Comments on HISTORICAL BOYS: Historical Fiction for Men and Women: Interview with Sarah Bower, author of THE NEEDLE ...

Anne, I'm sorry you've had such difficulty getting...

2008-07-07T13:32:00.000-07:00

Anne, I'm sorry you've had such difficulty getting hold of a copy of 'Needle'. Can I suggest you order direct from my publishers at www.snowbooks.com which might overcome the problem?

While I found your comments most interesting, I feel I must defend myself on the matter of where the Normans came from. In their own 'creation myth', given by Wace and not, I think contested by historians, Rollo was a Dane who fled to Sweden after losing a war against the Danish king. The Normans migrated from there to France around 900.

Being a novelist rather than an historian, I am sure I have made many mistakes in the novel but not, I hope, anything quite so basic as that!

I have been trying to get my hands on Needle in th...

2008-07-04T22:28:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to get my hands on Needle in the Blood for at least six months now, with no success, because it had such good "buzz". However, I have tried to order it through amazon.com. It was supposed to be available June 10. I'm still waiting for it.

That said, I noticed several things in this interview that I wonder about. Some of Ms. Bowers' names of people for the period(in England) don't seem right> Another thing she said was, that "the best fiction is character-led". I'm not so sure about this. You can't have any kind of a novel without some character development, but by the same token, you can't "lean" on character too much. A plot, and character will, in my opinion, develop naturally if you conceive your "participants" naturally. Finally, Ms. Bowers says that the Normans were "a bunch of adventurers that came from Sweden". Nope. They came from what is now Norway! I do not mean to criticize Ms. Bowers for these slips; they are natural enough, and she did not say, but I learned, in my own background research for my own WIP, that Normans and English were actually a lot more alike than different in many ways. For such a formative period(in the background of all English-speaking countries), very little material actually comes from that period, which tells us much about it. I have to salute Ms. Bowers for actually trying to piece a novel together out of it, and, from what I've heard, succeeding very well. I hope that someday, I will be able to read it.
Anne G

I really enjoyed Needle in the Blood when I read i...

2008-07-04T16:36:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed Needle in the Blood when I read it last year! I have already bought Book of Love and I am looking forward to it.

Thanks for a really interesting interview!