I’ve just interviewed J.K. Knauss for the launch of her new collection of medieval stories, Our Lady’s Troubadour. The interview is posted on the Historical Novel Society webpage. We talked about how the author worked with her medieval source material, about the relationship between historians and historical novelists, and about her writing group.

‘ I got into historical fiction because in grade school, there was a timeline on our classroom wall that began with Leif Eriksson being born in 970. It blew my mind that people lived so long ago. I wanted to know what it was like to see, hear, smell, and taste the world at that time, and what it felt like to experience all that. This visceral involvement is historical fiction’s legitimate goal.’

You can find J.K.’s fascinating interview here.

I am part of the team running sponsored interviews for the Historical Novel Society. For a small fee authors or their publishers can request an interview. The team started work last year and we have so far published over 30 interviews with authors launching new books. The interviews are full of useful tips on writing techniques and behind the scenes information for readers. We also ask each interviewee to tell us what was the best book you read recently, so lots of ideas for reading with the launch books themselves and the author’s suggestions. If you have a book coming out you can request an interview here.

We have just launched a new Instagram site for the HNS Interviews.