to Brian Young,
Eb Wheeler, and Brian McClellan for being part of our
Salt Lake Comic com panel. You can reach Brian Young
on Twitter at Swank Motron, Ebie Wheeler at eb Underscore Wheeler,
and Brian McClellan at Brian T. McClellan. We will also
include links to all of the author's websites and our
show notes which will be on our website, and we
(34:57):
encourage you to go investiget their work. There's just a
breath uh in their types and styles that they're writing about.
You know, We've got everything from historically inspired fantasy to
straight up historical novels, so lots of things that choose from. Yeah,
and again, also thanks to Salti Comic Con for having
(35:18):
us into Ryan Call for helping us put together that
pretty great panel of people. I absolutely love the people
that run Salti Comic Con. They do an amazing job
and they make our jobs easier while we're there. So
thank you, thank you, thank you. I have some listener mail. Okay,
since we've been traveling so much, we're getting a little
(35:38):
bit of a postcard pile up, so so I'm gonna
try to move through at least some postcards that we get.
We can never feature them all, unfortunately, but today I
have three to touch on briefly. I won't read them all,
but I will talk about them a little. One is
from our listener Brenna, and she sent us a postcard
from the Winchester Mystery House, and it's really really lovely
(36:01):
because it's in this fun art style that looks almost like, um,
some of the postcards you can purchase at Disney of
some of their attractions, so it's sort of fantastic. Uh.
The next one is from our listener John, and he says,
high ladies, I love your podcast. My family and I
were touring this museum during a Labor Day weekend anniversary getaway.
(36:22):
The guide mentioned how signs reflected changing times and culture,
and I thought of YouTube. They specifically cited how the
Big Boy had changed through time. Keep up the great work.
They went to the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, and
this postcard is a lovely image of the big Boy
holding his giant Hamburger and I kind of love signs
like I love that aspect of Americana. So thank you,
(36:43):
thank you, thank you. John. Our third and final postcard
for today is from our listener and it says, Hi,
Holly and Tracy, I just wanted to write and thank
you for all the work you do making such a
great podcast. Although the podcast has had different hosts, UH
and had different hosts then the Easter Island Update episode
is what sparked my interest in visiting here after my
summer research job ended in Chile. Keep up the good work,
(37:05):
so and sent us a beautiful large size postcard UH
from Eastern Island, featuring the famous sculptures that you will
often see there. It's a really lovely photograph as well.
So thank you, thank you, Thank you to uh Anne
and Brenna and John for sharing those with us and
taking time out of their travels to write us postcards.
Always say that I love it because it's always true. UH.
(37:28):
If you would like to write to us, you can
email us at History Podcast at how Stuff works dot com.
You can also find us pretty much across social media
as missed in History. So that's on Twitter at Misston History,
at Facebook dot com, slash mist in History on pinterest
dot com, slash misston History on Instagram, as at misst
in history. We're everywhere as miss in History. If you
(37:49):
would like to come to our website and visit us,
you can do that. That is missed in history dot com.
There's a mist in History theme you may have noticed,
and there you will find uh show notes for every
episode that Tracy and I have worked out together, as
well as an archive of all of the episodes that
have ever existed of the show. You can also occasionally
(38:09):
find blog posts and other goodies. You can also visit
our parents site, which is how stuff works dot com
and type something into the search bar and you're gonna
get back some really interesting uh the responses results. Thank you,
and you're gonna get back some really interesting results that
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encourage you to visit us online at misston History dot
(38:29):
com and how stuff works dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Because it has stuff
works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. You'll hear that
again in a minute because we recorded it while we
were in Salt Lake City at Sala Comic Con and
(00:22):
we did a couple of live shows. Yep. One of
those shows was actually a panel where we talked with
authors who incorporate history into their fiction writing. We were
really really lucky to be at a convention that to
some amazing authors on hand who were willing to share
their process with us. This conversation covers everything from the
research process, to diversity and history to being kind of
(00:44):
precious about facts. I want to thank you Holly for
doing of the legwork on this panel. Um, Holly assembled
a great a great panel, some of them one of
them will be a familiar voice to listeners. And then
also a really interesting spectrum of how people incorporate history
(01:04):
into their writings, so you will get answers from a
wide range of sort of flavors of historical fiction. Yeah,
and I really should give some of the credit on
putting together that panel to m Ryan Call, who is
one of the amazing people that run Solid Comic Con.
