So, if Lord Alexander Harrow looks like Ingres' sketch of Lord Grantham, what does Miss Charlotte Hopesay look like? I have been particularly concerned about this since my agent (hereafter referred to as Anne-Marie, since repeatedly saying "my agent" sounds a bit pretentious) pointed out that I give no physical description of her at all, beyond what she wears.

Well, she's not one of Heyer's junoesque heroines, like Sophia Stanton-Lacy (let salone Nell Stornaway), but neither is she particularly petite. She is not an incomparable beauty like Miss Isabella Milbourne, but she is pretty - even striking - if she wants to be. Her hair is neither flaxen curls nor raven tresses, but a reddish brown, and her eyes are hazel. In other words she looks something like this. Heather Findlay from the progressive rock group Mostly Autumn, who, as it happens, are playing in Cirencester in a couple of week's time. If the concert hasn't sold out yet, I'll be there.

Since, during the course of Lord Alexander's Cipher; or, the Bridekirk Behemoth, Miss Hopesay is drugged, jilted, goes into the wilds of Gloucestershire where she crawls around in attics, gets knocked on the head, tied up and then caught up in an explosion, she doesn't always look as calm as in that first photograph. But then again, neither does Miss Findlay.

Today was supposed to be a good day for doing my rewrites, but that didn't seem to happen. I started the day haring around Cheltenham to get a vital part to fix my motorbike (large silver BMW two-cylinder thing - think of it as a pair of matched greys) not to mention securing a copy of the latest Harry Potter DVD in exchange for a chunk of the Wenlock heir's accumulated allowance.

But the main distraction was sorting out something to wear to a book launch next Friday. The invitation says "sparkly", but my wardrobe doesn't do sparkly, not even a little bit. Clearly it was time to break out the inner Martha Stewart, and create a sparkly T-shirt that was, at least vaguely, me.

I started with Ingres' sketch of Lord Grantham, which is as good an illustration of Lord Alexander Harrow as I can find. With a little messing about on the computer and a great deal more playing around with tracing paper, drafting pens, craft knives and acetate sheets I turned the head and shoulders into a simpler and more striking illustration, in stencil form.

The other design element that I needed was a suitable font for a caption. I went with the Jane Austen font that the nice people at Austenblog alerted me to a while back.

Putting it all together with some glittery fabric paint and a heavy-duty long-sleeved black T-shirt, I came up with this, which, although I say it myself, isn't too bad a result.

As Mrs Wenlock pointed out, if I can't make the novel-writing pay, I could always set up a stall at Camden Market selling glittery T-shirts to Goths with Regency tastes.

OK, so it may not quite have the kudos of the list written in a book of gold by the angel encountered by Abou Ben Adhem (may his tribe increase), but Ampersand have updated their client list, and Lo! My name leads all the rest.

Heyeroines in need of a slap

21. Cressida Stavely (False Colours)

The discovery that a man has spent an entire evening at your home lying to you about almost every important aspect of himself might provoke a range of reactions in any young lady of gentle birth and finely-honed sensibility. Blithely forming a cladestine understanding with him would not usually fall within this range. That, however, is how Miss Stavely responds to the dishonourable behaviour of the Honourable Christopher Fancot.

Of course any woman might make a mistake, and had Miss Stavely resiled from her initial course of action once she had discovered a little more about the Fancot menage all might have been forgotten, but this is not to be.

Quizzed in the course of that first fateful evening by the Dowager Lady Stavely, not even Kit Fancot, in training to be sent abroad to lie for his country, could conceal the fact that he had an Uncle called Brumby. What Cressy soon learns, however, is that Brumby is not his only uncle. Indeed Brumby is not his most bizarrely-named uncle. That particular laurel falls to his uncle Cosmo Cliffe.

This should have been more than enough to send any sensible girl running from the Fancot family with all the speed she could muster, but Miss Stavely apparently thinks herself to be made of sterner stuff. This is, perhaps due to her belief that her first name is, if not as heroic as that of Miss Wantage in Friday's Child, at least somewhat epic and heroic.

There is a limit even to epic heroism, and the character of Lady Denville should have alerted her that she was over the limit. Much can be made of the relative contributions to a person's character from nature and nurture, but Kit Fancot must have been indebted to his mother for the overwhelming majority of each. Lady Denville's idea of frugality is, after all, to limit her supply of household necessities to forty eight pounds of wax lights and two casks of genuine spermaceti oil (allegedly from Barret, but originally from a genuine sperm whale), two Westphalian Hams, several pounds of tea, superfine vanilla, treble-refined sugar and a large quantity of wafers from Gunter's.

