Fiction can salvage astonishing stories of people left out of historical accounts and bring these forgotten figures to life. The past is full of scoundrels and ordinary heroes, and a novelist can find dramatic, vivid, and inspiring characters and events ready-made for fiction. In family lore, between the lines of textbooks and old newspapers, in the shadows of photographs, in letters and diaries, are plots and details that enrich our sense of the past. This workshop begins with an examination of the research behind two novels—Gilded Mountain, set in 1900s Colorado, and My Notorious Life, set in the1800s—both books inspired and informed by historical photographs, lost figures from the past, and enriched by old dictionaries like The Secret Language of Crime, Camp and Plant (about Western mining towns) and The American Thesaurus of Slang. It will include discussion of craft and research techniques, and how to transform just-the-facts history into drama and fiction.