I have the cover and the details uploaded, and should be finalising the internal files over the weekend. This means you should be able to find ‘Speaking in Silence’ any day now. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll no doubt receive a notification from Amazon and know the book is available before I do. Meanwhile, at the bottom of this post is the cover reveal. Click the image to open the full cover.
Who is it?
The problem with discussing any new release is that I don’t want to give away any spoilers or tell you what the story is because I don’t want to ruin the journey for you. However, you will meet the character while you’re reading the book, and all I will tell you is that he is our protagonist. Everything that happens does so because of him. Things also happen because of the antagonist who is after his own reward, but he’s slimy and horrible, so I didn’t want to put him on the front cover.
Speaking in Silence is a slightly unusual story for me in that it’s not exactly a mystery. It is, but the mystery is ‘How will they do that?’ and, later, ‘How did they do that?’ It’s one of only a few novels I have written with a classic drawing room denouement, as I discussed in a post the other week.
The fun thing for me was holding back what I and the characters knew, and not giving things away to you, the reader, too soon. I could have done that, and then there would have been one tension point at a particular place in the story, but that would have been it. This time, I decided to keep you wondering until after the event—the climax—and I hope it works.
‘Starting with Secrets’
With ‘Speaking in Silence’ written, I was able to turn my mind to the next book, ‘Starting with Secrets,’ and the one after that, ‘The Larkspur Legacy.’ What I am embarking on now is a two-part mystery that leads to what could be the end of the series. Having said that, I am sure the Clearwater world will live on after the Larkspur collection. I just haven’t decided how. Yet.
From Wednesday, on my work-in-progress blog, I will set the counter back to week one, though I have been working on ‘Secrets’ for the past several days already. I have been devising clues because the next novel is all about solving obscure clues while chasing down a secret ‘treasure’ that will secure the Clearwater future. (Again, I can’t say too much.) There will be a new character or two, and many of the established Clearwater and Larkspur characters will be involved.
Here’s an opportunity that’s just occurred to me—I’ll discuss it with Jenine when I can, but I’ll drop it in here now, so I don’t forget.
I was thinking I might ask readers and followers on my Facebook page to tell me who is their favourite character from either series. I can then make sure those characters appear in the next two books. There is such a cast now, that my spreadsheet of characters is bulging, and I am running out of names. (I realised the other day that I had an Archer and an Arthur, and when they appear in the same scene, I have to call Arthur a footman or Art, so readers don’t get confused between the two.) Keep an eye on my FB page and I’ll put up a post (if I remember) asking for suggestions.
Which characters would you like to appear in the next two instalments? Who’s your favourite? Perhaps then I’ll draw a random name and send off a signed copy of ‘Starting with Secrets’ when it’s out.
Speaking in Silence Cover Reveal
But I mustn’t get ahead of myself and forget that Speaking in Silence is out next week. Tune in to Wednesday’s WIP to start the adventure of writing the next novel, and before that, look out for the ‘Silence’ release.
Now you can click the image to see the full front cover open in a new window.
I am currently reading through the proofed manuscript, and only have a few chapters left to do. After that, I’ll be contacting the guys at Other Worlds Ink and setting up the formatting process. That usually only takes a couple of days, and after that, I will upload the Kindle versions of the book. I’m waiting for my cover designer to make a tiny alteration on the back cover of the print version, but I think she might be on holiday, so the paperback may not come out at the same time as the Kindle and KU versions.
So, in a nutshell, you should be able to find Speaking in Silence online in the first week of August. Once I have sent it to Amazon, I will return my attention to the next one, which I left five chapters in, to turn my attention to ‘Silence.’ Another WIP will begin, this time #4, because it will be the fourth novel I have taken you through in these blogs. It will actually be the 40th book I have written. Gulp. Then again, I do write full-time for around six hours per day.
Anyway… There will be more news soon, and keep an eye on the blog and my Facebook page for the cover reveal.
Yes, sorry about this, but I now have two WIPs on the go. Speaking in Silence is with the proofreader, so there is nothing more I can do about that for now. Having said that, I have just asked Anjela to amend the cover because I got something wrong in the blurb. Well, in the story, actually, where I gave Clearwater a title he could never have held. I’ve sorted that now, and it was only a case of changing one word three times. So, Speaking in Silence has gone for its check-up, leaving me little to do except prepare its Amazon page for when it comes back. Then, I will read it again, have it laid out, and upload the files. I am still aiming for the first week of August for its release.
