Bart Casey discovered the Monica

Lewinsky of the Elizabethan age and turned her already incredible true story

into an enthralling dual time line tale of historic intrigue and contemporary

greed.

Hi there, I’m your host Jenny Wheeler, and today Bart talks about his passion for forgotten stories, explains why Will Shakespeare continues to fascinate movie makers, and reveals how a mystery involving three famous Romantic poets is his work in progress.

Six

things you’ll learn from this Joys of Binge Reading episode:

How adman Bart researched his fiction in his lunch breaksWhy Shakespeare's life fascinates himHow sexual predation hasn't changed over the centuriesWhy he values historical accuracy in his workWhen facts are stranger than fictionThe appeal of dual timeline tales

Where to find Bart Casey:

Website: http://www.bartcasey.com/index.htm

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bart.casey

 Twitter: @bibliomad

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/bart_casey

What

follows is a "near as" transcript of our conversation, not word for

word but pretty close to it, with links to important mentions.

And now, here’s Bart.  Hello there Bart and welcome to the show, it’s great to have you with us.

Bart: Very happy to be here. Very exciting.

Jenny: Was there a “Once Upon A Time’ moment when you decided you must write fiction or you would have somehow let yourself down, or not completed something you were meant to do?  And if so, what was the catalyst for it

Bart Casey - historical mysteries

Bart: Well it was actually more than just fiction, because it was about stories- coming across stories - especially in college and graduate school. They just seemingly needed to be told, things that I didn't think people would know about or that had been forgotten. Those stories then became the motivation I had to start writing. Sometimes, the non fiction ones are just as good. Once you find somebody like a Laurence Oliphant, the character I wrote a book about, who seemed to be like Forrest Gump - he sort of did everything.

The fiction I write has a lot of non fiction in it. Anything I put in my upcoming book about Shakespeare or the Elizabethan characters is pretty much real. So it's fiction, but it's also pretty much non fiction. But to get to your real question; it's the story. You come across a story, you think 'I don't know that, I don't think anybody else knows that-' and you really have to tell them. That's the motivation.

Jenny: You seem to have real talent for finding these stories that have been forgotten or ignored - your non fiction books perfectly demonstrate that.

Bart:You just have an "aha" moment when you come across some of thee wacky combinations, and you just think that's so out of the ordinary and so compelling that it writes itself. The advantage of non fiction is of course it's real, so you can tell it chronologically from the people's birth to their death and not make anything up. When you get into fiction, you have to improvise a little. But I try to always be plausible, I don't try to make up anything crazy.

Shedding light on forgotten history

Jenny: You’ve made a specialty of blending dual time lines – contemporary and Elizabethan – to shed new light on forgotten history.  How did this passion first get sparked off?

Bart: Sometimes I think if the historical characters like Shakespeare, or Elizabethan people you read about them in school and you see anth...