Alex Beecroft was born in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and grew up in the wild countryside of the English Peak District. She studied English and Philosophy before accepting employment with the Crown Court where she worked for a number of years.Now a stay-at-home mum and full time author, Alex lives with her husband and two daughters in a little village near Cambridge and tries to avoid being mistaken for a tourist.

Alex is only intermittently present in the real world. She has lead a Saxon shield wall into battle, toiled as a Georgian kitchen maid, and recently taken up an 800 year old form of English folk dance, but she still hasn’t learned to operate a mobile phone.

History and Fantasy – is there a difference?

By Alex.Beecroft On Mar 11 2013, 9:00 am

This may seem like a ridiculous question. Of course there’s a difference between stuff that actually happened and stuff that some author made up out of their own imagination. I wouldn’t dream of arguing that the events in The Lord of the Rings actually happened, for example, even though much of Tolkien’s background work created to support that story has the very texture of history. It’s an invented history, I know that.

But I’ve always maintained that I like historicals and I like fantasies for the same reason – that to me they feel like very similar things. When I write both, it’s the strangeness of the other world which appeals to me. I enjoy having my mind be expanded by meeting people and encountering cultures who do not think or act like our own.

And I think it’s at that level of belief – of the world-view of the characters – where Historical Fantasy and History bleed together at the edges. Read more…

3 Comments

By Alex.Beecroft On Nov 1 2012, 12:05 am

One of the things that writers of historical novels frequently get asked about is research. Isn’t it a dreadful imposition having to do all that research? Doesn’t it cramp your style? Don’t you get scared that you’ll get something wrong and then everyone will laugh at you? I hadn’t even thought about it before. I [...]

2 Comments

By Alex.Beecroft On May 25 2012, 9:00 am

I have terrible problems with villains (and with heroes too, but the heroes can stay out of this for once.) Either a villain is bad enough for me to accept that no mercy needs to be shown to him – and in all my reading, only Sauron from The Lord of the Rings has ever [...]

5 Comments

By Alex.Beecroft On Dec 17 2011, 9:00 am

As Christmas is coming up, my dashboard fills up with references to Christmas elves – Santa’s little helpers in their jolly green and red outfits, curly shoes and hats. As a writer of fantasy and historical fiction, this never ceases to make me spit nails. Perhaps it’s the reverence I have for history that makes [...]

14 Comments

By Alex.Beecroft On Jul 21 2011, 6:58 am

I imagine that, of those people who've heard of me at all, most of them would put me in the genre of historical m/m romance. There's a good reason for that – I have written two historical novels, Captain's Surrender and False Colors, and have (at the last count) three historical novellas under contract, with [...]

15 Comments