Sharon Kay Penman
Sharon Kay Penman
Sharon Kay Penmanis an American historical novelist, published in the UK as Sharon Penman. She is best known for the Welsh Princes trilogy and the Plantagenet series. In addition, she has written four medieval mysteries, the first of which, The Queen's Man, was a finalist in 1996 for the Best First Mystery Edgar Award. Her novels and mysteries are set in England, France, and Wales, and are about English and Welsh royalty during the Middle Ages. The Sunne in Splendour,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth13 August 1945
CountryUnited States of America
Women did not have as many options as men, and I need to reflect that reality in my mysteries.
Whenever I've had to tamper with history for plot purposes, I make sure to mention that in my author's note, and I try to keep such tampering to a bare minimum. I also attempt to keep my characters true to their historical counterparts. This is not always possible, of course.
Men kill for many reasons, they steal but for one-greed.
Forget the threat of Hell's infernal flames. The true torture would condemn a man to wait and wait and wait - for an eternity
I'd not want to answer for the lives of other men; not at seventeen, by God's Grace.
Why is it honesty when a man speaks his mind and madness when a woman does?
Men are born to sin…What does matter most, is not that we err, it is that we do benefit from our mistakes, that we are capable of sincere repentance, of genuine contrition.
I do not set specific work hours as some writers do. I generally stay with a chapter until I am satisfied, do very little rewriting, and if a scene is going well, I've been known to keep night owl hours.
Many people don't know that New Jersey is a fertile breeding ground for writers, some of them quite renowned. And I would wager that most would be truly startled to learn that the star in the Jersey firmament is - drum roll here - Newark.
I feel that historical novelists owe it to our readers to try to be as historically accurate as we can with the known facts. Obviously, we have to fill in the blanks. And then in the final analysis, we're drawing upon our own imaginations. But I think that readers need to be able to trust an author.
It usually takes me about three years to research and write one of my historical sagas; this is one reason why I take medieval mystery breaks, for they can be completed in only a year.
When I moved to Wales more than twenty years ago and began to research 'Here Be Dragons,' I was fascinated from the first by the Welsh medieval laws, by the discovery that women enjoyed a greater status in Wales than elsewhere in Europe.
I was actually born in New York City, but my family moved to Atlantic City when I was five, this being my dad's home town, so I think that qualifies me as a Jersey resident if not a bona fide native.
Respect can be as elusive as the unicorn. I know something of this because I write books that are set in the Middle Ages, and the historical novel is often seen as the unwanted stepchild in the fictional family. I know even more about respect - or the lack thereof - because I live in New Jersey.