Guest Post!
Writing Historical Fiction with a Friend
Writing Historical Fiction with a Friend
By
Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
One of the unexpected advantages of having a co-author is
that you have someone to celebrate with who is every bit as excited as you are
when the book releases. And today we’re both very excited to share America’s
First Daughter with the world. This novel, which explores the life and
times of Martha “Patsy” Jefferson Randolph, the eldest daughter of our third
president, was years in the making. And it started one night when we were
having dinner together and discovered a mutual interest in American history.
Over burgers at a writing conference, we wondered what Jefferson was like as a
father, not just a founding father.
At the time, Laura was a history of professor by day and a
romance author by night, whereas Stephanie split her writing time between romance
and historical fiction. We got the crazy brainchild to combine our experiences
in co-authoring a book about Jefferson’s eldest daughter, and raced back to the
hotel room to research. Frankly, we had no idea the journey we were about to
embark upon. We didn’t know that it would take five years, three agents,
eighteen thousand letters and a road trip to get this book out.
But we did know, right from that very first night, that we
had stumbled upon a great untold American story. One that shed light on the women
of the early Republic, the sacrifices they made, the lies they told, and the
legacy they left to us. We understood from the beginning that our heroine
wouldn’t always be lovable--she was as complicated and morally flawed as her
father--but that her grit, determination, and resilience would fascinate,
captivate and inspire. We shared a vision from that first crazy night of
research into the wee hours to the days we would later squeeze writing together
into our busy schedules.
We knew what we wanted to do. But we didn’t know if we could
do it.
That is to say, having never worked together before, we were
taking an enormous leap of faith. And that’s one of the reasons that we
dedicated the book to perseverance and friendship, because everything could have
gone disastrously wrong.
Both of us have our own writing voices; we have strong
opinions and we are both used to having creative control. We also have vastly
different working styles. Laura is a pantser; she doesn’t normally plot her
books in advance, but lets the muse take her. Stephanie is a plotter who comes
to every novel armed with Scrivener and a host of color-coded story structure
notes. Add to that our busy schedules writing our own individual books and it
didn’t look like a match made in heaven.
But we had a few things going for us. The first, and most
important, was profound mutual respect. We didn’t often disagree on the
crafting of the book, but when we did, we would explain our positions, and
ultimately come up with a third solution that was better than anything either
of us could come up with on our own. We could’ve gotten defensive over our own
work, but instead we both worked hard to understand the each other’s reasons
and concerns. It also helped that we are both big picture thinkers; very rarely
were we attached to a specific wording of a paragraph--we were more concerned
about communicating an idea. In the picky little edits that passed back and
forth between us, we often just pressed ‘Accept All Changes.’
The second thing that made our partnership work was that we
both have a healthy ego and complementary strengths; by healthy ego, we mean,
we both had confidence in our writing, but not arrogance. If a scene had to be
cut for the good of the whole, we let it go. As for complementary strengths,
Laura’s perspective as a historian brought an in-depth knowledge of the period
and scholarship on Jefferson; her ability to make mortals of monumental men and
explore deep emotions helped connect readers to the story. The author of
multiple award-winning works of historical fiction, Stephanie brought her
fantastic understanding of character and story structure, and came up with the
use of letters to frame the book and each chapter within it. Her ability to
make the political personal brought the period to life and helped show Patsy
off to be the fascinating historical actor she truly was.
The third thing we had going for us was what we can only
describe as a magical creative chemistry. Brainstorming together we could
almost always build upon one another’s ideas in such a way that it was a pure
joy. There were many times one or the other of us would say, “Wait, wait, what
about this!” And then we’d both gasp. There was a particular day when the
writing had been a hard slog for weeks and Stephanie was struggling with how to
portray the events in revolutionary France alongside Patsy’s personal romantic
devastation. We’d met up to write together that day, and Laura suggested
somehow combining the scenes so as to cut down on words. And in a flash, Stephanie
realized that the struggles of Lafayette and the French Revolution were a
parallel to Patsy’s internal struggles. We started typing frantically, and by
the time we were done, we were both teary and moved by the scene. (There was
crying at Panera!)
It wasn’t always magic, of course. We had scheduling
conflicts. We had to jump through hoops to figure out how to write
collaboratively when our book became too big for Google Docs and Laura wondered
why Stephanie couldn’t just use Word like a normal person, and Stephanie
wondered why Laura couldn’t give Scrivener a shot! This is where it comes in
handy to really like your co-author, so you can tease each other
good-naturedly, and room together on road trips.
For us, writing fiction together--sharing the research,
hashing out the historical controversies and interpretations, choosing a
cohesive point of view--has been a challenging but rewarding experience unlike
any other. We loved it so much that we decided to do it again with our
forthcoming MY DEAR HAMILTON about Elizabeth Schuyler Hamilton the wife of
Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander.
Meanwhile, do you have any questions for us about the
mechanics of writing a book together?
Sincerely,
Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie
In a compelling, richly researched novel that draws from thousands of letters and original sources, bestselling authors Stephanie Dray and Laura Kamoie tell the fascinating, untold story of Thomas Jefferson’s eldest daughter, Martha “Patsy” Jefferson Randolph—a woman who kept the secrets of our most enigmatic founding father and shaped an American legacy.
From her earliest days, Patsy Jefferson knows that though her father loves his family dearly, his devotion to his country runs deeper still. As Thomas Jefferson’s oldest daughter, she becomes his helpmate, protector, and constant companion in the wake of her mother’s death, traveling with him when he becomes American minister to France.
It is in Paris, at the glittering court and among the first tumultuous days of revolution, that fifteen-year-old Patsy learns about her father’s troubling liaison with Sally Hemings, a slave girl her own age. Meanwhile, Patsy has fallen in love—with her father’s protégé William Short, a staunch abolitionist and ambitious diplomat. Torn between love, principles, and the bonds of family, Patsy questions whether she can choose a life as William’s wife and still be a devoted daughter.
Her choice will follow her in the years to come, to Virginia farmland, Monticello, and even the White House. And as scandal, tragedy, and poverty threaten her family, Patsy must decide how much she will sacrifice to protect her father's reputation, in the process defining not just his political legacy, but that of the nation he founded.
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Thank you so much! ~Jessica, InkSlinger PR
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