Dear Elizabeth – many thanks for agreeing to answer a few questions for Gateway….

GM: When you were at school, did you always do well at creative writing? At what point did you recognise it as a possible career?

EC: I didn’t particularly excel at creative writing.  I always received good marks, but they weren’t out of this world, just a good class average because I was good at English.   I’d told myself stories verbally all my life though (I can remember being 3 and doing so). I was 15 when I actually wrote my first one down.  That process and the pleasure I derived from it made me realise that what I’d love to do for a career was write historical ficition.

GM: You've chosen to write about history, and in particular mediaeval history, of course. Was history your favourite subject?

EC:  It was one of them along with English and general studies (i.e. general knowledge).  I studied history at school to ‘A’ level standard but actually all my medieval knowledge had to be gleaned outside of school.  For history exams at 16 it was World War II and at 18 it was the Tudors and Stuarts.  I loved ‘A’ level English because I got to study Chaucer.  That was far more my thing!  I also got to study some archaeology at school and I found that fascinating.

GM: The first few novels you had published are considered by some as romantic fiction rather than historical novels. It's inevitable that historical novels should contain romance, isn't it? Did you agree with that assessment of your first few novels?

EC: I would say re definition that I started writing at the romance end of historical fiction, but it was still firmly historical in content.  I now write further towards the straight end of the genre and my work is of the fictional biography ilk rather than involving imaginary protagonists.   I don’t think it’s inevitable that historical fiction should contain romance, but I like to read the kind of historical that has it to a degree, providing the characters are of their time and not modern folk in fancy dress.  You find most other genres of novel contain elements of romance.  None are immune.

GM: I'm intrigued by your admission that you want to write books that tell stories in the way that Peter Jackson told the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I adore those films, they are my absolute favourites, but although I can see that "visuality" and scene-setting in J K Rowling's Harry Potter books, in the sense that she almost writes screenplays rather than stories to be read, I hadn't thought that about your books. Is it something you now consciously aim for when you're writing?

EC: No, I’ve always written like that.  I see the scenes in full cinematic technicolour inside my head.  Peter Jackson told the Lords of the Rings story with stunning attention to detail.  He made his backdrops as real as he could and he did it with integrity and love.  I went to see the exhibition of the costumes at the Science Museum.  Theoden’s armour particularly impressed me because the scales on that armour are decorated with ‘Saxon’ interlaced patterning, but it’s not something you see on the film because the focus isn’t close enough.  For someone to put that detail into something that the camera isn’t going to pick up, shows how much love and meticulous thought went into the ‘window dressing.’  That’s what I mean when I say I want my books to echo PJ’s rendition of the trilogy.  It’s all about the 3D and being real enough to engage all the senses so the reader feels as if they are actually there in the time and place you create.

GM: You describe yourself as Philippa Gregory with a touch of Cornwell – I was brought up on and learned most of my history from writers like Jean Plaidy and, to a lesser extent, Dennis Wheatley, and I've described you as "Jean Plaidy with sex", which I know you found amusing. I also remember reading my sister's annuals, in which the cavaliers were always the good guys. Back in the 1950s, historians were quite clear on that – possibly because of the coronation of the new, young Queen Elizabeth – it was almost as if they were trying not to say bad things about the monarchy. If you were writing about the English Civil War, which side would you come down on, or would you try to present a totally unbiased point of view?

EC: I actually said Philippa Gregory meets Anya Seton with a touch of Cornwell, and I probably identify slightly more with Seton than Gregory.  To your question:  It would depend on what my characters were doing.  My views would echo theirs and I would base my views on primary sources and the best secondary sources.  I read quite a lot of Jean Plaidy when I was younger.  Her Tudor novels are excellent and I think that was where her heart lay, but she didn’t do medieval particularly well in my opinion.

GM: Will you continue to champion William Marshal in your next book? Or will you move forward (or backward) in time for the next one?

