Plodding along

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1825, Cambridge, Gregory 1, Gregory Hardiman, Regency, research, writing

Goodness, I had forgotten quite how slow it is writing the first book in a series.  To be fair, I didn’t realise at the time that “Fatal Forgery” was the first in that series – I thought it was a standalone book until Sam caught hold of me and wouldn’t let go – but I certainly noticed that I speeded up the writing through the series.  I thought maybe it was just me becoming a really good writer (hah!) but it turns out that the magic ingredient was familiarity: familiarity with my characters, and familiarity with the location.  And as I embark on “Gregory 1”, both of those are missing.

Yes, I have been canny enough to stick with a familiar timeframe: “Gregory 1” is set in 1825, which is the same year as for “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.  But I’m already finding that 1825 in modern, exciting, capital city London is not the same as 1825 in staid, academic, market town Cambridge.

And as for the other things that are slowing me down, it’s the usual stumbling blocks for the writer of historical fiction.  You start out with a simple sentence: He turned left into Sidney Street and headed for the market to buy fish for his meal.  Now, was it “Sidney Street”, or should I go with the nineteenth-century alternative of “Sidney-street”?  And I’m writing about a Tuesday – was the market in Cambridge on Tuesdays?  And were the fish sellers there every market day?  And were they actually in the main market, or near the “beast market” around the corner?  Perhaps he can do without a meal today!  I’m not complaining – well, not much – but it’s been a bit of a shock to go from days when I could quite happily pour out two or three thousand words, to feeling exhausted after only five hundred.  But at least this time, as I know already that it’s a series, I can comfort myself that time spent now on learning the details will be a good investment for future books.  Now, back to that fish: will Gregory choose Colchester oysters, salmon or herrings? Or even a tasty eel…

Don’t mute the messenger

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communication, Gregory Hardiman, marketing, newsletter, research, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, Susan Grossey, website, writing

I appreciate that this may have passed you by – mainly because it’s all still in my head rather than actually happening – but now that I am giving being a professional author a go, I am revamping my communications with readers.  I have a very minimal Facebook and Twitter presence for Sam Plank (nothing yet for Gregory Hardiman), and then I have this blog and my monthly research updates.  And there’s my website for me as an author, which covers my fiction and non-fiction writing.  My husband has kindly volunteered (that’s not a euphemism – he genuinely did) to update my website, which is looking a bit tired; like everything, websites have their fashions, and my rather static, page-driven one is now the website equivalent of the Ford Granada.  So I’ll leave that to him, and weigh in with praise/complaints/biscuits as required.  But my job now is to think about my more proactive engagement with readers.

This blog has always been ad hoc – in other words, I make a post when I feel I have something to say.  But again, this seems to be a bit passé: looking at the output of other, much more successful authors, the trend these days is for regular newsletters sent to subscribers.  Some of you will already receive my monthly research updates, and I am wondering whether to unite the two – in other words, to send out a monthly newsletter that contains some background research information as well as other updates on (for instance) how my current book is going and who has agreed to play Sam in the Sunday evening drama commissioned by the BBC (well, an author can dream…).  So the blog would cease, and only newsletter subscribers would hear actively from me.  (Signing up to the newsletter would of course be free.)

And so I wondered whether you had any views on the subject.  To make life simpler I have put together a few questions – but you are more than welcome to go off piste and ignore them completeley.  Here goes:

1. Would you be interested in receiving a monthly newsletter from me, which would focus on my historical crime writing (i.e. both the completed Sam series and the new Gregory series, and whatever comes after that)?
2. Looking at possible content, are you interested in:
   • The research that I do behind the writing – my current monthly update has only 46 people signed up, so perhaps it’s not as popular as I think
   • My progress on my current book
   • The writing process
   • The self-publishing process
   • Me as an individual and not just as an author – some writers share their holiday photos and pet photos, for instance
   • Anything else?
3. It is likely that I will work out how to sell my own books – in e-formats only – via my new website.  Would you prefer to buy this way (for about the same price as on Amazon, but with a larger percentage of the sale price going to me)?  And would the promise of special subscriber discounts interest you?

I think that will do for now.  As you can see, what I am trying to do is gauge whether this is the right approach, and – if it is – what would tempt you to become a newsletter subscriber.  Thank you so much for any thoughts.

But is it bright enough?

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Bob Marrion, cover, Design for Writers, Fatal Forgery, Notes of Change, publication, research, Samuel Plank, self-publishing

But is it bright enough?

