While I was writing When Secrets Bloom I fell in love with humor that’s cleverly used in historical fiction.
Humor has always been part of survival. In the harshest of times (for me that would be my childhood and teen years in communist Romania), wit becomes both shield and sword, a way to endure the unendurable. As one of my characters puts it:
‘You need to be more careful, Mo,’ she murmured, not unkindly. ‘This world’s got less mercy than a goose at Michaelmas—and you’re walking around like stuffing.‘
That kind of humor doesn’t trivialize fear. It grounds it. It makes emotion believable, action lifelike, and humanizes history. In this post I’ll share three moments from When Secrets Bloom where I deliberately used humor to deepen character, reveal cultural identity, and invite readers closer to the story.
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