I kind of put out a yell to him and said, hey,
we want to do this panel, and he gave me
(01:25):
suggestions on who might be good to talk to. So
thank you, thank you Ryan, thank you Solid Comic Con.
We had a wonderful time there. But we're going to
hop right into our discussion and then you two can
benefit from hearing about some of the interesting thoughts that
these authors had to share with us. Hello, and welcome
to the podcast. I'm Tracy Vie Wilson and I'm Holly Fry.
(01:47):
Have something cool today, which is that we're going to
talk to some actual authors about historical fiction. Yeah. We
often get asked and by listeners like if we would
cover like a historical fiction book. And since that's not
really part of the purview of the pod casts as
it exists, we can't really do it as a regular episode,
but for special events like a live event like this,
we absolutely can. Yeah. And it also instead of talking
(02:09):
about an individual book and and it's historical influence, we'll
be talking about lots of writers and lots of books. Yeah,
we thought we'd take advantage of the fact that we
are at a at a place where we have several writers,
um and writers of historical fictions, So we thought what
better way to explore that topic than to talk with
them about how they actually create the fiction that people
(02:30):
like you love because it blends sort of the wonders
of imagination with actual historical fact. So first we're gonna
have each of our wonderful panelists introduced themselves, starting with
this gentleman to my left. He's not a stranger to
the stuff you mission history class, audience. UM. My name
is Brian Young, and I'm the author of a children's
(02:51):
illustrated history of presidential assassination, which is what I was
on for before. UM, but in the historical fiction realm.
My last book was called The Aeronaut. It was sort
of a steampunk World War One novel. And additionally I
write for star wars dot Com and star Wars Insider
in a lot for Star Wars and UH really like
(03:13):
researching history. My name is Evie Wheeler. I'm the author
of the Haunting of Springett hall Um, which might guess
by the title is not completely historically accurate. UM, but
UM also Born to Treason, which is a lot more historical,
is based on actual events and No Peace with the Dawn,
(03:33):
which is coming out in November. So my name is
Brian mcfallen. I did give a caveat when we first
talked about doing this panel that I write epic fantasy.
I don't actually write historical books, but I am very
heavily influenced by history. But then I add magic and
a secondary world to it. Um, but my books are
(03:54):
the powder Made trilogy. We were actually really excited to
have that breadth of a range of from fantasy that
is sort of historically flavored to all the way to
the other end of the spectrum to your books. So
we're gonna begin with a question that is open to
anyone on the panel. UM. I have become a big
(04:16):
fan of Carrie Greenwood's Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries books. I
like them quite a lot. And I noticed after reading
several which I am reading in order, that she started
to place notes along the lines of the one I
am about to read at the end of each book.
This says, this is a work of fiction. I have
researched it as carefully as I could. There are undoubtedly
(04:38):
some small errors of fact and timing, and one big anachronism,
which is that I unilaterally moved the flower parade from
nine to Please forgive me and do not feel moved
to correct me. Anyone else is welcome to email me.
And then she gets her email addressed. So I wondered,
(05:02):
for all these other writers of historical fiction, whether you've
had similar Uh. I need to correct things that are
historical parts of books that are actually fiction. I uh.
So I toyed around with historical fiction in college quite
a lot. I really enjoyed it because I love history. Um.
(05:24):
And this is the exact reason I don't write historical fiction. UM.
I am a Wikipedia writer, and I get a lot
of virals from other authors when I say this, because
I write in a fantastical world, and I do that
so that it's not this world. Uh. If I need
to research something, it's usually gonna be something like, you know,
the muscle velocity of a you know from the lock rifle,
(05:46):
you know, stuff like that. It's gonna be very specific
and easy to find. I don't do a ton of
digging uh, and try to be specific to a particular
year that I'm trying to copy. I try very much
to cap sure the kind of the feel of an era.
I want something to be you know, Napoleonic, but without
(06:07):
Napoleon and our own history, you know, muddling it all up. UM.
But I I had a huge fear when I started
my books that I would get a lot of that,
and it hasn't actually been a big problem. I've had
some history I've had one or two history buffs who
have said, you know, you're doing this wrong with you know,
like you know, your infantry formations, stuff like that. But
(06:30):
I I most of my feedback has been very positive.
I try to be um as precise as accurate as
I can be with my historical fiction, because it is
historical fiction, and there's always going to be someone out
there that knows a little bit more than you do
about it, and so you just you have to be
as as careful as you can and do as much
research as you can. We did have UM and No
(06:53):
Peace with the Down. I have a co author in
that book, and we do have a few things that
we UM knowingly put in there that weren't completely accurate. UM.
