It’s time to choose the cover for ‘Sudden Deaths’.

I thought about a view of Hampton Court Palace (HCP) in 1653 for my new cover, as there is a chapter based there. I looked for a picture showing the way that it looked mid-seventeenth century, but could only find a sketch which did not show the river entrance that I wanted to highlight.

Even this took a long time – it’s not easy to persuade Google to show you pictures (or paintings, or sketches) from the mid 17th Century (trying prompts like ‘1650’ [too specific], or ‘Early Modern’ [too general]) which often gave results ignoring the period altogether or 16thC or 18thC, or even 1680, which showed the re-modelled HCP, post accession of William & Mary.

Results included the series of paintings known as the ‘Hampton Court Beauties’, also post 1677 and not quite the prominences of HCP I wanted.

In the end I gave in and asked ChatGPT to give me a view of HCP in 1650 and it came up with a really nice picture it had cobbled together from a variety of drawings and paintings of the period. It showed exactly the features I wanted and came with a legend showing what the different parts of the building were – though I then asked it to remove the labels, which it did.

The image betrays its AI roots in the shadows – one chimney has its shadow alongside it – and the boats that have wakes, showing they are in motion, but no means of propulsion (perhaps they have outboard motors!).

Nonetheless it would have make a perfectly usable cover, the details being too small for any but the fussiest critic. In the end I decided that, since almost all the action in the book is in the London area, I should use another picture of London, as in the ‘Urchin‘, but I’m keeping that one up my sleeve until publication day.

My process for writing is:

Have a general idea

Think about a scene/chapter

Write it all down as quickly as possible – This means doing very little error checking as I go, just dealing with those bits underlined in blue or red and the occasional typo that glares at me.

Once I have the first draft done, I have my first reader (the lovely Mary) look at it. When I have her comments, I go through the whole thing, correcting errors, tidying prose and making a note of inconsistencies, plot holes etc., which I will consider how to deal with. This is the second draft.

And that’s where I am now.

Then it’s make further corrections and any additional material by way of clarification or extra description where I think necessary. A final read through then it’s Advance Reader Copy (ARC) time. This gets produced in e-book form and a few hard copies. If you would like to read and comment on the ARC, let me know and I’ll add you to the mailing list.

ARCs should be out early December.

The #HNS Devon Chapter had another good meeting last Thursday. The usual topics recurred, agents and publishers among them.

There was some talk of the ‘woke’ publisher who insisted on the replacement of ‘girl’ by ‘young woman’, despite the appropriateness of the former in the context. Some of the readership would be offended, even outraged, otherwise.

One of the advantages of self-publishing is that I do not have to bow down before such pressure. If some people do not wish to read my work because I am insufficiently woke, I can live with that.

I have two young women in Sudden Deaths, both around sixteen or seventeen, so just about qualifying for that term in my eyes. One of them is just about as independent as it was possible to be at that time and my image of her is as a role model for any young woman. If anything she is a bit too good to be true: I am having difficulty finding flaws in her character to make her a bit more realistic.

The other is much more typical of the era. She has a (over-?) protective father and is quite restricted in her life generally. She herself is happy not to be interacting with others, particularly men – she had a bad experience previously. What should our protagonists do to help her with that? Should they, and we, take a 21st Century view on these issues, or a 17th Century one?

There is another female character, Elizabeth Lilburne, in her thirties, who is a strongly political advocate for women’s rights and the right to vote for everyone (well almost everyone, obviously not servants and vagrants). In many ways she is more typical of a late 20th Century activist than some of the current crop, and certainly not typical of 17th Century women – at least not as they are portrayed.

She was, of course, not someone I could invent, being entirely real.

It has been a week when I seem to have spent more time on research than actually writing.

In the 1650s what sort of boat would you use to transport five men and a couple of medium-sized barrels, as well weapons, upriver from London? A standard wherry would seem a bit too small. It could take up to five passengers OR goods, but not both. A Thames barge would hold more, but was too big and heavy to rely on oar power. It would have had sails, but that meant it would be dependent on the whims of the wind, particularly upstream from London, where the river was narrower and tacking against the wind more difficult, if not impossible. I needed the boat to take a reasonably predictable time to reach its destination.

