Historical Costumes: Walking in a Character's Clothes

One of the best ways to bring an historical novel to life is through detailed research. Nowadays there are many channels for research – primary sources are more available online than they’ve ever been, and often free to access with a click of a button. Those with a larger budget can travel and immerse themselves in surviving castles, or examine the artefacts of life in museums and art galleries. But there is another way, and that is to recreate the experiences of another time for yourself. While books and documents can give you insight into events and what people thought of them, and places can give you a sense of scale and atmosphere, research through recreation can give you unexpected insights into why people might have behaved in certain ways, and a detailed understanding of the rhythms of lives that were very different to our own.

Creating costumes and then wearing them offers an incredibly rich source of information. When you understand how much fabric goes into making a Tudor dress and how much ornamentation is needed, you gain a better understanding of the wealth required to dress that way. When you lace yourself up into a corset, you begin to see how women’s lives were restrained (literally), how they had to walk and sit and why they might have taken to their beds from time to time for the sheer relief! Wearing the elaborate headdress of the Chinese court makes you realise how necessary it is to keep very still. And if you ever take on the project of trying to handsew one of these garments, apart from learning new curse words, you gain some insight into the lives of those whose lives were functional rather than ornamental.

In writing my own historical fantasy, Harlequin’s Riddle, which is set in a second world Italian Renaissance, I was able to draw on my experience of researching, making and wearing two different outfits from the time, as well as on memories of the many feasts I’ve attended where I have been surrounded by such beautiful dresses. This allowed me not only to write vivid descriptions of the beauty of these dresses, but also to show small details such as tying the sleeves on and what it feels like to wear something that is made from heavier material than most things we wear today. Attending a medieval feast in our day and age really does transport you to another time, and open the door to a different world. Once this sort of experience is in your sense bank, you can write about it more easily to create that world for your readers.

I’m really excited to be bringing along a range of outfits from different time periods to the HNSA conference so that those who come to the workshop can see for themselves how they are constructed, how heavy they are and maybe even what it’s like to wear them. 

Recreating Historical Costumes Workshop

What is it like to wear a Tudor outfit or dance in a Renaissance dress? How heavy is an ancient Chinese hanfu and how much fabric goes into its creation? These questions and more will be answered by Rachel Nightingale in this workshop, where you will have a chance to get up close and personal with a range of outfits made by historical re-enactors based on research and portraits. You will have the chance to look at a number of costuming books that deconstruct historical costumes, and perhaps even to try on a historical outfit.

Rachel Nightingale will be conducting her Recreating Historical Costumes workshop on Sunday 10 September at the 2017 HNSA Melbourne Conference. The cost is only $20 for the session once a full weekend or day ticket has been bought. Purchasing a workshop tickets entitles you to entry into a $100 Dymocks Gift  Card giveaway.

In addition to Rachel's session, there is a suite of skills based workshops with top rate tuition including Authorpreneurship, Social Media, Pitching, Self Publishing, Writing Romance for the International Market, Children and Young Adult Fiction, Trove, Scrivener, Family History and Historical Mystery. And for those who enjoy costumes, we also have Leif the Viking providing a session on armour! Learn more at our website.

The Gazini Players are proud to present

For your Edification and Enjoyment

Tales of great Joy, and of great Woe

Ten years ago, Mina’s beloved older brother disappeared with a troupe of Travelling Players, and was never heard from again.

On the eve of Mina’s own departure with a troupe, her father tells her she has a special gift for Storytelling, a gift he silenced years before because he was afraid of her ability to call visions into being with her stories.

Mina soon discovers that the Travelling Players draw their powers from a mysterious place called Tarya, where dreams are transformed into reality.  While trying to solve the mystery of her brother’s disappearance, she discovers a dark cost to the Players’ onstage antics. Torn between saving her brother or exposing the truth about the Players, could her gifts as a storyteller offer a way to solve Harlequin’s riddle?

Rachel Nightingale has been writing since the age of 8 (early works are safely hidden away). She holds a Masters degree and PhD in Creative Writing. Winning the Mercury Short Story competition (junior section) at the age of 16 fueled her desire to share her stories with the world. Subsequent short stories have been shortlisted in a number of competitions and a play, No Sequel, won the People's Choice Award and First Prize at the Eltham Little Theatre's 10 Minute Play competition. Another, Crime Fiction, was performed at Short and Sweet Manila and Sydney.

