I’m away this week taking a bit of a holiday. I did say that I was going to repost old posts on here when I wanted a break and I nearly did that this week but then I thought that I could instead share a rambling stream of consciousness about what I’m doing with my life.
First up, I’m working on the next James Burke book: Burke and the Lines of Torres Vedras. It’s still very much at an early stage — the point where I’ve written the beginning and I have a reasonable idea of the end and one or two key bits in the middle but I still have to stitch them together into something approaching a whole story. I’m looking forward to it, though, because it will remind me of those wonderful days before covid when we just took off to Portugal to see the Lines for ourselves. It was a great experience and I do recommend them to anybody with any interest in the Napoleonic wars or just people who would like a good walk in lovely scenery.
This being after covid, our break is confined to England. Yesterday we were at Avebury stone circle, which is probably my favourite Neolithic site — massively more impressive than Stonehenge. Of course we arrived there just as summer ended and we walked around it on a grey afternoon in the rain. I did make a quick video which I put up on TikTok. You can watch the first bit HERE. The video doesn’t do the place justice. If you get the chance you really should go to see it.
Tomorrow we are planning a day in the Royal Historic Dockyards at Portsmouth. Those of you who were reading my blog last week might think I should have had enough of tall ships to last me for a while, but I love the Royal Historic Dockyards and we are all looking forward to revisiting some old favourites and perhaps exploring something new. I suspect you may be getting photographs of it on here before too long.
In other writing news, I was absolutely thrilled with this review of Eat the Poor: EAT THE POOR (GALBRAITH & POLE BOOK 2). It’s lovely when somebody not only enjoys one of your books but picks up on all the detail that most people might miss.
What else? There’s going to be a FREE promotion of Tales of Empire later is September, so watch out for that (though if you don’t want to wait it’s only 99p on Kindle). Also later in September, Antoine Vanner will be hosting me writing about spies in Napoleonic times and comparing them with spies today on his excellent blog, the Dawlish Chronicles. Otherwise it’s the usual blogging and tweeting and researching. But not for the next couple of days.
August 1 was the anniversary of the Battle of the Nile in 1798. I blogged about this two years ago so rather than blog about it again, I’m linking to the old post. It’s here: The Battle of the Nile
I’ve being blogging here for almost five years and on an earlier ‘Blogger’ site for seven years before that and that’s an awful lot of old posts that, although there is a ‘Search’ function on the site, don’t get looked at that often, so I’m going to recycle more than I have in the past.
Partly this is because I think some of those posts are rather good and I’d like them to get a bigger audience but some of it is simply to spend less time blogging.
Every year I probably write more than 50,000 words on my blog on that’s a considerable chunk of a book. In fact it’s longer than some of my Urban Fantasies. The sad fact is that if I spent less time blogging, I would spend more time writing. I’m working on the next James Burke book now and there are some other projects I would like to spend time on and something has to give and that’s something is going to be fresh blogs every week. I’ve threatened to do this before: in fact I wrote a blog post saying this in October 2020. This time, though, I need to at least make a more serious effort. Those books I’m planning won’t write themselves.
That said, if people have particular things they would like to read about, do let me know and I’ll try to oblige.
There will still be a post (almost) every Friday (I’m allowed the odd holiday): it’s just that more of them will be recycled.
Now back to James Burke and men’s fashions in Portugal in 1810.
I’m not a big one for preparing my Friday blog posts ages in advance. I generally prefer to see what I can think of to write on the day or (as now) the day before.
This week I really wasn’t sure what to talk about. There seemed to be quite a lot going on in the world and posting pretty pictures from a weekend away didn’t seem appropriate. (Not that we’ve had a weekend away as my beloved and I have both been hit with covid.) But anything based on what was going on in the wider world seemed likely to be overtaken by events before Friday. Now our Prime Minister has announced that he is (more or less) on his way out and I feel safe making the odd comment about writing about politics.
There is actually a lot of politics in many of my books but, because they are mostly set a long time ago, I don’t have to worry too much about how things might change from day to day. When Karl Marx pops up in Back Home, I know that he will be around for a while. (I loved working Marx into my plot. The idea that he and his friends used to meet for drinks and political chat in Soho in 1859 – when the book is set – always fascinated me.)
Can’t swear this is the right pub but it’s certainly close
I have written a couple of contemporary stories but they are fantasies featuring deals with the devil and vampires who dance tango. No particular problems with politics there.
