02 Saturday Aug 2025
Once upon a time, when I first joined the Historical Novel Society, I’d avidly read the quarterly Historical Novel Review, dreaming that one day my own books would be reviewed there, and perhaps there would even be a feature about my work… Continue reading
26 Friday May 2023
Posted in Books
Here we go! Today is the day!
Tom Walsingham is back in France – and right into the lion’s den!
It was never supposed to be the easiest of missions – but once Tom arrives in Rheims, deep into restless France, he finds that things are very different from what he and his powerful cousin, Sir Francis, had anticipated… And to find out just what threats are being prepared for Queen Elizabeth, this time our boy will have to take some really huge risks.
What’s worse, in theory he has plenty of support – but is there anyone he can really trust?
Aliases, betrayals, murders, looming war, lies aplenty, and a young rapscallion of a poet called Kit Marley… Tom is back for his most dangerous adventure yet!
Follow him as he tries to untangle, as Sir Francis would say, the joints and flexures of… Death in Rheims!
Book Three of the Tom Walsingham Mysteries is out today with Sapere Books. Findi it on Amazon in both Kindle and paperback formats!
13 Thursday Oct 2022
Tags
Douai Diaries, English College Reims, History, primary sources, Tom Walsingham Mysteries, William Allen
This one comes from the Douai Diaries – the rather miscellaneous manuscript books chronicling, mostly in Latin, the day-to-day life, struggles and correspondence of William Allen’s band of English Catholics exiled in France. Allen built an English college in Douai, first – and when he was thrown out of what was, back then, Hapsburg land, moved the whole establishment to Reims, where it remained from 1578 to 1593. There he continued to instruct and ordain Catholic priests to send back in England as missionaries. A good deal of martyrs, plotters and fanatics passed through the colleges of both Douai and Reims… Continue reading
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
10 Thursday Mar 2022
Posted in Scribbling
Tags
book 2, deadline, draft 1, draft-0, Tom Walsingham Mysteries, writing, writing experiment, writing schedule
Well, no – this is not to say that I have finished Draft 1… I’m about halfway through, though, and it is not an entirely bad place to be at this point. Oh, I do have almost daily bouts of How Will I Ever Meet The Deadline, but it is a common disease, and actually I’m pretty much on schedule, so what does one do, except ignore the bouts and write on? Continue reading
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
29 Thursday Oct 2020
Posted in Scribbling
Yesterday I finished, for all intents and purposes, the second draft of Road to Murder. Well, it was today, technically, around two in the morning – but still. I finished the second draft. Continue reading
Scribblings 