If you could change history, would you?

 

We all know the past is the past, but what if you could change history?

We asked eight historical authors to set aside the facts and rewrite the history they love. The results couldn’t be more tantalizing.

What if Julius Caesar never conquered Gaul?

What if Arthur Tudor lived and his little brother never became King Henry VIII?

What if Abigail Adams persuaded the Continental Congress in 1776 to give women the right to vote and to own property?

Dive in to our collection of eight short stories as we explore the alternate endings of events set in ancient Rome, Britain, the United States, and France.

An anthology of the Historical Writers Forum.

Get it for 99c on Amazon or read it FREE with Kindle Unlimited!

Meet the Authors:

Samantha Wilcoxson

Samantha Wilcoxson is an author of emotive biographical fiction and strives to help readers connect with history's unsung heroes. She also writes nonfiction for Pen & Sword History.

Samantha loves sharing trips to historic places with her family and spending time by the lake with a glass of wine. Her most recent work is Women of the American Revolution, which explores the lives of 18th century women, and she is currently working on a biography of James Alexander Hamilton.

Website

Sharon Bennett Connolly

Historian Sharon Bennett Connolly is the best-selling author of five non-fiction history books, with a new release coming soon.

A Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Sharon has studied history academically and just for fun – and has even worked as a tour guide at a castle. She writes the popular history blog, www.historytheinterestingbits.com. 

Sharon regularly gives talks on women's history; she is a feature writer for All About History magazine and her TV work includes Australian Television's 'Who Do You Think You Are?'

Website

 

 

Cathie Dunn

Cathie Dunn writes historical fiction, mystery, and romance. The focus of her historical fiction novels is on strong women through time.

She loves researching for her novels, delving into history books, and visiting castles and historic sites.

Cathie's stories have garnered awards and praise from reviewers and readers for their authentic description of the past.

Website

 

 

Karen Heenan

As an only child, Karen Heenan learned early that boredom was the enemy. Shortly after she discovered perpetual motion, and has rarely been seen holding still since.

She lives in Lansdowne, PA, just outside Philadelphia, where she grows much of her own food and makes her own clothes. She is accompanied on her quest for self-sufficiency by a very patient husband and an ever-changing number of cats. 

One constant: she is always writing her next book.

Website

 

 

Salina B Baker

Salina Baker is a multiple award winning author and avid student of Colonial America and the American Revolution. 

Her lifelong passion for history and all things supernatural led her to write historical fantasy. Reading, extensive traveling and graveyard prowling with her husband keep that passion alive. 

Salina lives in Austin, Texas.

Website

 

 

Virginia Crow

Virginia Crow is an award-winning Scottish author who grew up in Orkney and now lives in Caithness.

Her favourite genres to write are fantasy and historical fiction, sometimes mixing the two together. Her academic passions are theology and history, her undergraduate degree in the former and her postgraduate degree in the latter, and aspects of these frequently appear within her writings.

When not writing, Virginia is usually to be found teaching music. She believes wholeheartedly in the power of music, especially as a tool of inspiration, and music is often playing when she writes. Her life is governed by two spaniels, Orlando and Jess, and she enjoys exploring the Caithness countryside with these canine sidekicks.

She loves cheese, music, and films, but hates mushrooms.

Website

 

 

Elizabeth K Corbett

Elizabeth K. Corbett is an author, book reviewer, and historian who has recently published a short story, “Marie Thérèse Remembers.” She is currently working on her debut novel, a gothic romance set in Jacksonian America.

When she is not writing, she teaches academic writing, something she is very passionate about. She believes in empowering students to express themselves and speak their truth through writing. Additionally, she is a women’s historian who studies the lives of women in eighteenth and nineteenth century North America. Mostly, she is fascinated by the lives of the lesser known women in history.

A resident of gorgeous coastal New Jersey, she takes inspiration from the local history to write her historical fiction. She is an avid reader who adores tea and coffee.

Website

 

 

Stephanie Churchill

After serving time as a corporate paralegal in Washington, D.C., then staying home to raise her children, Stephanie Churchill stumbled upon writing, a career path she never saw coming.

As a result of writing a long-winded review of the book Lionheart, Stephanie became fast friends with its New York Times best-selling author, Sharon Kay Penman, who uttered the fateful words, “Have you ever thought about writing?” 

Stephanie’s books are filled with action and romance, loyalty and betrayal. Her writing takes on a cadence that is sometimes literary, sometimes genre fiction, relying on deeply-drawn and complex characters while exploring the subtleties of imperfect people living in a gritty, sometimes dark world.

She lives in the Minneapolis area with her husband, two children, and two dogs while trying to survive the murderous intentions of a Minnesota winter.

Website

 

 

Michael Ross

Best selling author Michael Ross is a lover of history and great stories.

He's a retired software engineer turned author, with three children and five grandchildren, living in Newton, Kansas with his wife of forty years. He was born in Lubbock, Texas, and still loves Texas.

Michael attended Rice University as an undergraduate, and Portland State University for his graduate degree. He has degrees in computer science, software engineering, and German. In his spare time, Michael loves to go fishing, riding horses, and play with his grandchildren, who are currently all under six years old. 