Rachel’s second passion after writing is the theatre, and she has been performing in shows and working backstage for a rather long time. She co-wrote and performed in the 2013-2015 version of the hugely popular Murder on the Puffing Billy Express, a 1920s murder mystery set on the iconic Dandenong Ranges train. The inspiration for the Tarya trilogy, which begins with Harlequin's Riddle, began when she read a quote by Broadway actor Alan Cumming about that in-between moment just before you step onstage, and began to wonder might be found in that place between worlds.

Harlequin's Riddle is available via Odyssey  Books.

HNSA 2017 Conference

The HNSA 2017 Melbourne Conference is being held on 8-10 September 2017 at Swinburne University. This celebration of the historical fiction genre will showcase over 60 speakers discussing inspiration, writing craft, research, publishing pathways and personal histories in our weekend programme. Among the many acclaimed historical novelists participating are Kerry Greenwood, Kate Forsyth, Deborah Challinor, Libby Hathorn, Lucy Treloar, Sophie Masson, Sulari Gentill, Robert Gott and Arnold Zable. The HNSA’s speakers’ list is available on the HNSA website.

In addition to the two stream weekend programme, there will be ten craft based super sessions and two research masterclasses.You won’t want to miss our interactive sessions on armour and historical costumes either! Purchase a ticket and you will be entered in the draw to win a $100 Dymocks Gift Card.

Manuscript assessments will be conducted by industry experts, Alison Arnold and Irina Dunn. Our free extended academic programme is open for general admission but bookings are essential.

Our First Pages Pitch Contest offers an opportunity for submissions to be read aloud to a panel of publishers. And we are delighted to announce the introduction of our inaugural HNSA Short Story Contest with a $500 prize!

Visit our website to purchase your tickets now!

Subscribe to our newsletter for interviews, reviews and news.

Learn about our sponsorship opportunities.

Let’s make a noise about historical fiction!

The Enduring Fascination of Historical Crime Fiction by Christa Ludlow

Historical crime fiction has an enduring fascination. The possibility of journeying back through time to the era of Sherlock Holmes, gaslight and hansom cabs; constables patrolling streets shrouded in fog; detectives attending autopsies in chilly underground caverns – what could be more enticing? 

We don’t have to travel to London to experience these thrills - Sydney has its own fascinating history of crime and punishment to be explored, as I discovered many years ago when I was conducting research for exhibitions at the Justice and Police Museum in Sydney. If you haven’t visited the Museum, it is in a beautiful old sandstone building near Circular Quay, which was formerly the Water Police Station and Court House. The Museum houses what used to be a private Police Force collection of artefacts relating to crime and criminals, from the early nineteenth century up to the present day.

I trained as a historian and I have written about the history of institutions like the Children’s Court, prisons and asylums. As I was trawling through old police records, photographs and newspaper accounts to find ideas for exhibitions, I wondered why no one was writing historical crime fiction (my favourite reading genre) set in nineteenth century Sydney. Sydney, its buildings, streets and institutions, seemed full of mystery to me. The result is Taken At Night, my first mystery novel, set in Sydney in 1900.

In 1900 Sydney was the largest city in Australia and the fifth largest port in the British Empire. But like all cities, its population was made up of winners and losers. While Sydney’s affluent inhabitants enjoyed the hotels, shopping arcades and theatres, life was much tougher in The Rocks, Millers Point, and Surry Hills. The maritime strike of 1890 and the following depression had taken its toll on the city’s working class. The waterfront areas were allowed to decline and slums proliferated, causing problems with health, child welfare and crime.

Sydney in 1900 was quite a diverse and complex city, if you looked closely. As a busy port, it was exposed to people of different races and beliefs. About 3500 Chinese were recorded as living in Sydney, there were Chinese language newspapers and, by 1904, a Chinese temple. Sailors and travellers of many nations passed through, including from India, the Middle East, South East Asia and Europe. 

The indigenous peoples of Australia continued to make a life in Sydney, despite discrimination and restricted freedom. Many Aboriginal people were attracted to the city by the opportunities for work at the railway workshops, on the wharves and in factories. Experts and new ideas were fashionable. Votes for women, spiritualism, theosophy, Socialism, ethnology and social Darwinism were all subjects debated in the newspapers and at public lectures. Some of these ideas influenced the response to urban crime.

I have written elsewhere how in the 1890s male Australian writers like Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson saw the city as a maze of evil and corruption and set their stories in the Australian Bush. Women, on the other hand, saw opportunities in city life. They were starting to enter the fields of literature, photography and journalism. In Taken At Night, the protagonist is a photographer and her profession allows her to roam the streets with a purpose and a camera. In 1891 the Illustrated Sydney News noted that nearly every newspaper of standing had one or more women among its contributors or staff writers. Photographers such as Laura Praed and May and Minna Moore were having their photographs published. 

