Update and Off

I have to take a week off to rest my arm again, but before I do, I wanted to update you on what’s what and where I am, and remind you of the MM Romance, thriller and mystery promos I am taking part in (links below).

Currently, as you might know, I am writing the seventh instalment of the Delamere Files, ‘Acts of Faith.’ This will be the 26th book set in the Clearwater world, and I think lord Clearwater may very well make an appearance if only for half a scene. The book is coming along gradually because I’m unable to type as much, but also because it’s taking a fair amount of research. I can’t tell you all the details of that without giving things away, but I can tell you this:

Yesterday, I was at the Criterion Restaurant, Piccadilly. Except I wasn’t. Baxter and another character were, and the date was March 1893.

‘Acts of Faith’ centres around Baxter and his desire to move up from being a groom to a detective. It will also see him maturing in certain ways, and shaving his privates in the bath.

What? Yes, well… It’s Baxter ain’t it? Jack also appears a fair amount, because Baxter is his assistant, and Will and Ned are around in the background. There’s a new character who gets involved in the mystery, but more about him at a later date, and I reckon you’re going to have great fun working out a) what’s going on, b) what went on in the past, c) What’s going to happen, and d) to whom, by whom, how and when. I will be commissioning a cover and an illustration later this month.

The Criterion Restaurant (Wiki)

All will be revealed in time.

I’ll be back with you in a week or so.

Meanwhile, here’s the reminder of the various promos if you want to click over to any and have a free browse.

Discover New Crime Series

Here, you can find 34 titles, some of which are mine: Deviant Desire, Guardians of the poor etc. Also, though, you will see The Saddling, The Witchling and The Easting, three in a series of books also by me. The main character of these three goes on a journey of self-discovery in a place that hasn’t changed for hundreds of years and yet exists in the 20th century… I don’t want to give too much away, but think ‘The Wicker Man’ meets ‘Witness’ but gay…

https://books.bookfunnel.com/crimeseriespagefeb2025/hl4zk6n3nl

LGBTQI + Romance Sales

I’m not 100% sure about this one, tbh. The header tells us you can find free books and ARCs at this promo, but mine aren’t being given away for free. Maybe I’m in the wrong group for this one, but take a look and see what you can come up with. There are 47 titles, including Banyak & Fecks and the Mentor of Barrenmoor Ridge.

https://books.bookfunnel.com/bfhostlbtqiarombooks/ipn9p050q5

First In Crime Series

Find some series starters in the crime genre with this promo where there are over 60 titles to explore, each with blurbs and links to where you can download or order them. Again, my usual suspects are in there, but this is one of the promos that does me well, so I’m staying right there.

https://books.bookfunnel.com/firstinseriesKUfeb2025/pxp5mlbvc5

Mayhem & Motives (From February 8th)

This is where I find most of my new readers these days, I’m sure of it. I work with Book Mojo from time to time and they do me well, so I like to support them back. In this case, they have 35 titles on offer. https://books.bookfunnel.com/crimeseriespagefeb2025/hl4zk6n3nl

https://books.bookfunnel.com/crimeseriespagefeb2025/hl4zk6n3nl

No spam, simply Jackson’s update.

Hi all, and welcome to February.

I have some new promos to share with you, plus some news on what I am up to. Let’s start with me. I am now over halfway through writing the first draft of ‘Acts of Faith’ the next book in the Delamere Files series (book number seven). I am aiming to finish the first draft by the end of this month, so, all being well, you might expect the book out in March. Maybe on Clearwater’s (and my) birthday on the 26th, we will see.

I am pleased to report that my three 19th century mystery series have been doing well, with some rising up and down various charts and reaching lofty heights (usually after a new release). My other books are doing okay too, but don’t get as much publicity as the Clearwater, Larkspur and Delamere collection, and that’s why I have some others in a promo this month, and they are ones you may not have heard of.

Here are the details of what you can find after February 1st (and, in the case of one, after February 8th, but I’ll remind you about that later too).

