It's a strange state to be in. I'm broke, trying to build again. The historical almost becomes poetry. It's a very dodgy thing how you do that. I'm not quite sure how it works, if it does, in these books, but it has to be casual.
Research can be a big clunker.
It's difficult to know how you can make the historical light. Italo Calvino , in one of his Memos for the Next Millennium , has a great essay on lightness. Even though there's a lot of detail about forensics in this book, it's really just a thin layer. It suggests much more. In fact, you have to keep moving, you have to keep the story going.