One of them was, UM, there were there were a
total of three African American women out of all all
the people that the US sent Overseas as a set
in World War One. There were three African American women
(07:16):
who went overseas. That was it. Those were the only
ones that were allowed to go, and they all went
with the Y M c A. And I thought that
their story was really interesting and I really wanted to
include like a mention or a cameo of them. But
they got there a little bit after. They got to Paris,
a little bit after my character left, and I just
I I had to fudge it a little bit and
(07:36):
have them be there, at least one of them be
there a little bit early so she could meet them
and have an interaction with them, because I just really
wanted to get their story in there a little bit.
So I but I do have a note at the
end that I say, yes, we know that this this,
this isn't right. They were a little bit later that
they got there. But sometimes when you just really want
to get a mention of something and they're kind of
(07:56):
like the moving moving the parade back by a year,
it's just the temptations a little too much to resist.
It reminds me of a game that I play a
lot of that is called Uh The Long Dark, and
it begins with this caveat that's like, we are aware
that wolves don't normally attack people, and you can sort
(08:17):
of hear that there there was some fatigue with that feedback,
but when they've decided to put it in there, I
think from my perspective, Kurt Vonnegut once wrote a book
that was interspersed with recipes for food because he wanted
to give a flavor of what the book kind of
felt like as you moved through it, and you put
a note in there about how none of the recipes
(08:38):
should be taken as literally. You shouldn't take his book
and go and do the recipes because they weren't accurate.
And then anyone worth anything would have the original recipes
and cookbooks on their shelves anyway. And I think that
that's sort of the flavor historical fiction needs to take,
uh in my opinion, because what you're trying to do
(08:59):
is contextualize and give a flavor of what that history
was like. And as a reader, you probably don't want
to say, you know that that fiction part means a lot,
and you don't want to say, no, this was innaccurate.
You know there needed to be more eggs than that recipe.
You know, I like that. Kurt Vonniguet could always find
a way to kind of like you people, which is
(09:23):
he's like, I know the recipes aren't right, you should
know better. He puts back on the reader, which I love. Uh.
The next question is for Emily specifically. You have a
pretty significant history scholarship background. You are not like a
layman in this world. Do you ever find it difficult
to diverge from the historical record as you're creating fiction. Yes,
(09:43):
it kills me. It's so painful. So I have a
master's degree in history, and I also have an m
l A and Historic Cultural Landscape, so I have a
lot of interest in that. I teach history at a
Utah State University and so so I do. I like
things to be accurate, and it's really it is painful.
It is hard to to step away from that. Even
when sometimes we just don't know things. There are some
(10:05):
things that no matter how much research to do, you're
never going to get that that detail or find that information.
And I will research it forever until I'm really really
sure that that that detail isn't out there, and then
I have to make it up. And it's it's scary
to do that. Because again, there may be that one
person out there somewhere that knows it and I don't,
and then they're going to come back and say, well,
you're an idiot because you didn't know this, and and
(10:26):
it just it is it's painful to change things or
to make them up, because especially when you've done so
much research to have it accurate and then have something
in there that that you know isn't That actually leads
really well into the next question, which is for anyone
on the panel who wants to answer, and I think
you probably would need to have very different answers. What
is your research process? Like, like I said, I'm a
(10:48):
Wikipedia researcher. You know, I try. I write very quickly.
I write in spurts. I'll write an entire novel in
just a few months after not writing for six months
because I'm just letting it percolate in my head. And
so to me, a lot of the times, if I
have to stop and go over and like look through things,
(11:10):
it derails my process completely. And so I'm I'm very
much about the pacing and the characters and the plot,
and I just kind of try to pound through it.
And my wife's my first beta reader. On everything, and
she gives me so much crap about it because she
loves doing research and she loves looking at all that stuff.
So oftentimes, you know, i'll be working on something, I'll
(11:30):
be like, honey, would you look this up for me
real quick, because I don't want to stop and do
it and I'll go back and change it later. But
uh yeah, so as limited as possible. But again, I'm
working in a second world, and I'm only going for flavor,
you know. I'm I'm aiming for something that's like like
more like a TV show would be that's you know,
(11:53):
in terms of historical accuracy, um, rather than being super accurate. UM.
