Using everyday tech to research a historical novel

My historical fiction novels owe more to technology than pen and ink.

Research. It’s such an evocative word, especially when it comes to novels. Glorious images come to mind – a desk in a wood-panelled library, a scrawl of handwritten notes, a benevolent librarian reaching across to add another book to the teetering pile. Even the dust mites that come streaming through the window of our imaginary study space are laden with the promise of inspiration to come and if you’re not quite writing with a quill pen, well there’s probably one in the drawer just in case.
 
It may come as quite a shock then to learn that my own two published books of historical fiction owe more to technology than paper and ink.
 
Part of this is due to circumstance. I’m a busy parent of two with a full time job outside of my writing, so my creative work is done in what I laughingly refer to as my spare time. Week nights are spent dropping budding athletes to various training sessions and I usually use that time to take a walk, or a slow jog myself.

My new book, A Maid on Fifth Avenue is partly set in New York City in the 1920s so last year, while I walked I also listened to audiobooks set during that period. I was also thrilled to discover that there is a podcast available on every subject imaginable, if you look hard enough. Thanks to engaging hosts like The Bowery Boys, I was able to steer my worn Asics around the roads of north Dublin, while my head was floating across Fifth Avenue, over a hundred years before.
 
It's also impossible to ignore the impact Covid had on my work, and my ability to research. My first historical book, a dual timeline ghost story entitled The Belladonna Maze was set less than 200km away in Co Roscommon, but in 2020 that might have been 2000km.

Google maps became my best friend – one of my characters in the current day section arrived in Sligo by train, and I was able to use mapped images to figure out exactly what she would have seen as she departed the station. I also used social media to request information and help – one evening I saw another writer tweet a gorgeous shot of Ben Bulbin, the distinctive table mountain in Sligo and I DM’d her to ask what direction she was travelling in when she took the photo, as I was hoping to write a scene where a character noticed it on the way into town! Luckily, being a writer, she didn’t pay any heed to the strangeness of the question and responded in very helpful detail.
 
When it came to writing A Maid on Fifth Avenue, many travel restrictions had thankfully been lifted, but it was now the case that I was writing about buildings, specifically mansions in New York and Long Island that simply don’t exist any more. Online history sites became my best friend and I poured over black and white images, imagining how a teenager from West Kerry would have felt as she strained her neck to see these magnificent buildings rise into the sky.

Of course online research is only as good as the researcher. I worked for over three decades as a journalist and put that training to good use, making sure I only accessed reputable and verifiable websites, podcasts and history books to make sure my books were as accurate as they could be.
 
 All of this however does not mean I abandoned the library during the writing process. On the contrary, I’m so fond of my local library in Dublin that the staff have been thanked in a number of my books. We are very lucky in Ireland to have a terrific library service, my local branch for example is open till 8pm four nights a week. But even outside of those times I can access to the online borrowing service, which allows you to get a book sent to your local branch from anywhere in the country, and I also use the Borrowbox app for books and audio books, all free of charge.
 
So if you have an idea for a wonderful work of historical fiction, but fear you don’t have the time to devote to research, don’t be disheartened. As with everything else to do with writing fiction, there is a way around all obstacles, if you look hard enough to find it.

A Maid on Fifth Avenue by Sinead Crawley is pubilshed by Aria, £20

Interested in reading more about researching historical fiction? Novelist Ellen Alpsten talks about balancing historical research with conveying human lives here