Fact and Fiction: Where the edges blur...

I have sent back my novella to the editor and she said she would get to work on it. As she works on it I am trying to finish up the sequel to it. The story begged to be continued and finished. I let my daughter Megan read the rough manuscript and she really enjoyed it. She holds back nothing and told me what she thought I should add or take away. I am doing that. One thing is she thought I should have a back story to explain the past lives of the main characters. Loving history the way I do and knowing a lot of the Irish history from the time I was little. I grew up listening to my father who was Scottish and Irish. We won't mention the English there (for now) Anyway even though he only went to 8th grade he also loved history and would tell me about this place or that, or this person lived here. Or This battle was fought here. He got me into antiquing at a very young age and looking for old bottles along rock walls. That was all fine and good till I became allergic to poison ivy and all it's cousins... Do you know the sap from the mango fruit has the same properties as poison ivy,oak and sumac... Yup!! Well anyway back to history, I learned to love reading and thankfully my father never censored my reading. While I was plowing through "War and Peace" and Anna Karenina by Tolstoy I was also reading anything about the Czars and Russian History. It was then in the 1970s that I found out from my Uncle (Mother's brother) that my mother's family the Oldenburgs who were from Northern Germany and part of a Royal Family and later one of the girls married the last Kaiser's second son. Well the Oldenburg family married into a lot of the Royal families of Europe. Boy what a rabbit trail I am getting on this morning. Back to history So being raised by my father since my mother passed away when I was five gave me a certain amount of freedom. I had a steady supply of money to buy as many books as I wanted. Sometimes I am sure it was not what my teachers thought was appropriate for my age BUT I have the same attitude, If my child is reading, I don't really care what it is(well maybe) BUT my father didn't censor me and in between all the Tolstoy books and history I also read a lot of fiction, "Summer of 42" about gave one of my 8th grade teachers a fit... "Helter Skelter" Not the best reading for however young I was, gave me nightmares... Anything Stephen King. Again nightmare city. BUT I was reading and while one of my friends went and bought tons of clothes, I was happy with my faded jeans, peasant blouses and any cast off she gave me cause I took any spare money I had and bought books. History was right at the top of the list. Somewhere soon after 1979 I found romance books and Kathleen E. Woodiwiss. All of her books, well I was sold on the whole romance genre. "The Flame and The Flower", "Shanna", "The Wolf and The Dove" were the first ones that I read. From then on I knew Romance with history would be the love of my life when it came to books. So now I am researching the prologue of the sequel of my second novella. It will go back to the year 1014 and the Battle of Clontarf and it's main characters and some I am making up who were the main characters in my novella which is in the hands of my editor. The Battle of Clontarf was on the outskirts of Dublin,Ireland and between the the Forces of High King Brian Boru and his opposing forces. It is quite the impressive list and one of the characters was his ex wife. So I will get back to organizing my characters and getting the opening scene set so I can write. Once this novella is finished I can take a breath and get back to the second in the series of "The Kings of Angkor"