History can be a great place to mine for story ideas. There are so many real world scenarios that you can use to research and fill in the blanks to create a brand new story from past real world events. This is how author Jessica Dall went about crafting her own novel. Check out my interview with Dall about her historical fiction novel, The Stars of Heaven, and click on her links to follow and buy below!
About the Author and Book
Author Name: Jessica Dall
Author Links:
Book Title: The Stars of Heaven
Genres: Historical Fiction
Links to buy:
Book Summary
When one of the largest earthquakes in history hits Lisbon on All Saints’ Day 1755, Cecília de Santa Rita e Durante’s life is turned upside down. With her family possibly dead, she must wade through the ruins that were once her home with the help of John Bates. The English Protestant represents everything she was taught to hate, but he is her only hope of making it through the newly destroyed Lisbon.
Book Excerpt
“I’ve lived in Lisbon my entire life, Mr. Bates. I’m certain I’ll be able to make it home without your assistance.”
Mr. Bates began to give one more half-hearted objection before a low rumble moving through the ground made him trail off. Cecília frowned, looking for an approaching coach, though from the way the sound was growing, it would have had to have been a line of coaches barreling toward them.
“What’s that?” Mr. Bates followed Cecília’s gaze.
Cecília shook her head, not having any better idea than Mr. Bates. The rumbling grew stronger, making loose pebbles rattle around her feet as the sound neared a roar.
Earthquake. The thought registered a second too late as the street under her rolled. Cecília tipped forward as shouts went up, mixing with discordant clanging church bells. She put her hand out to brace herself, but the ground lurched again. Her shoulder slammed into the curve of the niche then bucked the other way. She hit cobblestone hard.
The wall of the building across from her split, chunks of white plaster raining down across the street. Rough brick showed through as the ground continued its assault. Then the brick started to tilt. Eyes widening, Cecília curled into herself, everything happening too quickly to make sense. The wall fell. Hard chunks pelted her as it kicked up a cloud of dust so thick that she had no choice but to close her eyes.
Talking Shop
What is the central theme or message of your story? What do you want readers to take away from it?
In a way, The Stars of Heaven is a somewhat standard “science vs. religion” story, which in a large way was what the Lisbon Earthquake became about itself. In 1755, much of Europe was moving full-throttle into the Age of Enlightenment, and Portugal was more or less doubling down on their old ways, keeping their Inquisition going, making sure universities only taught religious-based Latin curricula, and all that fun.
When the earthquake hit, these two factions came to a head (was this God’s wrath or a natural phenomenon?) One of my primary goals when writing was to put a human face on this philosophical conflict. I also, however, didn’t want it to come down to “religion stupid, science smart” or any theme like that. As we should all know, science doesn’t always hold all the answers (especially in a time period when “female hysteria” was still a diagnosable condition) and religion can inspire people to do great things.
The main character does go through a major crisis of faith, and ends up changing parts of what she believes at the start of the book, but I think the true message I want readers to leave the book with is, as Socrates put it, “The unexamined life is not worth living” more than the idea that any specific idea is undeniably the correct one.
Name a fact or detail about your story that can’t be found within the pages of your book.
After all the research I did on the topic, I’m a relative font of (mostly) useless information about 18th century Portugal at this point, but the one fact that I kept trying to find a way to fit in and it just kept getting cut in edits was how the architects ran their experiments while trying to earthquake-proof the buildings they put up after the earthquake.
After working out a number of potential frameworks to use, they built scale models and then had lines of soldiers march circles around them to make the ground shake and see which ones held up the best. Honestly, I found that brilliant problem solving (since they didn’t exactly have earthquake simulators at the time), and I’m still a little sad that that couldn’t make it in somewhere with the rest of the plot happening!
How active are you in the online writing community? How has this community helped you as a writer?
I am very active with the online writing community, originally starting on the NaNoWriMo forums and now mostly spending my time on Reddit (I admit I was a bit of a Luddite and the NaNoWriMo site redesign made it difficult for me to follow along, so I more or less fell out of using it. I keep meaning to head back because it is a really great community).
