Here is a question worth sitting with: what happens when the gatekeepers say no, and you decide the gate was never yours to need in the first place?
That is exactly where Nancy Blanton found herself after agents dismissed her 17th-century Irish historical novels without so much as reading the pages. Their advice? Write something else. Her response? Build something of her own.
Nancy is the author of five meticulously researched historical novels spanning the entirety of 1600s Ireland. Her most recent, The Noblest Share of Earth, is set on the Inishowen peninsula in County Donegal in the far north of Ireland — a fertile and contested stretch of land she brings to life through decades of research, six trips to Ireland, and a writer’s instinct for the story hiding inside the historical record.
“What often happens, and what I hope and pray for, is that I’ll see it in a journal I’m going through. Suddenly something will appear, and then I know — that’s it.”
In our conversation, Nancy walked me through her process: how she builds a timeline first, lets characters emerge from that frame, and uses detailed character profiles — complete with photographs sourced from the internet — to keep her cast vivid and consistent across hundreds of pages. She writes in multiple first-person voices, a structural choice that lets her place readers inside moments that no single narrator could witness.
She is rigorous about professional editing. She worked with History Quill in England for her latest book and credits her editor, Kelly Ergen, with the kind of clear-eyed feedback that gives a writer genuine confidence before publication.
Nancy is also the co-founder of Amelia Indie Authors on Amelia Island, a community she helped create for writers who don’t fit the narrow profile agents seem to be looking for right now. She distributes through IngramSpark and is wide, meaning her books are available beyond Amazon, a publishing decision worth knowing about if you are navigating those same choices.
Her best writing advice, distilled from years in the craft: just tell the story. Details can be refined later. The story has to come first.
She is currently deep in research for her sixth novel, which picks up with the Restoration period and King Charles II, and she found the story she was waiting for just two days before we recorded this conversation.
I think you will love this episode. Nancy is thoughtful, funny, and remarkably grounded about what it means to build a serious literary project entirely on your own terms.
Find Nancy’s books on Amazon: Nancy Blanton Author Page | Visit her at NancyBlanton.com
Listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube.
Until next week,
Jolene MacFadden
Host, Jolene’s Book & Writers Talk
Southern Dragon Publishing Services
