Category Archives: Fictional Musings

Apr 12

It’s all in the Clothes

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OH and I have been thinking a lot about Emily and her relationship with Symington. She’s an East End girl of genteel stock; he was part of the late King Edward’s crowd. . He has been asked to look after her, she has contacts in the East End that are vital to a criminologist; but […]

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Oct 20

Phyllis Pearsall: Plot saver…

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As an historian, I usually don’t have a lot of time for geography. It’s professional pride. We’re at opposite ends of the humanities – and like daleks and cybermen, historians and geographers are fundamentally different. One is a noble exponent of detection, the other a mere scientist. but for Phyllis Pearsall, I am prepared to […]

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Jun 30

The 1949 Affair… The story So far

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Originally posted on The Secret of Aldwych Strand:
  Sometimes it’s really tough to catch up with a story that is more than a few chapters old. So I thought: why not make it easier with a quick summary post? So here goes… Lucy and Mark find they are in Blackpool, not Southend;  and the…

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Jun 06

Cruikshank to my Dickens – the Pantser’s Solution.

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I’d like to state, right from the start that the only two things I have in common with Charles Dickens is that we both publish instalments and we both have a stalwart sidekick on whom we can rely. He had Cruikshank; I have OH. If I need to visit a location; he’ll come with me. […]

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Why I have RSI – probably…

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My Magnus Opus – The Secret of Aldwych Strand – all 40,000 words of it… is sitting next to me on the sofa. It’s huge!  Well it’s 90 odd pages at 12 pt Times New Roman. That’s an awful lot of words. It’s more than my undergraduate dissertation; and at the time I thought that […]

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The Bleriot Monument and other Muses

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I’ve been stalled in the writing of my final set of chapters. I knew what I wanted to happen. I knew where I wanted it to happen, and I’d looked at the photos of Bleriot’s landing site at Dover Castle, but somehow, I couldn’t get it right. Every time I tried to put pen to […]

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Henry Vaughan – This Writer’s Latest Muse…

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Henry Vaughan – twin brother to Thomas, the Philosopher and Alchemist – was born in Newton upon Usk, Breconshire, Wales, in 1621. He went to Oxford with his brother (we think) but left to study Law in London. Unfortunately, this career choice was interrupted by the outbreak of Civil War in 1641. Briefly on the […]

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Churchill and Redundancy…

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Winston Churchill – was moved from his Job as Home Secretary to First Lord of the Admiralty at the end of 1911. A fact I have completely ignored when writing my other blog. He needed to remain at the Home Office  to move the story along. I did wonder whether anyone out there  would notice […]

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When Fiction becomes Stranger than Life….

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It’s very bizarre! I  started writing “The Secret of Aldwych Strand” as a bit of light relief. It’s got away from me. What was intended to be little more than a tale of two Essex teenagers exploring London at the turn of the 20th Century has turned into an alternate universe tale – after they […]

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Fixed Points in Time?

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For those of you following my other blog  – The Secret of Aldwych Strand – you will already know that I have a bit of a love affair with History. In chapter 13 Lucy tells David Lloyd George – the creator of the British Welfare State – that Winston Churchill is a fixed point in […]

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