EC: My next book, as yet untitled, is the story of Ida de Tosny, who was Henry II’s mistress, and Roger Bigod, second earl of Norfolk and the man responsible for building Framlingham Castle out of the ashes of his father’s rebellion and disgrace.  Roger’s son and heir married William Marshal’s eldest daughter and that will be the subject of the one after Ida and Roger.  So yes, William Marshal will be dropping in and out of the works in progress, but as a secondary character this time around.

GM: Like me, you think that the Lord of the Rings films are more enjoyable than the books – I think I've got that right, please correct me if I'm wrong. Are there other books that in your opinion have come across better as films that you can think of?

EC: I don’t think the Lord of the Rings films are better than the book – they’re just a different medium.  There are layers and depths that only a book can hold, and some areas of the film by necessity skimped those layers and depths, but I still think the latter has tremendous integrity. There are lots of films that do justice to the book and maintain that integrity.  The Last of the Mohicans for example.  I enjoyed the book (as far as I can remember, it’s a long time ago!) and I feel the film does it justice.  For better than, I’d have to say Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.  I know there’ll be lots of shouts of ‘No way!’ for this, but I’m speaking as I find.  I didn’t finish the book (yawn) but I thoroughly enjoyed the film.

GM: What challenges did you face in writing the novelisation of First Knight? It's one of the best King Arthur films, in my opinion, always a difficult subject to bring to film, of course. People have their own views of King Arthur and you can never please everybody.

EC: The main challenge was that I had to stick to the script and alter my mindset in order to suspend my disbelief.  I had to tell myself that I was writing a fantasy novel, not a medieval.  For example, Lancelot is portrayed as a peasant with a sword, going round the villages taking on wannabees for money.  But a peasant wouldn’t have had a sword in the middle ages.  It was the accoutrement of a knight.  He’d soon have had it seized from him.  Where would he have learned to fight like that anyway?  So I gave him a noble upbringing in his back story to account for that.  Once I’d managed to put myself into medieval fantasy mindset, I was able to get on much better.  I only had 4 months to write it, when a usual contract is 14 months, and at the same time I was reworking a novel for the USA market and writing a new, contracted book for my UK publishers, so in terms of workload it was a lot to juggle.  Occasionally bits of the script jarred with me.  There’s a scene where Lancelot looks at Guinevere and goes the cliché route of saying ‘Look into my eyes and tell me you don’t fancy me.’  I thought this needed a bit of work doing on it, so I used the mitigation of Guinevere’s internal thoughts on the matter to give it a bit more grounding in terms of character development.  I had a wry chuckle at an Amazon UK review of the novel that said it wasn’t up to my usual standard and that I was obviously writing with a view to it being made into a film.  But of course it was the other way around!

GM: How will you choose the music soundtrack for your next novel? Actually, you probably already have, as hopefully you're now working on it! So how did you choose it, and what is it? Or would that be giving away too much?

EC: I don’t write to music, but I listen to it while I’m away from the PC doing mundane jobs or exercising at the gym.  I know when a song is right for the soundtrack because I’ll get an adrenaline burst that says ‘Yes!’  I look for tracks with lyrics or a musical feel that will point up personality traits in my characters or reflect scenes in the novel or provide strong emotional resonances.  And yes, I do have a full soundtrack for my novel about Roger Bigod and Ida de Tosny.  I hope to have it on my soundtrack blog next spring, but as a taster I can tell you that tracks on it include Promised Land by Bruce Springsteen (a favourite artist of mine) for Roger taking the decision to leave his father and be his own man, and Kate Bush’s The Man with the Child in his Eyes, for what Ida first thinks about Roger.  One of the main love songs is by a wonderful band called Anberlin and it’s called Inevitable and the lyric that appealed to me is in the chorus. ‘I want to be your last first kiss.’  Given that Ida had had an affair with Henry II beforehand and was attempting to start anew, I felt the gentle wistfulness of the song conveyed that emotion as she and Roger started anew.  At the other end of the scale, and to do with the battle of Fornham at the beginning of the novel when Roger is burning his bridges and forging new ones, there’s a harder, angry song titled ‘Prayer of the Refugee by a band called Rise Against.  ‘Don’t hold me up now, I can stand my own ground.’

