It’s an ill wind

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author, editing, financial crime, plotting, research, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, Susan Grossey

On Sunday, my husband took part in a sponsored bike ride called the Prudential 100, which started at the Olympic Park, went through London and out to Surrey, and then back into London to finish on the Mall.  I went along to support (marital obligation…) and found myself with a bit of a gap in the middle.  As luck would have it, what with lots of roads in central London being closed for the event, and people being kept away in their droves thanks to Hurricane Bertha and her associated wind and rain, I was able to walk around various parts of central London in conditions that might have been familiar to Sam and Martha Plank – i.e. no motor vehicles, and not that many people.

I took the map which I had carefully marked with locations of key incidents from “Plank 2”, and had a wonderful time walking from one to the next, looking at whatever remained of the 1825 cityscape, and soaking up the atmosphere (and the rain – we’re talking tropical standards here).  I also learned a few new things about London to add savour to my descriptions – for instance, there are seagulls everywhere.  And I realised that in one scene I had described a particular window of a building as being on the first floor, but it is actually higher than that, so “Plank 2” should be even more accurate thanks to a bike ride and a hurricane.

They know whereof they speak

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author, Fatal Forgery, financial crime, fraud, Historical Novel Society, marketing, publicity, review, Samuel Plank, Susan Grossey

I got up early this morning, rather grumpy thanks to excess snoring by bed partners (husband and cat), and then opened my email to find just the loveliest review of “Fatal Forgery”!  I had submitted it to the Historical Novel Society back in April, and – to be perfectly honest – quite forgot about it.  I do keep a spreadsheet of my submissions, and check it from time to time, but what do you do anyway, if someone has said that they will review your book and then there’s a delay?  You can’t nag them, as they’re doing you a favour, and nagging might adversely influence the review, so you just have to wait and hope.  And the HNS has certainly come up trumps – you can read their very kind review here.  What a coup – the HNS is very well-regarded in the historical novel arena, is unusually welcoming to self-published authors, and has a clean, easy-to-navigate website, so fingers crossed that some of their readers will give “FF” a go on the strength of this review.

I am particularly pleased to see that the reviewer mentions the parallels between the Fauntleroy case and our modern banking scandals – this was very much in my mind as I wrote.  (And indeed, a different type of old/modern scandal has similarly influenced “Plank 2”.)  But when I was hawking “FF” around the agents and publishers, several of them opined that “no-one is interested in financial scandal these days”.  I was stunned – at the time, Fred the Shred and others were all over the media, and, given my line of work, people often ask me things like, “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen a bank employee do?”  (Karaoke is usually the answer.)  So it is very gratifying to know that others can see why Plank’s work, albeit set in the 1820s, is the genesis of investigation that is continued to this day – and that as long as we have money, we will have fraudsters and cheats and money launderers.

Local library event

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author, Fatal Forgery, library, marketing, police, publicity, research, Samuel Plank, Susan Grossey

Cambridge, as you can imagine, is rather generously endowed with libraries – every college has one, every department has at least one, then there are the cross-cutting ones like the University Library.  And then you can add to that total the large number of “public” libraries – including the very well-used (especially by me) Cambridge Central Library.  And the lovely people who are in charge of attracting even more people to the libraries, and therefore to reading, have organised an event for local authors.  You can read more about it here.

In short, six local authors – including me! – will be sitting in the entrance area of the library from 1000 to 1300 on what we hope will be a busy Saturday, showcasing our books, talking about them to anyone who’s interested, and hopefully selling a few copies.  I am very over-excited about it all, mainly because you cannot imagine how much I love talking about Sam Plank and historical financial crime and Regency London.  My poor husband is sick of the phrase, “I found out something really interesting today…” and is just glad that I will have another outlet for my enthusiasm.  It will also be great fun to meet other authors and find out about their writing and publishing techniques.

Of course, if you’re in Cambridge on that day, please do come by and say hello – it would be lovely to meet you.

Now the hard work really begins

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author, Fatal Forgery, financial crime, formatting, fraud, marketing, paperback, plotting, police, self-publishing, Susan Grossey, writing

I thought you might like to know that I have completed the first draft of “Plank 2” (still awaiting a more attractive title – please help me decide by casting your vote here).  The final full-stop went in at 12h14 (that’s how the Swiss write their times, and they certainly know a bit about accuracy) – hurrah!

