Anne Barwell: Working With History

Anne Barwell is here today to talk about the daunting aspects of historical research and how real events inspire plot. Please give her a big welcome!

Thanks for hosting me today as part of my blog tour for Comes a Horseman, the 3^rd and final book in my WWII Echoes Rising series.

One of the daunting things about writing an historical is the research involved.  But, on the flip side, often real events can inspire plot, and get characters out of a tight corner. In Shadowboxing, the first book in my WWII Echoes Rising series, I needed to get my characters out of a heavily guarded building, and couldn’t figure out how.  History came to my rescue!  I adjusted the dates in the story by a few weeks, and the Allied bombing of that area at the time gave my characters the break they needed. Sadly one of their own lost his life during the escape.

Historical events play a big part in Comes a Horseman. When I started writing the series, I knew I wanted it to finish with D-Day—the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6^th 1944.  The lead up to that event is well documented, so my timing had to be perfect.  I needed to have my Allied team in Normandy so they’d be there to hear the original coded broadcast to the resistance on 1^st June so they knew the invasion was coming.  I also had to get the weather right, as that impacted the date which originally was going to be a couple of days earlier.  Not only that, but I needed to find out when the area was bombed and the specific times—as well as dates—of the crucial events leading up to, and of, the invasion. 

When I started reading up on D-Day I discovered a rather cool coincidence. The Paul Verlaine poem which was broadcast over the radio as the coded signal to the French Resistance contained a line about the “heavy sobs of autumn’s violins”, and one my characters—Kit Lehrer—is a violinist.  It was as though everything fell into place and not only that, had meant to be this way all along.  I’d love to say I planned it that way, but I didn’t.  

The attitude of Standartenführer Holm towards the imminent invasion is taken from historical accounts too. The Germans weren’t expecting an invasion in Normandy, so their attention was elsewhere. And the idea that the Allies would broadcast to the resistance on the B.B.C.? Ridiculous. 

The timing of the action of the last few chapters of the book was crucial.  I needed to have the bombs drop on my characters at ground zero so the timing was historically accurate. I wrote those last few chapters with an historical timeline written in my notebook for the series, and adjusted the timeline of previous chapters so that everything meshed.  It also solved several problems the characters needed to figure out in order to complete their mission the way they’d decided it needed to play out. 

I’ve learnt a lot more about WWII while writing this series than I ever thought I would, and despite the work involved, I’ve really enjoyed it. I still have a notebook, a folder, and bookcase full of information about the period, and although this team’s story is told, I wouldn’t be surprised if that information proves useful in another story sometime.   

I’ve spent so many years writing these guys, I doubt they’ll disappear altogether. I kind of hope they don’t.