GM: You have a very big web presence, and there is plenty of material about you, too. Do you think that a strong web presence is essential nowadays?

EC: I do, very much so.  At one time you wrote a book and that was it, finished, but in today’s information hungry society you need to do much more. Also it’s fun to interact with the readers and I think it adds value to the reading experience for those who want to know more.  Often, gaining readers in the first place is about exposure.  If the readers discover they enjoy your work, it’s about keeping them on board and building bridges that are of benefit to both reader and author.  That’s my take on it anyway.

GM: I'm sure you get lots of fan-mail – does that come mainly from your website visitors or do you also get a fair proportion via your publisher?

EC: A few come from my publisher but it’s mostly from readers online.  Some weeks there’ll only be one or two, but on other occasions there are several a day.  Sundays seem to be peak day for receiving letters, so I guess people still have a bit of leisure time then.  I try to reply to everyone, but sometimes I get a bit behind if I have a lot on.  To those still waiting let me say ‘I’ll answer as soon as I can!’

GM: You're very approachable, as a lot of modern authors are – do you aim to reply to everyone who writes to you? What sort of things do people write to you about?

EC: As mentioned above, yes I do try to reply to everyone, although sometimes due to pressures of work it might take a while and the occasional e-mail does drop through the holes in the sieve.  People usually write to say how the novels have affected them.  They’re usually positive and it gives you hope for the human race that there are such lovely, thoughtful and interested people out there.  Sometimes I’ll have got a detail wrong and a reader will write to correct me.  I don’t mind this.  No author can get everything right and it’s better to learn and accept graciously rather than be miffed about it.  If a reader cares enough to write to me, then they are owed a decent answer. If I know I’m right though, I stick to my guns.  Readers often want to know about visiting the places mentioned in the novel or where they can find out more information.  They often tell me their age, gender and family circumstances, and it’s interesting to know this from a demographic point of view.  Not to boast but my readership does go across the board from young teens through to people in their nineties, and of both sexes.

GM: What principal sources do you use for your research? Do you haunt your local library or do you do quite a lot of it online?

EC: I do a mixture of everything.  I use the library.  I have an extensive library of my own and I’m always adding to it.  I do research online but I take care not to believe everything that’s out there.  Some of the genealogy sites are so wrong they are bizarre.  I use academic articles from the likes of JSTOR and I belong to several online discussion groups with experts as members.  I re-enact with living history society Regia Anglorm, which helps me to understand the practicalities and get a feel for life in the period I write about. For example,  it’s one thing to see a mail shirt in a text book, quite another to see someone put one on and take it off.  The same with an earthenware cooking pot.  It’s much more informative to use one in context than to see a few glued together shards in an archaeology book.  I also use what are known as the Akashic Records.  This is a belief that every thought, feeling and emotion leaves an imprint and if you have the ability, you can access the life stories of the past through them.  My brain doesn’t have the software to do this, but Akashic consultant Alison King does, so I use her abilities to access the data as a strand of my research.  A Place Beyond Courage was extensively written using this resource.

GM: One of your recent online interviewers asked if you kept all your story ideas in a strongbox – isn't it the case that if you're writing about a real person, the story is already there and it's your job to re-tell it in a way that millions of people will find readable? Which you do, of course.

EC: If you’re writing about a real person, then yes, the structure of their life story is already out there for anyone to access and tell as they choose.  You only need to look at the ocean of novels about Richard III or the hugely overdone Tudors to see that!  Each author though, will bring their own particular take to bear on the subject.  With novels where my protagonists and the story line are imaginary are concerned, I don’t feel I need to use a strongbox.  I’m not a paranoid author.  My novels are strongly character driven and that means that no one else is going to be able to do what I do anyway.