Criminology was still in its infancy. While fingerprinting was being practised by the police force in India, it was not accepted in England until 1901. Sydney’s police did not adopt it until 1911. One large and threatening shadow hung over Sydney in 1900 – the bubonic plague. It had first been noticed in China, then progressed to India and to the Pacific. It was carried by fleas on rats which infested the ships travelling between ports. In 1900, with no antibiotics, once a person contracted the disease, little could be done but wait and see. The plague plays a key role in Taken At Night and the sequel to be published this year, The Dark Room – many crimes could be committed under cover of quarantine! 

In response to the plague, which killed over 100 people, whole streets, buildings and wharves in Darling Harbour, Walsh Bay, The Rocks and Millers Point were demolished. With them went much of the city’s mystery. But occasionally in an old book, a photograph or even wandering the streets you can find traces of that city of mystery.

Christa A. Ludlow

www.sydneymysteries.com

Books: Taken at Night (2016) Paperback, eBook, The Dark Room (forthcoming, 2017). Connect with Christa on: Twitter and Facebook

Taken at Night

A missing woman, a city in turmoil and a mysterious photographer ….

The year is 1900, and photographer Beatrix Spencer has just opened her studio in the bustling colonial metropolis of Sydney. But it is a turbulent time to start a new business. A deadly outbreak of plague is threatening the city. Soldiers are about to embark for the Boer War. Women are struggling to gain rights and recognition.
When a woman doctor disappears from a quarantined ship, Beatrix is drawn into the investigation led by Detective Fergus Blair, who has secrets of his own. Despite their very different backgrounds, Fergus and Beatrix find that the city’s underworld is closer and more dangerous than either of them realized. And somewhere, another more sinister photographer is at work…

HNSA 2017 Conference

The HNSA 2017 Melbourne Conference is being held on 8-10 September 2017 at Swinburne University. This celebration of the historical fiction genre will showcase over 60 speakers discussing inspiration, writing craft, research, publishing pathways and personal histories in our weekend programme. Among the many acclaimed historical novelists participating are Kerry Greenwood, Kate Forsyth, Deborah Challinor, Libby Hathorn, Lucy Treloar, Sophie Masson, Sulari Gentill, Robert Gott and Arnold Zable. The HNSA’s speakers’ list is available on the HNSA website.

In addition to the two stream weekend programme, there will be ten craft based super sessions and two research masterclasses.You won’t want to miss our interactive sessions on armour and historical costumes either! Purchase a ticket and you will be entered in the draw to win a $100 Dymocks Gift Card.

Manuscript assessments will be conducted by industry experts, Alison Arnold and Irina Dunn. Our free extended academic programme is open for general admission but bookings are essential.

Our First Pages Pitch Contest offers an opportunity for submissions to be read aloud to a panel of publishers. And we are delighted to announce the introduction of our inaugural HNSA Short Story Contest with a $500 prize!

Visit our website to purchase your tickets now!

Subscribe to our newsletter for interviews, reviews and news.

Learn about our sponsorship opportunities.

Let’s make a noise about historical fiction!

Walking Sydney: History Brought to Life

Our guest today on the HNSA blog is Danielle Castles, one of our fantastic sponsors. She is the owner of Walking Sydney, a tour company with a difference. The ‘Bloke and the Larrikin’ tour involves actors guiding visitors through the rough, colourful and riotous history of Sydney’s Hungry Mile and the Rocks. Danielle’s inspiration for her business is a story in itself. Here it is:

I attended the very first HNSA conference in Sydney 2015 and loved it! I never dreamt I would be a position to contribute as a sponsor in 2017. The conference is an exciting opportunity to discuss what inspires us. We can tell stories in so many ways. My business Walking Sydney takes people on historical walking tours that include performances along the way. At the heart of the stories I tell is a desire to get people wondering about how the past connects to the present and to feel part of a greater whole.

Walking Sydney came into being through a couple of seemingly unrelated events. For a couple of years I’d been regularly making a list of what brought me joy and then one day I compared the lists and circled what was common to them all: writing, walking, history and travel. Et voila! That’s when Walking Sydney was conceived, but only in part.  The inclusion of drama goes back a decade.

I am well-travelled and have mostly travelled independently exploring many places on a whim. I always read a novel and a history book about the country I was visiting. Yet I always felt a powerful yearning to know more. My imagination would binge on a place: I would sit in a village square or lookout trying to absorb a place at a cellular level. It was truly nourishing yet at times quite frustrating. Point and look was simply never enough for me.  

