When Fact Meets Fiction...
When I start the idea for a book, I always start with something I deeply care about: usually a character with deep trauma who isn’t defined by that trauma but who has not been able to live a whole, healed life just yet.
That’s the beauty of romance. We can take a broken but functional person and give them everything. The dreams, the hope, the love.
All of those ideas—the character’s arc, their stakes—what makes their story urgent and important now—come from inside me, my experiences, my success and also my failures.
But there are some thing I have to research. I write epic fantasy, but I of course have never lived without modern technology. Before I ever wrote a word of fantasy (but long after I was a dedicated reader of the genre) I studied the clothes of the Medieval period. The food. Medicine, herbs, healing, and political structures. I’ve made choices in my books (like calling the political structures realms instead of “kingdoms”) based on my personal preferences.
One of the areas that can be hardest to research for me is the architecture of the types of structures that realistically would be available to my characters. A palace or castle is easy enough to research, but manor homes and estates, cottages, cabins, and small villages take a little more digging.
On my recent trip to England, I stayed with one of my oldest and dearest friends and her family as they hosted a wedding. (I truly was living my best rom-com vibes… If I wrote contemporary romance, the trip would have filled a whole series of books!) :P
The wedding took place in a renovated barn on a sprawling estate that had a massive pond and all sorts of beautiful buildings. But we stayed for four glorious nights at Frog Manor in Church Minshall, which is located in Cheshire.
Frog Manor! Photo by me.
When I started researching the place, I had a tough time finding much about it. Cheshire, I learned, is where Harry Styles is from (Harry!), and Church Minshall is a “parish” within Cheshire that has records dating back to the 1540’s!
Now, I have no idea how old Frog Manor is. But as I walked the grounds and explored the landscape, I could just imagine living there hundreds of years ago. How dark it would have been without electricity. How vulnerable and beautiful, peaceful and terrifying living in the distant past would have been.
Just looking at these pictures transport me back to the beautiful, historic space where the past felt so real, alive. The manor had been modernized, but the bones remember. This is why I love fantasy romance. We experience exciting, terrifying, and life-changing moments, change, grow, find love, and we do it all in a place in time that is complicated, beautiful, and infused with a sort of magic.
There is a manor in Broken Bloodlines that I can’t wait to share with you. It was written long before I visited Church Minshull, and I’m so happy to have had the chance to visit Frog Manor to really bring some of the spaces in those scenes to life.
Are you a history fan? Do you fall down the research rabbit hole when you discover something you love? Here are a few of my favorite sites to research all things Medieval:
Dictionary of Medieval Names from European Sources
Do you love the Medieval period? Have other resources you love for cosplay, LARP, or just browsing and learning? Please share!
And if you’re ever thinking of visiting England, you can stay in Frog Manor! It’s on several vacation rental sites. Check it out but I recommend you bring friends and a laptop… You might be inspired to write your own story!!!