Meanwhile…
Starting with Secrets has started. This story will be the sixth in the Larkspur Mysteries series and begins with something that happened way back before the first of the Clearwater series began. A secret known only to two characters sets off an adventure that will involve the academy men and characters from the Clearwater series. It’s going to be a two-parter, with the second book having its own title, and I have begun work on the plotting and early chapters.
The Larkspur / Clearwater Bible
I need to invent a fair few clues for ‘Secrets’, and my notebook has come in very handy, as has my Clearwater and Larkspur bible, where I record info about characters and places, events and so forth in case I need them later. Right now, I am about to sit at my writing desk and dream up another set of unlikely clues before returning to chapter four, which I wrote yesterday, and reading that through before moving on to chapter five.
I’ll be back next Wednesday with another WIP update, and who knows what I’ll be writing by then.
You may remember my to-do list last week looked like this:
Finish the fine editing
Reread for a final check
Create the blurb
Find images suitable to make a cover and open negotiations with Andjela
Proofreading
Layout
Check everything and reread
Upload to Amazon
Hope for the best
I’m happy to tell you, I have completed the first four things on the list ✔✔✔✔, though I haven’t finalised the blurb yet. Neil has read my edited draft, and I have a little editing to do on the last chapter, which I will do in a moment. Andjela and I have the licence for a photo to be adapted for the front cover, and there will be a reveal of that nearer the release date, which is still estimated at the first week of August.
Check in next week for an update. Meanwhile, here’s the draft blurb.
Speaking in Silence
The Larkspur Mysteries Book Five
Jackson Marsh
“The quiet ones have the loudest voice. Them as say most by speaking in silence.”
Fiona Hawkins, 1881
March 1891. A parliamentary committee arrives at Larkspur Hall to assess Lord Clearwater’s suitability to become the Earl of Cornwall. Prince Albert Victor will announce their decision at a society dinner on Archer’s thirty-second birthday.
However, the MP with the authority to advance Archer to the title is the same man who caused Edward Hyde never to speak again. When the parliamentarians arrive to inspect the Larkspur Academy, Edward comes face to face with the man he had arrested for making unnatural advances. A man who was never tried for his crime.
Silas Hawkins and the academy men band together to ensure Edward sees justice done while protecting Lord Clearwater’s reputation and each other. Using their skills in chemistry, physics and deception, they embark on a game of secrets and subterfuge where the unspoken causes the loudest outcry.
Speaking in Silence is the fifth book in the Larkspur Mysteries series, and touches on themes of victimisation and suicide. Like all books in the series, it is inspired by actual events from the late 1800s. With themes of friendship, bromance, male love and revenge, the story is more of a ‘how dunnit?’ than a ‘who dunnit?’ and like all of Jackson’s mysteries, contains humour, while mixing fact with fiction.
We’re into week ten of the writing of this new Larkspur Mystery and I am pleased to tell you, I have only eight chapters left to edit before I can say I have a draft for my beta readers, Neil and Jenine. The MS is booked in for proofreading on the 20th of July, and I am still aiming for the end of July/start of August to have the finished novel ready for you.
My to-do list now looks like this:
Finish the fine editing
Reread for a final check
Create the blurb
Find images suitable to make a cover and open negotiations with Andjela
Proofreading
Layout
Check everything and reread
Upload to Amazon
Hope for the best
While all that is going on, you won’t be surprised to learn that I have started thinking about the next book. The next two books, actually, because I am planning a two-book finale to this series along the lines of ‘The Clearwater Inheritance.’ I am teeming with ideas, and have already outlined various scenes in my head, but I must find a way to connect them. All I can tell you right now is that I am planning to incorporate many of the characters from both Clearwater and Larkspur, have three or four storylines running at once all leading to the same end, so all will be connected, take my characters to some wild and exciting places, and tie up many threads. Some of these threads were started in Deviant Desire, and before that, Banyak & Fecks, so I have lots of rereading and remembering to do (thankfully, I keep my ‘bible’ and notebooks). There is also a special ending to consider, and all being well, you’ll be able to read the second book of the two at or by Christmas.
Watch this space.
Thank goodness for my author notebooks and ‘bible’!
It’s done! The first draft, that is, and we have arrived at Bodmin station at 95,000 words. Now, after a brief stop, we must make the return journey to London as we embark on the rewrites and editing.
