Thursday, September 22, 2005
I take it back. Writing an American set historical is a hell of a lot harder than writing a European set historical and I can see why the European set historical is popular with Americans. As much as I love this country and its history, it's a bit tricky to write about it--slavery, theft of Native American lands, politics, and other things we still deal with today, not to mention the fact that America of the 19th century and early 20th century was(and still is) broken up by different focal points(the major cities) and not a central focus of arts,literature,science,etc the way London is, or Paris, or any other European country whose life is centered around one major city.
We've got the West(California) the Northwest(Washington,Oregon,a bit of Canada and Alaska), the mountains(Wyoming,Montana,Colorado,Idaho, the Dakotas), the southwest(New Mexico,Texas,Nevada,Utah), plains(Nebraska,Iowa,Kansas,Oklahoma,Arkansas,Missouri), the lakes(Illinois,Minnesota,Michigan,Ohio), the deep south(Alabama,Mississippi,Georgia,Louisiana,South Carolina), Florida it's own entity, the upper south(Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, W. Virginia), the coast(Maryland,Delaware,New Jersey, Pennsylvania), and New England(New York,New Hampshire,Maine,Rhode Island, Vermont, Massachusettes)--and everyone's culture/social life was different during the same time periods. So yeah, it's a lot more complicated to write an American set historical. I think that's probably why there isn't a lot of rah-rahing about Americana romances as wel as the fact that a lot of writers tend to transplant their ideas and assumptions about European behavoir into American set plots, which is why a Texas-set historical reads the same as a Regency Historical. I'm going to have to think on this some more...
i can be. anything.
22.9.05
