I am currently working on two series about the Anglo-Normans during Medieval Times. The first series will be called ''Kings And Crusaders.'' It will consist of three novels. The second series will also consist of three novels (or four) and be titled ''Knights of Christendom.'' Whereas the first trilogy deals with the Anglo-Normans during the Third Crusade, the latter deals with the conflict between England and France in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries.
Knowing history is an important aspect of writing historical fiction. However, perhaps a greater challenge than this is applying a literary focus to a novel rooted in history. The work of historical fiction can neither be fully fictitious nor fully factual. It is rooted in history and yet reads like literature. This type of formatting makes the writing of historical fiction a challenge.
Throughout the writing of each trilogy, I struggled to balance both history and literature in each of these novels. Sometimes, I went more towards one than the other. However, it has been my desire to make the books include both.
When I look at biographies of Saladin of Syria and Richard I of England, it is not so simple as taking non-fiction and writing about it. Writing about the past within the framework of historical fiction means adding good dialogue among the characters, a strong imagination towards the settings, and portraying my novels by the historical evidence found in works from various historians, theologians, and scholars. Likewise, I often have to look at various historical accounts (for example, I have often used the Crusade text in Translation series) from the era in which my stories are set in. Indeed, the letters of Richard the Lionheart, the writings of Baha ad-Din, and the descriptions from William of Tyre are even more important to me than are the opinions of modern scholars. Thus, knowing when to sound historical and when to sound literary (or preferably both) is key to this type of writing.
In many ways, I believe that writing historical fiction is more complex than writing either non-fiction or pure fiction. The former requires getting the facts right, the latter requires imagination, and yet historical fiction sometimes requires both.