I tend to start, UM. I find an idea that
I like, something that seems really cool, maybe a story
that other people haven't heard about, and I think, oh,
this is awesome. I have to tell this story. And
then I go and do the background research. So I
find um secondary sources, you know, books that just talk
(12:14):
about what life was like in this time period, and
I try to read the primary sources. I try to
read things that were written in that time period. UM.
If I can find journals and letters and things like that,
I I get really really in depth kind of the
opposite of Wikipedia isn't all bad, but that for me,
it would definitely be just a very base starting point.
So going back to those original sources trying to find
(12:36):
out and then as I'm writing, all ran into things.
You know, I'll talk about so many shoes and oh
do they have shoelaces or buttons? How did their shoes
go on? I need to find that out, or you
know what, what are they if they're celebrating a holiday,
how do they celebrate it? And go back and look
for those little details as I'm writing. Um. Sometimes I
do ride ahead and then go back and change it
(12:57):
later and check on it later. But um, but if
I if I do the research ahead of time, then
it's in my head enough that I can write quickly
because I do like writing quickly, and then go back
and fix the small things later. Um. I think for me,
I like to kind of research as I'm going in
that I'll do a lot of research to put the
story together. Reading history books. One of the things I
(13:20):
really love doing is is, uh, the two books I've
written that were historical fiction or alternate history fiction. Uh.
There are eras in which we can read newspapers from
that era and we can you know, you read how
people were writing, how people were quoted. Um, the ads
in those newspapers were surprisingly helpful because you know, I
(13:42):
would have never thought that tooth powder was a thing
rather than toothpaste or little details like that. Um. When
I was working on World War One stuff, I would
go over to the library and have my computer out
and I'd be working, but I just have, uh, I
pull out all the old big picture books with things
and just flipped through pages as I was going. UM,
(14:04):
And it was me trying to replicate sort of what
Martin Scorsese is he does in the editing room. So
on the editing room, Martin Scorsese has a monitor on
at all times with like Turner classic movies on it.
And it's because he's just every once in a while,
if he gets stuck, he'll glanced down and maybe something
whatever is randomly curated on the TV there might help
him get to that next thing. So that's me flipping
(14:27):
pages on three or four history books as I'm working
through scenes and through details. And I found so many
great details that I was able to weave into the
story that way as it was coming together naturally, you know,
I I should mention that like I think for a
lot of authors, I know epic fantasy authors that are
very much like this for me, that that the inspiration
(14:47):
that comes from reading history is amazing. Um. And I
don't know if it qualifies as research because I'm not
looking for specific details, but I'm looking for something that's cool,
that's a wow factor from history that maybe people don't
know about, or or maybe that's familiar enough to people
that it's a good way to transport them into another world. Uh.
(15:09):
My first book very heavily inspired by the French Revolution.
My second book very heavily inspired by Zeno fans Anabassis. Uh.
You know, I try to pluck things that are really
cool and you know, twist them and use them in
my own way. That's exactly why I love listening to
this podcast, to be honest, because no, it's it's I'm serious.
(15:29):
And this is why I tell writers feel like every
time I talked to writers while you're on it, every
time I talked to writers at conventions, I tell them
that that it's the sort of thing whether they're listening
to this one specifically or or just something like this
in general. But there isn't one as good as this one.
Um that you guys are curating content. You guys are
(15:50):
curating stories that I wouldn't necessarily seek out in any way.
So I'm getting just one story after another that maybe
they don't connect, but they're making me think about things
and soaking in those cool things. There are so many
episodes that I just save and go back to later.