For the most part, I like lingering around to provide advice and help newer writers, but I have also picked up a tip or two and connected with a lot of great beta readers from all walks of life. For example, I just finished a book set in Ireland. Some wonderful Irish (and UK) beta readers from the Reddit community helped comment on those Americanisms I wouldn’t have caught myself. I strongly suggest aspiring authors find some sort of community to tap into.
What famous books can you compare to your own?
It always feels a little presumptuous to link my writing to bestsellers, but I will say that I was an avid Philippa Gregory fan growing up, and I do think her writing influenced me a good bit, so I’d most closely tie this to her books such as The Queen’s Fool or The Other Bolyen Girl… just in an entirely different era!
What is a fun or strange source of inspiration that ended up in your book?
It’s a completely throwaway line, but about a quarter of the way into the book, one of the characters mentions that his sister lives in London, specifically in Poplar. The largest reason for this is that they’re a family of dockworkers, and Poplar is where the East India company’s docks were on London’s East End, but I admit the reason I specifically chose those docks over anywhere else is that I love Call the Midwife, and other fans of the show/memoirs will likely recognize that is where the Nonnatus midwives are located.
How long did it take to write your book from the day you got the idea to write it to the day you published it?
From the day I started reading about the Lisbon earthquake (and started toying around with how it would be a good setting for a story) and release day, August 18, 2020, it will have been six years. Obviously, a large portion of this wasn’t the actual writing process–since I knew next to nothing about Portuguese history before starting to write there was a ton of research I did, and then the publishing process is a slow beast!–but it has been a long time coming.
What is the most fun part about writing? The most difficult?
I’ve always been a dialogue-strong writer, so one of my favorite parts is just letting my characters play off of one another and seeing where the dialogue goes. I’m entirely a pantser/discover writer/gardners/whatever you’d like to call the version of writing where you jump in and start writing without an outline or sometimes even much more than a vague idea of where things are going, so that allows for a lot of freedom and character growth when you let things just happen as they well.
That style of writing does lead to one of the most difficult parts of writing, and that’s going through and cutting out the bits that don’t actually serve the story overall once I’ve finished. There are some great conversations that I’m still a little sore about having to cut with some stories, but as they say, when editing, you sometimes have to murder your darlings.
Do you focus on word count, hours spent writing, page count, or another way to measure your daily or weekly progress?
I’m a strong word-count measurer, which I think comes from having worked in publishing for so long (the industry is so focused on word counts that whenever someone asks me the page count of one of my works, I most of the time have to go check since I don’t even have a ballpark figure to give them.
I’m also the sort of writer that always has her story document open. So I can’t easily measure by hours, since I’ll be answering an email here, editing one novel there, and then adding a few more paragraphs to my work in progress all in a row, so an hour of work could be thousands of words or two sentences depending on what else is happening that day. Basically, though, if I have more words at the end of the week than I did at the beginning, I consider it a good week.
“What If” Scenarios
If your book ever becomes a movie, and you get final say over the cast, which actors would you hire to play your characters?
Honestly, if The Stars of Heaven were being produced, I would love to see what newcomers the casting department would be able to find for the characters. I bet there are a bunch of not-yet-known actors out there who would do a great job with the script. There’s also the problem that, after it having taken a good five years already in producing this book, by the time it then got optioned and cast, a lot of the actors I can picture would likely be far too old to play the characters.
For example, I think Jenna-Louisa Coleman would have been a great Cecilia, and I absolutely love her, but since she’s already 34, I imagine she wouldn’t be the best choice to play a character in her late teens/early twenties these days (absolutely no offence meant to Coleman, of course!)
If you could be in a writer’s group with up to four famous writers, who would they be?
Tough question, but I think I’d have to say Stephen King, Jane Austen, Philippa Gregory, and Alexandre Dumas. I think working with their mix of styles and skills would make for a fascinating writing group. It would also give me the chance to try to convince King to tone down the head hopping in his novels since, as engaging an author as he obviously is, head hopping makes my editor brain hurt.
Your favorite character that you’ve written comes to life for one day. What do you do together for 24 hours?