Discover New Crime Series

Here, you can find 34 titles, some of which are mine: Deviant Desire, Guardians of the poor etc. Also, though, you will see The Saddling, The Witchling and The Easting, three in a series of books also by me. The main character of these three goes on a journey of self-discovery in a place that hasn’t changed for hundreds of years and yet exists in the 20th century… I don’t want to give too much away, but think ‘The Wicker Man’ meets ‘Witness’ but gay…

https://books.bookfunnel.com/crimeseriespagefeb2025/hl4zk6n3nl

LGBTQI + Romance Sales

I’m not 100% sure about this one, tbh. The header tells us you can find free books and ARCs at this promo, but mine aren’t being given away for free. Maybe I’m in the wrong group for this one, but take a look and see what you can come up with. There are 47 titles, including Banyak & Fecks and the Mentor of Barrenmoor Ridge.

https://books.bookfunnel.com/bfhostlbtqiarombooks/ipn9p050q5

First In Crime Series

Find some series starters in the crime genre with this promo where there are over 60 titles to explore, each with blurbs and links to where you can download or order them. Again, my usual suspects are in there, but this is one of the promos that does me well, so I’m staying right there.

https://books.bookfunnel.com/firstinseriesKUfeb2025/pxp5mlbvc5

Mayhem & Motives (From February 8th)

This is where I find most of my new readers these days, I’m sure of it. I work with Book Mojo from time to time and they do me well, so I like to support them back. In this case, they have 35 titles on offer.

https://books.bookfunnel.com/crimeseriespagefeb2025/hl4zk6n3nl

There, that’s what’s happening with my self-promo this month. Feel free to throw those links around to all and sundry and do your bit to support indie authors.

Smithfield Market, London, 1838

It was market morning. The ground was covered nearly ankle deep with filth and mire; and a thick steam perpetually rising from the reeking bodies of the cattle, and mingling with the fog, which seemed to rest upon the chimney tops, hung heavily above…

Not my writing, I’m afraid, but Dickens (Oliver Twist, 1838). I am currently researching Smithfield Market because two of my investigators will be going there later today, and I want to give an accurate picture of what one of London’s most famous markets was like in 1893. However, so far, I have only found accounts from earlier in the century and passages from authors such as Dickens. Having said that, I have not yet read everything on my go-to website, the Dictionary of Victorian London.

One of my challenges is to describe the same thing again and use accurate facts without sounding like a lecture. This is where Will Merrit comes in. I have fallen on this handy tool of using him to provide Jack and Baxter with background information about destinations they visit. It’s happened in previous novels, and there’s a little bit of it happening in the next one, ‘Acts of Faith,’ which is ticking along nicely in first draft form (see Wednesday’s blog for updates). So, to let readers know the facts of a place, I might slip in a snippet like this:

In form, the Meat Market is a parallelogram. It is 631 feet long, and 246 feet wide. It covers 3½ acres of ground. The architectural style of the building is Italian. The external walls of the market are 32 feet high, and for the purposes for which it was erected it is both in appearance and arrangements a model market.

That’s actually from John Fletcher Porter, London Pictorially Described, [1890], and thanks again to the Dictionary and its compiler, Dr Lee Jackson. Click that link and you will find all his books about Victorian London. I have a few of them and have read others. They are fascinating, though not necessarily my period of late 19th century.

So, my workload today includes writing chapter 18 and making sure there is a PoC (Point of Chapter) so that the story moves or the characters develop and we don’t end up with a shoe leather chapter where you get fab description but no story movement.

I also have to put out the month’s newsletter which will contain this month’s promotions for new books from many authors. (Sign up for the monthly newsletter from the link at the top of this page.)

I’d also like to get to the bottom of why, in my new PC, my autocorrect options sometimes use ‘straight quotes’ and other times use ‘curly quotes,’ there seems to be no rhyme or reason for it. The problem is the straight ones in words like don’t, come out as reversed curly quotes in the final printing of the book and look odd. (A minor niggle, but a niggle all the same.)

I also have some other bits and pieces to take care of so this Saturday looks to be already filled up with work and typing, just as I like it.

Acts of Faith

At least, Delamare seven has a title, ‘Acts of Faith.’ There are many other books out there with that title or a variation of it, but none of them that I can see are gay historical fiction set in March 1893, so hopefully, I won’t cause confusion when this one is released. When will that be? I can’t yet say. I am up to 51,000 words, so halfway through, and someone’s about to make a link which will start the ball rolling downhill towards the crisis.

I am having a mild crisis of my own as I bought a new laptop last week, and I am still in the process of transferring things over. Setting Outlook for emails was a nightmare but it’s done now, and most of my most-used programs are installed. What I am now finding are the niggly little things that I added and changed over time are suddenly not there. For example, my file explorer used to save the four most recently used folders in the side menu and that was very handy. Now it doesn’t and even though I have set the box to do so, the programme doesn’t. I also have a thing where the autocorrect options I created (and there are many) are no longer there so I have to start that process again and add them one at a time when I see them. Strangely, though, when I do this, the resultant changes use ‘straight’ quotes and not the curly ones I want. Again, I have changed the auto-correct boxes so this shouldn’t happen and yet it still does. It’s not a great issue but I notice that when there’s a – for example – I don’t know, printed in the bokos the comes out the wrong way around.