But then I had to spoil it all by writing Eat the Poor. In Something Wicked, I introduced the detective odd-couple Galbraith and Pole. Galbraith is a traditional old-school Metropolitan Police detective and Pole is a vampire. The relationship seemed to work, both in terms of their forming a credible double act and allowing room for my sense of humour to tease both of them. People seemed to like them and suggested I write more. I decided not to do vampires again (Pole is enough vampire all by himself) so, after some thought, I came up with a werewolf. But if vampires dance tango (they really do) and spend a lot of time in self-improvement, what do werewolves do? Where would you come across them?
Maybe a good place to look for vampires
I ended up by having my werewolf hold down a day-job as an MP.
Maybe a good place to look for werewolves
Urban Fantasy (which is what fans call this genre) relies on having a realistic contemporary background, so my MP is an ambitious Conservative, anxious to get on in government. And that meant I had to write against the clock. The story would look a bit silly if it came out just as the Conservatives left government. And it rather relied on the party not noticing that they had a werewolf on the backbenches.
I’ve had a complaint that the whole thing is just an attack on the Conservatives, which it clearly isn’t. It’s a very tongue-in-cheek story about tracking down a mythical creature. But it works so much better with a particular approach to government in power at Number Ten. And now it looks as if that approach will be around for a few months yet.
Even once this government is gone, though, it has left a significant gift for Eat The Poor and any books like it. The idea that the House of Commons might be the site of a standoff between supernatural forces of Good and Evil once seemed to stretch the bounds of credibility. After what we’ve seen over the past week, though, nothing in my book seems impossible after all.
NEXT WEEK
Next week is the anniversary of the massacre of women and children at Cawnpore in 1857, so I’ll be writing about that. Plus, for that one day only, my book about 1857, Cawnpore, will be available FREE.
Eat the Poor got its first Amazon review this week, which made me very happy. Sue Bavey enjoys the idea of a werewolf who is a Conservative MP:
“I particularly liked how odious the Conservative MP Christopher Garold was. Anyone following British politics lately will not find the idea of a murderous werewolf that far-fetched when it comes to the dirty little secrets of those in power.”
I feel she is being a little harsh on Christopher Garold. He is, by his lights, a good MP, albeit one who disapproves of those he thinks of as “the undeserving poor”. He works hard for his constituents, takes no bribes, and campaigns on environmental issues. As one of his voters says, “He may be a Tory, but his heart’s in the right place.” And he can hardly help being a werewolf.
I had wanted to write a story about a werewolf since people started asking me for a sequel to Something Wicked. That book had started from the idea that if vampires lived among us, they would probably dance tango. I know so many tango dancers I have never seen in daylight that it seemed entirely credible and from that point the whole story just sort of took off. But where would you find a werewolf? What sort of person could turn into a creature that rips open the throats of innocent people who are foolish enough to be out on the night of a full moon?
The honest answer, of course, is that it could be anybody. But that wasn’t really satisfying. I wanted a job where a ruthless killer instinct and an unerring conviction of your own superiority to others made the idea of being a werewolf a natural match with your personality – and I came up with a Conservative MP.
The political edge was just a way of making the story work. Eat the Poor is an entertainment, not a searing bit of political satire. But while I was writing it, I watched our traditional political system falling apart. The ‘Good Chaps’ theory of government, which underlies our unwritten constitution, has given way to an approach to political power which is much better summed up as the Werewolf theory of government: the powerful take what they want and convince themselves that they are making society a better place while they do it. So there are points where the anger slips through. If you haven’t felt angry about Parliament in the past couple of years, you haven’t been paying attention.
Much more important than any political elements is the growing relationship between the all-too-human Chief Inspector Galbraith, very aware of growing older, and his vampire partner, Pole. Both essentially rather lonely individuals, they grow closer through their rather old-fashioned shared values. They believe in decency and protecting society. And, increasingly, they believe in each other.
More important than either the satire or the relationship, though, is the sheer fun of a hunt for the supernatural in the everyday (or everynight) world of today’s London. Wouldn’t you, deep down, enjoy seeing a werewolf in Parliament? Well now you can.
Eat the Poor is available on Kindle, in paperback or on Kindle Unlimited. You can link to it here: mybook.to/EatThePoor.
I published my second Urban Fantasy book just over a year ago. It was called Something Wicked. It introduced Chief Inspector Pole, who worked for Section S, a secretive police department hidden away in Counter Terrorism.
Pole is a vampire and he investigates crimes that involve a supernatural element. When a peer of the realm is found drained of blood in his own apartment, Pole is the obvious man (or reasonable approximation) to look into it. Unfortunately for him, old-school detective Chief Inspector Galbraith is already on the case and reluctant to hand over responsibility.
