Welcome to A Bloody Good Read
Hello, and welcome to A Bloody Good Read, new blog launched by me (Sam Thomas) and Nancy Bilyeau, another author of historical fiction.
I’m a professor in the history department at the University of Alabama-Huntsville, and the author of The Midwife’s Story: A Mystery, a historical novel set in England during the civil war between Parliament and King Charles I. The Midwife's Story is under contract with St. Martin's Press, and will probably come out in the fall of 2012.
Nancy's first book The Crown is will hit the shelves in early 2012, but is available for pre-order now. She has worked in magazine publishing, and written prize-winning screenplays. (I’ll let her introduce herself in greater detail at her convenience.)
Nancy and I are starting this blog largely as a way of communicating with readers, other authors, and to sort out our own thoughts about reading and writing historical fiction. Because I wear these two hats – that of historian and novelist – I also will use it to discuss the relationship between writing history and writing fiction, and how these endeavors compare.
As in my fiction, in my early posts I’ll focus on the past. I’ll try to explain how I came to writing fiction relatively late in life (I’m in my 40s), and how I got from idea, to agent, to contract.