A view of Bodmin Road Station, Cornwall in c.1895
This novel turned out to be slightly different to the others, and that made the journey an interesting one. Speaking in Silence is a mystery. It takes place in Cornwall and London, it brings in two characters who have, until now, been in the background, and it is based on a newspaper report from 1891. There, the similarities with the other Larkspur Mysteries end. Don’t worry, it still contains your favourite elements, but in a different way.
The content is darker than I’ve previously dabbled with because the protagonist is a victim. He’s also the one who hardly speaks, which presented another challenge when writing. Also, the mystery isn’t written as: This is strange, how are we going to solve this? It is written so the reader asks, ‘What are they doing?’ We know ‘they’ are up to something, and we know what they want to achieve, but, hopefully, you won’t work out what it is they are doing and how they achieve it until the end. Then, in the denouement, you’re told exactly how it happened.
I expect that makes little sense, but it will all become clear in the end, and the end of the journey, I hope, will be sometimes in July. Meanwhile, here’s an unedited taster from draft one.
Outside, foxes and owls scoured the grounds for their prey, while inside, a dim light burned in the drawing room until well past two in the morning. Figures paced before the window, apparently speaking in silence as no sound escaped the casements, and they disturbed nothing and no-one. At two fifteen, a light in an upstairs bedroom came on, and three silhouettes sat at a desk with paper and pen. Another discussion began, and one wrote while the others offered ideas. A little later, one sat in a chair while another busied himself around his head with scissors and a razor, until all three were satisfied with the results of their labours.
If that wasn’t strange enough, at the back of the house, another two men came from the kitchen and crossed the yard. At two twenty-five, they lit lamps in an ancient building that had once been a barn and set to work. There was no speaking, but there were sounds; the hissing and bubbling of liquids in jars, the clank of crucibles on iron stands, and the opening and closing of heavy books. All this took place beside a light which grew increasingly discoloured, once being orange, and then red, to glow purple just before the stable clock chimed half-past three.
Speaking In Silence JACKSON MARSH
I love this watercolour of Victoria College’s first chemistry lab, I can imagine our young men working in here
I have just written the denouement for ‘Speaking In Silence’, and it’s prompted me to talk about the subject and what I learnt from the process of writing the novel.
All my novels tie up at the end, but they don’t always come with a classic denouement. The closest I came was in ‘Unspeakable Acts’, the third Clearwater novel, where James Wright explains the villain’s motivation and method. ‘Speaking In Silence’ is slightly different to other mysteries I’ve written because it’s more of a ‘What are they doing?’ mystery for the reader, who won’t know what until the climax, and won’t know how until the last scene, the denouement.
What is a Denouement?
The word is borrowed from the French and originates in Latin, as this snippet from Etymonline tells us:
1752, from French dénouement “an untying” (of plot), from dénouer “untie” (Old French desnouer) from des- “un-, out” + nouer “to tie, knot,” from Latin nodus “a knot,” from PIE root *ned- “to bind, tie.”
[PIE = The roots of the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language are basic parts of words that carry a lexical meaning, so-called morphemes.]
In other words, denouement means to untie a knot. In literary terms, it means the final part of a play, film, or narrative in which the strands of the plot are drawn together and matters are explained or resolved. Or, as the dictionary also states: the outcome of a situation, when something is decided or made clear.
In other-other words, it’s that bit at the end of an Agatha Christie when Poirot stands in the drawing room and tells the assembled characters who did it and how. Of course, the technique is used in all forms of literature and creative writing, and doesn’t have to pertain to a crime story. The denouement of Romeo and Juliet happens after the two main characters are dead, for example, even though we all saw how they died.
What to Consider When Writing a Denouement
The following is based on my experience. There are plenty of free writing-advice websites that will give their own views, but having just looked at a few, they are very similar to what I worked out for myself.
Keep notes as you write towards the end
First of all, as I wrote my way through the first draft of Speaking In Silence, I made a note every time a character was seen to do something with no explanation; every time I dropped in a question mark for the reader if you like. This was to make sure I didn’t leave any knots still tied at the end. I do this with every novel, and it’s a good way to avoid the trap of ‘I’ll remember that for sure’, only to say later, ‘What was it I had to remember?’
