research – Empowering women through fiction and history.

Many writers do some kind of research for their books. Even contemporary authors often need to research experiences in life of which they have no first-hand knowledge. This could be anything from what a five-year-old will and will not eat (if you’re like me, with no kids and not much exposure to young kids) to the ins and outs of a career as a registered nurse.

Historical authors have the added burden of researching the past. Their research isn’t always related to well-documented events or facts (such as housing prices in the 1950s). In fact, often, their research is about the obscure details, such as how people stored meat in the 17th century (or even if they stored meat at all — we can’t assume the things we take for granted today were possible in past times). Their research isn’t necessarily related to major plot points or main characters either. Only this morning, I was researching the hours of operation for a produce stand in a small town in the early 1920s for some minor characters appearing in my work-in-progress.

Photo Credit: The Bookworm, Carl Spitzweg, 1850, oil on canvas, Museum Georg Schafer, Bavaria, Germany: Iryna Harpy/Wikimedia Commons/PD Art (PD Old 70)

There is no hard-and-fast rule about when researching should be done and how much. Every author goes by his or her own comfort level. Some authors prefer researching everything down to the last detail before they even begin that first draft. Others prefer to get the story down without worrying about historically accurate details and then go back and “fill in the blanks” during revisions.

I tend to do a combination of both. I research general aspects of history when I’m outlining the story because these can affect what direction the story will take. If I have an idea for a murder but research suggests it wouldn’t have been accurate for the time period in which the book is set, then that’s going to affect how the plot moves forward. An obvious example would be if I wanted to write a story where DNA testing plays a role in identifying the real killer and set the book in the early 1970s, I’d be 20 years too early, since DNA testing became common in the early 1990s (bet you didn’t know that, did you?) The appearance of a mob boss in my Grave Sisters Mysteries would be fine, since the series takes place during the Jazz Age, but the mob boss might be out of place in my Adele Gossling Mysteries, set some twenty years earlier.

Now, this last example brings up an interesting point about historical research and storytelling: The idea that just because something is historically accurate in one time frame but is associated with a later time frame doesn’t mean an author should include it in their book. We have to think of reader expectations. If I were to include a storyline in my Adele Gossling Mysteries involving a mob boss, it might be historically accurate (mob bosses existed since the late 19th century), but it would confuse readers since we’ve come to associate mobs and mob bosses with the Prohibition Era of the 1920s.

The outline is just the beginning of my historical research. While I’m writing the first draft, lots of little details come up. My process is to include them in the first draft as I know them in the 21st century, tag them with a note in bold and square brackets, and then go back later and research them. I do that mainly because when I’m writing the first draft, I want to focus on getting the story down from beginning to end. I don’t want to be distracted by popping onto Google and going down the research rabbit hole. One example that sticks in my mind was when I was writing one of the earlier Adele Gossling Mysteries, I decided it was time for the Arrojo police force to wear uniforms. Except I had no idea if police in America even wore uniforms in the first decade of the 20th century! Those are the kinds of details we might think are obvious, but when you’re dealing with the past, you have to suddenly stop and think about them. Spoiler alert: American police did wear uniforms in the first decade of the 20th century.

So doing research can be like the old paradox of the chicken and the egg — do you research first and then write, or can you only research once you start writing because you don’t know what you’ll need to research until you write?

If you’re new to my historical cozy mysteries, why not take the plunge into my Adele Gossling Mysteries? You’ll find a lot of interesting research plus a compelling story about Adele Gossling getting pulled into the murder of her next-door neighbor in the first book of the series, The Carnation Murder. It’s free to download on all bookstore sites. Find out more about the book and where you can get it here.

If you love fun, engaging mysteries set in the past, you’ll enjoy The Missing Ruby Necklace! It’s available exclusively to newsletter subscribers here. By signing up, you’ll also get news about upcoming releases, fun facts about women’s history, classic true-crime tidbits, and more

When I first conceived the idea of the Adele Gossling Mysteries, I wanted to know what life was like in the first years of the early 20th century. I knew my first book, The Carnation Murder, was going to involve an aristocratic family, so I went in search of anything (books, movies, etc) that portrayed life among the aristocracy. I stumbled upon a series that, although it takes place in Britain, mirrors the life wealthy Americans would have lived during this time. I immediately fell in love with it.