In 2006 I was exploring the Silk Road through Central Asia and read in a guide book about the Juma Mosque in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. The paragraph described the history of the mosque in detail and how it was a mechanics station during the Soviet era. There was one throwaway line, barely a footnote, about how for centuries women were stoned to death there. I felt incredible sorrow. I was angered that cars warranted more lines than the lives of women. All those lives so brutally taken, it was inconceivable to me. So I went there. Driven by an insatiable curiosity and a desire to somehow know them. It was one of the most powerful experiences I have had. In the courtyard of the mosque I became overwhelmed by grief and experienced spirit of place like never before.

Spirit of place has remained the single most powerful source of inspiration for me. When I began to plot out my first walk for Walking Sydney I was sitting outside the old Gas Works along the Hungry Mile and was once again powerfully swept away by spirit of place. And so ‘The Bloke’ was born and the full concept of Walking Sydney came to life.

Writing the stories and scripts for Walking Sydney is twofold: research and creative endeavour. Although the two often blur into one process. There is an incredible thrill when a lead becomes a thread I can weave into my stories. I follow all kinds of leads: newspaper articles of the time are a particularly fabulous source as they cover everything from politics, society, culture, economy, leisure and technology. And from there you never know where you’ll end up. If you write Australian historical fiction then you can’t go past Trove: digitised newspapers and more.

The most invaluable resources I have come across however are librarians, curators and historians. They are sitting on a literal treasure trove of information and seem to love the challenge, or dare I say, the invitation, to locate a helpful story, artefact or snippet of seemingly trivial information! I am grateful for their expertise and helpfulness.  You’d be surprised who will help when you simply ask. I’m currently working on a second tour for Walking Sydney: Queens Cross: wild women of Sydney. They are not who you might expect them to be!

Of course the extra bonus for me is that I see my characters brought to life. It is the most extraordinary and gratifying experience to see your written words evolve and grow into a living breathing emotional psychologically complex being. My actors, Matt Costin and Luke Thornley have proved to be wonderful collaborators. In the process I inadvertently became director and producer as well as storyteller and writer of historical fiction. I’m also currently completing my first historical novel which is set against the backdrop of the Federation Drought at the turn of the 20th Century.

A lot can happen in a couple of years!  I’m very honoured to sponsor the HNSA 2017 Conference. How does it get better than spreading the joy of reading and writing historical fiction? Oh and by the way, when next you’re in Sydney come along with Walking Sydney as we part the veil of time and relive the dramas of the 1870s and 1930s. Look for the special promotional code amongst your conference goodies.

You can connect with Danielle and Walking Sydney via her Website, Instagram and Facebook.

HNSA is incredibly grateful for the support of all our sponsors who are helping to make HNSA 2017 even better than our inaugural conference in Sydney in 2015. For more information on sponsorship opportunities, please visit our website.

The Forgotten Queens of 1066 by Joanna Courtney

HNSA is delighted to welcome Joanna Courtney to  provide a different perspective of the events of 1066 in her guest post on the women behind the Battle of Hastings. Thanks Joanna!

Ever since I sat up in my cot with a book, I’ve wanted to be a writer. I’ve had over 200 stories and serials in women’s magazines and, to my delight, PanMacmillan have now published The Chosen Queen and The Constant Queen, the first two books of my historical trilogy – The Queens of the Conquest.

It was when studying English lit at university that I discovered medieval literature and unlocked what has become a true passion for ancient history. I find the Saxons, Vikings and Normans absolutely fascinating and was very drawn to the amazing women – one from each nation – who were vying to be Queen of England in 1066. How come, I wondered, everyone knows about the kings but no one about their queens? It didn’t seem right and my trilogy seeks to tell their stories.

Women are something of a rarity in history – supposedly shy, domestic creatures who peep out between the cracks of their husband’s ‘greater’ deeds. However, anyone who has ever lived with a mother/sister/auntie/girlfriend/wife/daughter will know that very few women really stand quietly in the background of life and I see no reason why this would not have been every bit as true in the past as it is now.

Too many stories of historical women are lost to us and that is why I chose to write The Queens of the Conquest, about the women fighting to be Queen of England in 1066.  Not that I don’t like the men (I’m a little bit in love with all my heroes) but theirs are the grand stories everyone knows and I am more interested in capturing what happened behind the scenes of the battles.

Exploring the female side of a previous era allows access to those more intimate stories, but it is not without problems. The first is the lack of information about women in times past, especially further back. This isn’t really prejudice, simply that little was considered worth documenting unless it affected who owned land, property, goods or titles and that rarely included women.