Anyway… The good news is, I am typing away and creating another complicated mystery throughline set against a growing friendship/love story, and it’s all going rather well. Oh – and I might have the face of a new character whose first name I want to change, but otherwise… Meet PC Charles Inning:

You can also meet a heap of novels and authors on the last promo push of this month, simply by clicking the banner below. I will be involved in more of these next month, and there will be a newsletter soon to give you more details.

A Question of Title

Hi. This is a quick update about the next novel and finding a title. I thought I had settled on ‘An Act of Faith’, and then I thought about ‘Acts of Faith’ because of what the story is about, but I found ‘Acts of Faith’ the reading equivalent of a tongue twister for some reason. Now, I am thinking of the title as being, ‘A Question of Faith,’ but that’s not 100% there. It should be ‘Acts of Faith’ as that makes most sense to the story, so I may go with that for now even though there are a few of the same titles out there. Having said that, the ones I’ve seen are all about religion, not murder in 1893, so I might get away with it.

Talking of getting away with it, we were away yesterday. I wet to see a chiropractor about my back and shoulder, and now have some different exercises to do which should, over time, alleviate the pain I suffer when writing, walking, sitting… I also have to do less writing and sitting but do more walking while things improve, but that’s okay. I’m, meant to be retired anyway. I also bought a new mattress and a new laptop which I am away to set up now – the laptop, I mean; the mattress should arrive at the end of March as it has to be handmade in Athens. Sounds glamorous.

I’ll give you an ‘Acts of Faith’ update on Wednesday, and leave you with these two shots from yesterday in Rhodes.

Sunny in the morning
Rain in the afternoon

The Book with no Title, a Quick Update

Morning all! Here’s a quick update on where I am with Delamere seven, the current work in progress with no title. I am approaching the halfway mark and am around 40,000 words. Things are about to start to make sense. Lots has happened already, and you’re going to have a nice set of clues to try and crack before you, hopefully, say, ‘Ooooh, I get it now…’ and dive into the second half wondering who and why and what will happen next.

While this case has been unravelling, Benny Baxter has been going through a new phase of his life, and is about to embark on another, but I’m not going to tell you what.

Also, I have been delving into some research areas, albeit briefly, and have come across an interesting story that might make for a future novel. It’s a sad tale, but an interesting one of a boy who ran away from a Dr Barnardo’s home because of ill treatment. I asked a friend of mine to look him up in the census, but he had a very common name, and was hard to trace, but we found some follow-up information… but that’s a story for another day.

Meanwhile, I am just about to start on chapter 13, and I left Baxter with an unannounced visitor, so I best get on with that, before he gets out of hand and does something daft.

This week, by way of ideas for new authors and reading, I have a link to this free promotion if you want to click on through and have a browse.

Have a Word

If you’ve been reading the Delamere files, you will have noticed Jack uses a couple of what might seem odd expressions. One of these is, ‘Have a word.’ He says it as Londoners these days might say, ‘Leave it out,’ or ‘Do you mind?’ That’s one of his characteristics, in the same way it’s Baxter’s to use a lot of East End street cant (slang). As you may know, I like to have my characters use idioms in their speech as it makes them more individual.

One of the issues facing new writers, it seems, is to differentiate characters one from the other. A common trap to fall into (and I do it myself) is to describe an entering character right off the bat. Stoker does this when Harker first meets Count Dracula (ignore the coloured bocks, it’s from a learn English site:

That was Stoker’s style, and it’s one way of saying, ‘Here, meet the character,’ but these days, I am trying to ween myself from that easy way out and drip feed the details and build the character as the story goes along. One way to ensure your characters stand out from each other, is to hear them speak as you write their dialogue, and one way I do that is to use slang.

Baxter, for example, had a Scottish father so would have picked up some Scottish idioms in early life, and a London mother, ditto. He grew up around horses in a stable, then got kicked out onto the streets. He would have been, and is, full of colourful street language, horse-talk, Scotishisms and East End cant. Me being me like to be as accurate as possible with times, places, events, history and language within the scope of a novel, so I’m forever diving into my books as I write my London and other characters. One of my favourite books for this, as I’ve said before, is ‘The Vulgar Tongue.’ Although compiled in the early 19th century, this collection of street cant and slang is invaluable when writing dialogue from particular characters.

