Let us talk of many things!

It’s all happening today!  First of all, the divine Helen Hollick has featured a little piece by me on her terrific historical fiction blog, Let Us Talk of Many Things.  She gave me free rein – rather brave – and I decided to write about how I explore Sam’s London.  And quite by chance I realised that it is an interesting blend of old and new, as my two most-consulted resources are a map from 1827, and the Transport for London online journey planner!

Secondly, I have taken delivery of my “Book of the Year 2017” promotional stickers.  For those of you interested in the financial side of things, I ordered them from Vistaprint, using – with her permission – the logo designed by Helen.  I chose circular, matte, easy-peel stickers to mimic those seen most often in bookshops, and 120 small stickers (3.6 cm in diameter) cost me £26.03 including delivery and VAT.  That’s nearly 22p per sticker and a wild extravagance, but I treated myself.  I have now put them on the copies of “Portraits of Pretence” that I have in stock, added them to the books in my local bookshops, and posted them to the more distant stockists in Ely and London.  I have also been keeping a beady eye on sales for a spike, given all this publicity, but it is so far proving elusive.

 

And thirdly, I will be launching the “Plank 5” title poll at the end of this week.  My creative team and I (that’s me and the husband) are looking at a long list of possibilities in order to narrow it down to the final five.  The big thesaurus is out – the one with its own special magnifying glass – so it’s serious stuff.  Voting will open on Friday.

Plank returns to Cheapside

Occasionally – and usually unexpectedly – you get days when everything seems to go right, and yesterday was one of those.  First I met my “map man”, and things are moving on, albeit in an unhurried fashion.  He has agreed that it would be best to have a small, simplified map for each book, noting the key locations for that story, and then a grand, more detailed London map for all of them, for conversion into a PDF which will be downloadable from this website.  I have left it to him to decide which to tackle first.

Second, I decided to pursue another bookshop that has been on my radar for some time and, to cut a long story short, Daunt Books in Cheapside has agreed to take eight books – two of each title – on a sale-or-return basis.  Long-time blog readers will remember that I did manage to winkle one copy of “Fatal Forgery” into the original Daunts in Marylebone, but nothing came of it.  To be fair, they did warn me that their stock was heavily travel biased.  Their Cheapside outpost, however, has more of a balance between travel and – crucially – fiction, and I have managed to persuade the manager that his City clientele will appreciate the financial crime angle.  (Plus, of course, Sam’s dear friend Edward Freame has his banking house on Cheapside, almost opposite Daunt Books.)  I’m doing my inaugural (I hope) delivery run next week.

And third, I had a belter of an afternoon plotting for “Plank 5”.  I have decided on two deaths already – one natural, one not – and on the main twist of the story.  To tantalise you, I have been reading about Wesleyan missionaries in Jamaica, and the history of Kew Gardens…

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?

Sam and the Map Man

Just because I am counting the days (thirty!) until the official arrival of “Portraits of Pretence”, don’t think that I have forgotten my other Plankish projects.  For a start, Guy the narrator has already embarked on the audiobook of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.  Sales of the first AudioSam are going well, and autumn is a relatively quiet time for Guy, so it made sense for him to use his down-time to crack on with AudioSam II.  We’re not rushing to get this one finished, as I figure that the publication of audiobooks in the gap between publication of new books will give everyone a nice fillip – so perhaps March or April 2017.

Secondly, I have just met with the Map Man and he has shown me the rough draft of Sam’s London.  Here it is, with the new book on it for scale:

And here is some detail – that’s the area around Great Marlborough Street:

So yes, rather large – and perhaps not practical at that scale for inclusion in paperback books.  So the next step is to decide on the extent of the map, and then for the Map Man to make a tidy version of it – he has the most beautiful penmanship, so the labels will look lovely.  He is also intending to include some little drawings of key sites – here are a couple of prisons, for example:

And thirdly, I have started to jot down some ideas for “Plank 5”.  I already know the key plot point, of course – I planned that for each of the seven books right back at the beginning.  Shall I tell you?  Hmmmm, OK then: inheritance gone wrong.  It’s been a few weeks now since I wrote anything new for Sam, and I’m starting to miss it.

Beta the devil you know

I’ll put you out of your misery right now: I have met my (self-imposed) deadline of sending the completed first draft of “Plank 4” to my lovely beta reader Roy.  The email went off at 14:21 today, and now there’s nothing more to be done on the text until I hear back from him – hope he’s feeling kind…  To celebrate this evening, I will watch some trashy telly – becoming easier, now that the Olympic cycling has finished and my husband’s fingers can be prised from the remote control – and then go to sleep without playing Plank over in my mind.

