Thursday 12 April 2012

Commenting Problems Anyone?

A writer friend has let me know that she tried commenting on my blog a number of times and her message wasn't getting through.

So, I've removed the horrid Captcha and put comments on Moderated for the moment. I check my blog regularly so if you comment and you don't see your message after a couple of days please let me know, using the address on the right hand side of the page.

Sadly my blog gets frequent visits from spam websites (hence the moderation for the time-being) even though I don't click on those sites when they appear in my stats.

So thank you for visiting and reading, and I hope to read your comments soon. :)

Wednesday 11 April 2012

Some Interesting Results for Historical Fiction...

A few weeks ago- okay perhaps slightly more than a few weeks- I followed a link to a survey on Historical fiction reading. This wasn't aimed at Historical Romance, or writers, it was for Historical Fiction readers generally.

Well the answers have been collated, and it certainly raises some interesting aspects about reading historical fiction, that even romance writers might find useful; many of the answers probably won't be a surprise.

In Mary Tod's survey results, which you'll find in a link on her blog 'A Writer of History-thoughts about writing historical fiction', the responses to the question asking 'Have you always enjoyed historical fiction?' showed (that of the 805 people (of both sexes) who responded to the survey) that 533 had been reading HF since they were a child/teenager.

The most popular reason for reading historical fiction was to "bring the past to life, appreciating how people lived and coped in very different times."
A good example of why getting your novel's setting, and the lifestyle and behaviour of your characters right is important.

And "a great story" was the second popular option...

For the many writers of Medieval and Tudor based stories, you're clearly producing work for the favoured time period.

There's a lot more information to discover including the frequent book or e-book buying preference.

So pop over to Mary's blog and find out more...