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Candace Robb has turned a passion for medieval history into two best-selling crime series – one with a feisty female sleuth – but both of which stay true to the period while delivering addictive story telling.
Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler and today Candace talks about her love affair with York and how she secured a top writer as her early mentor.
Six things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode
- How a girl from Cincinnati fell in love with medieval York
- Why she thinks York “chose her” to tell its story
- How childhood as a “master plotter” helped her writing
- Where she’d take fans on a York mystery tour
- Why Ursula Le Guin is one of her icons
- What she loves about writing mystery series
Where to find Candace Robb:
Website: http://www.emmacampion.com/
and the Blog at https://ecampion.wordpress.com/
(I know – it’s complicated – Candace also writes as Emma Campion – and this is where you’ll find her.)
Facebook and Twitter:
https://www.facebook.com/CandaceRobb/
What follows is a “near as” but not word for word transcript of our chat with links to important mentions.
And now here’s Candace. Hello there Candace and welcome to the show, its great to have you with us.
Candace: Thank you Jenny It’s great to be here.
Jenny: Beginning at the beginning . . . .Was there a “Once Upon A Time” moment when you realised you had to write fiction or your life would somehow be incomplete? Was there a catalyst?
Candace: As far as my parents have told me, I was always a storyteller. I think what really began my career in telling stories and plotting devious twists was as a kid. I lived in a neighbourhood with loads of kids around my age. We would play-act all the time – the way we played was in our imaginations.
We’d be Davy Crockett, or Daniel Boone and we’d have all these characters because everyone needed to be involved.
I was sort of the plot master of all that! I was the one who came up with the stories, and made sure there were extra characters. I used to love to walk around in a circle in the room where my mother sewed and just tell her these stories. I would just elaborate on a fairytale I’d heard or a history and she’d say “Candace, you are going to get in trouble for storytelling one of these days”.
Jenny: You were born in North Carolina, grew up in Cincinnati and now live in Seattle – and yet you have developed a passion for medieval England and the city of York in particular . . that’s a long way from home. . . . how did that love affair begin?
Candace: The moment I stepped into York, I was in graduate school studying Medieval Literature and History. I walked into York, and I was smitten. I think it chose me, actually. I think the city of York chose me as the storyteller to tell its story.
Jenny: That’s amazing. Do you know if you’ve got any family links going back there at all?
Candace: I doubt it, I very much doubt it. Actually, my background is Polish, almost entirely. I know the city so well, I’ve spent so much time there and it just feels like a second home.
Jenny: Well certainly there is a very warm feeling that comes through in the books for York. We will talk a little bit later on about where you tell people to go if they were going to be visiting York. You’d be a very good guide I’m sure!
Candace: I think I would!
Jenny: You’ve got three historical series to your credit – ten Owen Archer books, three Kate Cliffords and two Margaret Kerrs – the first two set in medieval York and the last in medieval Scotland. What do you enjoy most about writing series?
Candace: I think in a series, you have the span of time and many different stories in which to develop the characters, to watch them over time.
In my Owen Archer series I have a brother Michaelo who is a villain in the first book, and yet overtime he turns into this very sympathetic character quite naturally.
It would be difficult to do that with a minor character in one book. I love not only that, but the characters eventually become such a part of my psyche.
When I’m thinking of the next story, they will often come up with the next story for me. It’s just a natural to think “Oh this is a moment for Jasper (Owen’s adopted son, Ed.) to start working with Owen”. It’s just a very warm way to work- that’s how it feels to me as an author, a very warm community in which I’m working.
Jenny: Both Owen Archer and Kate Clifford are crime mysteries and I wonder what attracted you to the historical crime genre in particular? What is appealing/ satisfying about writing fiction compared with perhaps writing academic history . . .
Candace: At first, I did not intend to write crime novels. I wanted to write historical novels, but I didn’t really want to write about the most famous of people, about kings and queens.
I tried my hand at a novel that eventually turned into the Apothecary Rose after several agents’ readers said “this needs to be in some sort of genre with some sort of hook”. They told me I could do a romance, which I did not want to do- I didn’t think I could pull that off- or I could do mysteries.
