An Interview with Margaret George

1/4/2020

Happy 2020, everyone!

A few months ago, I asked Margaret George if she'd be willing to participate in an e-interview, for my blog. She immediately jumped at the opportunity, and below, you'll find out much more about this fascinating woman who is truly the "grande dame" of American historical fiction.

Margaret has written eight historical novels (all listed at the end of the interview below). Her work is biographical and she goes to great lengths to achieve accuracy, imaginative prose, and is widely-known as a creator of epic tales.

I'm including the photo on the left, taken this past summer at the Historical Novel Society Conference in Oxon Hill, Maryland. Margaret and I were about to begin the big Book Festival signing event that the conference hosts. What a thrill it was for my first book-signing, to be autographing books while sitting next to my favorite bestselling author!

So now, I invite you to sit back in your chair, savor the interview, and READ ON!

Brook: Margaret, thanks so much for your time. Could you start by telling my readers why you chose to write Historical Fiction and what inspired you to do so?

Margaret: I have always been interested in history and especially the real movers and shakers of history, who seem larger than life. I wondered what they were really like, if I could go back in a time machine and study them. So learning about them in context was the best I could do to achieve that. I would say that my works are ‘psycho-biographies.’ I want to explore what made these people tick.

Brook: The ancient world has been the focus of five of your books. What keeps drawing you back to it?

Margaret: I lived in Israel in my formative years of seven, eight, and nine. The school I went to taught ancient history to us little kids---I still have the textbooks. One was titled “The House of History” and it started with Mesopotamia. Since I was living right in the place where ‘ancient history’ took place, it has always seemed my other home, psychologically. My school was located in Jaffa, where Jonah set sail and where the cedar timbers from Lebanon to build Solomon’s temple in Jerusalem were unloaded. My school building was on the site where supposedly Jesus raised the little girl Tabeetha from the dead. In fact the school was named “The Tabeetha School.” So ancient history seems a natural and real place to me.

Brook: You have written on some of the world’s most incredible personalities. How do you decide on a subject for a novel? Is there some important trait you look for or method by which you narrow it down to a particular person in history?

Margaret: I would say that all the people I choose lead ‘operatic lives.’ In opera passions are vivid and out-sized, emotions run high, grisly mistakes are made, and people die for love. Some historical characters led important lives but not operatic ones so I am not drawn to them. Generally there is more of that sort of behavior the farther back you go. So ancient and medieval times are gold mines of possibilities. Of the seven characters I have written about, two committed suicide (Cleopatra and Nero), one started a war that killed hundreds of people and brought down a city (Helen of Troy), another traveled with Jesus and saw the Crucifixion (Mary Magdalene), one was executed (Mary Queen of Scots). While Henry VIII and Elizabeth I did not kill themselves or get executed, there were plenty of executions around them. With the exception of Elizabeth I, and Helen of Troy who may have been immortal as the daughter of Zeus, none of these people lived very long, either. Nero died at 30 and Cleopatra at 39. Such is the stuff of tragedy!

Brook: We both know how much the publishing industry has changed and become much more accessible in the past decade or more. How have you adjusted to this phenomenon?

Margaret: I find it very odd, so different from the idea of a writer being known only through his/her writing. I also remember when ‘celebrities’ were mystery figures and the only information about them was carefully controlled by their ‘press agents.’ It is good to be able to connect with readers but frankly I don’t think the idea that writers must now be ‘brands’ so readers buy that ‘brand’ rather than the work itself is very healthy. We are just people, and the only thing we have to offer that makes us different is our work, not what we eat for breakfast or what our pet’s name is. That sort of thing is a diversion from the work. It also endangers judgment of the work for itself, obstructing it by judgment of the personality of the writer.

Brook: What words of wisdom do you have for newer authors just entering into the industry?

Margaret: It’s hard to think of any true wisdom other than what’s been around for a long time and is still true. You must have work to show, rather than just ideas about the work you intend to do, and you have to keep writing even when that particular work doesn’t get accepted, because the next one might. You also have to always keep in mind that luck plays a huge part in what happens to that work. Sooner or later you will have that luck, just by the law of averages, but it may be slow in coming. Also we have to remember that publishing is a business and they look at us as money-making commodities, and they have to bow to what the public is interested in at that moment, even if a particular editor really likes the idea. When I started out, editors had a lot of freedom to choose things on their own hunch, but now everything is run by the marketing people first. They are not interested in anything except what they see as an economic possibility. And they aren’t in the business of making projections and guesses about what the future might be interested in. It’s just too difficult for anyone to know what fancy will take the public next. Vampires? Disappearing spouses? It’s always a surprise.

Brook: You have had so many fabulous opportunities arise in your career. What memory do you cherish as the most precious?

Margaret: I would have to say having “The Memoirs of Cleopatra” made into an ABC-TV miniseries and being involved in the production. As someone who loved movies, I was so excited to see how one was made. The exterior scenes were filmed in Morocco and the interiors at Shepperton Studios in London. What was eeriest was seeing scenes that I had made up for the novel being solemnly recreated and enacted, as if they had really happened. Here were all these actors in their costumes in a setting that I had only imagined, but now was real---pillars and fountains and goblets, like a dream sprung to life. These were mixed in with the real historical ones, like the battle of Actium, and Cleopatra and the cobra.

It was also weird to see people walking around the set with a copy of my novel in their hands. And one time between scenes I was sitting next to Timothy Dalton, who was playing Caesar, and a fan came up and started fawning all over him and held out the novel for him to autograph, and never once did he turn and say, “this is the author, by the way.” Unreal!

They had a premier of the miniseries at the Grauman’s Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, red carpet and all. What an experience!

When the filming was over, the production company sent me one of the ships used in the Battle of Actium scene. It had been a small one in the background, about 4 feet long and made mainly of paper. I still have it out on my porch, and like Cinderella’s slipper the next morning, proof that the whole experience was real.

Brook: We’ve spoken a lot about authorship here, but let’s get personal. What does Margaret George enjoy doing on a beautiful day at home when she has time in abundance?

Margaret: I really treasure some quiet time to, as you say, just do anything that takes my fancy and not look at the clock. Depending on the time of year---I might read if it’s winter, or look through my photo albums. If summer, then a walk where there are lots of flowers. Really, pretty quiet and a far cry from anything operatic. I’m not like my characters, alas. But I will live longer. In fact, I already have!

I'd like to give another shout-out of appreciation to Margaret for taking her time to share memories and thoughts about her work with me and my readers. THANK-YOU!

Be sure to visit her website at: https://margaretgeorge.com/

In addition, here are some thumbnails and links to her books on Amazon. I highly recommend that you read a few. You'll find them remarkable and impeccably researched.

These books can be found on Margaret George's Amazon author page.