But the real danger does not come from Lady Denville, but from her constant companion, Sir Bonamy Ripple, to whom the above might serve as a late evening snack. Bonamy Ripple sounds like a large and unhealthy desert dish, but on closer examination he turns out to be a very large meal, with several removes involving quail, ducklings, and a green goose. He is also distinctly catching. Within a few pages of Sir Bonamy's appearance in the book (page 79 in the Arrow edition), Miss Stavely finds herself "in a little ripple of amusement" (page 123). By page 277 she has aquired "gravity" and is talking of widgeons. Whatever it is that Sir Bonamy spreads about him, while it may not be 'flu, it is quite definitely avian.

And yet still Miss Stavely appears to maintain the illusion that she can cope with all this, and that thanks to whatever she has taken from her great namesake, she can win through despite the hugely unfavourable odds.

I fear that she is mistaken. The original of her name was a tragic heroine who betrayed her lover with a greek warrior. The victory against overwhelming odds was spelled "Crécy".


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Heyeroines in need of a slap

20. Nell Cardross (April Lady)

Once again I suspect that there might be some debate over who the true heyeroine of April Lady might be. At no point is the expression used to describe Lady Cardross or (nor indeed Lady Letitia Merion). This must inevitably leave those who believe Miss Amanda Summercourt to be the heyeroine of Sprig Muslin at a bit of a loss. They might, of course, put forward the argument that a true heyeroine, even if she doesn't end up marrying the heyero, must appear in the first chapter. A careful review of the start of the book does indeed reveal a potential candidate on page 16 of the Arrow edition.

Unfortunately, despite this promising start, old Mother Wenlock makes no further appearance in the story, so I fear that, for all her magnificent and noble characteristics, we cannot count her as the heyeroine. That pretty much leaves us with no viable option other than the Countess of Cardross.

This immediately presents us with a problem. Read as a simple romance, April Lady has little to recommend it. The plot appears to be a simple rehash of The Convenient Marriage, but without a compelling villain, or perhaps Friday's Child without, well, without whatever it is that makes that worth reading. The "Nemesis" stuff, probably.

But it would be an error to treat April Lady as a romance. It is clearly a thriller. The relationship between Giles and Nell is well handled of course, but it is really a sideshow. The heart of the book concerns Madame Lavalle, and her partner, Mr Warren, the perfumier.

Note that we are never actually told why Madame Lavalle is making such spirited attempts to dun one of her more best clients. This is, of course, a great example of Miss Heyer expecting her readers to work it out for themselves. As you would expect from a mistress of whodunnits, the clues are all there, and it is in the first chapter that the key pointer can be found. It is Mr Warren's bill for Olympian Dew.

The Irvine family have something of a reputation for what we would nowadays refer to as addictive personalities. In the case of Lord Pevensey this expresses itself in a tendenct to gamble. In the case of his son, Viscount Dysart, it finds its expression in a compulsion to carve his initials in every tree in St James' Park, and to time himself doing so. In Nell's case it is substance abuse, and, primed by the reference to Nell's substance of choice, we can spot the tell-tale signs of addiction in much, if not all that she does.

Like LSD, Olympic Dew would appear to have effects that are much more interesting to the person taking the substance than to any observer. Where someone who drops acid sees marvellous visions that nobody else can see, the dabbler in Dew indulges in internal contemplation about her life and the state of her marriage at such tedious length that anyone caught up with her is likely to throw their copy of April Lady against the nearest wall and dig out the latest Bernard Cornwell.

That option is not, however, available to those caught up in the Dew trade. While the Countess of Cardross can ignore all the proprieties, and have improper discussions with strange men in Ryder Street, poor Mr Warren and Madame Lavalle must live in fear of the Dew barons, seeking payment for the stuff that they have provided. While Nell plays at highway robbery, the real villains pursue Madame Lavalle to the point where she feels that she is being forced to flee the country.

It is again a mark of Miss Heyer's writing skills that we are never explicitly told who the shadowy figures behind the Olympian Dew trade are, but the rules of this sort of fiction ensure that the smarter reader - and Miss Heyer knew that her readers would be smarter than the average - can work it out. Once again, the early chapters hold the key. Surely the prime candidate for the ringleader is none other than the mysterious and shadowy Lady Orsett? But she too shadowy and mysterious to be the only villain. She must have an accomplice.

This accomplice must be able to move freely between the haut ton, where Dew is dropped, and the source of this deadly substance, which is in Foreign Parts. What profession allows for this sort of behaviour? Obviously the Diplomatic Service. Is there a diplomat among the cast of characters? Indeed there is: Jeremy Allandale.

As soon as we understand where Mr Allandale stands, the book takes on a darker complexion. Letty's attempts to get Mr Allandale alone with her are suddenly chilling - he must be seeking to isolate her. Letty's choice of pink rather than cerise is not a fashion mistake, but a cry for help, and Mr Allandale's apparent abduction of Letty towards the end of the story is, in fact, an abduction.

