Or very nearly: Death in Rheims, his third adventure, is up for preorder on Amazon, and will be available on 26 May! Continue reading
Tom Walsingham is back!
23 Thursday Feb 2023
Tag Archives: Historical fiction
All those words!
10 Thursday Nov 2022
Posted in Scribbling, Things
Among the many wonders of the Internet, there is the huge abundance of dictionaries, glossaries, thesauruses, lexicons, and such-like beautiful things.
I’ve always loved dictionaries of all sorts, old and new, and own shelves of them, and since a young age I’ve been known to ask Saint Lucia for the occasional dictionary as a gift… Apart from the obvious use, I just love to get lost among those columns of words, to make discoveries, to go on treasure hunts, to chase the elusive nuance of a meaning… Continue reading
Tom Walsingham’s Book 3 is out!
30 Sunday Oct 2022
So here it is: A Treasonous Path, Tom’s second adventure in espionage and sleuthing, is out both as a Kindle ebook and a paperback! As usual, the lovely people at Sapere Books have done a great work: I love it all!
And what does Tom deal with, this time?
- A mysterious informant from the French Embassy (mysterious as in “won’t tell us his real name”…);
- An awfully hot summer;
- Murder, of course – and not just one;
- A few temperamental Scots;
- A traffic of forbidden books;
- Fencing masters and eccentric philosophers – all of them from Italy, all of them of unknown trustworthiness;
- A plot against the Queen;
- An enigmatic woman;
- His own family;
- Fanatics from all over Europe;
- Midnight visitors;
- Grumbling underlings;
- …
Are you curious yet? You can find A Treasonous Path – ebook or paperbachk – here.
Tom Walsingham 3 – Draft 0
07 Thursday Jul 2022
Posted in History, Scribbling, Stories
Remember when, back in January, I told you that I was experimenting with the idea of a Draft 0 for A Treasonous Path, and I’d let you know how it worked for me? Well, it would seem it worked well enough, because I’m doing it again. Six months later, and I’m at work on Draft 0 of Tom’s third book – for now TW3. Continue reading
Names, names, names…
27 Thursday Jan 2022
Posted in History, Scribbling
Tags
Historical fiction, languages, names, naming characters, research, spelling, Tom Walsingham Mysteries, writing
Yesterday I spent a good deal of time perusing lists of names of Guild members in 16th century Bruges. It’s one of the many wonders of the Internet that you can find this sort of thing for the asking… and, as I said, I ended up spending a good chunk of the afternoon going through list after list, copying the promising ones in my notebook – one column for given names, one for family names – trying them out for size, and even involving a Dutch-speaking friend for a sense of how a few of them would be pronounced… Continue reading
Sometimes it is the small things
28 Thursday Jan 2021
Posted in History, Scribbling, Stories
Tags
Historical fiction, murder mystery, Sapere Books, Sir Francis Walsingham, Sir Henry Cobham, writing
They stopped Walsingham and Paulo, my Italian, whom they seemed resolved to rob [… and] another Englishman in his company, called Skeggs, as I remember.
On the twelfth of November 1581 Elizabeth’s Ambassador in Paris, Sir Henry Cobham, wrote to the all-powerful Secretary of State – and spymaster – Sir Francis Walsingham . It was almost in passing that the ambassador slipped in this bit of information about the misadventure of Sir Francis’s much younger cousin, nineteen-year-old Thomas, riding as a diplomatic courier between London and Paris. Continue reading
The Raven’s Seal, by Andrei Baltakmens
16 Thursday Apr 2020
Posted in Books
The 18th century is lazily going by in the fictional English town of Airenchester, when we meet hour hero, Thaddeus Grainger, the type of young gentleman of means and taste. A bright, clever, careless boy in the words of his doting housekeeper, Thaddeus is in equal parts bored and disillusioned when it comes to the fine society he confidently belongs to, but that is the way of things, and what is a fellow to do – except navigate the currents, and keep apart from the worst of it? In fact, Thaddeus’s only rebellion is to cultivate the close friendship of reasonably genteel but penniless William Quilby, a vicar’s son and journalist… Continue reading
Longlisted!
08 Thursday Nov 2018
Posted in Scribbling
Tags
Dorothy Dunnett Award, Historical fiction, Historical Writers Association, Jennifer Falkner, Longlist, Short Stories
In the middle of it all – and by “it all” I mean tech week for my own translation and adaptation of A Christmas Carol, opening this Saturday – I’ve had a lovely surprise: my story was longlisted for the HWA‘s Dorothy Dunnett Award for unpublished short stories… Continue reading
All the Way to the Theatre – or, the Historical Novelist’s Dilemma
27 Thursday Sep 2018
Posted in History, Scribbling, Stories, Theatre
Tags
Before Shakespeare, Historical fiction, James Burbage, National Archives Blog, research, The Theatre, writing dilemmas
As I was busy completing the la(te)st revision of my novel before pitching it at the HNS Conference in Scotland, I came across this lovely article at the National Archives Blog.
And so I learned that, while I’d always assumed that people walked to the Theatre via Bishopsgate, Bishopsgate Street and Shoreditch, this was not the case. Not that the Burbages wouldn’t have liked such a straightforward route to their playhouse – but there was opposition from the local landowners – particularly from the Earl of Rutland, who effectively blocked the easy access… Continue reading
Underfictionalised
19 Thursday Jul 2018
Tags
Caravaggio, Historical characters, Historical fiction, historical novels, historical plays, Manfred von Hohenstaufen
Some historical characters seem so very, very perfect for fictional treatments, don’t they? Whether they have lived enormously interesting lives, full of drama and colour, or we know tantalizingly little about them – just enough to make us want to fill the gaps – they practically beg to be written. Continue reading
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