004The Daughters of the Draper  - an extract from the new novel...oh, this is rare- this blog is getting too many secrets from me. I never show my work before it's finished. I'm breaking all the rules for this blog! But it is only the prologue and a bit of the first chapter.

The Fourth Francis Vallemont novel.

by  Frank Almond

Prologue

There was no doubt that the young woman was looking at her. Her heart beat a little faster, as she purposefully moved across to the other side of the crowded market to look at another book stall- to see if the woman- a rather poorly dressed young woman, perhaps her own age, twenty-five, or a little older- would follow. And to her great excitement- she did!  And pretended to be perusing through some ballads, though from the corner of her eye, she could tell the woman was still watching her.

They were standing in the towering nave of the great Norman cathedral of St Paul's- or, to most Londoners, simply: Pauls, for it was not used as a place of worship these days. It had become the centre for the City's book trade- and since many well-to-do people shopped there, it was also the haunt of countless petty villains and prostitutes. Could this woman be a prostitute? she wondered. Her faded and a little threadbare clothes- though fashionable enough and clean- had that look of Birchin Street about them. Birchin Street was where ladies of quality sent their maids to sell their cast-offs and where the less well-heeled women did their clothes and shoes shopping, particularly, women of the street, who, rather comically, could often be seen wearing colourful gowns intended for evening wear only, around Thames Street fish markets and along the South Bank at nine o'clock in the morning. But this woman, in sombre blacks and greys and pinks was too tastefully turned out to be a whore, surely.

She blushed when their eyes inadvertently met, and then the woman quickly looked away and pretended to be interested in a display of pamphlets about the recent claret scandal. But as her eyes returned to her, she could see she wasn't really reading one, she was just holding it open and waiting for something. She might not even be able to read. And if she could not read- that would not be good. How could she hold conversations with a woman who could not read? That would not do. She turned away from her and changed her mind. She would not do.

She was just coming back into the dusty sunlight pouring in through the high entrance arch, when she felt something brush against her. It was a very slight laying on of a hand- like velvet, but in her heightened state of awareness, she had positively felt the charge imparted by a human touch. She turned and saw the startled  pale face of the young woman who had been tracking her. Now she was looking at her up close, she could see that she was even more attractive than she had looked from a distance. Her eyes were that green like sunlight through leaves. She was fair and clear skinned and her face was perfectly proportioned. Like an angel's. And she knew a lot about angels. The nose, perhaps, was a little too turned up, but everything else about her was most becoming, yes, very becoming indeed. She saw the woman's guilty eyes and the purse still held in her hand and realised the woman was no angel, but, in fact- a pickpocket!

"Give that back to me!" she snapped, and snatched the purse from her trembling hand, and began putting it away somewhere safer this time, in the bottom of her bag. Her father had often warned them about the thieves who inhabited the precincts of Pauls, and how they had to be on their guard.

A watchman saw the two women confronting each other and was quickly approaching them from the archway.

"I'm sorry," said the woman, casting her eyes down. "Please don't report me. I can't go to prison. I'd die."

She looked at her and she looked so contrite and ashamed that her heart went out to her. "Keep quiet," she said.

The young woman flashed her eyes at her and her lips parted in surprise and pleasure, to reveal two neat rows of even white teeth,  like a little double carcanet of pearls. But the elegant young lady was not looking at her, so she looked down again.

"Everything all right, madam?" said the watchman to the better dressed of the two women.

She looked at the pretty young woman. Her face drained of colour. She looked lean and hungry. Underfed. A little frightened now, yet, strangely, proud. The woman raised her leaf green eyes up to hers. And the two women recognised something in one another and smiled, almost in relief.

"Everything is fine," she said.

"Madam," said the watchman and turned away.

"Thank you," said the woman, and licked her lips, a confident smile now playing on them. And her bright green eyes were suddenly alive.

The wealthy looking young woman took her eyes off the captivating eyes and looked around a little anxiously.

"Would you like to go for a walk?" said the pickpocket.

She returned her eyes to the very pleasing face. "Where?" she said.

"Well, we could walk up to The Curtain," she suggested.

"Isn't that place full of men," she said.

"Yes, but they won't bother us," smiled the pickpocket. "Will they?"

And then she took her by the arm and the two women walked out into the sunlight together.