So I read a few mysteries and I thought “yes! This sounds fascinating”. You’ve got this plot, this structure. Something happens, the community is in chaos, your sleuth has to solve it before more chaos occurs, and sort of save the day as best they can. That really appealed to me, seeing as I had that childhood of being the master plotter. Plots are a lot of fun for me.
Jenny: Kate Clifford is a great lead character – a feisty independent, woman in medieval York – but I’ve seen some comment that “women couldn’t be like that” in that period . . In a recent blog you wrote that you “remember the day that Kate auditioned for the role” of new sleuth. Can you tell us about that day?
Candace: I had a conversation in the afternoon with my agent about “what next?”. I had just finished a triple knot, and so I had done my two ‘stand alones’ and I’d been away from crime for a while, and I really wanted to return to it. And so we talked a little bit, and she said “well come up with a couple of ideas and when you have them, call me back”. So I had a nap with my cat, and this woman just appeared walking down stone gate.
She was tall, with lots of wiry dark hair, and she was flanked by these huge dogs. If you’ve been in York, the streets are narrow. It would be an imposing trio to see on the street. I know somehow in this vision, under her skirts she has hidden a small battle-axe and a knife at her side, and she’s striding with purpose around the corner to the door of a guest-house. This elderly woman opens the door and she clearly is deferring to this young woman with dogs as her boss, her mistress. I thought, I have to know who this young woman is! That’s how she auditioned. When I told my agent about her, she said “I love her!”
Jenny: That’s how she appears on the pages of the novel as well, isn’t it!
Candace: At first I asked her if we could do away with dogs, because I thought it would be complicated to have these dogs in the story! But no she said, the dogs are nothing! And she just sort of came to me right there. I had the beginning of her story.
Jenny: There are other strong women in your Owen Archer series as well – Lucie, Owen’s wife and Magda Digby for example . . . it seems to me that there is a lot more emerging about the history of this period that is giving a more nuanced appreciation of gender roles – would that be true?
Candace: Oh it is. We’ve been told, because the records show so much more about men that women were very passive, that they were in the background. Yet when you look at court records, women were all over the place and they’re doing all sorts of incredible things.
You just have to know where to look. Since I first published back in 1993, so much more has been published about women that I have so many more choices for the types of women I might be writing about. I have more detail about what their lives might be like. It’s been quite amazing. In that time, just the ability to interact with a lot more historians online and get more information from them almost immediately when I need it has really helped.
Jenny: You are a qualified academic historian, so I imagine getting the history right is very important to you? Where does fact end and fiction emerge for you? How many of your characters are real people? And sometimes surely you fudge time lines to suit the story?
Candace: That changes with each story. My main characters in my crime novels are fictional, but they’re always based on stories I’ve read. So bits and pieces I’ve put together from a woman’s life to create Kate Clifford. I’ve done the same thing with Owen Archer and with Maggie Kerr, so it’s a combination of stories.
But I also love to use real historical figures. Kate’s cousin William Frost, who in the third book is finally mayor of York- he’s a real character. He was a real historical figure and that was why I gave her him as a relative because he has a very interesting history, and it’s fun to connect the dots. But we don’t know many personal things about these people; we don’t know how they felt. So we’re really connecting the dots to create a personality to whom these things might have happened in this order.
Jenny: Is the Archbishop in Owen Archer also based on a historical person?
Candace: Yes. He is. And he was to me one of the revelations, because he was a very political man, but also a very good archbishop. He really cared about his flock. I didn’t understand that at first, so I had to sort of gently shift his character as I went through the series to make him slightly more tolerable. He was a wonderful foil for Owen.
Jenny: I imagine in that period that you couldn’t be an archbishop and not be political- you wouldn’t last long in the job probably.
Candace: No, and especially in York. The North was the border, the protection between the King in London and Westminster and Scotland. There was still a lot of violence at the borders. All of the bishops in the North were very powerful and strong people.
Jenny: I see that at the beginning of the opening of Vigil of Spies, you talk about the worry that Scotland might decide with the King to invade- there obviously was a lot of political instability.
Candace: Yes, and that’s just fodder for a crime writer.
