Doing historical research? Don’t get lost in the details

Whether you’re writing historical fiction or not, any time you reference actual events, even in a fictional sense, you need to have done the research to pin down the info accurately. Erika Mailman will guide us through the process of acquiring the specifics necessary to complete our stories without spending so much time delving into history that we never quite finish our story.

Erika Mailman is the author of four historical novels and has been a Yaddo fellow and Bram Stoker Award finalist. Under the pen name Lynn Carthage, she writes Y.A. fiction. She grew up in Vermont currently living in Northern California with her husband and children, close to where gold was discovered in 1848. Erika says, “I love history, David Bowie, Oakland, Vermont, domestic shorthairs, fairy houses, mochas, and movies.”

She reads voraciously, loves anything French, gets “itchy feet” to travel on a regular basis, and finds peace in the woods, in meadows, in nature. She has always been fascinated by the way history allows us to imagine how people of the past lived and breathed and felt.