1904 is the year in which the next book is set, and not a new title to go along with the short-story collections 1892 and 1893, which are two volumes of the Clearwater Tales.
Having spent much of the last eight or nine years in the late Victorian period, and having stacked my shelves with books about that time, I am now in the Edwardian era, and that’s new to me. But it’s only ten years since Delamere, you might say; and yes, it is. But a lot happened in the world in between times. Cars, telephones, the march of technology, industry and medicine, to name a few, and me being me, I like to make sure I am as accurate as I can be.
This means much starting a chapter and then stopping to check things, such as the legal process of a pre-nuptial marriage settlement between a wealthy American family with a daughter to ‘sell off’ and an impoverished nobleman. How much would be a reasonable jointure back then? Would a new wife have to move from the home if the husband died?
Then, again me being me, the research reaches wider: How much would a road sweeper have earnt? What was Bloomsbury like in that year? What was the weather like on June 14th? What ships left New York for Liverpool on March 12th 1902, and did it have a telegram service? I even stop writing to see if I can find what was on the menu in first Vs third class on that ship…
All that slows me down, but so does filling in the gap of 10 years, figuring out how a character from then might be ten years on, deciding who, if anyone, has died, where they are now, and so on ad infinitum.
All of which is a way of telling my loyal, faithful and generous readers: I’m working on it! Once this first in what I hope is a new series is up and running, other stories should follow and flow more freely, so bear with me as I battle away at only 1,500 or 2,000 words a day rather than my usual three or four thousand.
In the meantime, if you want more to read while you wait, you have a couple of options:
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I must get back to my crumbling Tudor manor house in the Essex countryside, and a sequence in the new book which is in danger of becoming Great Expectations meets Bleak House.
In case you were wondering who it is in the image above, he’s an imagining of Lady Harlow’s butler, except, perhaps he is not a butler? Perhaps the missing Lord Harlow has a secret that his new wife and his gradually going mad mother don’t know about… Time will tell, but it might be a longer time than usual.
Keep reading (books by humans).