Welcome to the Historical Fiction Online forums: a friendly place to discuss, review and discover historical fiction.
If this is your first visit, please be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above.
You will have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed.
To start viewing posts, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Search found 100 matches

by Matt Phillips
Wed October 3rd, 2012, 8:00 pm
Forum: Feature of the Month
Topic: Feature of the Month, October 2012: October 2012: Colonial and Revolutionary America
Replies: 8
Views: 11940

[quote=""Ludmilla""]Has anyone tried Jeff Shaara's novels about the American Revolutionary War? I've thought about trying them, but wondered whether they read like NF masquerading as fiction.[/quote] I've read both Rise to Rebellion and The Glorious Cause . The two books provide a good overview of t...
by Matt Phillips
Wed October 3rd, 2012, 5:45 pm
Forum: The Craft of Writing
Topic: books on writing: your favorite?
Replies: 18
Views: 3632

For practical advise - not just what your writing should accomplish but how to accomplish it - I really recommend Larry Brooks's Story Engineering and his website, storyfix.com . His storytelling model will strike some overly formulaic, but it's akin to Robert McKee's Story , which someone else ment...
by Matt Phillips
Wed October 3rd, 2012, 5:29 pm
Forum: Movies, Television, Radio, and Music
Topic: Copper - BBC America
Replies: 6
Views: 1237

Copper - BBC America

Has anyone checked out the new series "Copper" on BBC America? I've really enjoyed the first few episodes. It's basically CSI meets Gangs of New York, set in 1864. The main character is New York City Police Detective Corcoran played by Tom Weston-Jones. He and his detective sidekicks solve murders a...
by Matt Phillips
Tue October 2nd, 2012, 11:27 pm
Forum: Feature of the Month
Topic: Feature of the Month, October 2012: October 2012: Colonial and Revolutionary America
Replies: 8
Views: 11940

I wanted to highlight this period, not just because it’s the setting of my WIP :) , but because its coverage in the genre seems dwarfed by its potential. The 17th and 18th century Atlantic seaboard exemplifies a “hinge of history,” in which so much of our world could have changed drastically had eve...
by Matt Phillips
Tue October 2nd, 2012, 3:36 am
Forum: Feature of the Month
Topic: Feature of the Month, October 2012: October 2012: Colonial and Revolutionary America
Replies: 8
Views: 11940

I haven't forgotten! I will get the thread going this week, hopefully tomorrow. I'm planning to highlight some classic, recent, and lesser-known HF titles from this period and setting and maybe share some research tidbits from my own WIP.
by Matt Phillips
Thu July 5th, 2012, 3:38 pm
Forum: Feature of the Month
Topic: July 2012 Feature of the Month: Family Sagas
Replies: 27
Views: 5048

John Jakes's North and South trilogy and Kent Family Chronicles were the first historical fiction I ever read. I picked up North and South when I was maybe 12 or 13 after watching the ABC miniseries back in the '80s, and I've been hooked on the genre ever since. I had always loved history and had no...
by Matt Phillips
Mon June 11th, 2012, 8:24 pm
Forum: General Discussion
Topic: Forthcoming Books: 2013 edition
Replies: 362
Views: 30614

Becoming Valley Forge, Seven Locks, The Turncoat ... Might we be seeing a shift in the conventional wisdom that HF set in America is a marketing non-starter? (Which I've never fully understood anyway, given the success of books by Kathleen Kent, Christine Blevins, Lucia St. Clair Robson, Sally Gunni...
by Matt Phillips
Thu May 24th, 2012, 7:38 pm
Forum: The Craft of Writing
Topic: How far can historical fiction be stretched?
Replies: 48
Views: 7933

It may be the last thing you want to do at this point, Kohadenal1, but the answer may lie in more research. As boswellbaxter and Daniel have suggested, you may have options for tweaking your premise that you're not aware of. Brainstorm alternatives to the plot devices that don't seem to work in your...
by Matt Phillips
Thu April 5th, 2012, 8:40 pm
Forum: Feature of the Month
Topic: April 2012 Feature of the Month: Classic Fiction
Replies: 22
Views: 4108

Are we talking classic historical fiction, or just classic fiction? If the former, for America, I agree with the Hawthorne and Twain works mentioned. I would add: * Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper and his other novels of the 18th century frontier. I know a lot of people can't stand rea...
by Matt Phillips
Tue March 27th, 2012, 10:24 pm
Forum: Others
Topic: The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins
Replies: 47
Views: 20753

Who's seen the movie yet? I was pleased with it. Overall it lacked the same intensity of tension the novel has, but it was probably about as good of an adaptation that could be done of this book. Of course, that's with the proviso that the movie has to be PG-13. The violence was certainly sanitized....

Go to advanced search