The two police officers investigate the crime together and Galbraith has to reassess his ideas about vampires, while Pole comes to the conclusion that humans may make better colleagues than he had expected.
The whole book was really just an excuse for me to write about a world where vampires live among us and dance tango. I got the idea in Buenos Aires with its frantic night-life populated by people that you simply never see by daylight. The elaborate graveyards filled with ‘streets’ of mausolea meant the idea that the tango sub-culture was mainly made up of vampires was an easy step to take.
Buenos Aires cemetery
I love tango, so it seemed natural to me that if you had eternity to perfect a skill, tango would be the obvious thing to go for.
Something Wicked isn’t a book that takes itself too seriously. I had enormous fun writing it. Slightly to my surprise, it seems that a lot of people had fun reading it (it’s had some lovely reviews) and there were suggestions that I should write another book featuring Galbraith and Pole. So I have.
Eat the Poor features a werewolf and Members of Parliament. After all, if vampires would naturally be attracted to tango, what could be a more obvious line of business for a werewolf than politics? It will be published in May.
All my books are written to stand alone, but there’s no doubt that Eat the Poor is more fun if you have already met Chief Inspector Pole and Section S. So next week (from Thursday) I’ll be selling Something Wicked at just 99p for a week. I do hope you enjoy it and will be tempted to buy Eat the Poor once it is released.
With the end of January only days away, it’s a bit late to be talking about plans for 2022, but the first weeks of the new year have been busy. Indeed, I’ve already passed my first landmark of 2022 with the publication of the latest James Burke book: Burke and the Pimpernel Affair. 2021 was a fairly grim year and Burke’s last adventure (Burke in Ireland) reflected the mood of the times, being very dark indeed. It seemed time to have something that was more light hearted and fun and Burke and the Pimpernel Affair definitely fits that description. It finds James Burke in Paris where (with a definite nod to Baroness Orczy’s books) he is trying to free British agents from a French gaol. He’s helped by William Brown, of course, and there are several historical figures who have roles to play, including the Empress Josephine. (The real James Burke probably met Josephine, though not in the circumstances of this story.)
I’m editing another Contemporary Urban Fantasy about Galbraith and Pole. A lot of people said they would like to see a sequel to Something Wicked, so I’ve obliged. It’s a story that’s been at the back of my mind for a while and I started writing it last year, but if I tell you that it features a werewolf and the House of Commons, you may see why I’m in a hurry to get it finished. It’s got the same sardonic humour as Something Wicked but there’s a definite satirical edge and I feel that for once I may be riding the zeitgeist.
Of course, if The Bookseller is right and 2022 is going to be all about historical novels, I may be riding that zeitgeist as well. Can you ride two zeitgeists or is it like trying to ride two horses and unwise to make the attempt?
I’m also involved in a short book of short stories. Four of us with stories set in the 19th century are putting them out together for 99p in the hope of reaching new audiences. It should be out in March. I’ll keep you all informed.
Here on the blog I’m going to try something different from February. My beloved is a big Jane Austen fan and keeps a regular journal. With all the fuss lately about exactly how many parties you were allowed to have and when, we realised that the details of two years of on-again, off-again restrictions had faded. She began looking back at the journal entries about lockdown and we realised that here was a record of an extraordinary period of English social history. (The Scots and the Welsh have their own, slightly different, stories.) So we’re going to take a look at what was going on two years ago. I’ll keep going until you all demand I stop – though I’ll probably run it alongside my regular blog rather than instead of.
Beyond March, I’m not sure where I’m going. I’m finding it difficult to promote existing books properly and write new ones at the same time. (Hence the gap in output while the John Williamson books were being published.) The temptation is to say that I write for fun and just concentrate on that but the fact is that it is only fun if people read them, and with thousands more books being published all the time, people only read them if you jump up and down and talk about them. So what to do?
I know I’m not alone in worrying about this. The sad fact is that writers will write only as long they think people are reading what they produce. (That goes for the blog too.) It’s one reason why reviews are so important, but any sort of feedback is appreciated: comments on this blog; contact on Twitter (I’m @TomCW99); anything really. (One fan of The White Rajah gave me a miniature kris in pewter, which was amazing, but you don’t need to get carried away.)
My nicest fan letter
If (and it’s a big ‘if’) I don’t write another novel, there’s a possible non-fiction about Waterloo. Or maybe I’ll just concentrate on improving my tango. (I can offer lessons if you want them.) Whatever happens – recession, lockdown, the collapse of capitalism, global warming, or the end of civilisation as we know it – I’ll still be writing or dancing or something. Stick with the blog and help me enjoy the ride – and a Happy New(ish) Year to you all.
