First nice weekend of the year ...

I had planned to go to the beach this afternoon. Southern trains, however, had other ideas.

Can't deal with Brighton Beach and fighting for a square metre of shingle: Hove beach, usually much quieter, is my preferred target these days.

But today, due to engineering works, there are no direct trains to Hove: and I, who used to happily travel for >2 hours to get to Thorpe Bay, can't be bothered. So it'd take me over an hour, home to beach. So I can't be bothered.

On the bright side, I do have a garden with cats, and shade, and an extension cable, and no screaming children (though there are some on the other side of the hedge).

On writing historical fiction

I've been reading quite a bit of historical fiction lately, and some thoughts are crystallising.

Good Enjoyable historical fiction (A Dead Man in Deptford, True History of the Kelly Gang, James Miranda Barry [but I'm only 10 pages into the latter]) is often written in a style that evokes the period in which it's set, even if the language is in no sense authentic.

Bad Irritating historical fiction (Bone House, the historical sections of The Conjuror's Bird, others that escape me) are written, often, in a bland and solemn style; a style that indicates that contractions, slang and humour are vile modernisms and to be avoided.

There are historical novels I've enjoyed recently that don't fit into the first category (The Crimson Petal and the White, The Penelopiad): in those, the voice is ahistoric or has a post-modern knowingness, a modern perspective.

When I write historical fiction, I aim for Style A: I suspect that Style C, though effervescent in the right hands, is much easier to get wrong.