The notes also help me see if I have given too much away to the reader, and if I need to take out anything too obvious. Thinking about ‘Silence’, I’m worried the reader will catch on to what’s happening well before the end, and so the climax won’t be a surprise. (It doesn’t have to be. I’ve found readers are as happy to say, ‘I didn’t see that coming’ as they are to have proved themselves right.)
Don’t Witter on for too Long
Says he… My denouement happens in dialogue, and I’m not sure if that’s the done thing or not, but it’s what I have done. The chapter is currently 4,000 words long, but it’s not all explanation. Some of it is character thoughts, reactions and other story matters, and the explanation of how they did it comes from four characters, not one, so there is more than one voice, and more than one point of view. They are explaining themselves to Lord Clearwater, so we are in his head, and when I felt the others were being too detailed, I had him slow them down because I imagined that’s what the reader would also be thinking.
Beware Repeats
I was conscious of not repeating what the reader already knew. They would have seen X do this and that, and the idea of the denouement isn’t to go back and relive the action, it’s to explain the reason for the action. Yes, you have to place the explanation in context, but that can be done in a few words. Also, once something has been explained, there’s no need to repeat the explanation from another character’s point of view. In my scene, with four people untying the knots, I made sure they all contributed, but they only contributed something new or added a detail that cleared up another question mark.
Show Not Tell
That old chestnut again. Think about that Agatha Christie scene when Poirot has everyone in the drawing room, the dining car or wherever, and you’ll see he does a lot of talking. Now think film, and you’ll notice there are flashbacks showing the action. That’s one way of giving the explanation, but it’s a filmic one. The way to present a ‘show’ denouement is to write a scene where the action unknots the rope, rather than dialogue doing it for you. It’s not easy, and in my opinion, some stories require a dialogue explanation. If I had written the ‘how they did it’ into the action during the book, there would be no deepening mystery. If I had written the ‘how they did it’ into the climax, it would have cluttered up the pace. The only way I could make it work in ‘Silence’ was to have the four characters tell Clearwater — who knows what they have done — exactly how they did it.
Keep to the Rules
Although it’s right at the end of the book, my denouement still keeps to the rules of character arc and development, scene structure, location, description and pace. It’s not just one long dialogue of this-then-that. There is some character-created humour, we come away with the sense that a particular character has changed, and we know where we are (Clearwater’s drawing room with the footman coming and going). As well as all that, the scene ends with a great big question mark which will lead us into the next instalment. Not exactly a cliff-hanger because the reader knows the answer to the question, but the characters don’t.
Other Advice Answered
I pulled a few random tips of denouement writing off the internet. I’ve justified my ending against them.
Keep it short. Each part of my explanation is short, but there are a lot of things to explain, and that, I did on purpose.
The denouement validates the story. I always aim for this (see the end of ‘Fallen Splendour’ for my favourite story validation). The denouement validates what has changed for a character or a situation.
Convey a new normal. I have left the reader knowing a particular character will now be better off, and one will be worse off. That is their new normal.
Characters’ futures. Similar to the new normal; the conflicts have been resolved, and normalcy returns to the characters, although that normalcy might/should be changed. I’ve also put in a question mark, and the denouement is followed by a short epilogue which takes us towards the next story.
Denouement is an essential conclusion to plotted conflict, while the epilogue is an optional afterward in which the author shows readers how characters have fared after the events chronicled in the work.
In ‘Speaking In Silence’, the epilogue concerns the villain and leads us into the next story. I now have a completed first draft and can set about rewriting the whole thing and improving it, all the while, aiming towards that all important denouement.
‘Speaking in Silence’ should be ready by July, and you can keep up to date with its progress on my weekly Wednesday WIP blog.
On our imaginary train journey from London to Larkspur, Speaking in Silence is now on platform one at Plymouth station. We have two legs to go, from Plymouth to Liskeard, and from there to Bodmin. Or, in writing terms, we have the remainder of the climax to write followed by the denouement, the ‘how it was done’ section.
I am at 85,000 words with approximately another 10,000 to go (plus all the rewriting and editing), and last night, I left my characters at the Savoy Hotel’s French dining room, in London, on March 26th 1891. They were among good company, being in the presence of Prince Albert Victor, Sir Arthur Sullivan, WS Gilbert, Gladstone and other notables of the time. The Clearwater crew are represented by Archer, Silas, Jasper, Mrs Norwood and some of the Larkspur Academy men, and on the journey, we have met several others from the large cast of both Clearwater and Larkspur mysteries.
