No more blank page

After months of pandemic, a three-week holiday, a 14-day period of self-isolation and now a Bank Holiday weekend, I have finally managed to concentrate for long enough to write what may turn out to be the first scene of “Plank 7”.  No promises and all that, but I’m pleased to have at last written something.  As this comes right at the beginning, I am trying to introduce the characters: there might be readers who come to this book without having read any of the previous ones, so I have to explain who everyone is and what they do.  It’s far from perfect, I know, but it’s an almighty relief to be off the starting blocks. (Apologies for the lack of formatting: WordPress has changed its editor and I can’t work out how to do anything at all!)

July 1829

There are some men who pursue change: as soon as they master a skill or see a spectacle, they are keen to move on to the next.  And there are those of us who treasure the familiar.  It’s not that I wish to return to the past –far from it, as anyone who has escaped the fish-stinking alleys of Wapping will agree.  And I am certainly not against improving myself; I read as widely as I can, and keep my ears open when I am with men who can teach me.  But I do not seek novelty for its own sake – a steadfastness for which my wife Martha might be a little more grateful.  Sometimes, however, the world thrusts change upon all of us, and we must make our peace with it.  Next year – God willing – I shall mark my half-century.  And since I was sixteen I have been a constable.  I once told Martha that I wanted to be buried in my uniform, which she said was in poor taste.  With Mr Peel’s innovations, I may no longer have the right.

William Wilson glanced at me as we paused to cross Oxford Street.

“Are you unwell, sir?” he asked.

“Unwell?” I repeated.

“You sighed,” he explained.

“Perhaps at the prospect of being asked ridiculous questions,” I said, and immediately regretted my bad temper.  Ever since Wilson had told me that he had decided to join the Metropolitan Police at the first opportunity I had been short with him – even though I had been the one encouraging him to think to his future and throw in his lot with the new force.  As Martha had observed after seeing me snap at the poor lad, just because the head wants something, it does not mean that the heart has to like it.

There was a small gap between the carts heading eastwards and we stepped into the road.  There was less traffic going west but we still had to wait for a neat little carriage to bowl past us, the coachman calling out a halloo of warning.  The shade cast by the shuttered theatre in Blenheim Street came as a relief; although it was not yet nine o’clock, the day was warm.

“Forgive me,” I said.  “I am out of sorts.  The heat does not agree with me – I have not been sleeping.”  Wilson said nothing but nodded tightly.  He would be quiet for perhaps ten minutes, I knew, but there has never been anyone less capable of bearing a grudge or staying angry.  “And how is young master George sleeping these days?” I asked.

Wilson’s face broke into a smile as he thought of his baby son.  “We’ve given up on clothes,” he said.  “When he’s asleep, he looks like one of those fat little angels you see in church.”

“Cherubs,” I said as we climbed the steps of the Great Marlborough Street police office.

“Less angelic when he’s awake,” continued Wilson.  “His favourite game now is giving and taking, which he can play for hours – handing something back and forth.  Me, I’m not so keen on it – everything he gives you comes with a generous coating of spit.”

“Talking about one of our visitors, are you, sir?” asked Tom Neale.  Our office-keeper was making an annotation in his ledger; I’ll wager that the records kept at the Old Bailey are less thorough than those in that ledger.

“Constable Wilson was regaling me with the perils of fatherhood,” I said.

“And how is Mrs Wilson’s latest project coming along?” asked Tom.  “Is she still troubled by the vomiting?  I remember Mrs Neale suffering terribly.”

“My mother tells me it should reduce,” confided Wilson, “now that we are past the early months.”

Tom nodded sagely.

“When you have quite finished with your discussions, gentlemen,” I said, leaning over the counter and tapping a forefinger on the ledger, “I wonder whether there is some work to be done.”

And the winners are…

Thanks to everyone who took part in the competition to win a free download code for the new audiobook of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”, the second Sam Plank novel.  (The audiobook of the first, “Fatal Forgery”, was released last year, and work will soon start on number three, “Worm in the Blossom”.)

The answer to the question Which world-famous department store is now located on Great Marlborough Street in London, opposite where Sam Plank was based at his magistrates’ court police office in the 1820s? is Liberty.  Of course it was not there in Sam’s day – it did not open until 1875 – but if you toddle along to that part of London you can still see a small part of Sam’s place of work.  The Courthouse Hotel is now on the same spot as Great Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court, and one of the hotel’s restaurants is in the old court-room.

Sorry: always thinking about Sam!  Back to the competition.  And the winners are:

• Graham Thomas
• Leigh Moss
• Susan V
• Edward Murphy
• Peggy Denk

Your emails with Audible instructions and your personal download codes are on their way to you – many congratulations.  And if any of you feels moved to leave a review…  Well, you have to ask: regular readers (and fellow self-published authors) will know that reviews matter enormously, for morale, guidance for improvement, and seduction of new readers, and for Amazon ranking purposes.

Mulling on maps

Several of you have asked – quite rightly – what has happened to the maps I was so excited about.  As you may remember, I like the idea of you being to follow in Sam’s (well-polished booted) footsteps around London, in an exercise I call “walking the Plank”.  I found a wonderful cartographer right here in Cambridge, and he has been doing sterling work reading the books and plotting the key locations for each on a large map he has drawn – about two square metres in size.  I showed you our progress here.

Since then, the publication of “Portraits of Pretence” rather overtook me, but now I am becoming mappish once again.  I am going to contact my map man anew, and need to give him definitive instructions about the end product that I would like from him.  And I have had an idea, but I would like your thoughts on this.

Sam, being an energetic fellow, covers quite a bit of ground, and London – even in the 1820s – was a big place.  In short, the map needs to be quite big to encompass Sam’s movements.  And for a map to appear in the book, it must fit – legibly – on a paperback double-page spread, which is not very big.  So my idea is to product two versions of each map: a cut-down one of the most important highlights to appear in the book, and then a more detailed one (that you could actually download, print and then use as a tour guide) to be offered as a PDF on this website.  Of course the situation is further complicated by the fact that there is a different map for each book.  In practical terms, we – the map man and I – have created a base map showing repeated Plank locations (Great Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court, Sam and Martha’s house, Newgate, etc.).  On this we then overlay the specific locations for each book.  So we face the prospect of needing fourteen maps in total – seven books, each with an in-book version and a downloadable PDF.  This is obviously quite a job of work, and I need to make sure that it’s the right way to go before breaking the happy news to the map man.  So what do you think?

Baiting the hook again

The official publication date for “Portraits of Pretence” is nearly upon us, and in my idle moments I have started my advance promotional push.  This is not nearly as grand or as organised as it sounds, as I am only one little person (moreover with a full-time job), but I do my best.

I have written before about my love of exploiting the “hooks” in a book – although, to be honest, this has not worked terribly well for earlier books, so I am really carrying on with it because I enjoy it rather than because it brings great rewards.  This time round, some of the action in “Portraits of Pretence” takes place in the vaults beneath the Pennington Street warehouse – a building that still stands in Wapping in London.  It is shortly to be turned into fancy apartments and artists’ studios, and so I have contacted the developers and a chap who took some lovely photos of the place to see if they would like to read the book.  I am also trying – unsuccessfully as always – to contact the most elusive man in London: the general manager of the Courthouse Hotel, which now occupies the building that was once Sam’s place of work, the Great Marlborough Street magistrates’ court.  I email and leave phone messages for this chap after every book comes out, and I have yet to speak to him – but maybe it will be four times a charm.