The first thing I would caution people is to not make historical characters sound like they’re not like us. Very specifically, where do you start with this? You mentioned a thousand years ago I’ve often wanted to write something that was that long ago just because it would be such a challenge. But very specifically, what do you do? Where do you begin? I know you go to the library, but where do you go in the library? What do you look for? Do you have a list of things that you give yourself, like a to-do list or things that I need to do before I can move on to writing? How do you manage something that unwieldy? I think you spoke to it a little bit ago about how at some point you have to trust yourself and shift from research to writing-you could go on interminably. This is the question that always comes up in my mind when I’m speaking to somebody who works in this genre, which is the issue of research, and how gargantuan a task it can seem when the job and the responsibility that you’re giving yourself is to render a world from a century ago or two centuries ago or a thousand years ago, whatever it might be, and to do it with some fair degree of accuracy. Her new book, Ridgerunner, is available from House of Anansi Press.īrad Listi: Before I let you go, I want to ask one more followup question that I think could be useful to people listening who might have some inkling to write or attempt to write historical fiction. Set against the backdrop of a distant war raging in Europe and a rapidly changing landscape in the West, Gil Adamson's follow-up to her award-winning debut, The Outlander, is a vivid historical novel that draws from the epic tradition and a literary Western brimming with a cast of unforgettable characters touched with humour and loss, and steeped in the wild of the natural world.Gil Adamson is the guest. When Jack finally breaks free, he takes with him something the nun is determined to get back - at any cost. Though he knows his father is coming for him, the boy longs to return to his family's cabin, deep in the woods. Twelve-year-old Jack Boulton has been left in the care of Sister Beatrice, a formidable nun who keeps him in cloistered seclusion in her grand old house.

And he is determined to steal enough money to secure his son's future.

Moving through the Rocky Mountains and across the border to Montana, the solitary drifter, impoverished in means and aged beyond his years, is also a widower and a father. After nearly twenty years, the notorious thief, known as the Ridgerunner, has returned. Part literary Western and part historical mystery, Writers' Trust Fiction Prize winner Ridgerunner is now available as a paperback.

The outlander gil adamson movie