GM: In your online discussion about historical fiction you say it suffered from "images of bodice ripping, candy hearts and old ladies smelling of mothballs reading Georgette Heyer and Jean Plaidy to satisfy unfulfilled longings". The Regency is a favourite period of mine, and I have to say that I learned a great deal from Georgette Heyer about it, probably more so than the rather dry history books, of which there were not that many. Wasn't that just a case of people writing for the times in which they lived? Heyer and Plaidy are still being reprinted, so people must still want them. Historical fiction has moved on to a new, more realistic and image-conscious phase with the likes of Bernard Cornwell, Phillipa Gregory, Conn Iggulden and yourself. Who would have thought that a series about Genghis Khan could become a best-seller? If the fashion was still for bodice-ripping and candy hearts, would you adjust your writing to suit?

EC: I write the way I write and that’s that.  I did make a conscious change from imaginary protagonists to real people, partly as a result of market forces but partly as a natural progression of me the writer.  It was what I wanted to do and I felt it was time I had a go.

When I wrote the above it was a few years ago and I was talking about the perceptions of the media to historical fiction.  Georgette Heyer has had a renewed lease of life, not least due to the influence of film and TV with reference to Jane Austen.  The mainstream press are still extremely sniffy about romantic fiction, including historicals and will not miss an opportunity to have a cheap shot at the genre.  Journalists will say ‘Oh, it’s a bodice ripper, or like a trashy Mills & Boon novel,’ but I’d like to bet most of the detractors have never read such novels in their lives.  The Historical Novel Society has, of course, done much to turn around the negative image of the historical novel and has gone from strength to strength in the ten years since its foundation.  Also the Romantic Novelists Association works to turn around negative media images of the genre.

GM: Do you read books by your contemporary historical fiction writers to see what they're getting up to? Your list of preferred writers concentrates on genres outside historical fiction.

EC: I read across the board in all genres.  There’s no single one I stick to.  I don’t read a lot of chick-lit because it’s not to my particular taste, although even there I enjoy the occasional one.  I don’t read many works of medieval fiction because I get irritated if authors don’t get their facts right, or ignore the mindset of the period.  It has to be a very special author if I’m going to read in the medieval arena.  I enjoy historical fiction that’s not set in my area of expertise because I’m not as sensitive to historical inaccuracies.

GM: You mentioned Mary Poppins from your childhood reading – any other childhood reads you remember in particular? Authors or books that would have fuelled your passion for writing, or was it mainly film and TV that influenced you?

EC: It wasn’t the Mary Poppins books that inspired me.  I was using the MP film as an analogy for my writing process.  I said that as a child I would enter the world of a picture book and make up new stories inside the picture, rather like Mary Poppins jumping into Bert’s pavement painting.  I would say it was mainly film and TV that influenced me, although as I began writing, romantic historical author Roberta Gellis showed me that it was possible to write intelligent historical romance with characters that were of their time, rather than Disney characters in fancy dress.  I read a lot of myths, legends, ghost stories and fairy tales in my childhood, so I suppose I was subconsciously storing up character archetypes.

GM: Can you name five favourite books, titles you couldn't be without? Series count as one title, for example, Stephen King's seven-volume THE DARK TOWER, which is one series I couldn't be without!

EC: It’s hard to choose just five.  These are favourites of mine among many favourites.  Ask me another day and you’d get a different reply!

Hanta Yo by Ruth Beebee Hill

The Francis Crawford of Lymond Series by Dorothy Dunnett

The Shining  by Stephen King

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Vintner’s Luck by Elizabeth Knox

GM: Elizabeth, thank you so much for taking part. I hope it's not too long before there's a new EC coming our way! Best wishes and a big thank you for entertaining us so royally!