March 10th 2017:- I’ve reached chapter twelve and the dramatic tension is building at a good rate. There are quite a few threads now that I have to keep in mind, in other words, sections or bits of dialogue or ideas that need following through and tracing to a conclusion. I did work much better today. No sign of Foxy out there, although I had to see another cat off the garden and away from the pond. Back in the story, I still have a mountain of research to do about money and the cost of living and what people had to buy for the house because one of the conflicts between Robert, the main character and his housekeeper, Tetty, is that he’s broke all the time and she is embarrassed by it as it’s her who has to pay the fishmonger and coal merchant and so on. She, Tetty is the funniest but most menacing of the characters, at least so far….
When I reach around 45 thousand words, I’ll have written the first draft of half this novel, and while I know that that is only the beginning of the work, it is at that stage that the book is fully born. Victorian London was very noisy, apparently, and street musicians added to the general din.