A few stats for you on that first draft.  There are 37 chapters (not keen on that number, but that’s the way the action worked out) and a glossary containing, between them, 65,688 words – so that’s the longest Plank novel to date.  And the scariest number of all: 64 days until publication.  Work is underway on the cover; I have decided on the background document and the foreground image, and the colour is up to (down to?) the designer.  And the title is down to (up to?) you, as you know.

But I will not be twiddling my thumbs until I hear from Roy and you lot have chosen my title for me, oh no.  The voice artiste has submitted the whole of “Fatal Forgery” for me to listen to – I didn’t dare do it while I was working on “Plank 4”, in case I muddled them up – which means that “Audio FF” might beat “Plank 4” to the publication post.  And I haven’t forgotten about maps to go with the books – “Walking the Plank” – but I am loath to pester the kind map man about them as he is such a nice chap and, well, we’ve waited since 1824, so what’s another few months?

Maps and monsoons

I know, I know – I’ve been very quiet recently.  But rest assured that I have not been neglecting Sam.  I went on holiday to Malta for a week and did take a complete break from him then; although Malta has a truly fascinating history of its own, I think it would be quite a stretch to shoe-horn Sam into it.  But when I got back it was full steam ahead, and I have three quick updates for you.

Firstly, this morning I met my “map man” who is preparing the maps for the books – “Walking the Plank” – and things are progressing well with that.  It’s quite an informal arrangement, and it feels impolite to push him for a deadline, so the current plan is to create two versions of each map: one to go into the books (from “Plank 4” onwards if we make it in time, or “Plank 5” if not), and one for download from this website.  So – eventually – there will be a map for each book, showing the key locations for the series (Sam’s house, Great Marlborough Street, Newgate, etc.) plus the specific locations for that story.

Secondly, nature took control yesterday: I went into the library to do an hour’s research for “Plank 4” and then the heavens opened.  It rained solidly for the next four hours, and I was stuck – so I ended up writing 1,256 words.  Every cloud, etc.

And thirdly, I have started thinking about titles for “Plank 4”.  As you know, I decide on a shortlist of five, and then you choose the one you like best.  I have thought of three – two of which I like a lot – and in idle moments I let my mind wander around more.  It’s always exciting to start considering the title, as it means that the end of the first draft is in sight – until that point, I have no idea what to call anything.

Prison perfection

Preparations for the Plank maps are proceeding apace.  I have marked up a handful of London maps – one for each book – for my “map man”, and he is going to start work on the base map that will be adapted each time.  He’s obsessed with architecture, I’m obsessed with Sam, and so together we’re really getting into what a French businessman I once knew called “the nitties and the gritties”.  And, as with almost every area of research you can imagine, I am having to be extremely careful.

Take, for instance, Newgate prison (or gaol, as it was more commonly called).  This is going to be on the base map, as Sam is always trotting along there to speak to a prisoner or to have a chinwag with the keeper, and the map man thinks he might draw a little picture of it.  Simple, you might think: just find an old drawing of it and there you go.  But no.  The original Newgate was part of the wall surrounding London, and was built in 1188 – it was a gatehouse with cells for housing ne’er-do-wells awaiting trial.  This original gatehouse was extended piecemeal – including by adding an extra tower for women prisoners – until it was pulled down and fully rebuilt in 1422.  It burnt down in 1666, during the Great Fire, and was rebuilt in 1672.  In 1770, work began on a new enlarged and modern prison with attached sessions house (courthouse), but during mob riots in 1780 it was badly damaged and so not actually finished until 1782.  In 1783, London’s main site of execution was moved from Tyburn (near modern-day Marble Arch) to Newgate Street, just outside the prison.  And in 1858, they divided up the interior of Newgate into individual cells – up to this point, only wealthy prisoners had any privacy.  Newgate was finally shut down in 1902 and demolished in 1904 – it is now the site of the Central Criminal Court, or Old Bailey.

As you can imagine, every incarnation of Newgate has been recorded in words and pictures.  And when Sam is describing it, or I am choosing a picture to serve as a model for the map, I have to be scrupulous about picking the right Newgate.  Now, don’t even get me started on the Marshalsea prison (two iterations) or the Fleet prison (four).

Putting Sam on the map

Some time ago I mentioned that I was hoping to include a map in what I was then calling “Plank 3”.  This became “Worm in the Blossom”, published in October 2015 with no map.  But I have news.  I live in Cambridge (east of England) and recently some maps appeared in the windows of local shops, highlighting some street art in our neighbourhood.  The maps were just wonderful: black and white, with clear lettering, and beautiful little drawings of local landmarks.  Perfect for Plank, I thought – but bound to have been done by some fancy-pants design studio in London.  However, after asking a few questions, I discovered that the artist lives about ten minutes’ walk from me, and what a lovely man he is.

