A new series for a new year

As you know, I am spending my December working on a non-Sam project – it’s a non-fiction book about running a happy one-person business.  I’m calling it “The Solo Squid”; it just came to me one day (as I thought about how a solo entrepreneur has to do everything, from mending the printer to chasing the unpaid invoices, as well as actually doing the work – so the eight arms of the squid are only just enough) and everyone I mention it to says that they love the title.  I have finished the first draft and the editing of that starts today, while on the cover front (so to speak) I am at the exciting point of waiting to see what the miracle-workers at Design for Writers have managed to create for me.  I’m hoping to publish the Squid early in January, which will be an exciting start to the new year.

But I have not abandoned historical fiction, not by any means.  As regular readers will know, I have decided that I am going to put the final Sam book on hold (not least because I cannot bear to say goodbye to him) and instead get started with the first book in my new series – that’s “Hardiman 1”.  The new series is set in the same era – the 1820s – but this time in Cambridge, my home town.  Gregory Hardiman is a university constable, which gives him licence to move around the city and stick his nose into all the colleges and departments (which may not have been called “departments” in the 1820s – perhaps “schools”?  I’ll let you know…).  And one thrilling difference between Sam and Greg is that university constables still exist!  Yes, I can go and meet Greg’s current day successors and ask them all about the job.  I have been in touch with the University Marshal (an office now held for the first time by a woman – a former bomb disposal expert, no less) and she has invited me to come in and meet her and her constable colleagues in the new year.  Even more exciting (is it possible!), her email says this: “As a Constabulary, we continue to use many of the items that were in use in the 1820s”.  So I may be able to actually see items that Gregory would have used.  January is going to be a fabulous month.

Sam and the cephalopods

Is there any better way to spend an evening than locked in a closed bookshop and talking to avid crime readers about the Sam books?  Short of having Daniel Auteuil and Luca Zingaretti as waiters, handing out cherries coated in dark chocolate (the cherries, not the actors – although…), I can’t think of how to improve the experience.  And so you can imagine how thrilled I was to be invited to read at the Heffers annual “Murder Under the Mistletoe” festive crime fiction event.  “Heir Apparent” was even in the window of the shop:

It wasn’t just me, of course: I was one of ten authors featured, and we each read a three-minute extract from our latest book and then gave our recommendation for a good book to read at Christmas.  I chose a passage from “Heir Apparent” that doesn’t talk about the crimes at the heart of the plot – inheritance fraud and identity theft – but rather examines the relationship between Sam and Martha, and that between Sam and John Wontner.  I think it was well-received – at least, people laughed in the right places.  Not many of the other readings had much humour, and one is still giving me nightmares.  And for my Christmas recommendation I chose “The Prayer of Owen Meany” by John Irving – he’s one of my very favourite authors, and the description of the nativity play in “Owen Meany” is one of the very funniest things I have ever read.  As Victoria Wood would have said, it made me snort chips up me nose.

In other writerly news, I am working hard on the text of “The Solo Squid” – my non-fiction handbook on how to run a happy one-person business – and am moving onto the exciting stage of thinking about the cover.  I’ve done my research into the differences between an octopus and a squid (both have eight arms, but the former has a round head while the latter has a triangular head with two fins as well as two long tentacles and a backbone) and have told the marvellous team at Design for Writers my ideas of how the cover might look (with reference to similar business-y books on Amazon whose covers I like or dislike).  From this unpromising sow’s ear, they will create their usual silk purse.  He’s no Sam, but I hope the squid will gather his own fans – perhaps I should give him a name…  Only squidding!

Sign up, sign up!

It’s all a bit quiet, isn’t it?  There’s always rather a lull after the publication of a new Sam Plank book, but please rest assured that I am not resting assured: I am working on the next two books.  The immediate project is my book on being a one-person business – almost certainly titled “The Solo Squid” – and the follow-up, to be embarked on fully in January, is the first book in my new Cambridge-set series.

However, my aim for this week is to beef up the number of people subscribing to my monthly update on the research behind the scenes of the Plank books (and, soon, the Gregory books).  The theory is that I do so much research for the books – both while I am deciding on the plots and while I am doing the actual writing – that it seems a shame to leave it to languish.  So I choose a theme each month and write an update, for your delectation and amusement, and perhaps to help other writers with their research.  It takes a bit of time to put it together – each update takes about a half-day to write – and so I am keen for them to be read by as many people as possible.  But I’m stuck on twenty-five loyal readers.

I’m very grateful for you all, of course – except for that twenty-sixth person who unsubscribed after I published an update on contraception (I think she expects the Regency to be all fluttering fans and dainty suppers, but of course we wouldn’t have had the Victorians if they hadn’t had sex in Regency times).  So please, if you know anyone who might be interested, do point them in the direction of the monthly updates (the sign-up ink-splatter appears on the left of every page of this website) – new subscribers get a free Regency glossary as a welcome gift, and I do regular competitions and giveaways.  Here’s a taster of what was in the November update, on education in Sam’s time:

As for girls, you’ll note that Sam talks of the two sons of the family being sent to school – their sister Lizzie was not given the same opportunity.  Charity schools did accept girls but they were offered a different curriculum, concentrating on Bible reading, needlework and singing.  Their upper- and middle-class sisters suffered a similar fate: most of their education focused on the skills that would make them attractive wives, such as embroidery, music and drawing.  Martha has the basics of letters and numbers – from when her father needed her help in his tavern – but it is only when she meets Sam that she learns to read properly, and for pleasure.  Indeed, it was not until the nineteenth century that reading gradually became a private rather than a public act; in the first three decades of the century, if you could read you were expected to read aloud and share your reading with family, friends and workmates.