There’s a reason for the cast being so large, and that will become clear in the next novel, as yet untitled, and the one after that which will finish the series, The Larkspur Legacy. But those are other journeys for other days.
Right now, I am dealing with an unusual mystery novel, because the mystery is for the reader (I hope), who should be asking, ‘What are they up to?’ It’s one of those where the characters and I know more than the reader does until the reveal at the climax. When I rewrite, I will need to check I haven’t given too much away while also making sure what clues I do drop are sufficient to hold the reader’s intrigue. I am sure I will find out when husband Neil reads the second draft for me, but that will be on the return journey to London.
Ah, we are now pulling out of Plymouth, and I must get back to the Savoy Hotel and the great reveal…
I’ve often been asked how I come up with the titles for my novels, so today, I thought I’d look at a few and explain how they came about.
Just the other day on Self-Publishing School, Chandler Bolt wrote a piece titled ‘Book title ideas: Choosing your own & generators to use.’ In his article, he says titles are short hooks that advertise your book by using the fewest possible words, and suggests that potential readers take less than five seconds to decide whether or not to buy the book. Some things to bear in mind, he says, are to
make the title memorable,
make sure its genre-appropriate and
make it intriguing.
I agree with everything he says in his article (it’s well worth reading), and it caused me to reminisce about how I came up with some of my titles.
What Comes First, the Title or the Story?
Good question. I just experimented with a book title generator and, to be frank, wasn’t impressed. It was a basic thing where you selected an adjective and a noun, and it bunged the in front of random words. It generated things like ‘The Enchanted Pencil’, ‘The Imaginary Vase’ and ‘The Crazy Coffin‘. Okay, fun if you’re looking for inspiration and you don’t mind every book title starting with The, but it wasn’t really my style. I could have done better by opening a dictionary at random and picking the first two words I came across.
Actually, let’s try that…
The Queer Informant The Predynastic Deuterium The Putty Cushion
Now we’re just being silly. Let’s get back on track. Where in the world did ‘Deviant Desire’ come from?
Deviant Desire
Deviant Desire started out as Something Lamplight, or it might have been Something Gaslight, because I wanted a title that reflected the background of the story, Whitechapel in 1888, during the time of the Ripper murders. As I was writing the book, I thought more about the title, and suddenly ‘Deviant Desire’ popped into my head. I hadn’t read that article I just mentioned or anything like it, so this was instinctive, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made.
Deviant Desire works on several levels. The main character, Silas Hawkins, is a renter and a trickster, so he’s a deviant. He’s also gay and so is the other MC, Lord Clearwater, so according to the lores of the time, they are both deviants. When they meet, they fall for each other, crash, bang, wallop style, so there’s your desire.
Meanwhile… The villain of the piece is killing young men as a way of laying a trap for our hero. He, the villain, has a deviant desire, not only to trap the hero, but a desire to kill, and if that’s not deviant, I don’t know what is.
Twisted Tracks
The title for the follow-on novel to Deviant Desire, Twisted Tracks, took a little longer to come up with, but it works in the same way. A villain is enticing the hero to a confrontation, and he does it with various twisted clues, including an anagram, a twisting of words into other words. Our hero and his friends follow the clues, the tracks left by the villain, and everything climaxes on a runaway steam train which, of course, runs on tracks. Until they run out…
Unspeakable Acts
The trend continues in book three of the Clearwater Mysteries with Unspeakable Acts. The trend of using succinct two-word titles, an adjective and a noun, but without ‘The’ in front of them. While thinking of this title, I wanted to continue using words that the Victorians used for gay men and their sexuality. So far, we’ve had deviant and twisted, and another common thing was to refer to gay sex as an unspeakable act. The story of book three concerns a performance at the Royal Opera House at which someone is due to make a speech, but if he does, he will be assassinated, therefore he can’t, or, in other words, his speech is unspeakable. The performance is of an opera, so the word ‘acts’ has a couple of other meanings (the division of a play, what the actors do on stage), and it all ties together with the background theme of the Clearwater collection, the dangers of being gay in Victorian times.
