Guest Post from Natalie Bayley, Author of Bone Rites

I'm pleased to be part of an October blog tour for Bone Rites, Natalie Bayley's historical fiction novel.

My participation is twofold: hosting a guest post today and providing a review closer to publication day.

Bone Rites is described as a dark, literary tale of love, loss and one woman’s obsessive fight for justice and redemption within a ruthless world and will be released on October 31st, 2023.

Natalie has written the following about some of the weird and wonderful facts she has uncovered while researching. Like me, I'm sure you will find it interesting. Thank you, Natalie.

Facts are Stranger than Historical Fiction

My latest novel, Bone Rites, is set in the first two decades of the twentieth century. I’ve always been drawn to the Edwardian era – there’s something about that time that fascinates me. I think it’s because it was a period of intense change: incredible social and technological revolutions, the horror of the first mechanised war, the huge death toll from the Spanish flu pandemic. I love writing historical fiction, but that decision comes with a price – research is VITAL. Even though Bone Rites is set just one hundred years ago, so many things have changed since then: clothes, beliefs, food, cars, wages, houses, ideas, jobs…Luckily, I love researching. I can quite happily spend months investigating the facts that will shape a new story. My reward, apart from having an accurate novel, is a vast database full of the most bizarre facts. I’ll share some with you now.

Bloody Murder

Having written half a dozen murder mysteries, I now know a lot about how to kill people. Poison was the Edwardian’s weapon of choice, so Agatha Christie’s job in the hospital dispensary was a gift for her writing! But murder is relatively easy – disposing of the body is the hard part. I’m lucky enough to have a neighbour who is a homicide detective and she talks about her horrific cases as casually as if I was one her team. According to her, the police are always finding people (or bits of people) that haven’t been disposed of correctly. Stray arms and feet washing up on the beach will always give a murderer away. I often discuss corpse disposal with my best writing friend, the award-winning French screenwriter, Nicolas Mercier. We love discussing how long a body takes to decompose in fine, dry sandy soil compared to heavy damp clay, or the role of insecticide in confusing pathology reports on human remains. (Significant!) We love to debate the relative merits of disposing of a body using: burial, acid, fire, or feeding the remains to pigs. I would not be at all surprised if we’re both listed by ASIS/CIA/MI6/INTERPOL as persons of interest.

Body Parts and Bones

I’ve had to learn how murderers in different eras might choose to dispose of incriminating remains, but I already knew the relative weights of various body parts. I once worked as theatres’ receptionist in a busy London hospital. It was my job to send amputated body parts to the pathology lab via the hospital porters. Try that after a big weekend! I saw all kinds of strange things, but my most vivid memory was being asked to carry a fully amputated leg. Here’s a fact: legs are REALLY HEAVY. (Most adults have heads that are heavier than their arms, but nowhere near as heavy as one of their legs.) My job rarely involved going into the theatres, so when I wrote surgical scenes for the novel I had to learn what my character would do to her patient/victim. So, I watched dozens of videos and read several books on surgical procedures. I don’t recommend doing this with a hangover or a full stomach, but if you are going to write it you have to get it right. You may never WANT to extract a floating rib from a living body, but I like to think if you had to, reading my book won’t give you the wrong idea of how to go about it. (please don’t try this at home, kids) I’m also full of interesting facts about bones. Bone Rites, is about a woman who creates a skeleton made of bones from various people and I initially called the novel, Two Hundred and Six Bones. I thought this was an excellent title until a friend who is a nurse told me that teaching skeletons only have around 180 bones because there are lots of tiny ones in our hands, feet and ears that are too fiddly to include. Whoops!

So, next time you read a historical fiction novel, spare a thought for the author who will have researched everything from soup spoons to surgical saws to ensure their fiction blends seamlessly with the facts.

Meet the Author

Natalie is a debut historical fiction novelist, based in Sydney. Her book, BONE RITES, won the UK Virginia Prize for Literary Fiction and is being published by UK indie publisher, Aurora Metro Books, in October this year.

Connect with Natalie:

Goodreads : Booktok : Instagram : Twitter/X : Facebook : Website : Amazon Author Page


Where to Purchase

Booktopia Book Sales:
https://wwwbooktopia.com.au/bone-rites-natalie-bayley/book/9781912430871.html

Some Important Dates

Two book launch events in Sydney:

Newtown, Better Read Than Dead Bookshop Oct 19
https://www.betterreadevents.com/events/bone-rites-launch-with-natalie-bayley

Wylies Baths Halloween Party, Coogee, Thursday Oct 26
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/wylies-baths-spooky-halloween-party-tickets-705293129737