Getting started can be a major problem for budding authors. A great story seethes within us, but we need something to push us into action. For me, it was my political science students at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, who planted the seed in my mind that I should write a novel.
Late in my career, I introduced a course on Politics and Fiction that resonated with my students. Every now and then, someone would announce how much he or she liked the way the fiction got them to feel what it had been like for the people in the story to live through the confrontations of their day. One young woman became enthused with a novel about the late 1940s and revealed her wish to have lived in those days.
As I slowly realized the powerful impact historical fiction could have on readers, discontent began to fester in my mind. I was the author of two successful political science textbooks. But no student ever told me that my textbook had touched them viscerally the way that a novel could.
Read More