So what happens next?  Well, I am going to do a very quick read-through, to make sure I haven’t accidentally left big gaps or unanswered questions (I changed the name of one of the characters, and I need to check that I’ve changed it everywhere).  Then when I get home at the weekend I am going to mark all the locations that feature in the book on a big map of London (thanks to TfL for the ideal London cycling map) to check that they are all where I think they should be.  After leaving the draft to stew for a fortnight, I shall do a proper re-read, making changes as I go.  And at the end of August, I will send out the second draft to those who have kindly offered/agreed to act as readers – and I will be asking them to look not so much for typos as for sense.  Can they follow the plot?  Do they like it?  Is it exciting?  Is there enough Martha?  (Most of the readers of “Fatal Forgery” said that they would like a sequel to give a bigger role to Martha, Sam’s wife.)

When their comments come back, I will sob/cheer/take it on the chin, and then incorporate them into the third draft.  I already have a fair idea of what I want the cover to look like, and have been chatting to my lovely cover designer about it, so once we have a title we’ll be good to go on that.  Then I need to format the book (paperback and e-versions), write the blurb, upload it to a gazillion sites, promote it – heavens, it seems that writing the thing is the easy bit!

In the mood

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financial crime, paperback, plotting, police, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, Susan Grossey, writing

One of my concerns when I was anticipating coming away for this writing retreat was that I might not be “in the mood” for writing, that I might sit up here in solitary splendour on the top of a mountain, and wait in vain for the muse.  But I have discovered something very useful.

When you set off for work every day, do you say to yourself, “Well, I’m not really in the mood for this teaching/accountancy/bus-driving/whatever today, so I don’t think I’ll bother”?  No, of course not – few people have that luxury.  And being on a writing retreat, it turns out, is like having writing as a job.  Every morning I wake up and get on with writing because that’s what I am here to do – my current job is to write the first draft of a novel, and it just has to be done, regardless of “mood”.

But when I am at home, fitting my writing in between my real life, I do ask myself whether I am actually in the mood – and if I’m not, I don’t start.  On reflection, I think this is a mistake.  From now on, when I put a writing day in my diary, that’s what it will be: my mood will be immaterial, because I won’t even ask myself about it.  I’ll just start writing – because if I can do it every day for a month, I can certainly do it for a single day, afternoon or even hour.

Time travel

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author, Fatal Forgery, financial crime, fraud, plotting, research, Samuel Plank, Susan Grossey, writing

I just love writing – and indeed reading – in the past.  For me, one of the main pleasures of reading is escape, and by delving into the past, you add a whole extra dimension to that escape – you can now experience a different character, situation and time.  Plus, writing a historical novel demands a certain level of discipline and (one of my favourite words – and a top, rather unglamorous skill of mine) organisation.  (Yes, I’d rather be able to sing like a nightingale or paint like Turner, but when skills were being doled out I got organisation and knitting, so I make the best of it.)

For writing about a different time is not just getting the details right – making sure that Plank has a fob watch (and a fairly basic one at that) rather than a wristwatch, and not describing a building that has yet to be built – but also about recognising that time itself was used differently in the past.  In the period I visit – late Regency, specifically 1825 in “Plank 2” – certain things happened more quickly than nowadays, while other things were slower.  Obviously travel was slower – and much rarer, in that most people never left the place where they were born, and indeed Sam and Martha do not “go on holiday” or “go to the country for the day”.  But you could get messages to people in your own town fairly quickly (using runners – this pre-dates the famous über-efficient Victorian postal system).  And justice moved swiftly: most people accused of a crime and pleading not guilty could expect their trial within a month, and those trials were short – the average murder trial took eleven minutes (yes, minutes).  I am sure I will make some booboos, but I do try to take each event and ask myself how long it would take in London in 1825 – not in Switzerland in 2014.

And I am still looking for more opinions on a possible title for “Plank 2”, as people seem to suggest that “Plank 2” is actually not terribly suitable.  I wrote a blog post about the current options a few days ago – please do vote.

Possessed by Plank

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author, editing, financial crime, fraud, paperback, plotting, police, research, Samuel Plank, Susan Grossey, writing

So here I am, halfway through my month-long retreat in the company of another man.  Did I ever tell you how I named my police constable?  To begin with, when I first started writing “Fatal Forgery” (which itself started life as “A Fraudster and a Gentleman”), he was called George Rayner.  I know: not good.  But in the 1780s, when he was born, people chose their children’s names from quite a limited selection – none of your Duwaynes and Will.i.ams back then.  And then one day I was reading through the records of the Old Bailey (utterly fascinating, and now all online – just a fabulous resource) when I came across a trial where one of the witnesses was a police constable called Sam Plank.  “That’s him!” I cried – my husband remembers me doing it.  And I just knew that Constable Samuel Plank was the man for me.