The fantasy book that I worked on, the the the Werewolf,
(16:12):
the French Werewolf episodes, you guys did. I listened to
those probably four or five times while I was writing
that book. I I know myself and another epic fantasy author,
Brent Weeks, are both huge fans of hardcore history and
listen to that religiously. Uh and uh. And that's a
great one for me for just just sitting there and
(16:34):
listening about you have that emotion of history and and
trying to pluck something from it. I also have it
on good authority that history podcasts are great tools when
you're running a D and D campaign figure out what's
happening to your players. So that's actually pretty a pretty
(16:56):
interesting research sample set. I like how when we asked
about how the writers prepare their research and what their
processes like. They all gave completely different answers about it,
which kind of illustrates exactly what we were going for
a wide range of styles and writing types. So now
we will pause for a quick sponsor break, and then
(17:17):
we're going to jump right back into this writer chat
from Solid Comic Con. The next question that I have,
I'm gonna start with Brian, but if other folks have ideas,
I also would like to hear from the rest of
the panel too. Uh. In the last few years, there
seemed to be more and more books that come out
(17:38):
and somebody will raise the question of uh, the characters
in this book are not very diverse, uh, and often
enough for it to be a pattern in The response
is like, well that was history. Uh, So I wanted
to see what your thoughts were on that. Brian. UM,
I think that that's kind of being a lazy writer,
to be honest. I think when you look at things like, um,
(18:01):
maybe the way women are treated on Game of Thrones
per se um that that's it's historical in one way,
that he was basing it off of one perspective of
medieval Europe, but it's his own universe, so there's nothing
that says that that the culture as it exists in
that sexist form needs to exist that same way in
(18:23):
his universe. Um, you know you that you can find
ways to work around that and and stand behind that
fiction shield and come up with ways to to put
that together. I don't think that's necessarily whey or a
way to acknowledge it. Um. You know a book I
worked on, UH that that isn't out yet or anything.
(18:44):
It's about filmmakers in the nineteen teens running from Edison's patents,
men who were thugs that were hired by Edison to
shoot up cameras and make sure nobody made films unless
they were paying him what was essentially protection money. And
it was a very male dominated industry. It was a
very male dominated UH era. But finding ways to incorporate
(19:10):
female characters in more contemporary settings, Like I said, you
just need to give the flavor of that history. You
don't have to. You don't have to. I don't want
to say that it's masking what that history was, but
it's including people now into what it might have been
and finding ways to do that that are creative. Yeah,
I I agree that it's it's lazy writing to to say, well,
(19:34):
everybody was white, everybody was straight, everybody was male. I mean,
you know obviously that one's not true, but but the
other ones aren't true either. The other ones aren't true either.
That As I was, it's it's just a history has
been whitewashed and we don't look. Even European history, there
were there were minority groups throughout racial minorities and religious
(19:54):
minorities and um, sexual orientation minorities. They were all there
out history. They were they were part of the lands,
the historical landscape. As as I was researching for Born
to Treason, it's a it's a Welsh Renaissance setting. And
as I was, as I was looking through sources for that,
I found a book called Jews and Muslims in Medieval Whales,
(20:15):
and I was like, well, there's another book I'm gonna
have to write, because that's awesome. You don't you don't
think about that, You don't think that. But they were there.
We just sometimes you have to look for them. And
so even if you're writing, I mean, definitely, if you've
got a fantasy setting, you can you can play with that.
You can include um, people of different of diverse groups.
(20:35):
But but even if you're doing, um, just straight historical fiction,
and it's very accurate, it's based on research. Those those
minorities were still there, they were just kind of being
hushed up, and they weren't necessarily getting a lot of
attention from contemporary writers or sometimes even from historians today
who are still sort of digging them up. And so
(20:57):
it is out there and you can and you can
include it, and there's not really a good reason not to.
If you're like, if you're creating a community that's in
a historical setting, Um, it's a really interesting thing where
you can find that many of these communities had their
own sources of of outlet where you could read about
what they were doing. Um. I've been researching for a
(21:18):
long time a story about the Japanese internment in World
War Two, and I'd read, I'd read all of the
sort of contemporary accounts and things. But it wasn't until
I didn't feel like I had a full picture, until
I actually found the daily newsletters that they were printing
on the inside themselves and hearing how they were describing
that that in their own words, that I realized that
(21:40):
the history we knew was just sort of the version,
you know, it's it's true histories written by the winners,
and the Japanese internment is no different. In seeing how
they wrote about it in their own words was was
incredibly enlightening. I'm also going to take a moment to
pitch the medieval the people of color in European art history.
(22:01):
Tumbler is great. It's so good. Uh. Number one for
constant examples all over our history of Hey, it was
not all white people. Uh. But then number two for
the occasional indignant response to someone being terrible. Yeah, it's spectacular. Uh.
The next question is kind of for everybody, uh, because
(22:22):
you all love history and you love writing fiction. I
know Emily talked about worrying that someone else might know
a thing out there that she didn't happen to unearth.
But I wonder, just for any of you within yourselves,
how often do you find yourself battling going the root
of fiction in a moment versus wanting to stay true
to a piece of history that you might be in
(22:44):
love with. UM. I mean, for me, really it is
about that that flavor. UM. I haven't written anything, um
that was so specifically tied or married to that history.
