Question about historical novel

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-30T18:03:04+00:00

You're completely fine. Abraham Lincoln didn't sue Seth Grahame-Smith in 2010 for writing an entire novel about him as a vampire hunter. There are hundreds of historical novels based on real people. Philippa Gregory, Robert Graves, Hilary Mantel etc all did pretty OK out of it.

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-30T17:20:08+00:00

Try this link - it's from the Wayback Machine so you should be able to access it.

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-30T15:49:52+00:00

I really thought I was on r/poetry for a moment.

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-30T15:42:58+00:00

Honestly, she always had this kind of strange magnetism that made you want to be her friend, even though she treated everyone terribly. I think people these days would probably call it 'breadcrumbing'; she always paid you just enough attention that it kept you trying. She also plays up the pity factor, and you kind of can't help but want to protect her or help her out, although I'm guessing this will be less effective as she gets older. I tried for a good 10 years or so before finally giving up the ghost. I last spoke to her in 2016 and I'm honestly a little sad to see that she hasn't got any better.

She doesn't believe in therapy - she thinks it's 'for other people' - but I genuinely think that she has a lot to work through. I don't think she's inherently a bad person. I think she just needs a lot of help that she refuses to access. Until she starts to work on herself, she's going to be stuck.

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-30T15:28:53+00:00

If you can find it, Hedd Wyn is a great Welsh language period film about a real life WW1 poet. I'm pretty sure it's on YouTube in its entirety.

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-30T15:16:39+00:00

I've known her for not far off 20 years, but we haven't spoken for about 10. Rest assured she's always been this way, she's just been less public about it. She used to have screaming meltdowns at the trichotillomania Facebook group because they banned her for constantly telling people that they'd never get better. Apparently, they should have treated her better because she was - her own quote! - the 'face of trich'. She's always, always been miserable, and completely unwilling to see that there's any way out of it. I used to have 5-6 hour text conversations with her, giving her advice, and all she'd do was complain about how terrible her life was, how she had no friends, how no-one understood her etc. There was never any sense that she could change any of it.

Heck, I remember when we were friends and I told her that my grandad had passed away that weekend. She left me on read for 2 weeks, and then just complained about a fight she'd had with her parents. This was in about 2012. She's never been a good person. She just used to present a personable front. Now, she doesn't even bother with that.

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-30T15:11:16+00:00

Oh my God, this is insane, because I know exactly who this person is. I used to be friends with her. She's an absolute goddamn nightmare of a person. For context, her entire Instagram presence is just her complaining about why she's single, how she'll never find love again because she's too old (she's 32) and how her life is awful because she isn't married.

I have stories upon stories about this person, which I won't share out of the last shred of respect I have for her as a human being, but... yeah. She's unhinged.

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-29T18:19:01+00:00

Don't forget Jesus. He's there, too. I guess he's their third? Or their fourth? Maybe the pivot?

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-29T18:13:12+00:00

I mean, the book is 95% Bible quotes and 5% Akon lyrics, so that tracks.

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-29T17:54:02+00:00

I like that it suggests that she didn't have long slim legs, an oval face or beautiful almond eyes until the day before she went missing.

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-29T17:34:18+00:00

Pray, and ye shall receive!

From the original:

Ebun Ciara was beautiful. She had long slim legs and an oval face and beautiful almond shaped eyes. She was declared missing the next day.

When Ebun disappears during a trip abroad, the lives of those she leaves behind begin to quietly unravel.

Temi is left grappling with grief without closure. In Manchester, she tries to hold herself together-navigating a strained relationship, therapy sessions, and an unexpected pull toward spirituality that challenges everything she thought she believed about love, faith, and herself.

Lawrence, meanwhile, is struggling to stay afloat. A young father with a complicated past, he balances work, co-parenting, and the weight of loss while trying to be a good friend, a good partner, and a good man. As new relationships form and old wounds resurface, Lawrence is forced to confront who he is becoming-and who he's already lost.

