about me

Thanks to everybody who has supported me, or taken the trouble to look at my work so far.

I started writing historic fiction partly to avoid taking off on unanticipated flights of fancy. I wanted my writing to be based on reality. Yet my first novel involved time travel and some other fantastic devices - back then I would have called it magic realism.

Historic events can provide shape for a story - a beginning, middle and end - though these are not always clear and they may well be open to dispute and interpretation.
I enjoy reading historic sources, and engaging with them in a creative way. So my writing tends to be influenced by whatever I read, whether that was written by an historian, a poet, or a philosopher. And of course the language I use is shaped by them as well.

In my first novel, The Fundamentals of New Caledonia (published 2003) this meant drawing on scientific texts as well as other historic sources. I described some of these in an article, Darien to Dream, first published in Scottish Book Collector, and now on the Textualities website.
http://textualities.net/author/david-nicol

As for Furore, my research was broader and deeper. It seeks to retell some forgotten and neglected stories from the past, using the voice of a narrator who belongs in the period that he describes.

favourite books

my websites