First I’d have to decide who my favorite character is (they tend to change from day to day, or even hour to hour) but assuming it’s someone from Stars I’d probably have a lot of fun first introducing them to the 21st century (yeah, we could literally get on this thing called a plane right now and be in Europe in ten hours. Isn’t that crazy?) and then I’d just want to spend time picking their brains. Maybe head to a museum and have them point out anything from their time period that’s just plain wrong, since I’m a nerd like that.
You are transported into your book for one day. What role do you play? How do you alter the events of the story?
This is a fun question, though with all the drama and intrigue in the book, I think I’d be more hanging out in the background somewhere playing with the pretty dresses while everyone else deals with the plot. “Hey, John. Hey, Cecilia. Hope you’re having fun playing with life and death stuff. I’ll be over here soaking in eighteenth century arts and culture. Peace out!”
Would you rather own your own book store or your own publishing house, and what would you sell or publish?
Knowing people who own both, I’d honestly probably not want to own either. I love book stores and publishing, but it’s a rough business being in charge of either. If I could cherry pick the work from each, though, I’d definitely own a publishing house. I already work as an editor for one, and I do love the publishing business.
As to what I would publish, the obvious answer would be “hopefully things that sell” but if I was also in charge of editing everything myself, I’d most likely end up sticking to my own strengths as an editor: Historical fiction, romance, women’s fiction, some fantasy, book-club fiction, all that sort of stuff.
Just For Fun
Your trademark feature.
I used to have more fashion sense (or at least like to think I did) but I currently have a ten-month-old, so my current trademark is likely an exhausted expression and high ponytail (no haircuts from quarantine + a baby going through the hair-grabbing phase does not lend itself to much more!) I can only hope as baby life gets less demanding (that happens, right? Please tell me that happens…) I can start thinking about trademark features again.
Favorite time of/part of your day.
I am a night owl through and through, so I’m entirely that person who loves working at midnight. That’s less doable now that I have an infant, but that has always been my most productive time of the day (or I suppose night!)
Favorite place you’ve visited/place you want to visit.
My favorite place I’ve visited so far is probably Ireland. I had a chance to go with my family a few years back, and it was an amazing trip. I’d love to go back at some point and do the southern half of the country (we made a loop around the northern end on the last trip but sadly didn’t have time for Cork/the Ring of Kerry/etc.) I’d also love the chance to actually get to Lisbon at some point after spending so much time researching it, but I imagine that isn’t going to be for a bit with a new baby around!
Food you’d like to win a lifetime supply of.
Sushi. I would eat it every day, honestly, if I could. That was the hardest thing for me to go without for nine months while I was pregnant with said infant, and I pretty much immediately had it delivered to the hospital to eat after delivery. There’s actually a picture of me holding takeout sushi next to the little hospital bassinet!
Your favorite podcast.
As a history nerd, I’m a big fan of In Our Time, which is a BBC Radio 4 production. I’ve also listened through the entire series of The Gilmore Guys podcast, since I really like their discussions and have been to a live recording of How Did This Get Made? while they were in DC.
Favorite Halloween costume ever.
One of these days, I really want to sew an at least mostly accurate gown from some time period that I can use for Halloween. I’ve yet to have the time or gumption to attempt that, though, so my current favorite from years past is likely the year I went to a Halloween party that was also a “pun” party (where we all dressed up as a pun of some kind). I made a bunch of signs with struck-through bells and wore a gold medal, making myself a “No-bell Prize”.
A talent you have and a talent you wish you had.
I’m a big fan of crafty things, like crocheting, knitting, sewing… I don’t think I’m going to be winning any blue ribbons for any of it, but I have made myself some fun dresses, such as the red, white, and blue dress in this picture I made for 4th of July.
Buy it!
Buy a copy of The Stars of Heaven here, and help support local bookstores! This is an affiliate link, and I will receive a commission on any sales.
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This is so cool! I’m going to ask my local library to buy this book!
That’s a great way to help out an indie author. Thanks for reading!
This is amazing. Thanks for sharing
It was nice to learn about this book and author. Very interesting.