For example. Yesterday, I was writing a scene about Baxter but from Jack’s point of view. Bax had been up all night drinking coffee with lots of sugar in it, so he was what we’d now called hyper, and he was talking to Jack who was brought up in Limehouse, so they more or less understood each other when Baxter said,

‘Like I said, looks like they’d been on and off more times than a cockish Corinthian’s been on and off the Lady Abbess in a knocking shop.’

I was going to use another word for ‘knocking shop’ such as nanny house, nugging house, pushing school, snoozing ken, academy (which were all in use in the early 19th century), but for clarity, I went with a more modern term. A ‘cockish’ Corinthian is a hybrid as I made up ‘cockish’ to mean randy (which was not commonly in use until 1950s), but Corinthian was a word used to describe men who frequented brothels, where the Lady (or Mother) Abbess was the madam.

‘Like I said, looks like they’d been on and off more times than a cockish Corinthian’s been on and off the Lady Abbess in a knocking shop.’

Here’s another note. You might have noticed Jack (and Baxter) use the word ‘Lob’ for their, er, dangly bits. The word, ‘Lob’ in old cant referred to the till in a shop, and to ‘frisk a lob’ was to rob a till. Baxter, and other ex-rent boys of Whitechapel, use the word because their, er, dangly bits, were how they made money, so the front of their trousers became where they kept the ‘lob.’

Yes, the words are vulgarities, but that’s how many of my characters would have spoken because it was a) how they were brought up, and b) all they knew. As they progress through the series, they change, of course. Where Will is learning to control his OCD, so Jack is learning to curb his vernacular, though some characters, such as Baxter and Ronny, are still having issues with that. (Ronny, btw, has been diagnosed as having a mild case of what we now call Tourette’s, mixed with 14 years of bad habits.)

While trawling my dictionary looking for suitable words to slip into Baxter’s vocabulary, I came across an expression I am going to have to throw into the next book at some point: Dicked in the nob.

Any ideas?

No, it doesn’t mean that – wash your mouth out…

It means silly or crazed. ‘That boy was dicked in the nob.’ Imagine saying that now.

Anyway, the point of this ramble was to bring the book to your attention, The Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose. I have a hard copy and a free PDF copy I found, and that’s much easier to trawl through because you can search for the word you want an alternative for.

While doing that, I found the book includes a section of a poem which I’ve put here so you can see a few choice words and also see how the book works.

FLASH PANNEYS. Houses to which thieves and prostitutes resort. 
Next for his favourite MOT (Girl) the KIDDEY (Youth) looks about,
And if she’s in a FLASH PANNEY (Brothel) he swears he’ll have her out;
So he FENCES (Pawns) all his TOGS (Clothes) to buy her DUDS, (Wearing Apparel) and then
He FRISKS (Robs) his master’s LOB (Till) to take her from the bawdy KEN (House).

FLASH. A periwig. Rum flash; a fine long wig. Queer flash; a miserable weather−beaten caxon (wig).

I’ll be back on Wednesday with an update on the next book and its progress. Meanwhile, here is a promo you might want to browse.

The Book with no Title (as yet)

As usual, I am still unsure about the title of the next Delamere story which is now up to 27,000 words – so just over a quarter of the way through, if it is to be a standard length. The characters are all in place, and the mystery has been set, though it is soon to lead to another, and then another until someone realises what’s going on and that someone may well be me.

I have been looking through old newspapers trying to discover if there were still any paddle steamers working on the Thames in 1893, but I haven’t had any luck so far. (Anyone? Any idea?) I discovered there were still paddle steamers for sale, but I think these were probably for scrap or refurbishing. I’ve not delved into this in much detail as yet, but here’s a piece I pulled from a London newspaper of March 1893:

Click to enlarge

The things aren’t integral to the story, but I wanted to use one for… some reason, so I went off on the distraction tour and spent a happy hour reading all kinds of advertisements and snippets. Also, in the process of writing a character’s backstory the other day, I mentioned the dance card, and went off to see if I could find an image of one to share.

Here’s a potted history of the dance card from the Newberry Library:

Popularized in Vienna in the nineteenth century, dance cards continued to be used throughout the early twentieth century. Names could be filled in just after a dance to keep as a memento, or early in the evening to ensure one had a partner planned for each dance, thus eliminating the risk of being labelled a wallflower.

Which of the characters used a dance card, you may wonder, and you will, one day, find out. I have a piece of work to do for someone else today, and then, I shall be continuing with chapter 10. Meanwhile, if you are looking for some new romance reads to start the year, I have several promos to share with you. Let’s start with this one, LGBTQIA+ Romance = the January Bookfair. Simply click the banner to check out over 45 MM romance titles.

