The Accidental Expert

RHYS BOWEN: The Accidental Expert

I was watching PBS a while ago when they showed two subsequent programs, one on Coco Chanel and one on Paris in the early 1900s. And I found myself adding my comments and corrections out loud to both programs because I knew more than they were telling. I wouldn’t have said I’m an expert on modern art or on Chanel, but it seems I have become one because they were both featured in my books. Coco Chanel played a role in my Royal Spyness book called Naughty in Nice and post-Impressionist Paris is the focus of my Molly Murphy book called City of Darkness and Light.

                Since I write historical novels it’s become very important to me to get everything right. After all my books take place in the first half of the Twentieth Century—there were newspapers for every day. There were photographs of every scene I need to describe. There were newsreels featuring famous people. So I have no excuse for getting anything wrong.

              

  I don’t know about you but if I find one detail that I know to be wrong in a book, that entire story loses validity for me. I no longer believe in those characters.  I have recently been asked to blurb books in which significant details about London or life in the early 1900s were wrong. A train from Yorkshire came into Victoria Station! I dropped the book hurriedly!

  I think it’s up to the writer to do her  homework properly and thoroughly, to make sure all the little details are right. For Molly Murphy, where the books are usually set in New York, this involves walking the streets Molly walked, noticing what she would have seen—is the Brooklyn Bridge visible from here? Have the leaves fallen from the trees in Washington Square in late October?  I have also acquired a large collection of photographs from the time and I can check what was on the billboard or what was the name above the tailor’s shop on a particular street. Not necessary maybe, but satisfying.

I love it when I get letters from people who grew up in New York City thanking me for bringing their childhood memories back to life. One woman said that she was born in Greenwich Village, as were her mother and grandmother and her grandmother used to buy bread at the same bakery on Greenwich Avenue as my characters. That made me feel really good--that all that research was worth it!

                What a wonderful extra bonus, as well as writing a story I enjoy, I am delving into areas I would never have explored… becoming an accidental expert.

                This has happened throughout my life. My husband became a sales manager of Air India. Suddenly we were called upon to host important Indians, give talks on India, even lead trips to India. We went there several times, covering the whole country from Kashmir down to Kerala.  We were patrons of an Indian dance school. We cooked Indian food. And all this was accidental. If he had instead taken a job with Air Finland I’d know all about reindeer and saunas.

                When I wrote In Farleigh Field I read numerous books on World War II, autobiographical accounts of working for M.I.5 and at Bletchley Park. Then I went to Bletchley Park and nosed around, asking questions.  When I write about the royal family in my Royal Spyness books I try to make them as accurate as possible so that anything they say is an opinion I know they actually expressed. I’ve read all the biographies. Been to all the palaces. You might say it’s fiction and it doesn’t matter, but it does.

                So a word of warning to writers: if you put something in your books you will be assumed to be an expert. If your sleuth breeds llamas, you will be asked to judge llama shows. If she bakes cupcakes (Jenn McKinlay) you will be asked for recipes. So don’t give your characters any skills or interests you’d absolutely hate in real life.  You will have to do a lot of reading and study, to make sure everything is right, because somewhere, someone in the world who is an expert on llamas or spinning will write to you and tell you what you have wrong!

                My latest research has been on Tuscany. I’ve set a book there, partly in WWII, partly later. I've just seen the cover: isn't it fab?

 I knew I wanted to write this book so I studied every detail from the making of olive oil to the mummified body of a saint in the church, to the parade on Corpus Christi Sunday  (which comes in the book).  And of course I had to study the food and wine in depth. In the name of research, you know.  We suffer for our art!  But the point is that settings only come to life through the little things—the smell of bread baking, the sound of a voice singing from an upstairs window, the scent of a particular flower on the breeze.  Now I’m itching to go back again. That vin santo was awfully good…. And my wish is to be granted. Next summer I ve been asked to repeat the writer's workshop in the Chianti region. Who wants to join me?  Details on my website:

So Reds—in what areas have you become accidental experts?