Blurb

A first few trial blurbs (I reckon it's best to start early) as I'm already finding it difficult to explain what the story is.


A sinister church and three driven, passionate women, linked across 1500 years

A mysterious church, three haunted women, linked across the centuries

It was a church like no other - and it linked three women's struggles for fulfilment across the centuries

The isolated church with a sinister message three women struggle to breaks its hold over them.


A church with a message - and three women's struggles to break its grip on them.

Adela, Bertha and Constance: each has her own struggle, for love, recognition and a family. They are linked across 1500 years by the tiny church that the locals call "The Devil's Chapel".

Research

I thought I could just get going, but yesterday told me differently.

Stupid really, an A-level in Medieval history and 6 weeks studying the Dark Ages at degree level (before I switched to Classics) do not equip you to write a multi-stranded historical novel without a bit of extra work.  I started with 1910 - a period I am happy and familiar with due to my research on The Ash Grove.  Then I stopped,.   I need to write the three different strands independently and then cut them into each other - I think.  But logically I should start with 1910 and the story of Dorothy's research (actually maybe I'm going to call her Constance)   But I start doing my own research, and I'm drawn to the historical periods, rather than trying to understand the history of female scholarship and women's role in the Society of Antiquaries,.   Next week I am going to the Antiquaries' library I think, to get on with it.

Yesterday I felt stupidly stuck, but an hour's reading of a book about Romanesque sculpture this morning has filled me with ideas again.   I am off to buy a bookstand for the desk - so I can take notes onto the laptop.  Why haven't I had one before?

This is a Barfrestone capital formed as a double-bodied dragon - a fairly typical "grotesque" illustration, which as I observed at the time, seem to mimic designs seen in medieval manuscripts.  This has been confirmed this morning.   I also discovered the that masons' lodge was under the direction of a church official, the Prior of  ChristChurch (the Cathedral monastery) so that adds a whole different dimension of tension and conflict and the need for concealment - good stuff.

The new term begins!

I have started writing the Devil's Chapel - and I am delighted that I have 4,000 words of an actual beginning... I have re-used some of the MR James type text I wrote in March, but in a more concise, dynamic way.  I think I will write the three stories independently and then intercut them and edit and add foreshadowings and so on later.  I have even thought of a plot twist.

Today I felt very ill, so I didn't do much, but I edited and read up notes and thought and tried to induce in myself a medieval/dark ages mindset.  Tricky.