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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.

When you have a novel set in a fictional history, you still should get your history right.

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

I don't generally read a lot of fiction.

It's still funny for me to think of myself as someone who writes historical fiction because it seems like a really fusty, musty term, and yet it clearly applies.

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

I quickly learned that as a fiction writer, you need the sort of details a historian or a biographer would find extraneous or useful to provide context via a footnote.

You can't believe anything that's written in an historical novel, and yet the author's job is always to create a believable world that readers can enter. It's especially so, I think, for writers of historical fiction.