It was always in service to the story, especially with
that that story about the filmmakers kind of battling Edison. Um.
(23:06):
You know, there are very few accounts, uh, and and
it's weird how many different sources you have to piece
together to kind of put together a picture of what
that would look like. Anyway, So that finding the exact history,
like enough of the background in the setting, that's what
I was important. That was what was important for me
to stay true to, rather than any of the specific details.
(23:28):
But that doesn't mean some of it, most of it
happens in Sacramento, And that doesn't mean I wasn't looking
up like maps in which streets the street car lines
ran on, and what colors the street cars were, and uh,
you know where the hotels were in relation to where
they'd be staying or where their office would be, or
things like that. It almost sounds like for every time
you take creative license, you build up the actual factual
(23:48):
stuff on the other end of it. I've found that
as well that we um so no no piece with
the Dawn the World War One novel. Um, we wanted to.
It's it's actually about Utah Utah's in World War One
and what happened in Utah during World War One, and
so we thought, well, we're both we're both um, we
will teach it Utahs. The university were up in Cash Valley,
(24:11):
but northern Utah. The Shoshone were the Native Americans that
were there in that area before, and we thought it
would be interesting to include them because they have a
lot of history in the area. But it's one of
those that's kind of been whitewashed, and so we thought
this might be tricky to like, well, how are we
going to work them in? And it turned out like
there was there was so much information, like the first
code talkers. The first code talkers weren't the Navajo in
(24:32):
World War Two, they were the Choctaw in World War One,
and we were able to work in some some details
about that. And so so it doesn't often Actually you
might be worried that you're maybe gonna step step away,
but as you do that research, a lot of times
you find these really cool connections back to the original
story that just it fits really well in it. It
just builds the story up more. You know. I am
(24:55):
actually I have a terrible memory, which is one of
the reasons I don't actually discuss history with other people.
Very much, because they'll be throwing facts at me and
I'll be like, yeah, that sounds familiar. Um, But I
have a terrible memory, and so I'll forget things all
the time, but I'll things will leak into my writing.
And I Uh. I mentioned before that my second book
was heavily inspired by the Analysis, and I didn't realize
(25:16):
that until after it was out. Um, because I loved
the anapsis as in Latin as a kid. We we
talked about a lot, and the teacher was given us
translations and stuff to read. And then I remember in
college being obsessed with it and loving it and wanting
to do something interesting with it. And then several years
passed and I hadn't thought about it for a while,
(25:37):
and I had my first book out, and then the
second book I worked on and finished and put it out,
and looking back at it when I started to do
publicity for that book, I went, oh, my gosh, a
army in enemy territory trying to make their way home.
I wrote something that's like the Analysis without even realizing it.
And so like, I think that's part of being an author.
(25:58):
And you know, even that doesn't necessarily write historical fiction. Uh,
And somebody that loves history is that it's going to
leak into their a lot because you're getting inspired by
other stories, and those stories don't have to necessarily be fiction.
My next question is actually for you, and it's along
those same lines. You've talked a couple of times about
(26:20):
how you don't really write historical fiction, it's more of
a historically inspired fantasy. Where do you feel like that
line is in your process? Um? The line, I mean,
I try not to steal directly because you know some
people might notice. But so I, like I said, I
(26:42):
have a terrible memory, So I'm forgetting the guy's book,
the name of the book or the name of the author.
But I read this amazing book. It was like something like, uh,
five Ways We Got to Now or something like that.
It was John Jon Stewart a few years ago, and
that's where I got it from. But one of the
things he talked about was cold the concept of cold
history work le Um, and he talked about this character
(27:02):
of this guy as this real person who basically brought
ice to North America UH and started selling ice UH
for the first time, and that became a big revolutionary thing.
And my next book has a character who is the
ice barred? And I stole that one directly. You know,
the character is completely different than the real historical person,
(27:24):
but the way they got to pa like their their
wealth and and the way things interact in that world
is extremely similar. Um. And I felt like I could
take that one because it was quite obscure but interesting
and kind of cool and and has that you know,
that realism to it because it's real. Hey, We're going
(27:49):
to include a couple of the questions from our audience
at the panel. We don't always include audience questions because
we like to keep some things in our lives show
sort of special for the people that attend there, but
we will include a well, because there were some interesting
questions asked and some interesting answers given. But before we
get to those, what do you say, Tracy that we
pause for a quick moment and have a word from
one of our great sponsors, Okay, al Rady. I felt
(28:17):
like we couldn't talk about a historical fiction without bringing
up the musical Hamilton's and I just sort of, I
don't know, I've I've sort of gone into the historical
and and there's there's stuff it's inaccurate, and um, about it,
but UM, I don't know. It's like it plays with
time and mixes the timeline around a bit, But UM
(28:39):
like to to sort of move the story forward and
to have a better flow of the story. So I
don't know really what I'm asking, just sort of what
are your thoughts. I had on a Hamilton's shirt earlier today.
