No news is good news

Right?

Sorta.

I haven’t posted for a while. Sorry and all that. I’m sure you’re fine with it.

The reason for my silence is because I have been head down writing, mostly. Not on my novel about Marguerite, the murderess (alleged — it’s complicated).

No, I have been writing a new book.

So, although this newsletter is called 1872: A Murder that title is now obsolete. I will be thinking up a new one between now and the next missive.

If a post about writing (my writing) doesn’t interest you, stop reading now. It’s only a few paragraphs but I would hate for you to be bored. So…

I entered Marguerite into a number of writing competitions, the first of which was the Cheshire Novel Prize. No, I didn’t win or even place — but the lovely people who run the show provide detailed feedback to all entrants. Three pages of it. And three people in the publishing industry read it.

So while I think about how to fix the manuscript, I have embarked on a new story.

This is a crime thriller set in Lambeth in 1882. It will feature a woman detective, babyfarmers, Dr Annie McCall (pioneering obs/gyn, a real person), Mrs Meredith (another real person, ran charitable laundries employing ex-convict women), trains, the workhouse.

One thing that inspired me to write this story is the assumption (erroneous IMO) that all middle-class Victorians were stern, unforgiving, snobbish, obsessed with respectability and delighted in oppressing working-class people, and that all poor people were criminals or sexually incontinent or both. The tone will be dark but I am hoping to chip away at some stereotypes.

I have written 8,000 words, not all of them in the correct order.

Yes, but there was more to it than unrelenting grime… Illustration from London: A Pilgrimage (1872) by Gustave Dore (1832–1883).