Have managed to do an hour or two here and there over the last few weeks but work and other commitments at home mean that I've not done as much as I'd like.  Grumpy.

To Birmingham on business, but managed to squeeze in an hour's research on the train there and back, and, arriving early at the City Library for an event, was able to use their reading rooms for another half hour.  Slow work, ploughing through three different people's accounts of what they did between ten and eleven in the morning on the day of the fire; all of them trying to wriggle out of responsibility; all of them putting blame on someone else.

Me (and others) nattering about the Fire on the BBC - Part 2

Me (and others) nattering about the Fire on the BBC - Part 1

Slush Pile Hell

Laugh-out loud hilarious blog of submissions to a literary agent.  Shoot me if mine ends up here.  No, hold on, I'll shoot myself.

80K reached - shattered!

After four days of tough slog with chapters one and two, I am pleased to report that I have licked these into shape pretty well and am very happy (though inarticulate from fatigue).  Spent most of today in the Bodleian.  Have now gone over the 80,000 word mark.  Just one more chapter (number three) to make respectable before I get feedback.  And then I might just be about ready, after some polishing, to have my first crack at finding an agent.  No real opportunity, except the odd evening and a bit of time at the weekends to do any more writing, until the Pope's visit to Westminster on 17th Sept, which I have taken as a day off.

Writer seeks Literary Agent

In bored moments, I have been known to google for literary agents who might want to take me on.  I'm building up a shortlist of possibles before deciding who to plump for first.  I was a bit taken aback by some of the draconian submission guidelines on agents' websites, until I read the following from one agent's blog, indicating what his 'slush pile' of unsolicited manuscripts looks like each day. 

Ready, steady....coke!

With a long weekend ahead, husband packed off on a trip of his own, fridge stocked and infinite supplies of diet coke on ice, it's time for a four-day stint of writing.  See you on the other side.

The Afterlife of Charles I's Death Warrant

The Death Warrant

One thing leads to another when you're researching, and as a result of work on the fire book, I have gathered enough spare material for an academic article, which I'm planning to call "The Afterlife of Charles I's Death Warrant", telling the story of what happened to this iconic document, one of the most famous in the country, after Charles I's death.  It fits in well with the work done on other "relics" of Charles I; and is still "venerated" in facsimile on the line of route tour in the Houses of Parliament.  Hoping that the journal Parliamentary History might be interested in it.