New Century, New Ideas.

It’s been two weeks now since I published Journeyman Joe, and you might think I’ve been idle, but I haven’t. The need to write remains as strong as ever, and I have been writing every day as usual. Except it’s not been at my usual pace because I am writing something in a different era. Where Deviant Desire started in the Autumn of Terror in 1888, and the Delamere Dilemma ended in June 1894, what I am writing takes place ten years later, in 1904.

However, for those who wrote and commented and didn’t want to say farewell to the Delamere boys, I can tell you that, if this new project works, you will meet some of them again before long. Here, without giving away too much, is what I have started with.

The year: 1904
The place: Bedford Place, Bloomsbury, London
The name of the business: Merrit Brothers. Confidential Investigations.
Semper Veritas

This may sound like a continuation, but much has changed. Not only in London and the wider world, but also in the lives of the protagonists, Jack and Will Merrit.

I don’t want to give too much away, mainly because I have only written the first quarter of the first draft of a new and uncertain idea, but a new century brings new technology, new cases and new characters. While some of the original characters remain, some are elsewhere. I hope the underlying themes of male friendship, bromance and romance remain, but on top of them will be mysteries that the reader can consider and perhaps solve along with the detectives as each story progresses.

We are in the Edwardian period. There are the first motorcars on the road, some people have telephones, the Unionist (Conservative) Party are in power, the Suffragette movement is rising, and cinema is in the early days of popularity, though still young, and progress progresses at a fast pace.

These changes, and writing outside of the period I have been in for the last ten years, require me to research much that is new to me, and when writing, to stop, think and check the authenticity of everything from transport to costume. I must also consider what has happened to characters in the ten years since we left them celebrating at Delamere House, and this has given me hours of fun. Who is still with whom? What’s happened to X? Where is Y? Who might have died, moved abroad, moved on, and who remains of the cast from 10 years ago? This is why it is taking me a long time to get started. I don’t mean plotting a mystery; I have one set out already, but the characters I developed up to a certain point now have a missing 10-year gap for me to understand, so I am often pausing to consider not just physical appearance, but also their history, and that takes time.
Actually, the physical appearance is often the easiest thing to invent, and I have been using some of today’s technology to help me picture them.

This, for example, is Jack Merrit in 1904. Now aged 37, starting to go grey, but otherwise still fit and handsome and not (as is popular with so many writers of detective fiction) a hard-bitten, bitter and burdened drunkard, but one with more experience, a few more scars and a lot more stories. But still the same heart underneath.

You will have questions: Is this character still in the stories? What has happened to this person? Are this couple still together? Has this one found love yet? How did the Oscar Wilde case affect them as gay men unable to exist as themselves? And, I hope, many more. I shan’t tell you, because I don’t know all the answers yet, but I can tell you that at the core of this first story in what I hope will be another successful series are four of the Delamere Files main characters, with others waiting in the wings to make guest appearances as we go along. Who these four are, though, is a question to be answered later. (Jack and Will Merrit, obviously, but as for the other two…?) So, folks, that’s where I am right now, and I’ll update you as I go. The chances are, this new book won’t be out until after Christmas, which gives you plenty of time to catch up.