And more…
I could outline every single one of the 11 Clearwater titles, but it would become repetitive. In summary, though, they all have double meanings: Fallen Splendour (book 4) refers to a line from the major clue of the mystery, ‘The splendour falls on castle walls’, and also refers to someone’s downfall; Bitter Bloodline (book 5) refers to the taste of a Transylvanian wine, a blood feud, and Bram Stoker; Artful Deception (book 6) centres on an artwork and theatrical tricks, while hero and villain try to outwit and deceive each other; Negative Exposure (book 9) refers to being photographed naked, having the negatives of those photos printed and therefore exposed, and because of that, a man’s secret coming into the open, thus, also being exposed.
You’ll note that for books seven and eight, the titles differ. We’ve moved on from the use of deviant et al., and the titles are longer. Home From Nowhere (book 7) was a line that came to me when the characters were speaking. As often happens, I let them speak and, later, edit what they say. In this one, Fecker says to Jasper something like, ‘Like me, you have come from nowhere’, and later, Jasper says to Billy, ‘I feel like I’ve come home.’ Oh yes, I thought, Jasper (the MC) has come home from nowhere, and there we go.
One of a Pair(book 8) is another play on words. Jasper is one of a pair of young men falling in love, and Billy is the same as he’s the other half of the pair. There’s another meaning to the title which I can’t tell you in case you haven’t read the book, but if you do, you will realise the relevance.
Banyak & Fecks, The Clearwater Prequel
Banyak & Fecks was the first time the title came before the story. I’d been thinking about a novel detailing how these two friends met. Deviant Desire opens with them in the East End, and they are already very close by the time we meet them, so how did they get there? My husband said there should be a prequel telling us just that, and I wanted to write something more character driven rather than full-on mystery. I wanted it to be about Banyak & Fecks, as they call each other, so that had to be the title, and it is.
The Larkspur Series
Still trying to keep to the title-writing rules of catchy, intriguing and memorable while sticking to my own deviant desire for titles to have more than one meaning while being relevant to the plot, I moved into slightly different territory for the Larkspur series.
Guardians of the Poor, the title of book one, refers to the real guardians of the poor, those who oversaw, ran and were responsible for the workhouses. It also refers to the two main characters, and how they do something which improves the life of those in a workhouse; they become guardians of the poor in another sense.
Keepers of the Past keeps up the rhythm of the series titles, and refers to archaeologists and a cult member (perhaps), while Agents of the Truth completes the three-part telling of Dalston and Joe’s story. It also refers to archaeologists and men working for the Clearwater Detective Agency.
For book four in the Larkspur series, I wanted something a little more atmospheric, and I wanted to get away from the rhythm of ‘Plural Noun of the Single Noun’ of the first three books. Seeing Through Shadows gives us a verb, a preposition and a noun, so a different rhythm, while remaining succinct and a little intriguing. Do we see through shadows? Aren’t we just seeing what they are shadowing? I mean, if there’s a shadow on the wall, are we seeing the shadow or the wall? In the story, we’re not sure what we’re seeing, so that fitted rather well.
I am currently working on Speaking in Silence, which is an oxymoron, because you can’t speak without making a sound. Yes, okay, so we have sign language and writing, but that, strictly speaking, isn’t speaking. Speaking in Silence refers to those things which are left unsaid, and in the story, there are many of them. The most difficult ‘unsaid’ part of writing this novel has been keeping information from the reader; that’s the thing I am not saying; the silence if you like. The reader will find out what’s going on in the end, but I wanted to keep them in the dark for as long as possible. I hope it works. We will have to wait and see. Also in this story, there are lots of things that the characters don’t say, but in the gaps in conversations, they and we understand their meaning… It’s complicated to explain, and you’ll have to wait a couple of months before you can read it when I hope all will be revealed.
Other Titles
I’ve written more than the Clearwater and Larkspur series. You might have heard of or read The Mentor Collection, for example. They are ‘Older man mentors younger man in love, lust and a few other things’, kind of stories. The titles aren’t tricky, though again, there is a pattern. All four are ‘The Mentor of…’ somewhere, and that somewhere takes the classic form of adjective and noun. Here, the adjective suggests loneliness or isolation (reflecting the younger, lost-his-way character) and the noun is something stable, a home (representing the older character).
Thus, we have: The Mentor of…
Wild Hill Farm
Barren Moor Ridge
Lone Marsh House
Lost Wood Hall
As Wildhill Farm, Barrenmoor Ridge etc., as they are also place names.
