As long as I can remember, art and art history have been my passions. I grew up with a father who brought a drawing pad to every outing and painted oil paintings to sell, give away as gifts, and to hang on the wall of our home. Our living room looked like an art museum, packed with paintings of mountains, fiords, and forest interiors. In fact, when he and my mother prepared for their wedding in Oslo in 1944, my father painted during the night to trade his art for meat for the wedding dinner.
I loved art, as well, and chose to study Art & Design at Brigham Young University. I adored my art history lectures. It’s hard to explain how my heart still leaps when I learn about master painters of old, visit ancient churches and castles, or stand in front of original artwork by my favorite artists throughout the centuries.
My passion for the written word has taken me on a path where I get to combine my love for art, history, and historical fiction. I get to make up stories about brave women who give their all to fight for truth and fairness. I get to dress them up in the fun clothes of their time (yes, I studied clothing history, too), and I can put them in situations where they struggle to meet their goal and solve the mystery. They stumble, get back on their feet again, and sometimes they fall in love…all in a backdrop of the times they lived in.
To write such historical fiction, I do oodles of research. Did they eat potatoes in 1661? Did they have curtains? What kind of hats and cravats did the men wear? When did chocolate digestives come on the market? What did British police cars look like in 1973? You get the point. But this research makes writing historical fiction fun. There’s so much to learn, and all these details add to the story and make it believable.
Think about this as an example: you enter the world of Charles Dickens and ride in a horse-drawn covered wagon through the streets of London. What do you hear? What do you see out the window? What do you smell? What do you feel when the roads are uneven and sitting still is impossible? What do you taste when you open the napkin on your lap and take a bite of your travel food? Are your feet cold? Every detail needs thorough research.
When writing The London Forgery, I had two different time periods to consider. The main story is situated in London, and the year is 1973. I was a young teenager in 1973 and still remember much from that time. Still, there were aspects I had to research, and I had a blast doing so. The second story goes back to Thomas Gainsborough when he painted his masterpiece Mr. and Mrs. Andrews in 1750. Now, those chapters needed much more research, and I loved every minute of it.
I hope you’ll enjoy going back in time—first to London in 1973, and then to Suffolk in 1750—and spend time with the characters in their own setting. I certainly did.
Happy Reading!
Thank you Heidi. It has been a pleasure to have you on the blog.