In more general terms (moving away from specific book focus)
Jenny: You’ve written two stand alone historical novels under the pen name Emma Campion. How did they come about, and why did you feel you needed to write them under a different name?
Candace: I did not choose to create a pen name for them- that was all the marketing department at Random House in the UK. They felt people were going to be very confused when it wasn’t a crime novel written by Candace Robb.
So they insisted on a pen name which I really did not like. My Italian publishers refused to change my name, which was great. But I wanted to try out the kind of novels that I wanted to write in the beginning.
After 13 crime novels I was still wondering “do I really want to be more of a writer of these strong women?”. I had researched them for the Owen Archer series- so Alice Perrers-the King’s Mistress – and Joan of Kent, the wife of the Black Prince.
I thought it would be really fascinating to write their stories. So I took time out from the crime series to write these two books, the kind of books I thought I wanted to write.
That taught me that I really loved to write crime fiction! These were about women in the royal court, and their live were so restricted, relative to the merchants that I have, all of these everyday people in my crime novels.
I really got bored with the royal court. And I thought, well there you go, now I know! I’m very happy to have written the novels- I loved the deep research I had to do about the 100 Years War.
I don’t get to use so much of that research in the crime novels. But I’m so happy I’m back, and that I took the risk and tried it out.
Jenny: Is there one thing you’ve done in your writing career more than any other that’s been the secret of your success?
Candace: When I listen to my readers, it seems to be that I develop characters with so much back story and so much development that people begin to see them as real people and want to follow their stories through many books.
That’s something I wasn’t aware of, but I’ve had other writers tell me “oh you gave me that idea”. For example in the Owen Archer series which was my first series, it was how a marriage develops and it goes on, and they have children.
They have this whole family life as well as solving crimes, and readers seem to really love that. And I think it also helped to set the books in York, because people love York. That really helped too.
Jenny: What’s the secret to a good historical mystery? Have you seen a growing interest in this area since you began writing?
Candace: A good historical mystery, and the writer of a good historical mystery has to be very steeped in the period, so that the stories come out of what might have happened, what would have been the danger, the politics, the typical crimes of the time. You don’t know that until you’ve really studied the location and the period. To me, that’s very important.
Jenny: If you were going to suggest a magical mystery literary tour of York – or Yorkshire – where would you suggest people go?
Candace: Of course York itself. I have a lot of readers who fall on my husbands maps, because he does the maps for my books and they’re quite accurate.
You want to see York Minster and the Undercroft as well- they’ve done a wonderful job of the history down there. You want to see the Shambles- it’s that wonderful narrow street, giving you such an idea of what the crowding would have been like.
The Merchant Adventure Halls, the wonderful Medieval hall and of course walking the walls gives you such a sense of the old city and the countryside around it. And then you have to get up onto the dales and up on the moors.
The Ryedale Folk Museum is really a good place. It’s an outdoor museum with different structures from different periods of history. There’s just so much, I love it there.
Jenny: You’ve almost got to the point where you could write a “historical guide to Owen and Kate’s York” – a kind of “Official Guide” combining the background of your characters with the real history, geography, townscape etc… I for one would love to read something like that . . .
A bit like Lindsey Davis’s Falco the Official Companion – her guide to her crime series set in Ancient Rome . . .For readers not so familiar with the context it would be fascinating. . . (Probably be an awful lot of work!!)
Candace: I’ve thought about it and it’s a lot of work. I have two friends now in York who I’m actually thinking of approaching- they’re very busy though just like me, but the three of us could really do a job with that! Maybe one of these days.
Jenny: They reckon that collaboration is the new big thing for writers, so I think that sounds like a great idea!
Candace: Well the three of us have different talents. I think that it could really work but we’ll see!
Turning to Candace as reader
Jenny: The series is called “The Joys of Binge Reading” because I see it as providing inspiration for people who like to read series . . . .So – turning to your taste in fiction who do you “binge read” ?
Candace: Currently I’m making my way through Craig Johnson’s Longmire series- I love that series. And Donna Leon, I keep up with her books set in Venice. I just love those books.
