01UndatedWhat was it that marked me as a woman and was I prepared to let it go?Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
02UndatedHis heart is pounding and when he kisses her it is as if the whole of Riyadh disappears – the wide sky, the hard surface of the roof, the date palms and the water wells.Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
04UndatedWhen the first book out my sister-in-law read it and we were chatting at 5 o'clock in the afternoon and she said, "Oh my God, chapter six, sex and a murder," and her five year old wandered into the kitchen and said, "Sixty hamburgers?Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
05UndatedHistorical fiction of course is particularly research-heavy. The details of everyday life are there to trip you up. Things that we take for granted, indeed, hardly think about, can lead to tremendous mistakes.Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
06UndatedWriting historical fiction has many common traits with writing sci-fi or fantasy books. The past is another country - a very different world - and historical readers want to see, smell and touch what it was like living there.Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
08UndatedI know a lot of writers, and everyone works differently, but this is something that we truly have in common across all genres - the fiction has to be real inside your head.Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
09UndatedI have no problem in moving a date one way or another or coming up with a subplot that gets my characters in (or out) of a fix more rambunctiously than the extant records show.Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
10UndatedPeople make interesting assumptions about the profession. The writer is a mysterious figure, wandering lonely as a cloud, fired by inspiration, or perhaps a cocktail or two.Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
11UndatedBooks have a vital place in our culture. They are the source of ideas, of stories that engage and stretch the imagination and most importantly, inspire.Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
12UndatedWhen you think about the period in which Agatha Christie's crime novels were written, they are actually quite edgy for the time.Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
13UndatedI decided to coin the term 'cosy crime noir' for Brighton Belle. That is 'cosy crime' for today's sensibilities because there is that slightly edgy element to it.Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
14UndatedI have a really vivid imagination and I find it difficult to read scenes of complete graphic violence. That's not to say that graphic violence does not exist. It's just that I find it quite harrowing and I much prefer if it isn't completely outlined for me because my imagination can do that.Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
15UndatedYou spill a lot of beans in historical fiction. Crime fiction is about spilling no beans at all. You spill the least beans you possibly can. So because I had already written historical fiction before I was really good at the spilling beans section, but the new skill I had to learn when I was writing Brighton Belle was difficult. I had to avoid the equivalent of shouting, "this character's a murderer! Look who did it!.Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
17UndatedThe best historical stories capture the modern imagination because they are, in many senses, still current - part of a continuum.Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
18UndatedWhile I'm frustrated at the amount I'm expected to take on in the present, the 1950s woman was frustrated by being excluded - not being allowed to take things on at all.Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
19UndatedToday women have the rights and equality our Victorian sisters could only dream of, and with those privileges comes the responsibility of standing up and being counted.Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
20UndatedI'm not sure how much easier it is for a mother to balance her life now - have we simply swapped one set of restrictions for another?Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
21UndatedI was asked the other day in which era I would choose to live. As a historical novelist, it comes up sometimes. As a woman I'd have to say I'd like to live in the future - I want to see where these centuries of change are leading us.Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
22UndatedIn the 1950s at least less was expected of women. Now we're supposed to build a career, build a home, be the supermum that every child deserves, the perfect wife, meet the demands of elderly parents, and still stay sane.Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
23UndatedLooking at my life through the lens of history has made me increasingly grateful to standout women who pushed those boundaries to make the changes from which I have benefited.Sara Sheridan / quote ↗
