by Susanne Dunlap | Mar 8, 2022 | Book Coaching, Research, Writing life
I happened to realize the other day that my bedroom walls are decorated with old photographs and drawings of my forebears, all of whom are no more. There’s my maternal grandmother in her high school graduation picture from 1929. My other grandmother in her wedding...
by Susanne Dunlap | Aug 7, 2021 | Research
I pride myself on doing my research thoroughly and efficiently—as my course, Rein in Your Research attests. Yet the one topic I always have to investigate again and again when I write novels set before the 17th century concerns measurement. Many of the units and types...
by Susanne Dunlap | Jul 17, 2021 | Book marketing, Research, Writing life
The first two volumes of my trilogy, The Orphans of Tolosa, came out within a year of each other in 2019. My original plan was to publish the final volume, Voices in the Mist, in 2020. That turned out to be wishful thinking. I had no idea of the long road I would have...
by Susanne Dunlap | Jun 6, 2020 | Research, Young Adult
These days are tough, no question about it. It’s a time to raise the voices of people of color, hear their stories and listen to their pain. I fervently believe that #blacklivesmatter. But as much as I empathize with those who face personal and systemic racism...
by Susanne Dunlap | May 27, 2018 | Research
Writers of historical fiction consult many sources to try to get as complete a picture as possible of the time, place, customs, and characters in their novels. And primary sources are the gold standard when it comes to research. But there is a caveat, and that has to...
by Susanne Dunlap | Apr 15, 2018 | Research
It seems every day, even when I’ve thoroughly researched a subject or a person and am in the middle of writing about it or her, a simple session of Internet research turns up new sources and resources that at the very least enrich, at the most reinterpret what...