At the moment what I’m currently binge reading is Ursula Le Guin, because of her recent death. She was one of my mentors, and I just decided to go back and re read a lot of her books. I’m on the Earthsea trilogy right now, which is actually more than three books.
Jenny: How did she become one of your mentors?
Candace: Back a long time ago before I was published, I attended a three week writers workshop, and she was the teacher the third week. It was a Science fiction and fantasy workshop, because that’s what I started writing. I had decided that this was the workshop I was going to find out from the teachers if I really could be a writer, or if I should give it up.
Ursula was the one who said “you have some wonderful stories here, but you shine whenever there is a medieval history in the background”. And she encouraged me to focus on that, to focus on medieval history.
It just felt it had almost chosen me, the way I wrote it. She was very encouraging, and years later I was doing an event and her and her husband Charles showed up. She was just so proud of me. I hadn’t even realised that she was following my career, and it just meant the world to me because she’s one of my idols.
Jenny: That’s a very special story. It’s interesting- she obviously had an intuition for what was working the best.
Candace: Yes, and there are people who just have that. I’ve met editors, and my current agent who are really good at doing that, at zeroing in on something and saying “here, this is what’s exciting you”.
Circling back to the end
Jenny: At this stage in your career, if you were doing it all again, what would you change – if anything?
Candace: I don’t know. There were times when I think I should not have veered off the crime novels and should have just stayed with them, but I learnt so much in that time when I was researching something quite different.
No, I don’t think I would have changed anything. I wished I had appreciated how much I loved what I was doing from the very beginning. But I kept on thinking, “this isn’t really what I wanted to do”.
Jenny: Was there ever that feeling, being an academic, that you should be writing something more literary, such as literary fiction?
Candace: Well I think that was part of my embarrassment about writing mysteries, but I quickly dropped that idea.
So many crime writers like Colin Dexter are such good writers. It’s not that the genre is not literary, it’s some silly idea about what genres are and that they’re inferior. I go to several academic conferences regularly and see friends I knew in graduate school and we all agree that I’ve had the best career of them all. I get to choose what I get to focus on and dive in, and I don’t have to do all the teaching and the committee work.
Jenny: What is next for Candace the writer ? Projects under development?
Candace: I’m writing the eleventh Owen Archer. I’m about to get the edit of the third Kate Clifford back from my editor- that one’s called A Murdered Piece. That one will come out in September. I’m not sure when the Owen Archer will come out. Just the other day I came up with the plot for the twelfth Owen Archer, so I have the feeling I’m going to do two Owen Archer’s in a row right now.
Jenny: Where can readers find you on line?
Candace: I have a blog that right now is also serving as my main website, as I’m developing a new one. You can go to www.candacerobb.com, and it will take readers there. I am @candicemrobb on twitter, and I also have a Candace Robb Facebook page.
Jenny: You mentioned that your readers have given you a lot of feedback- do you get a lot of feedback from your Facebook page?
Candace: I get a lot of feedback though the Facebook page, my blog and on Twitter. The interesting thing on Facebook is that I get a lot of private messages from people. Just after Christmas I posted the first chapter of the new Owen Archer, and I got so much response from that, and people being so happy about it. It made me happy realising I was heading in the right direction. It’s so much fun to be able to connect like that.
Jenny: Do they make suggestions for how they want the characters to develop?
Candace: Once in a while, especially on my blog, people ask “would you do this, would you do that”. I was actually fighting with myself about some possible change in a character, and I just posted about it on my blog and asked for reactions. I got wonderfully new, honest reactions from readers about how they would answer that. That’s another one of the things that’s so much fun about writing a series- people become so invested in the characters.
Jenny: And with the technology today, it really is a community of spirits.
Candace: It is. On my Facebook page I share a lot of things that I come up with in the way of articles, and news article about new sites that have been unearthed. It’s such fun to have people who are enjoying the same thing.
Jenny: Well look it’s been wonderful talking today, we are now out of time but I do appreciate you giving us this time today, and stepping out of your writing for half an hour. It’s been wonderful chatting with you.
Candace: Thanks so much Jenny, it’s been a lot of fun.
Jenny: Thanks so much Candace, we’ll watch you with a lot of anticipation.