One of the many joys of being a self-published author is the complete control I have over how my books look.  And one of the many curses of being me is that I have no visual artistic talent at all.  Thankfully I am smart enough to find people who have this talent, such as the marvellous Andrew at Design for Writers.  He has done all my covers – fiction and non-fiction – and, to quote the immortal Hot Chocolate, everyone’s a winner, baby, and that’s no lie.  In particular, he has done sterling work in turning what we both thought was a one-off cover for “Fatal Forgery” into a powerful visual brand for the Sam Plank series.  Each Sam Plank cover has a central line-drawn figure against a blurred document, and its own, bespoke font.  And so it is with – drumroll, please – the seventh and final Sam Plank cover, for “Notes of Change”:

Choosing the colour was tricky: earlier books in the series had already nabbed blue, yellow, red, green, purple and grey, and the Regency/Georgian colour palette is all about strong colours, so the pastels are out.  I did some fun research on various decorating websites, particularly for companies specialising in heritage and period properties and restoration, and the strong orange/ochre/cinnamon palette seemed promising.  And look what Andrew has done – who could possibly not spot that cover on a shelf!

As for the image, that was quite a saga, but with a happy ending.  I wanted an image of a Metropolitan Police officer, but right from the beginning of the “new police” rather than later in their life.  There are dozens of drawings and paintings of Met Police officers in the Victorian era, but finding one from the start, with the right facial hair…  And I finally came across this one, drawn by a fellow called Bob Marrion.  A police officer himself, he illustrated dozens of books on military history – uniforms were his thing – and one slim volume on called “‘C’ or St. James’s: A History of Policing in the West End of London 1829 to 1984”.  Sadly Bob has died, but his estate has given permission for the use of his gorgeous drawing – all Andrew had to do was cunningly remove the duty band that the officer was wearing.  (Duty bands weren’t introduced until 1830 while “Notes of Change” takes place in 1829, and you know what a stickler I am for historical detail.)

So now it’s all hands on deck for actual publication (officially Friday 29 April) – let the uploading begin!

Always questing

Tags

cover, Holborn, Martha Plank, Metropolitan Police, research, Samuel Plank, The Notes of Change

One of the great joys of being an author of historical fiction is that I can spend a whole day on research – running off down all sorts of rabbit-holes – and still claim to be “writing”.  Today I have had two quests, both of which remain unfulfilled, but then that’s part of the fun: if it was easy to find this stuff, everyone would do it.

Quest 1: where was the station house (i.e. home base) for Division E of the Metropolitan Police when they were first created in 1829?  Division E operates in Holborn, and candidates for their station house location are Bow Street (although this was initially the home of Division F), Hunter Street (but apparently not until later in the century), Hatton Garden (but this was actually a magistrates’ court – did they bunk up together?) and George Street (although I can find only one mention of any police presence there).  I have been on police history forums and emailed all sorts of people – and this is just so that Sam can make a passing comment to Martha. He may have to think of something else to say.

Quest 2: a cover illustration for “The Notes of Change” (the novel formerly known as “Plank 7”).  I have found the perfect image – but the man who drew it has died, and the man who published the book in which it appeared as died, and I’m struggling to find anyone who has the authority to grant permission to use the picture.  But I’ll have to persist, as can you imagine the outrage – the scandal, darlings – should I be charged with a copyright offence concerning the cover of a novel about law and order?

Founts of wisdom

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Gregory Hardiman, Plank 7, research, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, Susan Grossey

I spend a great deal of time on research – no, don’t feel sorry for me because I simply love it.  But sometimes even the most diligent research leaves holes in the information, and when that happens, you can be sure that someone – a real-life person – will know the answer.  And for me, one of the joys of writing has been to discover how enormously helpful experts are with their information.

Last week I mentioned to someone that I am planning a series of books whose narrator will have a military background in the Peninsular Wars, but that with no military service in my family (my grandad worked in an aircraft factory but that’s it), I am something of a novice and find it rather confusing.  Ah, he said, I did an MA on the history of the cavalry and can probably help with that – would you permit (permit!) me to take the skeleton character details and create for you a credible military history and timeline for your character?  Would I ever!  And then yesterday I contacted a man who has just published a book on the two men who were the first Commissioners of the Met Police, to ask if he had any details about the swearing-in ceremony for the first cohort of officers, and he has responded with all sorts of juicy specifics (it involved parchment).

I already try to pay it forward by sharing my own research in my monthly “behind the scenes” updates, but I shall have to up my game and make sure that I am always as generous with my own research as other people have been with theirs.