To Finish
As usual, I am rambling on now, and I am sure you got the point some time ago. So, to finish, I thought I’d return to that random title generator and come up with some more Mentor titles. This isn’t just for fun, I also want to highlight what I believe: that the author should come up with the title, and not use one of these random word-pickers, although they might spark ideas for stories. Perhaps. How about reading…
The Mentor of the Perfect Fireplace
The Mentor of the Haunted Coffin
The Mentor of the Happy Wheelbarrow
The Students of the Windy Wind
Remember: keep the title succinct, intriguing, genre-specific and, if you can, consider the rhythm.
See you on Wednesday for more WIP news, have a great weekend and happy reading!
If you have been following the ‘Speaking in Silence’ journey from London Paddington to Bodmin, you will know that it’s been an interesting train ride so far. In the word count scheme of things, I’d say I was now at Exeter, being at roughly 72,000 words, with the destination being 100,000 or thereabouts. After some shunting around in a yard several miles back, I have had a clear run from Bristol, and am now approaching the final reel. The final ‘act’ as they say in film terms.
I started the ‘Speaking in Silence’ journey knowing that I wanted it to be about two characters who appeared in the last book, but who we don’t yet know; Henry Hope and Edward Hyde. In this story, Edward is the protagonist, and yet, not only does he hardly speak, he also hardly communicates. That poses a few challenges for the author. Unlike Joe Tanner, who is deaf and communicates through sign language, Edward has taken a vow of semi-silence. The only person he speaks to is Henry, and Henry knows why. We, the reader, come to learn why Edward chose to do this, and we come to understand there is only one thing that will enable him to feel able to speak again. Justice. Therein lies the plot of the novel.
That was what I started with 72,000 words ago, and the rest I have, quite literally, made up as I have gone along, including the characters of Henry and Edward and a hell of a lot of backstory, which trickles out over time. I have used the flashback technique, and it was only while writing those scenes that I came to know the characters. They introduced themselves to me while Henry was telling me his and Edward’s story if you like, and that didn’t happen until I was quite a way into the story. That’s why we had the shunting around a few miles back, and I had to backtrack and change the point of view of some of the earlier chapters. If there’s a lesson there, it’s ‘know your characters before you start’. (A note to fellow authors, if you would like to stretch your character’s bio then you can always drop in for a ‘character interview’. Contact my PA for more details jeninesymi@gmail.com).
To give you a flavour of the novel, and without giving anything away, here’s a short excerpt from the first draft – unedited so excuse any errors. The skeleton is a character who will remain nameless for now, and I have changed the name of the second character to ‘John’ so as not to spoil things for you. John, the villain, is going to see the other villain at his new lodgings in Greychurch:
The skeleton’s previous lodgings above the ‘Princess Alice‘ had, John thought, been about as low as a man could go, but when he took a deep breath and entered the ‘Hops and…’ as the broken sign described it, he realised he had been wrong.
His foot fell on a rat, but it didn’t squeal because it was dead, but the child playing with it gave him a mouth of abuse, which he ignored. Dishevelled heaps, rather than people, sat at the few tables, some sucking on pipes whose fumes hardly disguised the stench of damp clothes, sweat and something else he didn’t like to think about, while across the room, no more than ten feet from the door, two men stood at a trestle table that served as a bar, while three rested against it on the floor, either drunk or dead. The most unnerving thing about the place, however, wasn’t the landlord with wooden teeth, only one eye and one hand, nor even the miasma of fire, pipe and opium smoke, but the silence. No-one even looked at him, no-one jereed at a well-dressed man from the west of the city entering their destitute realm, and nobody, apart from the child, made a sound.
These people, if he could call them that, might still be able to hear, he thought, and so he prepared to whisper to the disfigured landlord. As he leant over one of those asleep at his feet a movement to his right caught his eye. One of the heaps unwound itself from the table it had been slumped across and dragged itself to its feet. It said nothing, but a skeletal hand emerged from the sleeve of its black gown and beckoned to John like death, before gliding towards a door beside the makeshift bar.
Pleased to be with someone he knew, albeit vaguely and nefariously, John followed the skeleton through to a passage, and down a set of steps to a cellar. Ahead, the scurry of clawed feet suggested their path was clear, but still, when they arrived below ground, several pairs of pink eyes glinted in the candlelight, watching from the crevices for the time they could reclaim their dominion.
The Princess Alice pub was one of the pubs frequented by prostitutes in the East End of London at the time of the Ripper crimes
More on my WIP blog next Wednesday, but don’t forget to be here on Saturday for my other weekly post.