So I ended up with a ‘large wherry’, assuming that there would be at least some variation within that classification. I then wanted to know how fast it would move. My boat would have four rowers and would set out with the tide in flood, but they would have many hours of rowing. Unfortunately, while Google maps would tell me how long my journey would take on foot or by car, it doesn’t seem to have the option for a rowed boat, or to say that the route should be entirely along the river. It doesn’t even give me the option for horseback, or only to cross the river at London Bridge. Now, I ask you, what sort of a tool is that?

This was the era in which the skiff, a slimmer, lighter version of the wherry, was born. Between two and eight oarsmen, most commonly four, it was faster than the wherry and used for messengers or low weight, high value transport, or even for pleasure and sport. But how much faster? If the wherry set off an hour before the skiff, how long would it take to catch up?

I admit that I avoided AI in answering these questions, mainly because I was not at all sure I could rely on the answers, but also to avoid any taint of AI in the finished work.

Off-topic again, but, despite living in a very much suburban environment, I do like being able to see trees from both front and back of the house. They are just starting to show their autumn colours and with the bright blue skies today it really doesn’t feel like October – is that good or bad?

Always hard to work when the view out of the window is like this.
☺

So, as the third week of the sprint to finish the first draft of Sudden Deaths comes to an end, I have a few hours left to write the 700 words that will keep me strictly to my target.

Given the overall target of 75k words, I’m now 55% of the way there. I’m hoping that, as most of the second half is resolving everything that started in the first half, things will get easier from now on.

The more I write the more I wonder if I’m envious of my grandson, who has put in his UCAS application for next year, to study English: would I be up to reading all that stuff that somebody else says is good for me, or would it put me off reading for life?

In this week’s news: M John Harrison is on the Booker shortlist. Is this the first time a long time SF author has made it?

Another good meeting of #HNS Devon Chapter last Thursday.

A number of people have been in touch with Graham, saying that they were interested in coming along to our meetings and Martin managed to make to this one. We talked quite a lot about his book and discussed the usual things that we all find hard, including finding editor, agent and publisher.

Other news included the publication of Rosemary’s new book on Kat Ashley, to go with her fiction set in the same period in Devon.

Richard talked about some of the ideas brought up at conference for the future of HNS, including podcasts and an editing group.

We also talked about using each other as beta readers. I would be happy to do this once the first draft of Sudden Deaths is out of the way.

I am missing my target for the week, but only by about 10%. ☹️ Still time before the end of the day though. 😀

I have been working on my second book, Sudden Deaths, for seven months now. Up to this week I had written 18,000 words, or about a quarter. At that rate it would take me almost two years before I completed the first draft. We are back in ‘I don’t even buy green bananas’ territory.

So I decided it was time for a change of gear. If I write 1,000 words a day, or, more realistically, 7,000 words a week (good days, bad days), then I should finish in about eight weeks, or early November, which would give a reasonable prospect of a release in February.

So the next question is, ‘Is that feasible?’ I started a regime where writing takes precedence over everything else (well, almost – I couldn’t bail out on watching the Last Night of the Proms with friends, obviously) on Tuesday. Over the last five days I have written over 10,000 words, so I’m doing double the target and it should be possible to complete the first draft by the end of October (working to the original target, but as a minimum).

Second draft, end of November. ARCs produced and distributed to anyone who wants to read them in December. January for final edits. Publish in February.

What could go wrong?

Completely off topic, but …

I have said before that I believe research should be thorough, but should not be invasive in my writing. In particular, the language I use should be easily understandable for a modern reader. I tend to use the language of the mid to late 20th Century so that it feels old, but still comprehensible.

I have recently read a book, set in the 16thC, which is written in modern English, but which uses two forms of cant. One is a form of thieves’ cant: language used by gypsies, vagabonds and criminals to disguise what they were talking about from outsiders. It was not used in this way in the book and seems unlikely to have been in use in this period in London. More to the point, if I really wanted to be sure about what was being said, I would have to use google up to half-a-dozen times for one page. This really doesn’t help the flow of the plot. If anyone finds any of my writing where that happens, please point it out to me straightaway.

The other sort of cant is the jargon of a particular profession. I can believe that this is accurate (I have not researched it), but a little of this sort of thing goes a long way.

It’s a fine line between immersing the reader in the time and place and confusing them.