Monica Hesse is a columnist with The Washington Post and the author of several novels. Before writing Girl in the Blue Coat, Hesse wrote two science-fiction novels.

In this Author Q&A with The Washington Independent Review of Books, Hesse explains how her experience as a journalist prepared her well to make the jump from science fiction to historical fiction. She says that:

“It’s a big leap, but it’s also a total un-leap. I’m a journalist by trade, so research is my comfort zone. It was reassuring to work on a book where, when I wasn’t sure what should happen to my fictional characters, I got to go and find out what did happen in real life. And when I thought, ‘Well, this chapter would be much easier to resolve if I knew whether color film existed in World War II Europe,’ it felt natural to put on my reporter costume and call around until I could find an obscure vintage film expert who could say, ‘But, of course. You want Kodachrome or Agfacolor, or maybe Agfachrome, but first let’s have a detailed conversation about the specific dates of your book’s events and who your characters are, because that would impact which camera film they’ve [stet] be most likely to get.