A taster…
This is just a small taste of the opening pages of the novel, Reliquary, Book One of The Peregrinus Series, which I hope to e- and print-publish in the next few weeks.
The inspiration for my latest book, Reliquary, originally came from the research I carried out for the previous trilogy called The Triptych Chronicle. In the process of seeking facts on rare and valuable merchandise that may have been traded in the twelfth century, I came across mention of a silk called byssus and which is still harvested in the Mediterranean from a species of shellfish.
Yesterday, I looked at the word count of Reliquary, my current manuscript, and realised I had passed the 100,000 mark. I was surprised. It seemed only a short time ago that I watched 50,000 tick over and then time just slowed and it seemed no matter how often I wrote, the numbers barely changed. Some days, I would delete a page or a paragraph. And at one point, I accidentally opened the file at the very beginning and decided I wanted to hit the readers pretty hard from the get-go and so added a kind of prologue to set the scene.
I have still to get the editor’s approval on that one but it works for me…
At some point, maybe in the first chapter even, a writer will wonder if he or she has a story.
For me, I write to roughly the half way mark or even just the first 50,000 words and then I send it to my trusted editor for an opinion.
These last couple of weeks, I have held back from continuing with the manuscript of Reliquary until I had a definitive answer on whether the story had legs.
Writing this latest historical fiction (A Small Thread of Silk – working title only) is filled with serendipitous and exciting discoveries which is making the writing something special. Those of you who know me from Facebook will know about the strange revelations that have occurred, odd discoveries which mean that this book has just been waiting quietly in the wings to be written.
Yesterday, I found a nugget of research for my new 12th century novel entitled A Small Thread of Silk.
I discovered that a very special artefact was in fact 6 metres long.
So what, you may ask?
Well, in imperial measurements, that’s over 19 feet. And that extra-long measurement gives me scope.
Book Two of The Tritptych Chronicle is following a pathway.
I hadn’t intended for this to happen when I began Tobias’s story in Book One. But Book Two, Guillaume’s story, is treading that same route and has caused a re-think about just who might be the focus of Book Three…