The Daughters of the Draper

Hugh Shevington got up from his desk, high in the Master's office of Skinner's Hall on Dowgate Street, and looked out of the window again. He had a fine view of the slate-grey Thames and the street below. But he was not really looking at anything in particular today. And he could not settle to his work. He returned to his chair,  restless and impatient to be going. A few minutes later he got up once more and went to stare out of the window again. What did it matter if he left early for a change. He pursed his thick red lips and considered that. Yes, he would leave now and go home. He could not concentrate anyway, he was too excited, his mind was on the drinks party he was going to that evening at the Hartscombes. Yes, he would go now- but wait! He had arranged to meet Francis Vallemont. He had asked Francis to meet him at four down in the lobby. And it was barely past three. He had just heard the bells of St Michael's- across the Wallbrook- tolling out the hours. He returned to his desk once more and slumped down. He hadn't felt this excited since his wedding day. How long ago that morning seemed to him now. Where does the time go? Ten years. He had seen ten years pass by him. in the flowing waters of the Thames; in all the bright new furs unloaded down at the Vintry Quay; in all the lonely nights- heard them tolled out, almost mockingly, to him by all the church bells. Ten years. He had been blissfully married for just one year to Sarah. And that was all the time Heaven had allowed them, before she had been cruelly struck down by the sweating fever.  Although in this case it did not spread, though they had taken the precaution of burning everything she touched. At first- when the affliction visited them on the Friday- they had simply thought she had caught a heavy feverish cold, but by Monday he was burying her at St Gabe's. A lump came to his throat, as he remembered her. It hurt him that his memory of her, her face, was fading, and he realised she was someone he had barely known. But how beautiful she had looked on their wedding day, that much remained- and how happy they had both been- and yet how sickly pale and cadaverous she had looked when the angels finally came for her on that terrible Sunday afternoon. God, he would never forget that ordeal. Or how strong his widowed mother had been. What a rock she was, what a woman to have by his side in that dire hour of need, when he had lost his dear sweet Sarah. And almost his mind.

But now, at last, he had met a new woman. And he was going to see her tonight. Her name was Grace Hartscombe and she was the eldest daughter of his new friend, Walter Hartscombe, a well-respected Draper's Company liveried man, and very wealthy, too. And although he had only met her once, his heart had skipped a beat as soon as he laid eyes on her. The only mystery was why such a beautiful young woman had not already been taken, for she was five and twenty years of age and would bring a large dowry with her, but her father had assured him there was no credible young man seeking her hand. None Grace would accept at least. The Hartscombe women led a quiet life down at Peverley Farm, their father's estate in Kent. Peverley Abbey was a former Cistercian monastery with a lake and close to four hundred acres of good arable land attached to it. Legend had it that the white monks had built their monastery there after their leader had a vision of an angel walking on the waters of the lake. It was this story that had first drawn the young Walter Hatrscombe to the property, but now he had a mind to sell it, and that is why he had also invited the wealthy Goldsmith, Sir John Houseman and his wife, to the little soiree he was giving at Sidon Street that evening.

When I wrote the opening scene- I had to for something later in the book- I was directly inspired by Sarah Brightman's This Love, which perfectly set the slow, strange atmosphere of the encounter I was looking for, when I heard it. I had already created the scene in my mind, but the music made it come alive for me.  Just an example of the power of music on our imaginations and how helpful I find it when I'm thinking about writing. I don't usually play it when I am actually writing- only when I'm making notes. Or, more often, staring blankly into space, waiting for something to come into my mind. I'm also playing Sarah's Dust in the Wind.

This novel features Hugh Shevington, who appeared in The Murder of Errors, fleetingly, and was briefly introduced in An Unreasonable Request. This will be a hallmark of my Vallemont books- characters will come and go and be woven in and out of them, as the chronological story of Vallemont progresses, from one whodunnit to the next, and his life changes. It's an ambitious project, but one I have decided to pursue, whether these books sell or not, because I enjoy it. And I hope to wear you all down with my persistence!

Crashing into the scenery? When you are writing it is quite common for all of us to feel a bit daunted by a particular scene we have to write- we wonder how we can manage to do it convincingly, or how we can do justice to it. Well, just crash right into it and do your best and then worry about it afterwords. Crash on into the next scene, quite often that will require you to make adjustments or additions to the scene you were worried about. Do not be put off by difficult scenes- push right in there and get your characters talking and acting. You own the place remember! When I came to describe the poor tenements down on the dockside at Worcester House in The Murder of Errors, I admit I felt daunted, but in the end I think those scenes pleased me (pleased?- I loved writing those scenes!), because I let my imagination dwell a little on the place, until I could see and touch and smell those rooms and passageways. I made sure I covered all the senses (as they taught us in school), and have more to say about that in another post!