This is a huge frustration for the historian but something of a gift for a novelist armed with an eager imagination, though it does create the second big problem in exploring female history – how we can truly get under the skin of these women? How can we know what they really thought when we have no access to the basic assumptions and attitudes that must have underpinned their approach to life? To me, it all comes down to the essentials of being human and of being female, essentials which surely have not changed that much?

This year we’ll celebrate the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings and in some ways 950 years is a long time, but in terms of the evolution of humanity, it’s nothing and it’s surely arrogant to assume that emotions are a modern invention? Saxons, Vikings and Normans would have loved their children, fought with their siblings, made and lost friends, laughed and cried, hurt and grieved, and fallen in love. These are all fertile ground for the novelist and hopefully, therefore, the reader.

I firmly believe that the women (and, indeed the men) of the eleventh century were similar to us in all the essentials of what it is to be human and they certainly didn’t live from headline to headline. Battles, even in those times, were few and far between and in the intervening days people didn’t just sit around waiting to be ‘history’. For me it’s really important to think about those long hours, days and weeks of ‘normal’ life. The three heroines of my books were all educated young woman, brought up at the heart of powerful courts. They would have understood the problems facing their husbands and would be a logical person to talk them over with. These were not women to underestimate, however little we may know about them, so who were they?

Edyth, heroine of The Chosen Queen, was the only daughter of the powerful Earl of central England and became Queen of Wales at the age of 14. She reigned for 9 years and gave birth to 3 heirs before losing her husband to the English and returning to her homeland. Back there, still only 23, she was the only woman powerful enough to help Harold join North and South to make England strong enough to resist invaders. Edyth was carrying Harold’s son when he died on Hastings field and had history been the turn of a sword different, she could have been the mother of a line of kings stretching who knows how far.

Elizaveta, heroine of The Constant Queen, was a fiery and elegant Princess of Kiev. Born of royal Rus blood on her father’s side and Scandinavian on her mother’s, she was brought up to be a ruler. Having won the heart of Harald of Norway when he was exiled to her father’s highly influential court, she was at his side both when he reclaimed his own country and when he set sail to conquer England. A woman of drive and energy, she fuelled her husband’s ambitions and, with a network of sisters in all the royal courts of Europe, could have made England a highly cosmopolitan queen.

Finally Matilda, heroine of The Conqueror’s Queen (out in 2017), was the eldest daughter of the politically canny Baldwin of Flanders and, with French royal blood flowing in her veins from her mother’s side, was also raised for a high place in the world. Although initially unwilling to marry Duke William because of his bastardy, she soon recognised in the young ruler a fierce and proud ambition to match her own. Together they set out to master Normandy and, eventually, to conquer England, the country they’d been promised by King Edward. As a great-great-great-great-granddaughter of Alfred the Great, Matilda gave William a vital pedigree in his claim to the throne, but as his wife she also gave him culture, stability and credibility to make him the viable ruler he became. The victory in 1066 was not just his, but theirs.

These women were rivals in 1066 and they were battling every bit as hard as the men, if not with swords then with the traditional women’s weapons of words, influence and care. They may not have known each other but they did know that their own success would necessarily be at the expense of the others and so it eventually proved. By the end of 1066 there would be two exiled widows and one queen. Did the best woman win? You’ll have to read my books to decide but I do hope that in doing so you can help recover a little of these amazing women who should not have been lost to history.

‘You need not take England without me, Hari, because I will be your constant queen – there with you; there for you.’

Elizaveta is a princess of Kiev but that doesn’t stop her chasing adventure. Defying conventions she rides the rapids of the Dnieper alongside her royal brothers and longs to rule in her own right as a queen. Elizaveta meets her match when the fearsome Viking warrior Harald Hardrada arrives at her father’s court seeking fame and fortune. He entrusts Elizaveta to be his treasure keeper, holding the keys to his ever-growing wealth – and eventually to his heart.

 Theirs is a fierce romance and the strength of their love binds them together as they travel across the vast seas to Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland. In 1066, their ambition carries them to the Orkneys as they plan to invade England and claim the crown…

The Constant Queen is a powerful absorbing novel which tells the story of a daring Viking warrior, his forgotten queen and a love that almost changed the course of history.

Thanks so much Joanna - you certainly will be busy over the next year with your trilogy! You can learn more about Joanna on her website and you can connect with her via Facebook or Twitter.

The Chosen Queen and The Constant Queen are available on Amazon Australia or via Pan MacMillan.