Guest Post, Natalie Bayley – Author of Bone Rites

As part of Natalie’s blog tour, she has written this post for me about her writing and research process for the novel to accompany the review. Thanks for the fascinating post, Natalie.

Researching Historical Fiction: the Old, the Strange and the Downright Peculiar

Most of my novels are set in the early or mid-twentieth century. I don’t know why, but the world from around 1900 to the 1960’s really fascinates me. Perhaps it’s the rapidity of change that people went through, the intense horror of the two world wars, the huge social and technological changes. Whatever the reason, those years draw me again and again, even if only for flashbacks in more contemporary stories. But when you write in the past, research is EVERYTHING. You can take nothing for granted, from what people wore and what they ate, to how they travelled, communicated, worked, loved, died. Fortunately, I’m obsessed with research. I lose days, weeks, months uncovering the most obscure facts.

How not to be an idiot

Finding out exactly how, where and with whom a posh, English, bisexual woman might have taken opium in Paris in the post WW1 period took me weeks of research. In the end, the reams of fascinating information I uncovered is no more than a couple of sentences in my novel, Bone Rites. But they are CORRECT sentences. Why, you might be thinking, don’t you just make it up? To answer that, I need to tell you a little story.

I once read a hugely bestselling book (I won’t name and shame the very famous author) where the protagonist paid for his London taxi ride with a one-hundred pound note. WHICH DID NOT, AND STILL DOES NOT, EXIST. I stared at the book in horror. I said a rude word. Then I threw the book into the bin, because that was the end of that story. I’d lost all faith in both it and its author. So, now I’m paranoid about creating that same sense of betrayal, annoyance, and disgust in my readers. To try and avoid it, I research Every Tiny Thing. I might not always get everything 100% correct, but hopefully I’m not making one-hundred pound note mistakes.

Murder, Blood & Bones

I know a lot about dead bodies. A Lot. So much so, that my neighbour (who is a homicide detective – I know, I’m blessed) talks to me about her cases as if I’m as if I’m as blasé about finding body parts washed up on the beach as the rest of her team. My best writing friend (the award-winning French screenwriter, Nicolas Mercier) calls me to discuss such topics as how long a body might take to decompose in a sandy, radioactive soil compared to a thick, damp, London clay. We also have long discussions about the role of insecticide in confusing pathology reports on human remains. We debate the relative merits of acid/fire/pig farms for disposing of a body. I have no doubt that the pair of us are listed as dubious characters on a variety of ASIS/MI6/CIA/INTERPOL lists.   

I also know a fair bit about bones now. Bone Rites, features a skeleton made of bones from various people and I initially called it, Two Hundred and Six Bones. I was pleased with this title until I found out that a typical teaching skeleton only has about 180 bones. There are several tiny fiddly bones in our hands, feet and ears that can’t be included. That could’ve been a massive research fail. I also now know the relative weights of various body parts. Most adults for example, have heads that are heavier than their arms, but nowhere near as heavy as one of their legs. Fact. Legs are HEAVY. I also watched videos and read books on surgical procedures. I don’t recommend doing this if you have a delicate stomach, but if you are going to write it you have to get it right. You may never WANT to sever a man’s head from his spinal column, but I like to think if you had to, reading my book won’t give you the wrong idea of how to go about it.

Respecting Real People

The other thing about writing the past is that you have to be careful if you include real people. You can’t lie. You can embellish, extend, extrapolate, sure, but you can’t actually represent people in a way that’s not accurate. And that means doing a ton of – you guessed it – research. But one of the best parts of doing research for a historical fiction novel is finding out about cool people you’ve never heard of.

In Bone Rites, my protagonist, Kathryn, wants to study medicine in 1912. That wasn’t very easy for a girl back then. After much research, I came across the fabulous Dr Elsie Inglis and her medical school for young women in Edinburgh, Scotland. I read her biography and realised I had stumbled on a total legend of a woman. In fact, I loved Elsie Inglis so much, she became an important character in the book. Much of Kathryn’s activities during the First World War are based on the true-life story of Dr Inglis and the series of flagship war hospitals she set up, staffed entirely by women. Elsie was also a very keen advocate for women’s right to vote. This also wove itself into the story – when we first meet Kathryn she’s languishing in London’s Holloway Jail, where so many suffragettes were incarcerated for their beliefs.

But… Historical Fiction is not History

I think it was Kate Atkinson who said that she reads dozens of books for her historical fiction novels, but before she starts writing she sets them all aside and allows her imagination to fill in that research scaffold. I think that’s good advice (although I always double check my facts!) In Bone Rites, Kathryn is a woman of her times, but she can also talk to our times. She’s so frustrated by her lack of power and the way men talk down to her, abuse and oppress her, that she breaks all their rules and does what she wants. She’s a bad girl, sure, but she does what she needs to do in a very bad world. I rather admire that, don’t you?

Important Links:

Better Read Than Dead Book Launch

https://www.betterreadevents.com/events/bone-rites-launch-with-natalie-bayley

Wylies Oct 26 – Halloween Event

link tbc