Writing historical fiction is maddening because you can’t include everything you learn! You use what you need for your story, but have to let so much get away. For instance, the Census Bureau has codified race legally since the Constitution created it. It’s always struggled to do so, and no wonder – working first in a slave nation, then one that continued with tortured fractional definitions. In 1890, for instance, part of a Bureau’s enumerators’ mind-boggling job was to decide whether a Black person was completely Black, or it not, was a mulatto – ½ black, a quadroon – ¼ black, or an octoroon – 1/8 black. But the Bureau didn’t trust the subject to tell the truth, or even to know. That judgment was left to what the enumerator saw, with no questions asked of the individual. The brutal and infamous examination of Alice Jones Rhinelander’s racial identity in

Females were not even mentioned in our founding Constitution. Males dominated its creation, influenced by Mr. Jefferson’s “… all men are created equal” – (except of course Black men who ended up Constitutionally defined as 3/5ths of a human). Until August of 1920, when the 19th Amendment was finally ratified, all women had been created invisible. And that Amendment gave them only a single right: to vote. All other rights came slowly. For instance, the right for women to serve on juries was still restricted in New York State five years later, when Alice Jones Rhinelander was sued for fraud. She was falsely accused of having claimed she was white as she enticed her wealthy husband into marrying her. The jury she faced was made up of twelve white men – hardly a gathering of her peers who were without prejudice. She and her lawyers accepted those realities, and fought

If Leonard Rhinelander and Alice Jones had such a wonderful romance of total devotion to each other, why did Leonard sue her for fraud for pretending to be white – which he and she both knew she had never done – in order to obtain an annulment of their marriage? Well, it’s complicated, and if I explained everything, I’d have to warn you with a HUGE spoiler-alert and give away more than any author would wish to do. Suffice it to say that Leonard knew from Rhinelander family lore what the Rhinelanders were capable of doing to any member of the family who deviated from their rarified standards. It resulted in the utter destruction of those outside the family who were involved – in this case, Alice Jones Rhinelander, his targeted wife, the woman he loved profoundly, and her family. How much of this did Alice know? When did she

I’ve always thought that an artistic creation of any kind was not complete until that critical moment of sharing it with the observer. Yes, sure, a great painter can create a masterpiece and keep it under canvas in his studio and never show it to anyone. A composer can come up with the most sublime concerto ever conceived and share it only so far as writing it down. But I say: Until the painting is seen by others, or the concerto heard, or the play performed, or – dare I say – the book is read, the work is incomplete. What this means is that before fame crests and floods its rewards of recognition around, the poor son-of-a-bitch who creates something is stuck with making that completion happen – in my case, getting Black and White and Read All Over read. And doing that is a conundrum like no other.

How many words can a writer of historical fiction cram into an historical character’s mouth? I’ve been told in no uncertain terms: “None!” As in, “How can you dare be so presumptuous to make-up one word that was spoken by (take your pick:) George Washington… or Napoleon, or the Buddha, or Catharine the Great, or Elvis?!!” I’ve never written about any of those very historical people, but you get my point: When you’re writing about real people, anything said that can’t be documented is so often regarded as a certain kind of lie, or at least less respected than an utterance that was gleaned from a footnoted source. “Fiction” is story telling using imagination – a creative source that historians dare not allow. One of the greatest historians writing today is Rick Atkinson doing three volumes on the American Revolution. He describes (and documents) Martha Washington arriving at her husband’s

The fact is, the love story of Leonard Rhinelander and Alice Jones had nothing to do with race until the trial was brought, intended to end their marriage. Then race became a useful cudgel. Throughout their courtship – even when Leonard’s father sent a lawyer and detectives to their hotel room to physically separate them, sending Leonard on a lengthy trip with one of those detectives – the father’s objection was not racial but social: his son being involved with a young woman from a dreadfully lower class who was not acceptable to a Rhinelander. Even so, after years of struggle and living on letters, Alice and Leonard secretly married. Their marriage was revealed by a particularly racist headline in a tabloid: “RHINELANDER SCION MARRIES THE DAUGHTER OF A COLORED MAN” Alice Jones, whose mother was English and her father was part “Caribbean,” had lived her entire life as a

Let me tell you a little bit about “dower rights,” because they are vital to understanding why the Rhinelander family insisted on having Leonard’s marriage to Alice Jones annulled, rather than getting a simple divorce. Dower rights came from common English law, in effect from the earliest days of the new nation. The statutes protected a married woman from abandonment by a husband who tired of her and wished to be rid of her, resulting in her destitution. To discourage such often arbitrary breaking of the marriage pact, dower rights gave the bride absolute possession of – not money, or family silver, or jewelry, but one-third of her husband’s real estate from the first moment of marriage. In 1925, the Rhinelanders owned or controlled one-third of Manhattan Island, lands and fortunes accumulated over decades from before the Revolutionary War. They knew instantly that Leonard Rhinelander’s marriage to Alice Jones was

The publication date for Black and White and Read All Over has come and gone, and I’m still astonished—and, at times, struggling—with this new world of publishing. To build word of mouth, we’re even giving the book away free on Kindle to start. Try convincing Random House to do that. As more responses come in, I’m not surprised that the basic questions are asked: “What’s fact and what’s fiction?” and “When the history is so complete, why do you need fiction?” As a storyteller, I’ll answer the first by saying, “I’ll never tell, and it’s beside the point;” and to the second, I’d say that pure history is never complete and doesn’t allow for imagination. No matter how many sources and footnotes are listed in one “defining” book of history that allow its provable deductions, inevitably another book will come along with new discoveries, new sources and footnotes, to alter

In the last blog, I said I was going to try to describe the phenomenon that occurs when I’ve done a lot of the research, and one character or other slips right off the pages and I know it’s time to start writing the story. Since that went up on the website, a number of you have written anticipatory questions about it, which is great! I thank those of you who’ve taken the trouble as it helps me to focus my explanation. When I’m creating characters from scratch who will help me tell a story within a certain historical context, I’ll do research until I’m comfortable with a level of familiarity with the times and places I want to write about. This usually takes about a year – which I confess is joyous, as if I’ve designed my own history course, reading only where I want to go. I develop

I’m so delighted that so many of you responded to news of my new novel, Black and White and Read All Over, being published on May 1. It’s less than a month away, so if interested, please go to my website — williamkinsolving.com — where you can order an advance copy. It’s really the easiest and quickest way to get the book — hardcover, paperback, or Kindle. A number of you asked a great question, one that I never thought to answer before, for myself or anyone else. I compacted the questions into: “You said in your blog that you ‘look around for a project,’ and then start research. Because you’ve written in so many different forms — novel, play, screenplay, even a musical — when do you know which one you’ll use for the current project? Right up front, or does that occur later?” This is a great question