The good news is that my plan has gone, well, according to plan. I did my last bit of general, background, “I don’t know quite what I’ll need but this sounds interesting, and oh, that’s good too, I’d better read that just in case” research on Sunday. I tell you, those Victorian chroniclers were a gossipy lot – so much so that it sent me off down a rabbit-hole researching defamation law! Surely you can’t say that, I kept thinking, but apparently they did. Symbolically I have moved the towering pile of research tomes off my writing desk and onto the floor and will now rely on the notes I took in Scrivener (my research and writing program).
The really good news is that I have indeed started the actual writing. Well, to be fair, it’s only one paragraph – but it’s a whole paragraph! This means that I have settled on the outline plot for the first Gregory book. It’s set in 1825, because that’s the year of the Act for the better Preservation of the Peace and good Order in the Universities of England – which gave Oxford and Cambridge universities the powers to appoint constables. The Act was passed in July 1825, but my story is starting in February of that year – and that’s all I’m telling you. Except that valuable artworks, books and bottles of wine are disappearing from one of the colleges…
And the bad news is that no-one has bought a single one of my books – or even downloaded the free guide to the Sam series – since last Thursday. Here I am, slaving away, wearing my fingers to nubs writing whole paragraphs (well, one whole paragraph) and no-one cares. Harrumph.
Susan Grossey 