Regaining Lost Aspects: Mind and Soul

Fountain Bookstore hosted a historical fiction panel that I was able to listen to with Chanel Cleeton, author of House on Biscayne Bay; Denny S Bryce, author of The Trial of Mrs. Rhinelander; and Eliza Knight, author of Starring Adele Astaire.

This was such a cool panel to listen to, especially when it came to the authors discussing their research. Denny S Bryce said that history guides historical fiction writers into their stories and went onto explain how sometimes they find characters in history that people didn’t even know existed, like a brother or a sister of a famous person. They all also expressed exciting forms of research that one may not think about when it comes to researching the past, like diving into the songs and movies of the historical characters they are working to voice in their books. Bryce talked about how she really enjoyed listening to one of her character’s albums, especially the live versions, to learn the character’s personality by how they interacted with their audience. She also talked about how she and Knight were out one day and came across a few stories about Marilyn Monroe and then found a picture of Monroe with a friend, which made them both want to work together to write a story about the picture they had seen. That story is called Can’t We Be Friends.

On the topic of Marilyn Monroe, Knight watched all of Monroe’s movies for research. She said through doing that, she could see when Monroe’s acting began to change once she got more training and then again when she started getting into drugs. She was also able to see and understand how one of the films she did for her husband hurt her because she had to relive hurtful past events while being a method actress.

Cleeton talked about her upcoming book House on the Biscayne Bay, a dual-timeline book in which the past and present intersect in a gothic house, and how she had to do research for both of the time periods it is set in. She also explained how hard it is for a historical fiction author not to use modern phrases because the brain sometimes automatically inputs them.

A cute and exciting thing that Knight said she learned through research, which she tied into one of her books, was that Queen Elizabeth had a Keeper of the Queen’s Corgis. Because Knight is obsessed with dogs, she dove into writing a story about the queen, the Keeper of the Corgis, and the Corgi herself from the Corgi’s point of view. That book is called The Queen’s Faithful Companion and will be out this year.

It was also very cool to hear how Denny S Bryce had worked toward being a full-time writer, which is her fourth career, and that she loves it. She said that even though it has its bad days sometimes, it is a life she has always wanted. She used to be a professional dancer and through her other careers she wrote fan fiction to relax, now writing her own stories is what she spends most of her time doing.

Thank you, Fountain Books, for organizing this cute and insightful event.