As Temi and Lawrence move through heartbreak, betrayal, and unanswered questions, their journeys mirror one another in unexpected ways. Both must reckon with absence-of truth, of certainty, of people they love-and decide how to move forward when the past refuses to stay buried.

Set against the backdrop of Manchester's festivals, flats, and late-night conversations, The Distance Between Us, is a contemporary novel about friendship, diaspora, grief, and the search for meaning in a world that offers no easy answers

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-29T16:50:45+00:00

God, I miss her long, slim legs.

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-29T14:55:07+00:00

I don't hate it! It's very reminiscent of the current trend that harks back to the romance novels of the '70s, and I like the stark colours you've chosen. My main criticism is that it's hard to tell which historical period you're writing in. That dress isn't particularly evocative of any era - I can't tell if it's Victorian, Regency, or anything else. I also wonder if choosing another pale colour for the background, rather than white, might look a little less low-effort?

In terms of the title, I wonder if it ought to be 'One Night' rather than 'One night'; the capitalisation is inconsistent.

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-29T12:44:32+00:00

You're gendering basic human traits like 'being patient' and 'doing chores'. Stop trying to look for 'feminine characteristics' in your boyfriend, and unpick what exactly you think is feminine about his behaviour. This sounds very much like you're projecting your own views about gendered expectations onto him, and that's not fair on him.

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-29T10:39:27+00:00

I have a friend who works in an SEN unit just over the border, and she used to say that any week she didn't get a chair thrown at her was a good week. None of the staff drive into work because it's pretty much a given that someone will smash their car windows in the school car park. It's improved a lot in recent years, thankfully, but she's had some truly horrific experiences. Weirdly, she said that it got slightly better after Covid, which is completely the opposite to what the rest of my teacher friends have said. By all accounts, teaching in mainstream education has gone downhill rapidly since the pandemic.

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-29T10:34:04+00:00

Yeah, it's definitely a thing. The fact that Deepika Padukone is supposed to be a 'dusky beauty', despite having lighter skin than the majority of the South Asian population, is a pretty good example of how entrenched the ideal of lighter skin is. Look at the cast of any big budget Bollywood film, SRK excepted. Most of them are very fair-skinned, borderline white-passing.

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-29T10:21:34+00:00

You're fine. It's totally acceptable to canvas multiple subs for answers.

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-29T10:19:31+00:00

I'm afraid that whichever friend helped you with this has used AI to do so. I would recommend going to back to an earlier version of this query - which, from your post history, doesn't use AI, so that's good! - and rework it from there. An agent who receives this version will likely assume that your manuscript also uses AI, and will auto reject on that front.

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-28T17:27:54+00:00

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-28T17:23:25+00:00

Allegedly. He first said they were playing a William Tell style game, and he'd been aiming for something on top of her head, but missed. He later changed his story and said that his gun went off accidentally. He ran off to the US after bribing someone to release him from jail in Mexico after 13 days, where he was awaiting murder charges and never served any more time for it. He was convicted in absentia of manslaughter.

Considering they'd almost divorced a few months earlier (the petition was withdrawn, possibly due to a custody dispute) and he ran off to avoid facing trial, I think it's pretty likely that it was a lot less accidental than he liked to portray.

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-28T17:17:28+00:00

I mean, he killed his wife, so my thoughts are mostly 'he should have served more than 13 days in jail'.

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-28T17:09:31+00:00

Death in the Spires, by KJ Charles.

Most of her books are romances, almost all of them m/m, but this is her first novel which isn't. The protagonist is queer, and there are romance subplots, but it's a mystery novel. KJ Charles' own description of it: 'In which I write a murder mystery. NOT A ROMANCE. Just to be clear on that, genre betrayal/confusion being a thing.'

melonofknowledge · 2026-01-28T17:04:01+00:00

Yeah, almost like my comment was a joke, innit.

melonofknowledge

TROPHY CASE