A Quote by Lauren Willig

I went to grad school with the grand plan of getting my Ph.D. and writing weighty, Tudor-Stuart-set historical fiction - from which I emerged with a law degree and a series of light-hearted historical romances about flower-named spies during the Napoleonic wars.

Lauren Willig

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About Degree Emerged Fiction Flower Getting Grad Grad School Grand Hearted Historical Historical Fiction Law Light Light-Hearted Named Napoleonic Plan School Series Set Spies Wars Which Writing

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Lauren Willig
American - Author
Born: March 28, 1977

I've been typed as historical fiction, historical women's fiction, historical mystery, historical chick lit, historical romance - all for the same book.

Lauren Willig

There are similarities between historical novels and science fiction. Being thrown into the Napoleonic Wars is just as much of a different world as space.

Alastair Reynolds

Historical fiction is actually good preparation for reading SF. Both the historical novelist and the science fiction writer are writing about worlds unlike our own.

Pamela Sargent

If you're writing something that's clearly labelled as an alternative history, of course it's perfectly legitimate to play with known historical characters and events, but less so when you're writing an essentially straight historical fiction.

Diana Gabaldon

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.

Edward Rutherfurd

Historical fiction was not - and is not - meant to supplant literature from the period it describes. As a veteran of the Crimea, Tolstoy wrote 'War and Peace' to match his own internal sense of the truth of the Napoleonic wars, to dramatize what he felt literature from that period had failed to describe.

Alexander Chee

Historical novels are about costumery. I think that's the magic and mystery of fiction. I don't want to write historical fiction but I do want the story to have the feel of history. There's a difference.

Chang-Rae Lee

History buffs expect historical background in historical fiction. Mystery readers expect forensics and police procedure in crime fiction. Westerns - gasp - describe the West. Techno-thriller readers expect to learn something about technology from their fiction.

Edward M. Lerner

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

George R. R. Martin

I think when you look at the quarterback position, and this mastery of the craft we talk about, it really is an advanced degree. It's like going to med school, or law school, or getting your PH.D. It really is that type of educational effort, on the field and off the field.

Steve Young

My first book was a historical novel. I started writing in 1974. In those days, historical novels meant ladies with swelling bosoms on the cover. Basically, it meant historical romance. It was not respectable as a genre.

Hilary Mantel

I'm a big fan of historical fiction stuff. Historical battles - 'Gladiators,' 'The Patriot.'

Andrew Luck

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

Lauren Willig

Historical fiction is a collaboration between the time in which it's written and the time that it's writing about and the far future, when we don't know what people are going to think about yet.