Illustrated Police News, 1893

As regular readers of my Victorian mystery series will know, I often refer to publications of the time for ideas, research and details. In the case of the currently untitled, seventh Delamere File, I have one of my detectives reading the Illustrated Police News from roughly the time the story is set. I say ‘roughly’ because there was only one copy of that month/that year on the British Newspaper Archive site when I looked, so I used one from a nearby month for the book. Here’s the front page of the IPN from the 4th March 1893:

And here’s a closer look at one of the drawings.

The illustrations were mainly on the front cover, with a few drawings inside, but nowhere near as many. This, for example, is page three of the same publication.

Apart from its lurid stories, what this publication gives me is an idea of policing methods of the time. Then, of course, you have the surrounding news, such as what the weather was like on the day, what was happening in overseas crimes, and, in the illustration, a look at what the scenery was like. By that, I mean, this one has a drawing of Poplar Town Hall as the artist saw it back then, rather than as someone might have photographed it in the 20th century. There are also short, dramatic stories which help give a feel for the creative writing style of the time, but they are also fun to read for the scandal and gossip.

They also lead me to new discoveries, and these can lie among the advertisements as well as the text. For example, I’d never considered an ‘Organette’ until I reached page four.

I’ll try and work one of these into the next Delamare. I often wonder what Jack, Will and the rest do of an evening. I know they play billiards, read, and go to the theatre or pub, but what about background music? There is no music in the house because no-one plays an instrument, and the gramophone was only a few years old. The first ‘records’ didn’t come out until 1892, and the first seven-inch record in 1895. I can imagine Jimmy having a phonograph if he needed to, and they now have three telegraph machines at the house. When telephones become more accessible, they will no doubt have at least one of them.

The first telephone came about in 1667 when Robert Hooke created an ‘acoustic line telephone’ like we did with tin cans when we were children. It wasn’t until the late 19th century that things really started to pick up (the phone), and not until the early 20th century that the call to invest more in home phones was answered. Great technology which, in the UK today, allows you to listen to Vivaldi for two hours while trying to reach a doctor.

You see how it goes? I started off talking about the Illustrated Police News and ended up talking about telephones via the organette. Now, I’m going to delve into chapter eight of the next book, where, I believe, someone has just experienced the first pangs of falling in love, while examining where a woman died in a bath. The mind of an author, eh? Have a good weekend!

Welcome to 2025

Hello everyone. I hope you had a pleasant New Year and, like me, you’re looking forward to a year full of writing, reading, and losing oneself in fictional adventures.

My year has started well. I am working on the next Delamere mystery (book seven, as yet untitled), and for those who have asked to know more about Benny Baxter, you’ll be pleased to hear he features in this next story. He may even end up being the hero… We shall see. Here’s the drawing Dalston Blaze did of Baxter back in 1893.

Benjamin Baxter

The year also started well because of an email I received. It’s from a friend who has a friend I vaguely knew years ago, and that friend has read all the Clearwater books, and is two books into the Larkspur series, and, apparently, I am now his favourite author. What this friend has also done is spread the word around his older, wealthier mates, who are now also enjoying the series. The email goes on to say:

All his friends who have read the books agree that they ought to be picked up as a TV series and would love that to happen. I told him that you were already in the early stages of issuing the audio books and he thinks various others of his friends would welcome that.

Well, slow down a moment… The audiobook version of Deviant Desire is still in discussion because I am unable to release such a thing through Amazon as I would like, so I’m not sure what’s going to happen there. As for a TV series… I did have an approach from Bad Hat Harry Productions, but that may have been either fishing or phishing, as I’ve not heard anything more. There was another company interested in me giving them the rights to make a screenplay, but when I said, ‘Giving?’ and told them to name a figure, they slunk away. However, if any of my readers do know someone in TV or film, a production company or an artist with clout, and wants to recommend the books… Feel free! That’s how it works. I could spend months putting together a ‘bible’ for the world, characters, stories and so on, and then not be able to hawk a proposal around because I don’t live in London or LA, so I have to rely on chance or word of mouth, or email – which is where you might come in. You know, if you’re bored one day, send an email off to Netflix of someone…

Anyway, I can’t sit around here dreaming, I have a book to write, and I am going to get on with that right now, and will be back on Saturday with another update from the world of Jackson Marsh. Until then, here is an inspirational view to start the year.