She did It was the one from where Lemonwell Randa
was raising money and if you gave some money, maybe
you would win tickets to his last performance, which I
(29:00):
did not. Um who on the panel likes Hamilton's I
haven't been exposed much to it. You know. This is
where I make that blanket statement that gets booed. I'm
not a big fan of musical. Does it like singing?
I don't. It's not that I don't like music, It's
(29:21):
that I don't like watching people sing because you can
see inside their mouths and it's iggy, and when they emote,
they tend to make faces that are private time faces,
and I'm not comfortable with it at all. So I
have not partaken of the Hamilton's juice yet. I was
(29:44):
gonna say, I think what you see with with Hamilton's
and any any historical fiction is uh. Alfred Hchcox said
that fiction is life with the doulbits cut out. And
so every choice that someone is making when they're adapting
history into a fictional story, they're making those sacrifices and
changes to tell a better story, to get you too,
(30:05):
as a storyteller, to try to get you to emote
or feel for things, or have empathy this way, or
make you think about things in this way. And so
history isn't like that. History is much more objective depending
on the source, and historical fiction isn't that. So, so
I think that's where it's great that we have stuff
like Hamilton's. Hopefully it takes people the next step to
(30:26):
actually learn, like, well, what did they what did they ignore?
What did what didn't fit into that story? What didn't
fit into that narrative? Yeah, the the the entertainment or
wow factor, Uh is a balance that I think all
writers are trying to reach because you're, yeah, you Sometimes
you look at something you say, I need to fudge this,
(30:48):
but it's gonna be so cool that nobody cares. Uh.
So sometimes you can make things better by doing that,
and sometimes you have to go to the obs direction.
Sometimes you say, uh, you know what, this could be cool,
but I'm not gonna be able to pull it off
in a way that makes it satisfying. Uh. And you know,
obviously something like Hamilton's fudging works, and I think, um,
(31:11):
it's I think it's good to remember anytime you're looking
at any kind of history, including your great, big published
history textbooks and things like that, someone is telling you
a story. Someone is selling you a story. They want
you to to believe that history was the way they
said it was. And it's it's a little almost creepy
to think about that, like, because it's history had happened, right,
(31:34):
it's just the stuff that happened, But it's always being
told as a story, and it's always being retold. And
that's why historians have jobs, is because we're retelling history
over and over again and understand. And sometimes it's things
like uncovering the Jews and Muslims who lived in medieval
Wales and nobody's written about them before. And sometimes it's
just just new takes on things. It's new information, but
(31:55):
someone's always twitted. Someone's always telling you that story, and
their own biases are in a historians as biased, if
not more so, than anybody then as everybody else is.
And so I mean, yeah, you look at something like Hamilton's,
people go in there, I think knowing that it's not
a accurate I mean, we don't even know if Alexander
Hamilton's had a great singing voice. So so there's an understanding.
(32:20):
I think when you go into fiction and there's you know,
different levels of fiction. If it's a musical, we're gonna
expect things to be condensed and change. If you're reading
historical fiction, maybe we expect it to be a little
more accurate, but there's still that fiction aspect. And even
when you're reading like academic history, it's it's still has
its own biases and it's still a story. They're still
(32:40):
telling you a story. I love Hamilton's. People started writing
to us about Hamilton's really before it became a really
well known thing, like definitely before the cast album came out,
and before it just every time he turned around on
the internet, Hamilton's was in front of you. Uh, And
I was like sure, it's I'm sure it's fine. And
(33:01):
then when I finally listened to it, I got super excited. Um.