Jon Harris is perhaps even more batty about Cambridge and about history than I am, and is blessed with the ideal skill for communicating his enjoyment: an ability to draw glorious maps.  I met him this weekend in a café in town and explained what I envisaged for Sam, and he got it immediately.  We bonded over a love of Ronald Searle’s drawings and – to cut to the chase – Jon has agreed to do Sam’s map for me.  Or rather, Sam’s maps.

We decided, after I had explained the concept of the series of seven books, that what we need is eight maps: one “base map” showing the four or five key Sam locations (his house, the Great Marlborough Street police office, Newgate and so on) and then a version of this for each individual book, showing the base key locations plus the places that feature in that particular book.  So for “Fatal Forgery”, for instance, we would add Fauntleroy’s bank and the Coldbath Fields house of correction, for “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” Freame’s bank would appear, and so on.

As for how to distribute these maps, this is still a little uncertain, but what I am thinking is this.  For the books that are already published – “Fatal Forgery”, “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” and “Worm in the Blossom” – we will prepare the relevant maps and then have them available as a free PDF downloads from this website.  I will also put a note in the front of each book to that effect, so anyone who buys the books from that point onwards will know where to find the maps.  I don’t want to actually add maps to these books as it’s a bit of a swizz for people who have already bought them.  But for new books – “Plank 4” onwards – I will put a map in the paperback book itself and offer the free PDF download as well.  The map in the book might have to be slightly abbreviated, given the limited space available on a paperback page, but the PDF one will be the full monty.  E-books, I suspect, will not have maps – apparently diagrams are the very devil to get into e-books and I don’t fancy wrestling with it for days.  So e-book buyers – past and future – will be directed to the PDF downloads.  I think.  We’ll have to see about the technical stuff as we go along.

But for those of you who said you’d like to have a map so that you can trace Sam’s footsteps, just a little more patience: it’s on its way!

Walking the Plank

Several readers – particularly those less familiar with London – have said that they would welcome a map of the key locations in the Plank books.  Sam is quite a walker and covers a lot of ground, but his home turf is Piccadilly; it’s worth remembering that in his time (1820s), the “West End” was all under development – it was the fancy new part of town.

I’ve now checked, and it seems that I can indeed include diagrams in my interior template for “Plank 3”.  Photos and anything coloured or particularly detailed would be tricky, but a black-and-white line drawing, like a map, is perfectly possible.  I now foresee only two problems.  One, London is huge and contains a gazillion streets and roads and lanes and alleys – even in Sam’s time.  So any “map” I include would have to be selective and show only relevant highlights.  And two, I have the artistic capabilities of an arthritic spider.  So I will need to rope in someone with good spatial awareness, neat penmanship and a precise mind – luckily, I am married to just such a person.  All of this means that this little project – the “Walking the Plank” schematic map – has miraculously leapt off my desk and onto that of my husband.  It may still prove unwieldy, but he’ll give it a go.  He’s already talking about royalties…

Mapping Plank’s progress

I will admit that things have been rather sluggish recently.  I have had a busy time at work (the paid, day job) and I’m heading towards a holiday, so Sam has been on my mind but no so much on paper.  That said, I have managed to write nearly two thousand words (so far…) this weekend, in between chores, so am pleased with that progress.

One thing I spent quite a bit of time on was consulting my map.  I mentioned in an earlier post that I am heavily indebted to Greenwood’s 1827 map of London, but for ease of paper reference I have turned to an unusual source: the Transport for London cycling map of central London.  It is a lovely colourful folding map of the area I need, and because it is intended for cyclists on the hoof/wheel, it is wonderfully clear.  I have taken my coloured pens and marked on it all the key Plank locations – Great Marlborough Street magistrates’ court, Newgate prison, the Fleet, Sam’s house and so on – and then use pencil crosses for the more one-off places of interest.  If I then need Sam to hare, say, from home to Newgate, or from the Fleet to a suspect’s house, I can get a good overview of the route he would have taken.  Before mentioning any street names, I then cross-reference with Greenwood’s.  This is essential, as even the most seemingly established London place names might not be all that old.  Ludgate Circus, for instance, was actually called Farringdon-circus until relatively recently – and that’s certainly the name that Sam would have used for this busy junction.

Now that I know that my summer retreat-at-home is happening, I have decided that I will spend one of my precious days down in London, armed with my marked-up map, re-walking some of the main routes taken by Sam, just to add some little descriptive details – and to check that I am not making the poor man walk his boots off.

And for those of you who have requested it, please rest assured that I am considering the idea of including a map in the next book so that you can “walk the Plank” along with Sam.  (My husband is a neat little draughtsman and may be roped in on map-drawing duties with bribes of chocolate biscuits.)  The only thing that might stand in our way is whether I can include diagrams – rather than just text – in the interior template that I use for my books.  I will check it out and let you know.