03 Thursday Mar 2022
Tags
Amazon, C. P. Giuliani, Elizabethan spies, historical mystery, historical thriller, Preorder, Sapere Books, The Road to Murder, The Tom Walsingham Mysteries
And I’m very, very happy to announce that you can now preorder via Amazon The Road to Murder – Book 1 of the Tom Walsingham Mysteries! Continue reading
10 Thursday Feb 2022
Tags
cover reveal, historical mystery, Sapere Books, The Road to Murder, The Tom Walsingham Mysteries
And for the first time in nine years, I leave aside my beloved colour scheme of black, grey, red and white, because really, this one you must see in all its splendour… The lovely people at Sapere Books sent me my cover – the first cover for the Tom Walsingham Mysteries…
03 Thursday Feb 2022
Tags
British History Online, Calendar of State Papers Scotland, historical novel, primary sources, swashbuckling
After finishing Draft 0 last Monday, I’ve spent this past couple of days up to my chin in primary sources, thanks to the wonder that is British History Online. Continue reading
21 Thursday Oct 2021
Over the years, and very much by trial and error, my rather difficult relationship with science fiction has come to work essentially like this: I give a very, very wide berth to everything dystopian and pre/post/apocalyptic; I’ll let myself be tempted by some carefully chosen, strictly past-bound time travel* now and then – and that’s it.
Now, please, let’s not go into whether time travel is proper sci-fi or something else or its own genre, shall we? Let us just observe that my last foray, Murray Leinster’s Time Tunnel,** was published and marketed as such in 1964 – and leave it at that. Continue reading
30 Thursday Sep 2021
Posted in Scribbling, Stories
Tags
I’m sure you know how it goes.
You are working on a project. A long term one. Longer than you planned at first, perhaps – but sometimes things have their own way of stretching into something else, and… and… oh, you do know how it goes. Continue reading
02 Thursday Sep 2021
Posted in Scribbling, Stories
They come to you, and say that they have a story, a really good story that you should really write.
In time you learn to recognize this, a certain gleam in their eyes from the very first moment someone mentions that you write. Then they sit on it, they observe you, sometimes they ask questions, trying to determine whether you might be the right person… Continue reading
27 Friday Aug 2021
I am looking for a book.
“Well, you are always looking for a book – or three,” my mother said when I told her – and she isn’t entirely wrong. But the fact is that, this time, I’m a bit stumped. Even the all-encompassing Internet, so far, isn’t helping much. Continue reading
12 Thursday Aug 2021
And it is World Elephant Day, so… Elephants!
Last year I wrote a post about the general lack of fictional elephants, in which I mentioned the historical but nameless elephant given by the Sultan of Egypt to Emperor Frederick II, and gone down in the chronicles as the Elephant of Cremona… * Continue reading
15 Thursday Jul 2021
Posted in Scribbling, Stories, Theatre
We all read The Three Musketeers as children, don’t we? And we play make-believe, and watch the movies (and the fact itself that they keep making more of them must mean something), and go on to read Twenty Years Later, and perhaps The Man in the Iron Mask – but this is already where “we” split into two camps, roughly speaking: those who leave behind Dumas as yet another childhood pleasure, and those who do not. Continue reading
06 Thursday May 2021
Posted in History, Scribbling, Stories
Tags
#StoryADayMay, digital maps, Gerogian London, John Rocque, Napoleon, rabbit holes, Richard Horwood
Well, not quite a full week, if you like, as today is just the sixth day… But I have to say: so far, so good. Last night, quite late (after the loveliest Alice rehearsal) I completed the draft of my fifth story, and took a few notes for things to come… Continue reading
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