Picture this

Tags

National Portrait Gallery, Plank 7, plotting, research, writing

Here I am, indulging in my weekly writing immersion.  I’m afraid my own plan of writing for thirty minutes a day came to nothing: I just can’t get into the right frame of mind at the start of the working day, with so many things to attend to.  So it’s back to the old pattern of thinking about Sam all week and then spending one day at the weekend in his company (whichever day the weather is worse, as we like a day out on the tandem as well).

And today I have a little tip for those of you writing historical fiction, particularly set in Europe (and perhaps America).  When I am describing a new character, I like to be able to visualise them.  And of course I need to make reference to what they are wearing – breeches or trousers, greatcoat or cutaway, bonnet or hat.  If you do searches on, for instance, “London men fashion 1828”, the results are plentiful – but they are all “fashion plates”, showing the very height of fashion.  It’s a bit like someone assuming that we in 2021 all dress like the models in recent issues of “Harper’s Bazaar” and “Vogue” magazines.  It’s hard to find pictures of real people in everyday outfits.  But what I do now is go to the website of the National Portrait Gallery and, in the search box, put the year I am looking for.  The results will be paintings, sketches and sculptures “issued” in that year, and although many of them will show people dressed in their finest (or wearing togas), there will be many others that show people in much more workaday outfits.  And it’s perfect for seeing hairstyles and whiskers.  I am about to describe a fellow called George Young, who ran a horse bazaar in London in 1828, and there are no portraits specifically of him.  Instead, my George will be a combination of a Methodist minister called John Stephens and the chemist John Hope – they look the right age, with a healthy lack of concern with fashion.  Just make sure you click on the details of the sitter you’ve chosen, to guard against modelling your character on a well-known eccentric!

Like a pig in press

Tags

archive, Cambridge, Gregory 1, library, Metropolitan Police, newspaper, Plank 7, research, Samuel Plank

I am having just the most fun.  For some unknown reason (I guess I once showed an interest in the website) I have had an email from a newspaper archive service offering me a free three-day weekend pass to their records.  Three days of snooping around in old newspapers, especially given that I am library-starved during lockdown – yes please!  In short, you can put in any search term and time frame and the service rootles through its “20,200+ newspapers from the 1700s–2000s”.  It’s not comprehensive – sadly, there’s no sign of the “Cambridge Chronicle” that was published on Fridays in the 1820s and would have been useful for my new Cambridge-set series – but there’s certainly enough to keep me going.

I have written a long list of search terms, trying to think of anything that might be useful for “Plank 7” or the Cambridge series, while hoping that I don’t stumble across anything that contradicts something I have written in an earlier Sam book.  I have been clipping and saving like a demon, and have devised a new file-naming convention so that I can see at a glance which topic it covers (Crockford’s gambling club, Met Police, counterfeiting, university constables, etc.).  This has made me realise that the articles I had sourced before, in the good old days when I could go into a real-life archive, are named rather chaotically, so I need to go back through those and rename and reorganise them.  Don’t feel sorry for me for one single second: I’m in seventh heaven when I’m researching and organising.

I have also taken the opportunity to search for my own surname in the press; it’s unusual enough to accumulate only 393 matches between 1802 and today (and some of those are mis-readings of the words “grassy” and “grocery”).  I was hoping for something glamorous or scandalous or wealthy, but sadly the high point of the family’s achievements seems to be a W E Grossey triumphing after “close and spirited competition” to win the Church of Ireland Young Men’s Society Elocution Competition in 1891.

Room for improvement

Tags

organisation, Plank 7, plotting, research, word count, writing

I know that I have been a sorry disappointment to you in recent months – very little blogging, and even less writing of the latest Sam Plank book, “Plank 7”.  The latest on that is that I have written seven chapters, with a total of about 13,000 words, and I am reasonably happy with one of my plot strands.  The main obstacle to writing is that I am, against the odds, working pretty much full time – I’m certainly not complaining, when so many are struggling to make a living, but it means that at the end of the day and then the week I have very little mental energy left for imaginative writing.

