Patricia Furstenberg, Writer of Historical Fiction, Children's Books
Travel via Stories
“I step where I am needed… even when the ground burns beneath me.” I like this quote because it represents Kate Webber, the main character from When Secrets Bloom. Kate does not act because she believes she will win. She acts because not acting is unthinkable.
And her choice sets the course of everything that follows.
Continue reading “I step where I am needed, even when the ground burns beneath me – When Secrets Bloom”
Power rarely announces itself. It shimmers inviting admiration while concealing the cost of its making – much like silk under candlelight. But history and human nature also suggest otherwise.
Ahead of an anticipated collaborative anthology, I’ve enjoyed new historical fiction authors and discovered what’s hidden beneath quiet surfaces. But when beauty is crafted under constraint, does it remain beauty… or does it become testimony?
Continue reading “Hunting the Sun by Jean Gill – Beauty as Testimony”
There are cities in Transylvania that do not simply sit on the map, they remember. They carry the sediment of centuries like bark around an old trunk. Brașov, know as Corona or Kronstadt in medieval times, is one of those places. In When Secrets Bloom Brașov does appear only as a backdrop. It breathes. It resists. It watches.
Because to write about a place is to write against forgetting.
Continue reading “Real Places in Historical Fiction: Brașov in When Secrets Bloom”
There are truths history rarely writes plainly about. Skill, in the wrong hands — or rather in the wrong body — becomes suspicion. And knowledge, instead of opening doors, invites them to close.
Continue reading “Yet for all my knowledge I was still only a woman. And that was my crime. #bookquote”
I’ve been exploring a remarkable group of historical voices lately – ahead of a new anthology – and discovered what lies beneath quiet surfaces. Power rarely arrives gently. More often it is forced into unwilling hands demanding a price long before it grants authority. But, when survival demands transformation, when does need become something else entirely?
Continue reading “Hell Hath No Fury: The Story of Marguerite of Anjou by Judith Arnopp”