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As much as I love historical fiction, my problem with historical fiction is that you always know what's going to happen.

Writing historical novels can be dangerous. We need to be as accurate and as fair about the historical record as we can be, at the same time as creating our fictional characters and, hopefully, telling a good story. The challenge is weaving the fiction into the history.

We've all faced the charge that our novels are history lite, and to some extent, that's true. Yet for some, historical fiction is a way into reading history proper.

My books fall in the wobbly middle between historical fiction and historical romance.

I'm not a great reader of historical fiction; it's not my favourite genre.

However, the difficulties and pleasures of the writing itself are similar for a novel with a historical setting and a novel with a contemporary setting, as far as I'm concerned.

I just love historical fiction.

Historical novels are hard to do for the general public for commercial writers like myself.

I am not a fan of historical fiction that is sloppy in its research or is dishonest about the real history.

One of the joys of writing historical fiction is the chance to read as much as you like on a pet subject - so much that you could easily bore your friends senseless on the topic.