To remedy that, I am currently working my way through a book called “The Organised Writer: How to Stay on Top of All Your Projects and Never Miss a Deadline”, by Antony Johnston.  When my husband saw it arrive, he was surprised, as I am famed for my organisational skills/obsession.  (Surely everyone has a “Dish of the Day” list pinned on the fridge, showing what every meal for the coming week will be, so that we can alternate meat/fish/veggie, and potato/rice/pasta, and avoid food waste.  No?  Ah, just me then.)  And it’s true – I don’t need much help with record-keeping, plotting, invoicing and the rest.  But I do need to find a way to prioritise my writing, so that I don’t end up with perfectly filed paperwork and no energy left to write a single paragraph.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

The other aspect of life as a writer that has been exercising me recently is how wonderful it is to have an alternative world to which I can escape.  When I am sick to the back teeth of hearing about the US election and about corruption in the UK government, I can leave the modern world entirely and spend a happy hour or two reading and writing about the horse trade in London in the 1820s.  I pity those who are not readers or writers and are therefore stuck in the moment.  And as I read about Sam’s contemporaries, I do wonder whether ignorance was a sort of bliss: were people happier when they weren’t bombarded constantly with information about politicians and celebrities and sportsmen?  When they knew their family and their neighbours, and only occasionally did news about a world leader filter through – it was certainly a smaller life, but perhaps it was a happier one…

The perils of being pedantic

Tags

historical fiction, Plank 7, plotting, research, Samuel Plank, writing

I have always held that writing historical fiction suits me for three reasons:

• I’m a bit old-fashioned and rather like living in the past
• I don’t have a terrific imagination and am happier with a skeleton of known history on which I can hang my story, and
• I am addicted to research.

However, I do have one character trait which is both a blessing and a curse for the historical novelist: I am a paid-up, card-carrying pedant.  I can usually control my instinct to correct other people, but inside my own head, it’s picky central.  And pedantry is an extremely time-consuming activity.  Here’s today’s example.

I am trying to write a scene where Constable Sam Plank is inspecting a notebook written by a suspected criminal, in which the man uses annotations – an X, a question mark and an exclamation mark.  Just as I am writing this sentence, I hear my inner Queen of Picky: ah yes, but is that what they called those punctuation marks in the 1820s?  And it is remarkably difficult to find out.  And remarkably fascinating to try.  Two hours later I’m no further on with the scene, but I do know that:

• “question mark” is a modern name – Sam would have known it as a “mark/point of interrogation”
• “exclamation mark” is probably OK (although back in the 17th century it was a “note of admiration”)
• F Scott Fitzgerald loathed exclamation marks; Emily Dickinson loved them
• there is a small town in Canada called Saint-Louis-du-Ha! Ha!
• printers call the exclamation mark a screamer, a gasper, a slammer or a startler.

All fascinating – but that’s two hours gone and I’ve written two sentences.

In a related story, I listened recently to an interview with Antonia Fraser, the hugely respected historian.  She quite forcefully made the declaration that she is not an historical novelist, because her books contain no fiction.  She does not say that someone walked determinedly into a room, for instance, unless the historical record shows determined walking.  Perhaps I’m not being picky enough…

Back at last

Tags

Cambridge University Library, Metropolitan Police, Plank 7, research, Samuel Plank

Today I visited the Cambridge University Library – my spiritual home and happy place – for the first time since (I think) March.  It wasn’t the carefree immersion of old: I had to book my visit ahead of time and specify the maximum five books that I wanted them to leave on my allocated desk.  No wandering around the open stacks, no snooping around the special collections just to wallow in knowledge, no sniffing the air in the Rare Books Room.  But still, I was sitting in the vaulted Reading Room, with ten books at my elbow.  (Five book limit – pah!  Ask for something that comes in six volumes et voilà!)

I had planned to limit my research for “Plank 7” to the new things I intend to include – Crockford’s gambling club, and London’s sanitation system, for instance.  (Now you’re intrigued… And if you’d like to know more about that sanitation stuff, do sign up for my monthly research updates, as that’s my topic for the next one.)  But my perusing of the UL catalogue turned up a couple of publications on the history of policing that I had missed before and I couldn’t resist ordering them as well.  And I will admit that I opened them with trepidation.

As regular readers will know, I am a devil for historical accuracy.  It’s unfortunate, because I am both pedantic and unskilled as a historian.  But if it’s in my power to find it out, I will do so, and I will make sure that it is reflected accurately in the Sam books.  This means that I live in fear of discovering something new that makes my earlier writing inaccurate.  I don’t mind (much…) if my earlier writing has gaps in it, as I can fill those in as I go along, working them into plots of later books.  But if something is actually wrong – shudder!  Thankfully, today was a day for illumination rather than contradiction.  And my top three favourite facts I learned are:

• William Crockford – who owned London’s finest and most aspirational gambling club, which counted the (prudent and non-gambling) Duke of Wellington amongst its members – dressed like a poor country farmer and spoke with “rough cockney tones”
• The wine cellar below Crockford’s was 285 feet long, and contained 300,000 bottles valued at £70,000 in total [that’s about £4.8 million in today’s money]
• The new Metropolitan Police were given a recognisable uniform to wear partly to reassure the public that they were not government spies.