Writing Historicals

Hope everyone had a great Easter. My husband and I spent the afternoon in Historic Williamsburg.

It’s an area that’s basically a tourist attraction. People dress up in historic costume and talk about life during the time when Virginia was still part of the British colonies. Since it’s early in the season, quite a few of the shops and homes weren’t open. The good thing, though, was that it wasn’t as crowded as I bet it is during the summer months. It was also cold!

But it was a fun taste of the town. What we did get to see was interesting, especially the book binder – for me at least. I wish he’d talked more about exactly how he binds books. What he did discuss was the cost of paper in that time. A single page of blank paper would have cost the equivalent of a penny, which was about what a laborer made for an hour’s work. Imagine buying a whole book of blank pages. For the average person, buying a book would have been an extravagance.

What I did come away with was that if you write historical and set your books during the colonial times, this would be an excellent place to go to do research. You could spend days there taking notes and talking to people.