Blog
On Submission
My book went out to editors in the UK and US last week. Having never got beyond … well, my own laptop, before all of this is new and bewildering. I’m constantly looking for blogs with an in on what…
English Cricket!
Okay. Bear with me. I’ve been researching Lords Cricket Ground for my other life and, oh!, it’s rich pickings! Seriously. According to British History Online (see, I told you it was brilliant), cricket was quite the den of boozy, gambling…
Letters & Victorian Londoners
I use letters a lot in my book. I love their immediacy and how you can bring to life lesser characters in the story, giving them a unique voice through word choice and tone. It’s a peek behind the curtain…
What is an apport?
I write a lot in my book about apports happening during seances. Indeed, Mrs Wood is considered the greatest apporter of her time. But what is an apport? Apports are objects that appear, seemingly from the Other Side – they…
Vitriol & Victorians
I’ve already written about the likelihood of Agnes Guppy, my inspiration for Mrs Wood, actually commissioning such a heinous act as an acid attack on Florence Cook, but why would it even be considered? How common was this type of…
Victorian Mourning
My protagonist, Mrs Wood, is a widow. The story begins in February 1873 and her husband has been dead for nearly three years. This means that she’s free from the more restrictive elements of the Victorian Mourning Periods. Mourning etiquette…
Location, Location, Location!
My protagonist lives and works in 1873 Notting Hill. The amount of time I spent trying to find the right place for her was SO much fun, but also VAST. Because one of the things I love about historical novels,…
Did people eat bananas in 1873? or: the importance of research
The Past is a foreign country: they do things different there. The Go-Between, PJ Hartley Writing historical fiction is like writing any kind of fiction: your characters have needs, wants conflicts. They move about, travel, visit theatres and zoos, get…
Guppy v Cook: the inspiration behind my story
My story centres on two Mediums working in 1870s London – Mrs Wood and Miss Bird. While both were born in my imagination, they were inspired by the apparent rivalry between two great Victorian Mediums who were working in the…
The Victorian second-hand clothes market
About two-thirds of the way into my current book, my protagonist, Mrs Wood, visits an old friend and Medium who has recently been exposed, a catastrophe that has forced her from comfort and into a room above a second-hand clothes…