And yet, happily doing the Dew, the Countess of Cardross is aware of none of this, nor does she apparently ever establish how her long suffering husband sorts it all out, through his involvement with that clandestine government agency only ever referred to as "Another Interest".

As with many great writers, the secret of Miss Heyer's storytelling lies in what she leaves unsaid. Nonetheless, I do feel that she might at least have been explicit about Nell's need for some sharp correction.


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My apologies for the long gap in posting. Normal service, or at least what passes for it on Wenlock, will resume very shortly.

Significant news over the last three weeks includes a decision by my agent that the latest draft of Lord Alexander's Cipher; or, the Bridekirk Behemoth isn't quite ready to be shown to publishers. It did not therefore get an outing at the London Bookfair. We are meeting later this week to discuss what more needs doing.

While I have not been that active, the Wenlock heir has written an entire novel; nine chapters and an epilogue. It is action packed stuff involving rather more dinosaurs than dukes.

Watch out for a discussion of Nell Cardross later today, with Cressida Stavely not far behind.

I sent the revised first three chapters of Lord Alexander's Cipher; or, the Bridekirk Behemoth off to my agent yesterday. In fact I sent six chapters: the first few chapters were always the longest, and the first has grown longer as a result of some wholesale changes to scenes. The later chapters will get shorter as I flense them in the interests of pace. It made sense to even up the chapter length by splitting the first three each in half.

As a result the hero and heroine don't meet each other until towards the end of chapter 4. This is not best practice for romantic fiction, I fear.

I also changed my hero's surname. This was partly in response to the appearance of a hero by the name of Matthew Hawkwood in James McGee's Ratcatcher, and partly in response to Jan's comment that his original surname always made her think of outdoor clothing. So, he is no longer Lord Alexander Hawkshead, but Lord Alexander Harrow.

Following a link from Language Log, I thought that I should check the new name for sluttishness, using the Slut-o-meter created by Joël Franusic and Adam Smith.

There I discover that "Hawkshead" is 7.33% slutty, while "Harrow" at 2.7% is positively pristine. By way of comparison, "Darcy" is 4.63% slutty, "Rochester" 6.69%, (Rhett) "Butler" a disappointing 1.29% and "Heathcliffe" a bizarre -63% slutty.

Jane Austen (4.71%) and Georgette Heyer (10.23%) are both fairly demure, with Wenlock, at 3.05%, purer than either. My own name, however, scores a rather disturbing 93.97% slutty.

In her Bookworm on the Net blog today, Anne Weale flagged up Storycode (US readers should go here), a site which collates reader assessments of novels, and uses them to come up with recommendations for other books.

I had a go at coding a book, picking April Lady as I have just finished reading it (will Nell merit a slap? Watch this space). Having moved sliders around to give my views on how romantic it was (very), how horrific (not at all), how erotic (barely), how exotic (fairly) and which among the seven basic plots it used, I ended up being recommended Bella Pollen's Hunting Unicorns, Terry Pratchett's Mort(!), and some old thing called Pride and Prejudice.

Sylvester appeared further down the list. A bit of poking around suggested that of all Heyer's works, the only ones coded so far were Sylvester (once) and A Civil Contract (twice).

I think that this could be a really useful site, once it has a few thousand more contributors, so I strongly encourage you all to give it a go.

Heyeroines in need of a slap

19. Horatia Winwood (The Convenient Marriage)

The youngest Miss Winwood manages to commit so many social solecisms that it would hardly be a surprise if most of the upper ten thousand were crying out for a chance to slap the girl. Horry is, however, a Winwood, and if she has little else, she has the Nose. For this alone one must inevitably forgive her much.

But not everything. There are some things, and one in particular, that are beyond the power of a single nose - or indeed any number of noses - to remedy.

With no money to their name, the females of the Winwood family must base their not Ainconsiderable reputations upon less tangible things. among the most precious of these is the ability, and indeed willingness, to Talk with Capital Letters. As one might expect, it is Lady Winwood who is most expert at this. When she says that her Days are Numbered, one can readily believe that they have not merely been counted, but individually signed for, wrapped, stamped and secured with the sort of seal that one finds only in the more anagogical parts of the Bible.

Lady Winwood's two oldest daughters are similarly skilled, able to deploy Cassandra-like prophecies of doom in the face of even the most minor of domestic mishaps. This is the sort of social skill that is beyond price, without which no Grande Dame can have any pretensions to Grandeur. Even their otherwise unremarkable cousin, Mrs Maulfrey, is able to endow such a word as Settlements with a sonority beyond its real significance.

Miss Horatia Winwood, on the other hand, seems utterly uninclined to indulge in any such utterances. Indeed it is hard to find evidence of her Uttering anything at all. Even her interjections - typically "Stuff" and "Pho" - have their capitalisation subverted by Horry's stammer(not that the stammer itself is to be condemned - indeed one might come to like it, along with the eyebrows and, of course, the Nose). Such is her blasé attitude towards life that she cannot be bothered even to think in terms of Scandals and Scrapes, choosing instead to admit to mere scandals and scrapes. Is this Behaviour Befitting a Countess? I am sure that it is not only I who thinks not.