We’ve been through a lot together already, and now – hiding away together in Switzerland – we are getting to know each other even better.  He’s told me about his childhood, and today he revealed to me what made him become a police officer in the first place.  I won’t spoil the surprise for you, just in case you decide to read his next adventure, but it was very moving, and certainly explains a great deal about how he became the man he is.  And just to confirm your no doubt nagging suspicions that I have gone completely batty stuck up here alone at the top of a mountain, I genuinely had no idea about this anecdote until I sat down and wrote it: I didn’t plan it, and it just appeared.  He’s good company, Sam Plank.

A sense of entitlement

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Fatal Forgery, financial crime, paperback, plotting, Regency, Samuel Plank, Susan Grossey, writing

I have had four days off writing, while I visited some friends, and now I am back, refreshed of mind and raring to go.  While I was away, I couldn’t do any actual writing, but I did use some long train journeys to consider the subject of a title for the book.  It’s a very important part of the book’s appeal, of course, and – looking in particular at self-published books – there are some shockers out there.  I am trying to hit on something memorable, pithy, intriguing and clever – much like my good self, as my granddad would have said.

I have narrowed it down to a short-list – although something else could occur at any time – and thought I might run them past you for any initial reactions.  I can’t give away too much of the plot (not least because some of it has yet to be decided…) but in short it’s about Constable Samuel Plank and his interest in the development of financial crime, particularly fraud, in London in 1825.  So in the (current) running we have:

• A Fool and His Money
• In the Footsteps of Fools
• Swells and Speculators [“swell” is Regency slang for “wide boy” or conman]
• The Man in the Canary Waistcoat [a particular gang of London swells wore fancy yellow waistcoats]
• Canaries, Pigeons and Gulls [more Regency slang, for wide boys, targets and victims]

What do you think?  Please vote!  Whichever I go for, there will also be the subtitle “A Sam Plank mystery” – trying to build the brand, you see.

 

A laptop with a view

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author, financial crime, plotting, police, research, Samuel Plank, Susan Grossey, writing

I am always impressed with – and slightly envious of – those people who say that they can write anywhere.  You know the sort: “Yes, I do have four children and a full-time job as a heart surgeon, but I just used my twenty-minute tube journey to do the plotting and then wrote the chapters with my pad propped on the kitchen counter while I cooked dinner.”  I’ve never been able to do that.  Sure, I carry a notebook everywhere with me so that I can jot down thoughts and ideas as they occur, but when it comes to actual sentence construction, I need somewhere calm and quiet and comfortable.

At home, that’s my back bedroom, which we now call the study.  I have a little antique desk facing the window, overlooking our garden and the roofs of the houses nearby, and I write on a different computer and indeed operating system to the one I use for my day job: Windows for work, Apple for writing.  My husband suggested it, as a way to make sure that I couldn’t switch between the two without significant effort, and now it’s just the way I do it.

But away as I am “on retreat”, I thought you might like to see my current writing environment.  My computer is set up on the dining table, looking out of the French window and over the balcony:

And yes, I do sometimes move to the balcony table when it’s just too sunny and warm to stay indoors.

Every afternoon – unless it’s raining or we’re “in the cloud” (that’s nothing to do with wireless storage – this is a mountain resort, and often we are literally higher than the cloud cover) I walk up here to clear my mind:

And this is where I sit when I want to have Big Thoughts about plotting – waiting for divine inspiration, you might say:

Seeing inspiration everywhere

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fraud, paperback, plotting, self-publishing, Susan Grossey, writing

There were many benefits that I was expecting from a writing retreat.  For instance, I’m having a (very welcome and much appreciated) break from household responsibilities – staying alone in a small flat, I have very little to do by way of cleaning, food shopping, cooking or washing.  I am also isolated from distractions like Internet and phone (and shops), so all the energy that it normally takes to resist them (and often unsuccessfully) can now be channelled into writing.

But one benefit that I did not foresee – and it seems crazy now – is the stimulation that comes from being in a different environment while having the luxury of a mind free for creativity.  Although my novel is set in London in 1825, and I am staying in Switzerland in 2014, inspiration is everywhere.  The church down the road here chimes its bells on the quarter hour – a practice abandoned in many English churches – which reminds me that in Sam’s day, church bells were vitally important for telling the time, as very few people had watches.  And when I was food-shopping on my first day, I walked past an old-fashioned merry-go-round in a park, and it gave me the perfect mechanism for explaining a crucial plot point – sorry I can’t give more away, but it really helped me.  So a retreat is not just getting away from things, but also experiencing new things – any one of which can help the writing process.