Sarah Penner likes to get out of the library when researching her immersive historical fiction books way, way out of the library.
The pen behind the 2021 bestseller The Lost Apothecary, The London Seance Society and the forthcoming The Amalfi Curse (out April 29) has gone mudlarking in London, attended a seance and explored shipwrecks all in the name of research.
“When they pick up a book, [readers] want that feeling of immersion, but they don’t necessarily want things they’ve already done, because then your depiction of it might sort of conflict with theirs,” the author told PEOPLE. “And so in some ways, it’s an opportunity to just introduce the reader via my words to that experience without them having to leave their couch.”
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‘The Amalfi Curse’ by Sarah Penner
Penner’s books are known for their realistic details, that step-back-in-history feeling that only comes from meticulous research. But the author, who started writing as a way to fulfill her creativity while working a desk job, prefers getting her hands dirty to looking at artifacts in museums.
“When you are out in the field on your own, nothing is behind glass and you get to curate what you think is interesting,” she explains. “I get to be the own curator of my own experience. And that’s part of what I’ve always really liked about this.”
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‘The Lost Apothecary’ by Sarah Penner
That doesn’t mean she hasn’t also found inspiration the more conventional way, including one very special book she discovered at The British Library while researching The Lost Apothecary. “There was this apothecary’s journal from the 1700s, and I remember seeing a portion of a thumbprint on one of these old pages. On another page, there was part of a paw print like someone’s cat walked over it,” she says. “And I just remember thinking, I am holding this log that is literally 300-400 years old. I might have been the last person to open it. And that’s just a really amazing connection with this person that I’ll never meet.”
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‘The London Seance Society’ by Sarah Penner
While some authors start with a character and build the story around them, Penners often begin with inspiration she gleans from her own travels. “For me, novels always start with a sense of place, so I’ll find myself in a location that really speaks to me,” she says. “I find myself curious about the history of the area, so I’ll start researching. But then my imagination starts ticking and saying, ‘Oh, I could see that happening here, that happening here.’ So I’m very inspired by a sense of place.”
And sometimes, going even deeper into those places helps her face her own fears along with the characters she’s creating along the way. In preparing for The Amalfi Curse, in which her protagonist is a nautical archaeologist who moves to the Italian village of Positano to investigate some mysterious shipwrecks along the Amalfi Coast, she and her husband spent a lot of time underwater themselves.
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Courtesy of Sarah Penner
Sarah Penner and her husband diving
“We got [scuba diving] certified about 10 years ago in Kansas of all places,” Penner says, with a laugh. “But we’ve been diving all over the world. We love the Florida Keys … We’ve gone diving in Thailand, Cozumel, all sorts of really fun places in Dominican Republic.” But she doesn’t discount the danger inherent in the sport. In fact, one scene in which her protagonist gets into trouble on a dive is based on what the self-described “nervous diver” admits scares her about the sport.
“I think part of writing that scene I was describing very closely like my own deepest fear,” she says. “Call it the deepest form of immersion therapy.”
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So where will Penner’s adventures take us next? No spoilers, but she’s unfurling her map for future possibilities.
Courtesy of Sarah Penner
On a private archive tour in Naples, Italy
“I would love to set a book in Edinburgh or Prague, but I’d also love to go kind of vastly different to maybe Antarctica, or the remote tundras in Alaska,” she muses. “I would love to go to South Africa and see some of the Saharan deserts. And then New Zealand and Australia. Those are on the bucket list as well, so it’ll be really interesting to see where my future stories end up taking me.”
The Amalfi Curse hits shelves on April 29 and is available to preorder now, wherever books are sold.
Read the original article on People
