Drawing inspiration from the documents of the time

 

“I often tell people who want to write historical fiction: don't read all that much about the period you're writing about.  Read things from the period that you're writing about. There's a tendency to stoke up on a lot of biography and a lot of history, and not to actually get back to the original sources.” – Thomas Mallon

 

Born in Glen Cove, NY on Nov. 2, 1951 Mallon is an award-winning novelist, essayist, and critic known for historical novels rich in detail and context, putting readers into a “fly on the wall" position for the events swirling around them.

 

He is he author of 11 novels – including Henry and Clara, Two Moons, and Watergate – and numerous nonfiction works, led by one of the definitive works on plagiarism, Stolen Words.  He also has written two volumes of his insightful essays.  His newest nonfiction book is this summer’s The Very Heart of It.  All told he has authored 20 books and hundreds of news stories, features and essays in his long career.

 

Historical fiction, he said, remains the genre in which he is most interested. “I think the main thing that has led me to write historical fiction is that it is a relief from the self.”  His advice to writers of historical fiction is to recommend a system that has worked for him.  

 

“For almost every novel I've written, I've read the daily newspaper of the time almost as if it were my current subscription. For Two Moons, which was set in 1877, I think I read just about every day of the Washington Evening Star for that year. For Henry and Clara, I read the Albany Evening Journal of the time.”