Style? This is very very simple. It is your authentic voice. (God help you.) It is what you talk like in real life- your expression. It is that simple. You can pretend to be someone else, but your authentic voice will always betray you. So let your authentic voice speak. This is my authentic voice. See? Easy isn't it? It's like talking with a mate or using that telephone voice of yours- it's all you. Use it. It is yours and as peculiar to you as your thumb print. The book you are writing will make you use every facet of your authentic voice (or style) and that's good. Let it happen. Just be you. Educators will probably drone on about other considerations and confuse you. You already have your style. Now write in it and feel nice and cosy and comfortable. Like lying in a nice warm bath- that's how comfortable you should feel- utterly relaxed and confident about being in your own voice and self. Now, write...

I'm moving into an intense writing period next week, because I have some time available. I don't have to be in the mood to write. I write myself into a mood by just sitting down and typing- quite often it's just not much good, but I keep going and then usually something better arrives and then, once I'm into my story, I sustain it for as many hours as I can. I do not stop writing once I'm away. Food and friends can wait. This way, like Simenon (who wrote his, albeit, very short, Maigret novels in six days, and then was violently sick! And went to find a woman, apparently.) I can finish the first draft of a novel in a matter of weeks. Say, two or three. I'm not as quick as that Belgium maestro. Then, of course, there is re-writing and addings etcetera. I never begin writing, however, until I have all the characters names and what they look like and where they live and what their interests/hang-ups are and my whodunnit murder plot thoroughly worked out. This is not necessarily a synopsis, because it would probably only make sense to me, if you looked at my notes, which I write in long hand in a notebook- never on my computer. The notebook has to go with me everywhere (usually stuffed in my back pocket, so that I can jot down anything that occurs to me. And then when I think I've got enough and feel confident, I plunge into the narrative- and hopefully everything falls into place. This way I leave plenty of scope for ideas and that freshness and pace one can only achieve, I believe (and what I believe is peculiar to my way of writing) from writing very very quickly. I have only ever had one book turned down by a publisher and that was a very derivitive thing I am too embarrassed to even describe here. But it's in the trunk along with several other completed MSS I have never sent off to anyone. The trunk is what writers call those works they keep back from the public, because they hate them but spent too much time writing them to throw them away. Trunk work can come in handy sometimes, for titles and ideas and characters, so it's never a good idea to throw it away. IMHO. Actually I'm not that humble, but I am a nice person to everyone I meet, because you never know when you might be meeting an angel in disguise, do you?

A word about synopses or outlines. Publishers and lecturers are very fond of these. But writers don't really need them. Just prepare the notes you need and leave something for your imagination to fill in along the way. Obviously, you have to plot out a whodunnit, but you don't need reams of the stuff. Too long thought over projects, or talked about, do not get written!  Anyway you can always write the synopsis up after you've written the thing. By the way, we writers call our work many things, but the favourite expression is the "piece of @?£%". At least that's what I always call mine, until it's finished. And then I usually call it my love-child!

Seriously, I always experience an intense day or so of doubt when I'm about a third of the way through the POS. And then I do much pen-sucking and notebook reading amd music listening- and then there is always a moment of revelation when you see a connection that pulls the whole narrative together. It's an almost ephiphanic (is that a word?) moment. If I never sold another damn book, I would not give up writing, because I want to experience those moments all my life. Orgasmic is the word I'm looking for. Unfortunately, I cannot share any of them with you (you'll no doubt be pleased to hear!), because it would spoil the plots. I deliberately chose the whodunnit format to keep my writing disciplined. I would be quite happy to write about characters living in the period I like the most (late Elizabethan/early Stuart), but the whodunnit form gives me a sense of purpose and order. There's enough spontaneity and wildness in me- to be curbed is good, in my case.

Editing your work? It's important for all of us, who write, to find someone who is prepared to look through our work and offer some constructive criticsm. I have someone, who would not say he thought something was good if he thought it was bad. You need someone like that, who is not worried about upsetting you;  it's not usually fair to inflict this responsibility on a relative or your partner. My advice is find someone who is indifferent to your writing (that's not difficult for me!) and then you can be sure you're receiving the unvarnished truth about it. I don't mean to spell check your work (you can do that yourself) and I don't mean to say what they think of your style or sillly things like that (you should know what your style is)- I mean just to read the whole novel and say whether or not it made sense (in my case: did the whodunnit work?) and if something should be added or removed, concerning, again, the overall sense from a reader's point of view. You can't expect someone to check the grammar and spelling of your novel, or say what they thought of your writing. Assessing your work would require someone much more experienced and expert.