And there has been some discussion about it being used
in classrooms which I think is a really cool idea
because some of the history that it goes over can
frankly seem really dry, like the whole thing about assuming
state's debts. Who is really fascinating by that? Um? But
(33:23):
then I also think it's a really good opportunity to
talk about us some of the social issues that were
present at the time. Like there's a whole song about
how there was no one else in the room when
it happened. That was Thomas Jefferson's room. I'm pretty sure
that there were enslaved people serving that dinner, and so
like there's simultaneously the thought process of the folks who
(33:44):
hear that song for the first time and don't think
of that, and the people who really were in that room,
and we're just having unguarded conversations around human beings that
they sort of forgot were there, who were actually serving dinner,
which I think is a really amazing opportunity to like
explore things like that, So not just so much to
get the facts of cabinet rap battles, but to talk
(34:07):
about all of these other more nuanced things that kind
of rise up. That didn't mean to make that fun,
that was an accident, but you know what I'm saying.
I mean, I'm just excited that it gets people excited
about history. So even if I'm not into it, that
that means nothing. I love how passionate people are now
about wanting to learn more. So that's the magic. Once again,
(34:35):
I want to say a huge thank you to Brian Young,
Eb Wheeler, and Brian McClellan for being part of our
Salt Lake Comic com panel. You can reach Brian Young
on Twitter at Swank Motron, Ebie Wheeler at eb Underscore Wheeler,
and Brian McClellan at Brian T. McClellan. We will also
include links to all of the author's websites and our
show notes which will be on our website, and we
(34:57):
encourage you to go investiget their work. There's just a
breath uh in their types and styles that they're writing about.
You know, We've got everything from historically inspired fantasy to
straight up historical novels, so lots of things that choose from. Yeah,
and again, also thanks to Salti Comic Con for having
(35:18):
us into Ryan Call for helping us put together that
pretty great panel of people. I absolutely love the people
that run Salti Comic Con. They do an amazing job
and they make our jobs easier while we're there. So
thank you, thank you, thank you. I have some listener mail. Okay,
since we've been traveling so much, we're getting a little
(35:38):
bit of a postcard pile up, so so I'm gonna
try to move through at least some postcards that we get.
We can never feature them all, unfortunately, but today I
have three to touch on briefly. I won't read them all,
but I will talk about them a little. One is
from our listener Brenna, and she sent us a postcard
from the Winchester Mystery House, and it's really really lovely
(36:01):
because it's in this fun art style that looks almost like, um,
some of the postcards you can purchase at Disney of
some of their attractions, so it's sort of fantastic. Uh.
The next one is from our listener John, and he says,
high ladies, I love your podcast. My family and I
were touring this museum during a Labor Day weekend anniversary getaway.
(36:22):
The guide mentioned how signs reflected changing times and culture,
and I thought of YouTube. They specifically cited how the
Big Boy had changed through time. Keep up the great work.
They went to the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati, and
this postcard is a lovely image of the big Boy
holding his giant Hamburger and I kind of love signs
like I love that aspect of Americana. So thank you,
(36:43):
thank you, thank you. John. Our third and final postcard
for today is from our listener and it says, Hi,
Holly and Tracy, I just wanted to write and thank
you for all the work you do making such a
great podcast. Although the podcast has had different hosts, UH
and had different hosts then the Easter Island Update episode
is what sparked my interest in visiting here after my
summer research job ended in Chile. Keep up the good work,
(37:05):
so and sent us a beautiful large size postcard UH
from Eastern Island, featuring the famous sculptures that you will
often see there. It's a really lovely photograph as well.
So thank you, thank you, Thank you to uh Anne
and Brenna and John for sharing those with us and
taking time out of their travels to write us postcards.
Always say that I love it because it's always true. UH.
(37:28):
If you would like to write to us, you can
email us at History Podcast at how Stuff works dot com.
You can also find us pretty much across social media
as missed in History. So that's on Twitter at Misston History,
at Facebook dot com, slash mist in History on pinterest
dot com, slash misston History on Instagram, as at misst
in history. We're everywhere as miss in History. If you
(37:49):
would like to come to our website and visit us,
you can do that. That is missed in history dot com.
There's a mist in History theme you may have noticed,
and there you will find uh show notes for every
episode that Tracy and I have worked out together, as
well as an archive of all of the episodes that
have ever existed of the show. You can also occasionally
(38:09):
find blog posts and other goodies. You can also visit
our parents site, which is how stuff works dot com
and type something into the search bar and you're gonna
get back some really interesting uh the responses results. Thank you,
and you're gonna get back some really interesting results that
you can pass through and learn new things. So we
encourage you to visit us online at misston History dot
(38:29):
com and how stuff works dot com for more on
this and thousands of other topics. Because it has stuff
works dot com
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Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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