Bible Notes
As soon as I realised I was to write a series, I began what writers call a ‘bible.’ This, in my case, is a leather-bound notebook in which I record basic details of characters and places, various notes, maps and other information which I can refer to later. Doing this helps avoid errors further on in the series, so, for example, a character’s eyes don’t change their colour, or he isn’t suddenly a year older than he should be.
Some characters have more notes than others. Archer’s entry, for example, covers two pages, and some of the notes make little sense. However, over time, I will add these notes to the Clearwater Companion and include everything I have in my bible per character, and some other snippets that might be of interest. Most of the dates and ages in these notes relate to 1888, particularly for the characters of Archer, Silas, Thomas, Fecker and James.
[By the way: I have started building a Companion page for this website. It will be an index of all the ‘Clearwater Companion’ posts that I have and will put up over the next year or so. As soon as there is enough in the index, I’ll make the page public.]
Bible Notebook
This is it in the image:
These are some of my notes from my leather-bound Clearwater bible, my main depository of notes that keep me on track as the series grows. Apart from the locations section, I put these notes in the order they appear in my books, so they jump around a little, but I later, for the companion, I will arrange them under the series book number and title. Where a character has a whole page or two for their own notes, I will put them in a separate section.
Locations
Throughout the two series, I have used real and imaginary locations, or real locations to which I have given imaginary names. My original idea was to set Deviant Desire in a parallel London, so as not to upset Ripperologists. However, later, I realised that there was nothing wrong with using real places, as long as my descriptions were as accurate as I could make them. In the location sections, I make notes about whether the places are real or not, and mention those where the name is changed.
- The city London
- Greychurch The area/borough of Whitechapel
- Limedock The area bordering the river, Limehouse
- The Crown and Anchor Archer’s nearest pub in North Riverside
- Riverside North and South (Kensington and Chelsea)
- Cleaver St Cleveland Street
- Five Dials Seven Dials near Covent Garden
- The Grapevine restaurant The Ivy, near Seven Dials
- Prince’s Bridge The Albert Bridge
- St Matthew’s Park Hyde Park
Clearwater House, Bucks Avenue, London, W.
A very rough plan of the ground floor of Clearwater House. You should be able to enlarge it. Ps, I am not an architect!
Clearwater House borders St Matthew’s Park, and although made up, would have been to the west of Knightsbridge underground station, somewhere around what’s now Prince’s Gate. I named the street Bucks Avenue after the location of what’s commonly thought to be the first Jack the Ripper murder. On August 31st 1888, Mary Ann Nichols was found dead in Bucks Row, Whitechapel. Bucks Row is now called Durward Street.
Places In Greychurch
- Saddle Square
- The Ten Bells Real pup in Spitalfields
- The Lamb and Compass Pub in Limedock
- Cheap Lane Invented
- Leather Lane An ally leading to The Ten Bells
- City Street, main road Whitechapel Road
- Tanner’s Yard Invented
The rope house (Molly’s) is in Tanner’s Yard
Taking the rope, or sleeping upright while hanging over a taut rope, cost 2d per night in 1888. It is thought that this is where the term ‘hangover’ came from because a night trying to sleep in a crowded room while hanging your upper body over a rope left you feeling pretty rough the next day.
You could also ‘take a coffin’ and rent an undertaker’s coffin for 4d per night. Some casual wards of workhouses and other hostels also had ‘coffins’, rough beds that resembled wooden coffins.
Other streets and places:
- East Street with Cutpurse Lane off it
- Cheap Street Market
- Iron Bridge, at Limedock
- Lane End Hospital (Mile End Hospital)
- St Mary’s Hospital, Lady Clearwater’s project
- Lessening Lane, Limedock
- Christ Church, near the Ten Bells (real)
Bible Notes Random
It’s the nature of my book that I jot ideas and notes as I go through, so there will be some random notes that are not in chronological order. I might go back and add a character note to their page when they have one, but otherwise, I find whole pages dedicated to random jottings.