Website

 

 

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A Personal History with the Tudors

Dear readers, I am so excited to introduce you to Karen Heenan. She shares my love for the Tudor era and the historical figures of the time who are often overlooked. I have had the pleasure of working with Karen on the latest Historical Writers Forum anthology, Alternate Endings. While I imagined a brighter future for Queen Mary in my story, Karen went back a little further and looked at Catherine's story if Prince Arthur had lived. I know you're going to love it!

Welcome, Karen!

~ Samantha

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

A Personal History with the Tudors . . . and how Henry VIII doesn't improve with age

A Guest Post by Karen Heenan

My first introduction to the story of Henry VIII was the 1970 BBC series The Six Wives of Henry VIII, which we got in the US in 1972. I was eight. My mom was a big reader and had some knowledge of (and sympathy for) Anne Boleyn, so she wanted to watch the first two episodes covering Catherine of Aragon and Anne. After one episode, I was hooked and insisted on watching the rest of the series, even though Mom lost interest once Anne was executed. 

Throughout my teens and early twenties, I devoured every bit of Tudor-related historical fiction I could get my hands on. I loved stories of Henry and the queens, but it didn’t occur to me at that point to wonder “what if” about any of it. History was what it was, and I accepted it. 

As I got older, and read more non-fiction, threads began to present themselves, offering clues to different ways the story of Tudor England could have gone, if only one tiny thing had happened differently.  

Arthur Tudor’s death in 1501 was no tiny thing. He was Henry VII’s firstborn son, the heir to the newly-created Tudor dynasty, trained and educated from birth to take on the role of his father’s successor and lead the Tudors into a new age.  

Henry, on the other hand, was the younger brother, educated separately, and intended for the church. It was a failing on the part of Henry VII that he didn’t prepare the “spare” as thoroughly as he educated the heir, and I sometimes like to imagine the panic he felt when Arthur died and he realized that he had a limited amount of time to reshape his son into an eventual monarch.  

Which is not to say Henry VIII did a bad job as a young king. He kept on Thomas Wolsey as an advisor, and promoted him. Wolsey was a master of detail and excelled at the day-to-day drudgery of ruling, and Henry relied heavily on him in the early years. He also got rid of Richard Empson and Edmund Dudley (via execution). Empson and Dudley had been his father’s “hatchet men,” two lawyers who headed up the king’s council Learned in the Law and who enriched Henry VII (and themselves) by collecting taxes, dues, selling wardships, pardons, and licenses, and generally extorting from the nobility with the king’s full permission. 

He also married Catherine of Aragon. This was a fiscally sound idea, since her Spanish dowry had already been paid and Henry, like his father, was of no mind to return it. It had been widely proclaimed that Arthur and Catherine’s marriage had not been consummated, but a dispensation was obtained from the pope anyway because canon law forbade a man – even a king – from marrying his brother’s widow.  

Henry and Catherine fully expected to have children during the course of their marriage. And they did, but only one, the future Mary I, survived childhood.  

Thus began Henry’s frantic quest for a son, changing the course of English history and ending or turning upside down the lives of many people. 

I chose to write Princess of Spain in Catherine’s voice, allowing Arthur to live until their eldest son was sixteen, and questioning what would happen to an over-ambitious Archbishop named Henry if he tried to put himself forward as regent for the young king, rather than allowing his sister-in-law and the council to act as regent for two years. Catherine will have a fight on her hands, but at her side she also has two of Arthur’s most trusted advisors – Edmund Dudley and Thomas Wolsey. 

As a lover of history – and a stickler for accuracy in fiction - It was strangely cathartic to imagine what might have happened had Arthur Tudor survived and Henry had been left in the secondary spot history intended for him, and if Catherine had been given the wife, mother, and queen she could have been. Want to know more?  

Read my story in Alternate Endings to find out! 

Connect with Karen Heenan and check out the rest of her books on her Blog, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Goodreads, or her Amazon Author Page.

Get Alternate Endings from Historical Writers Forum for only 99c!

 

What If Mary & Reginald Got Married?

I'm excited to announce that a new anthology is available from Historical Writers Forum! Each author was asked to answer a historical 'what if' question, and I considered a few before deciding to write a story about Queen Mary I choosing to marry Reginald Pole instead of Philip of Spain. You will love the alternate endings that other historical novelists came up with too!

Did I mention that it is only 99c?!

What if Mary and Reginald got married is a question I have written about before, but this was my first time expanding on it and what might have happened. Without the people rising up against a fear of Spanish rule, would Mary still be remembered as Bloody Mary? Might she have also been happier married to a man who might return her love instead of seeing her as a path to a crown? The fact that Mary and Reginald died on the same day, 17 November 1558, becomes heartbreakingly romantic if we imagine that they were married at the time.

In my Alternate Endings story, I got to think about a few other people who would be impacted by Mary & Reginald becoming co-monarchs. What would Princess Elizabeth think of this, and what would she do to ensure her own position as heir apparent? Perhaps, marriage would be a better path for her as well. How might the Tudor dynasty change?

Writing alternate history is thought-provoking, and I decided to keep some parts of Mary's story as they truly happened, but you'll have to read Tudors with a Twist to discover what stays the same and what is just a might-have-been. One big change alters the course of England's monarchy. Find out what happens in Alternate Endings from HWF!

Explore more Alternate Endings on the HWF Blog Hop Page!

What would you do if you could change history?