Author Stephen Harding, who has military experience and specialized in writing about military affairs as a journalist, has published more than a handful of books, two of which reached the New York Times best-seller list. His newest book, Dawn of Infamy: A Sunken Ship, a Vanished Crew, and the Final Mystery of Pearl Harbor, was published this September. We caught up with Harding prior to his talk at One More Page Books on Nov. 30 to find out about his writing process.
How do you find the topics you write about and determine what is book-worthy?
I’ve been a journalist and historian for all of my professional life. I started out covering military conflicts; I’ve done time in Bosnia and various other places. But I prefer to find topics we don’t know a lot about. A book of mine that hit the New York Times best-selling list, for example, is about the only time in World War II when American forces and German forces joined together and fought together to defend a castle in Austria. Once I found this little-known story, for me to be able to get into it and write about it, I have to be fairly certain I will find the sources it will take, which means national archives or whoever the official record-holder is. And it is always a plus if there are people around who participated or the children of the people who did; a first and second person can add a lot to a narrative. I also try to approach each of my books or articles as a storyteller. It’s all well and good to shine a light on interesting parts of history, but if you don’t do it in an interesting and engaging way, nobody will read it.
When writing your books, how do you bring these past characters to life?
Part of it is just knowing as much as possible to know about people I’ve never met and who, in a lot of cases, died before I was born. Most writers of history have never personally interacted with the people they’re writing about. It takes a lot of information to be able to form a picture of that person that you can then translate for other people. It’s about finding all the information, not just official records, but letters and reminiscences of old family friends or relatives that really shape and complete a picture as much as possible of the person you’re trying to write about. Secondarily, once you know that person as much as you’re going to be able to, you have to understand to the best of your ability the situation in which they found themselves.
For example, in my novel Dawn of Infamy, the crewmen that I write about were never seen again. All the records of the ship went down with them, so it’s a question of going back and finding as much as possible with the records left and writing about these people. Part of it is curiosity and being able to root out the information that you need to tell the story. Times change, decades go by and generations go by, but a lot of human experiences translate though time. Especially when writing about Tony Marchione, I was able to bring part of my experiences into the telling of that story. Military service has certain similarities throughout time and space.
What are you working on next?
I’m in the early stages of trying to decide between three different projects. I’m going to be in Hawaii soon, and the 75th anniversary of Pearl Harbor is coming up, so I’m going to be there to do some research on one of the projects I’m considering.
