What hasn't been done?

pdr said:

There is a huge body of fiction based around WWI. Try Ann Perry's series for a good read.

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I've tried getting into her stuff and just don't for some reason. I figured if I don't like the Victorians, her WWI stuff probably won't sing to me either.

Julianne Douglas said:

Firedrake, the third volume of Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles, Disorderly Knights, takes place on Malta during the Turkish siege in 1551.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679777458/?tag=absolutewritedm-20

Wonderful book.

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oooh, cheers! I'll add that to the list!

Re: WW1. novels. - Absolutely loads of them! Birdsong and The Ghost Road for starters. Another good one - The Ice Cream War. At the risk of making a sweeping generalisation - I'd venture to say that you'd find more WW1 novels in the UK rather than the US. WW1 really isn't given much coverage in schools in the US. It's ingrained in the British consciousness because so many families lost men to that war. Entire regiments were made up of young men from the same towns and, in some instances, almost wiped out to the last man. Google the 'Accrington Pals and you'll see what I mean.

I didn't really learn much about WW1 until I went back to the UK and reading AJP Taylor's book. After that, I devoured any book I could find on the subject.

WWI - Robert Graves' Autbiography 'Goodbye to All That' gives a great picture of life in the trenches as a junior officer.

I'm fascinated by the liberation of Portugal by English knights who were passing at the right time on their way to the Holy Land. Anyone done that?

It is estimated that some 20 to 25% of the Scottish regiments didn't return. Many Scottish villages lost an entire generation of men.

Parents of famous historical figure meet, try to achieve some kind of harmony, fail completely.

Wait -- that's the plot of my novel!

Puma said:

A Lucretia Borgia poisoning?

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I'm focusing mostly on the Italian Renaissance. I've actually written a Lucrezia Borgia poisoning, but she's the one who got poisoned.

firedrake said:

In all seriousness, there's one incident in history that doesn't appear to have a novel centered around it and that's when the Turks laid siege to the island of Malta back in the 16th century (I think, memory a bit fuzzy).

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Angels in Iron by Nicholas Prota, though I can't in good faith recommend it. Very good reviews on Amazon, but I found the writing tiresome and the characterizations way too black-and-white. The Hospitalers are all perfect. Noble, humble, brilliant warriors, etc. Put it down after about 80 pages.

There's so much that hasn't been done that it makes my brain hurt to think about it.

Just playing around in my own sandboxes of interest...

• Rome during the seven kings and the early Republic
• Appius Claudius Caecus (who oversaw construction of the Via Appia and the first aqueduct during the Samnite Wars)
• The Gracchi and the fight to reform the Roman Republic
• The Normans in Sicily and southern Italy
• Anything Byzantine

As for stories, plots, whatnot that I haven't seen and would like to...

• More stuff told from the "other" point of view. Caesar's Gallic Wars from the POV of the Gauls, etc.
• More stories that play around with chronology. And I don't mean two stories taking place in two different times. Think how Pulp Fiction worked.
• A historical that involves no combat and no love story (though I must say Robert Harris' Imperium pulled this off very nicely)
• Zombies! (because why not?)

The countless wars of South America, especially the series fought between Chile and Bolivia, are given almost no space. The Boer War(s) are also given little writing. I believe there are some books which focus on the last, most sporting (from the British perspective) one but that hardly counts. And during WWI, the theaters in China, the Pacific and in Africa. The Toyota War is surprisingly overlooked, even with its catchy name. Finland and the USSR and their engagements. Medieval Sweden and their expansion across and into modern-day-Germany. Wellington in Portugal. The Austro-Prussian war is always overlooked. And the Franco-Prussian war always becomes a WWI footnote. The Normans of the Byzantine Empire... The Byzantine Empire in general. Carthage. The Latin successor states to the Byzantine Empire. Trezibond has a few, but could use better.

And I could go on....

Actually almost everything has been written about. What hasn't been done so much is looking at things from a different point of view. Maybe the Greeks, the Romans and the British (or English pre-union) weren't NECESSARILY the heroes, you know.

Are there novels out there that deal with the dirty TRUTH of the Opium Wars, for example? If so, I've missed them.

Finland and the USSR and their engagements.

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I would love to read more on Simo Häyhä (aka The White Death)-fascinating!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simo_Häyhä
One wouldn't necessarily have to do it from Simo's point of view, but devise a new character and put him in Simo's position...actually, I might take this concept and go with it!

Albannach said:

Are there novels out there that deal with the dirty TRUTH of the Opium Wars, for example? If so, I've missed them.

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Not novels (though Flashman and the Dragon doesn't really pull its punches) but the RSC did a musical/pantomime in 1983/4 called Poppy which is pretty hard-hitting about the Opium Wars and, in my opinion, is well overdue for a revival.

Actually, although it's mainly about the later history of the colony, Timothy Mo's An Insular Possession deals with the Opium Wars, I think.