More about self-reading your work. At least you know how you want it read, but then again you may be doing it a disservice by reading it badly overall. If I could have found someone to read my work I would have used him or her. I felt physically ill at the mere thought of reading mine. And believe me- I mean that. But now I've done one, my advice would be try to read it yourself. Don't give up, keep going and you will get better and feel more comfortable. The only way for relatively unknown writers (like me) and completely unknown ones to gain a readership could be the audio book route. This way the customer is buying a performance and that must be worth something- especially if it's the actual author who is reading it to them. It's relatively easy to do technically, with all the computerised editing suites and recording paraphernalia we have these days. So, give it a go. One practical tip: look ahead to the end of the sentence and see what the last word is- then make sure you pronounce it well. Heard that at a Shakespeare actor's workshop. It's good advice. Also, read at your normal pace, so that your breathing is not too obvious. And watch those p's and f's, which can really create turbulence in the microphone. I'll say some more about reading in another post.

Someone advised me not to write too much in these blogs. Blogging must be the easiest thing in the world. When the Greek philosopher Thales was asked what the easiest thing in the world to do was, he replied: give advice. I've never forgotten that. And the hardest, according to Thales (once considered the wisest man in Greece) : knowing yourself.

Reading? I like Robert Wilson, Robert Goddard, Agatha Christie, Patricia Wentworth, Georgette Heyer, and many more, too many to list. Any old detective books or historical. I took English and History (second subject) at university, so I've read a few of the classics, too, especially Jane Austen, Dickens, Shakespeare and Gibbons. I also like those Falco books by Lindsey Davis. And Simon Brett's stuff- he reads his own work. And, of course,  P. G. Wodehouse.  Anything by him! Overall, I like any history or detective books- which is what I've ended up writing- combining the two. You should read a lot if you're a writer. You can learn technical things that might for some reason be causing you mild amounts of trouble. But don't get too pretentious and literary- you don't want to be one of those precious writers, who think writing streams of their thoughts is somehow interesting. Great writers wrote stories, plain and simple- even Joyce wrote stories- Ulysses is very readable.

Reading one's own work, for a relatively shy person (which means most of us, I expect), is quite an ordeal, as I said. My audiobook (Troublesome Disguises) is nearly eleven hours long. That's eleven hours of sustained characterisation (hopefully) and eleven hours that probably took more like five or six days to achieve, not counting days off and breaks, because of all the re-reading and cutting. It is a performance and has very little to do with the skill of writing. Writing this blog is simple because I just type- it's just typing- but writing is obviously much more concentrated and thoughtful. Reading is interpretation of characters and atmosphere and requires quite different input. It's not for the coy. Especially if you plan to subject your efforts to the rest of the world! Even if sometimes the world won't listen.

I have decided to post the first chapters of all the Vallemont novels here over the coming days. First up will be Troublesome Disguises. (Forgot- it's already up in audio form, so I'll post the others instead.)

Obviously, without all the hype and publicity that accompanies most books these days, by celebrities and best selling authors, I do not expect my books to raise much interest. But the audiobooks, I believe, could make an impact, especially when I have produced a few more of them. I intend to keep writing these stories- not to make money (though it's always welcome), but because I enjoy writing and researching them. And I am beginning to sort of like recording them. Yes, I am starting to like the sound of my own voice. Was that Echo who went down that tragic path in the Greek myths?

I want to show that it is possible to get one's novels out there, without publishers and the media- via the author's own voice. I will get better at reading them. Honest! Wish me luck. Everybody needs a great big slice of luck in this life, no matter how hard you try- you always need a little good fortune. And you have to try and help it along.

Phobias, obsessions, hobbies and interests? I try to give my characters these. Not every one of them, but certainly all my key characters have one or the other of them. I like them to be busy when someone interrupts them. It's a little writer's trick I taught myself, but have only developed it fully in the Vallemont novels.

Pathetic fallacy. I personally try to avoid this. Prefer to think of nature as indifferent, random and even a little cruel. Just a choice.

This pen and ink (isn't it great?) is by Hollar and is probably a little early. But she is meant to be a Huguenot. This, for my purposes, is Mrs Ursula Clavell, who also appears in,  "An Unreasonable Request."
I hope to have the audiobook of this novel (which is written) finished by the end of November-first week of December, 2011.

(Erm, my fav book by me.)

Here is the cover of the second  romantic, time-travelling comedy I wrote. The first one was called Tempus Fugit and this one, Future Tense, has just come out in paperback. It's available all over the net, and, of course, at my publisher's site, http://www.bosonbooks.com/boson/