Speaking in Silence Well, I have the title of Larkspur five! I also have an outline, I know where I am ending up (kind of), and I know where I am starting.

I also have an idea of where the characters are going to take me once they start on the adventure, and I have begun the opening chapters to see how they work out. I’m also doing my background reading, and that’s going to take me another week or so. After that, I should be able to forge ahead and get the story down in the first draft.

But what I can I tell you about it as, together, we embark on the next adventure?

This is where I have to be careful as I don’t want to give away anything that happens in the previous book, in case you haven’t read it yet. I can tell you, though, that it will involve characters you met in ‘Seeing Through Shadows’, there will be an ongoing love story, a mystery (of course), and we won’t stay in Cornwall the whole time. In fact, the story starts with a prologue set in Greychurch (Whitechapel), in January 1891, and then jumps forward to March of that year. I’m currently reading newspapers of the time, and I am reading about the great blizzard that swept the south of England between 9th and 13th of March, making roads and railways impassable, wrecking a number of ships, and killing at least 200 people.

My story begins just after that, and it’s going to involve at least one Clearwater detective in the mentoring role, as a small group of academy friends seek justice for one of their number. Other old favourites I hope to use in ‘Speaking in Silence’ are Creswell, my barmy barrister, and Dr Markland, my even madder medical man. They will be cameos, because that’s what those characters are good at, while the main leads will be two Larkspur Academy men. The fun part, for me, is going to be how to convey the backstory of a character who doesn’t speak. (He can, but for some reason, he chooses not to, and understanding why, is one of the mysteries to be solved.) I have an idea for how this character will tell us about his past, and that’s one of the many ideas I am jotting in my notebook. For now, it’s back to the newspapers of the time, working out logistics, setting the timeline and then, beginning on the book proper in a couple of weeks.

Stay with me and follow the creative journey through my Wednesday WIP, and remember to check in on Saturdays for a new, more in-depth blog post or MM romance news, interviews and other things, and I’ll see you there. Meanwhile, you can catch up with the Larkspur Mysteries here.