They really beg to be taken on. I am just often puzzled (maybe it's that the English write a lot of the historical fiction?) at the deeply Anglophile nature much of it has. That's fine but there are other ways of looking at history. The same with the Greeks and Romans although they don't write the novels so I'm not sure I can explain that fixation.

Edit: There are a couple of novels that deal with that general period but mostly from a very British perspective (Flashman and the Dragon is very much in that category in that it portrays the Chinese and Manchu without exception as devious, sexual deviants, weak, and/or opium-addled. It totally ignores the fact that the Second Opium War was started by the British in order to open more Chinese ports to more foreign trade, including the importation of opium. The burning of the Summer Palace is actually presented as an act of British restraint rather than the vandalism it was)

Someone mentioned that a novel from the PoV of the Gaels would be interesting (and one that doesn't at the end decide that the Romans were doing the world a favor by conquering them). I agree but I don't feel like doing the work to have the scholarship to do it. I'd sure read it though.

Doogs said:

• Anything Byzantine

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One of my WIPs is Byzantine, another planned novel is Byzantine.

Eddyz Aquila said:

One of my WIPs is Byzantine, another planned novel is Byzantine.

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Same here...I've got a Belisarius novel on the back burner, and have been reading up on Constantine XI recently. Don't know if I'll ever get around to doing anything with him, but you never know...

My current works take place in Rome in the 1590's and they don't focus on Caravaggio, which seems to make them unique.

Personally, I think Italy has lots of untapped potential for historical novels. All of those small states, populated with nobles whose spare time seems to consist of nothing but conspicuous consumption, scrambling for position, pursing vendettas, and whoring (not necessarily in that order) makes for an unbelievably awesome milieu for adventure fiction.

Memnon624 said:

Firedrake, to my knowledge there are two: Tim Willocks' The Religion and David Ball's Ironfire. I would recommend both, but Ironfire is my personal favorite.

Best,

Scott

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Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond series had one too. Forgot the name.

Oh, and if one could do any book about Cyprus and it's modern-day turbulence... That'd be amazing!

Albannach said:

Ts)

Someone mentioned that a novel from the PoV of the Gaels would be interesting (and one that doesn't at the end decide that the Romans were doing the world a favor by conquering them). I agree but I don't feel like doing the work to have the scholarship to do it. I'd sure read it though.

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"The Eagle and the Raven" by Pauline Gedge, is a novel about the Roman invasion and occupation of Britain, told, mainly, from Caradoc's (Caractacus) and Boudicca's POV. I highly recommend it.

The last line is a killer.

"...and in the swirling autumn mists of Albion, the light of freedom flickered and went out."

Roberta Gellis did a YA some years back called THE MISTLETOE AND THE SWORD about the Roman invasion of Britain and the indigenous tribes' response to it. Very fine stuff.

In my niche market, it's depressing the level of sameness we seem to put out. Have to put out? I don't know. I was told that my 973 Wales project wasn't in a "popular enough" era/setting to sell. If I made it 1400s in Scotland, however...

I'm not changing it. Once I finish it, I plan to sell it as-is, because Wales in 973 is simply not medieval Scotland. I'm not convinced that if 4200 authors write Tudor England or pre-Reformation Scotland novels, there won't be readers out there hankering for a story in a different time and place.

Stewart [or Stuart] Scotland - but hands off they're mine. And I mean outside of Mary, Queen of Scots!

Can we stop saying The English Civil War? It's wrong. There where Civil Wars happening simultaneously in England, Scotland and Ireland.

gothicangel said:

Stewart [or Stuart] Scotland - but hands off they're mine. And I mean outside of Mary, Queen of Scots!

Can we stop saying The English Civil War? It's wrong. There where Civil Wars happening simultaneously in England, Scotland and Ireland.

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I'll read any book you write in this era! But I'd need to know if you are Highlands or Lowlands. No Sassenachs, please.

And well said about the Civil Wars (which is how they are termed in the UK in any case).

I would like to set a novel in the very early regnal period of Rome - it's rarely done. Other than that, I can't think of anything off the top of my head at the mo.

I suspect most of Asia is fertile ground. When's the last time you read a historical set in Cambodia? Or Malaysia? Or the Phillipines? Or even Japan, outside of the samurai era? Or... but you get the idea.

The entire continent of South America would seem to offer a lot of possibilities too.

With more and more of North American readers coming from non-European countries, the old refrain that it wouldn't resonate with American readers makes less sense all the time. From a commercial point of view, starting with Hispanic countries would probably make a lot of sense. Huge market potential.

Dang. I've almost talked myself into writing historicals.

waylander said:

WWI - Robert Graves' Autbiography 'Goodbye to All That' gives a great picture of life in the trenches as a junior officer.

I'm fascinated by the liberation of Portugal by English knights who were passing at the right time on their way to the Holy Land. Anyone done that?

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I have! It is in a novel that my agent is going to start submitting in the next couple of months. I can't tell you how nice it is to find that there is at least one person who might find that part interesting...