It is no surprise I love historical fiction. I am a history enthusiast and there is nothing like escaping to the past and exploring how people lived long ago. We often find ourselves not so different from them. Or how history repeats itself in more ways than one. Historical Fiction Writers today brings those voices to life so we might share a bond with them or better yet, learn from them. There is so much we have inherited from them. Not only our cultures, religions, social norms and wanting acceptance but a deep feeling of survival and planting more roots for the future.
We must know history to understand and to grow. Knowledge is power. We must also study history so we may not to repeat past mistakes of our forbearers. Which we tend to do regardless. The human condition is extraordinary and an enigma.
Historical Fiction does matter.
Stephanie M. Hopkins
Layered Pages 
Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres – it always brings a period to life and it’s a terrific way to learn!
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Agreed!
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All I’ve learned in the process of writing novels that, I hope, are convincing and accurate in their history, has made me a very different person from the one I was before I began. I think I began being interested in reading history (thank you, Barbara Tuchman) only a couple of years before I discovered the first novel I would write (Martin of Gfenn). The main thing I learned is that we don’t know much and we don’t think about the lives, the details of the lives, of the ordinary people who are actually the swelling wave that moves humanity forward. I think this is one reason history repeats itself, and then, too, human nature appears always to have been human nature.
I think well-researched historical fiction is important because it puts the lives of real people in front of real people and engages our imaginations so we begin to see the people of the past, not just great, fat, swaths of events — wars, plagues, etc.
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Reblogged this on I'm a Writer, Yes, I Am! and commented:
Good thoughts on the relevance of historical fiction. 🙂
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It got me into the real thing.
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Great piece, Stephanie. I love history and historical fiction for so many reasons, and it’s fantastic how people from the past can be heard once more in historical fiction today. It memorialises them, their account written down numerous times whether in biographies, history texts or a novel. Their lives remembered. Particularly with fiction, we can breathe new life into old, long forgotten voices, and in this way bring history to life – so many readers have discovered a love of history through historical fiction, which is another reason why I love this genre.
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