Photo Credit: Jean Marsh, who co-created and starred in Upstairs, Downstairs at a signing at the Broadway Theater in Barking, East London, cropped, 12 December 2009, taken by Tim Drury: Rhain/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY SA 2.0

Photo Credit: Dame Eileen Atkins, co-creator of Upstairs, Downstairs, reciting poetry at the British Library, 7 October 2021, The Josephine Hart American Poets Hour: Starkinson/ Wikimedia Commons/ CC BY 3.0

The British TV series Upstairs, Downstairs was the brain-child of two veteran British actresses: Jean Marsh and Dame Eileen Atkins. The two women were dismayed when they watched an earlier British drama The Forsyte Saga (from 1967, not the 2002 mini-series), and realized the series never portrayed the life of the servants who played such a major role in the Forsyte family members’ lives. They wanted to make a comic series set during a time when the class hierarchy was still pronounced in Britain about the troubles and turmoils of those who worked for these aristocratic families – the “downstairs”.

However, when the series was sold, the production company that bought it changed a few things. First, they decided the series should portray not just the downstairs but also the “upstairs,” or, the aristocratic family for which the servants in the series worked (the Bellamys). Second, they decided to take the comedy out of the series and make it more of a drama along the lines of The Forsyte Saga, which had aired four years before the launch of Upstairs, Downstairs in 1971.

One of the fascinating things about this series is that you see how life in the early 20th century (the series ends in 1930) wasn’t easy for either masters and mistresses or servants. Aside from the modern conveniences both had to do without (even though the Bellamys were wealthy so money was no object), the social expectations for both were sometimes difficult to manage.

The pilot episode shows this beautifully, though more from the “downstairs” point of view. Right from the first scene, we see a young woman (played by Pauline Collins) who comes to the house to interview for a position as a maid make the social faux pas of the century — she knocks on the front door. The butler Hudson (Gordon Jackson), his expression one of stoic rage, motions for her to descend the stairs and come through the kitchen entrance and then chews her out for not knocking on the proper door. It’s clear the young woman has never worked in service before, something the other servants, even more than the lady of the house, grumble about. In fact, Lady Marjorie Bellamy (Rachel Gurney) is more sympathetic to the nervous young lady — until it comes to her name. The young lady gives her name as Clemence — a rather “uppity” French name. Lady Marjorie immediately changes it to Sarah and insists she be called by this name. This was actually not uncommon, as mistresses oftentimes either changed the names of their servants or they simply couldn’t be bothered to remember their name so they called them by the name of a former servant they had become used to.

Sarah ends up leaving service quite early in the series (though she does return later on) because, after getting a taste of not only the physical harsh labor but the social and psychological humiliation as well, insists on something better for herself. Members of the family feel the constraints of their social position as well, though in different ways. We see this with the father (whose background is respectable but whose aristocratic standing comes from his wife, and his Parlament peers never let him forget it), the son (whose military position doesn’t always suit his tastes), and the mother and daughter (both of whom suffocate under the constraints of the separate spheres so heavily cherished, especially in Britain, during this time).

Sometimes research can be really fun, and I was lucky enough to catch this series when it was on Netflix in its entirety. It served me well for my upcoming release, The Case of the Dead Domestic, which involves the death of a lady’s maid and the divide between the wealthy of Arrojo and the working class. The book comes out at the end of this month but feel free to pick up a copy now at a special preorder price here.

If you love fun, engaging mysteries set in the past, you’ll enjoy The Missing Ruby Necklace! It’s available exclusively to newsletter subscribers here. By signing up, you’ll also get news about upcoming releases, fun facts about women’s history, classic true-crime tidbits, and more!

Tag: research

Historical Research: A Chicken and Egg Paradox