A Winwood who does not Capitalise her Speech is, one might feel, hardly a Winwood at all, and one who, when kissed, not gently at all, but ruthlessly, crushing all the breath out of her body, merely observes that she never knew that her husband could kiss like that, rather than perhaps falling into a Swoon, or Fainting Dead Away, clearly needs to Buck Up her Ideas.


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While in the capital this week, I visited what might be considered Wenlock's spiritual London home.
I used to visit the Wenlock Arms occasionally in my younger days, when I lived in that part of the world. It went into a bit of a decline, and it has been almost two decades since I was last there. I was delighted to renew my acquaintance. It seems to have changed very little in appearance over the years, but the beer is much better than I remember, both in range and quality. I am not at all surprised that it tends to win CAMRA awards.

The Wenlock name comes from the mediaeval moated manor house of Wenlock's Barn that once stood nearby. In addition to the pub, the name has attached to a couple of local streets, and to the Wenlock Basin, which branches off the Regent's Canal.
It is shown on Greenwood's 1827 Map of London - it is the unnamed basin in the top right-hand corner, which looks like a very new addition to the map, as the lines symbolising water don't follow the edge of the basin. Wenlock's Barn is shown at the top left-hand corner of the next panel of the map. It would appear that the pub postdates the Regency by a few years, as they make clear.

If you ever visit, then the sandwiches are well worth sampling. Proper doorsteps, made with extremely fresh bread. Salt Beef seems to be the favourite variety, but I went for black pudding.

There are building works on the other side of the street, with luxury apartments going up with views of the pub or the basin. One would make the ideal Wenlock London pied-à-terre.

The Wenlock family is just back from a visit to the Great Wen, to borrow Mr Cobbett's charming phrase (but then you should see what he has to say about the delightful spa town in which Wenlock currently has his abode). One of the principal purposes of the visit was to take part in a Valentine's Day debate at Upminster Library on the motion that men are as romantic as women.

Proposing the motion were, from left to right, Roger Sanderson (caught in the act of producing some red roses for our opponents), Michael Taylor and Wenlock. Despite (or perhaps because of) meeting in a nearby hostelry some ninety minutes beforehand in order to work out some tactics, I am not sure quite how coherent our line of attack was, although Julie Cohen makes a brave attempt to explain it.

My own argument was from the heroes of classic romantic novels: Heathcliffe, Max de Winter, Rhett Butler, Rochester and, of course, Darcy. They may not always be pleasant to have around, being frequently selfish, arrogant, rude and grim (and not always having Ten Thousand a year to make up for it), but despite these failings they are somewhat more stirring of the emotions than the assorted Janes, Lizzies and Cathys against whom they play out their parts. I would be tempted to exempt Scarlet O'Hara from such criticism were she not such a self-centered cow who really ought to have come in for more of a slapping than Bridget Jones. As for the second Mrs De Winter: as a heroine I reckon that she shows less personality than either her predecessor (who labours under the disadvantage of being more than somewhat dead), or indeed Manderley.

Our opponents were, from right to left, Julie Cohen, Katie Fforde and Elizabeth Lord. Julie's arguments tended to involve reading out smutty lyrics from current hit records, and noting that her husband had nobly sent her off to Upminster on Valentine's Night rather than staying in for champagne and chocolate (Mrs Wenlock chose to accompany to the debate, and it was she who took these photographs, but I would not want to use that fact to score any debating points. Katie brought the subject of cheesecutter thongs into the debate, while Elizabeth Lord accused Byron of writing for money (I am giving a somewhat partial account of things, in both senses of the word - Julie's account is probably more reliable).

After the audience had had their say there was a poll of the audience, which ended in a tie broken by the chairman's casting vote which went to our side. We then went back to the pub. All in all, a very enjoyable way to spend the evening of Valentine's Day.

Heyeroines in need of a slap

18. Henrietta Silverdale (Charity Girl)

It is hardly an unusual position to be in. We saw it five years earlier with Sir Gareth Ludlow, and we shall see it again in a year or so with his Grace Adolphus Gillespie Vernon Ware. A heyero arrives with some unsuitably young girl in tow, drops her off with you and your family to look after, and then goes gallivanting off on his adventures. What can you do?

Well, if you are Miss Silverdale you can do a great deal better than meekly accepting the situation and leaving your reader to endure Ashley Carrington on the Road, a deeply unedifying travelogue involving High Harrowgate, Low Harrowgate and all that lies between (more than would be strictly necessary if only Carrington, or, as we should perhaps more properly style him, Viscount 'Des' Desford, could be bothered to go via the stile), and which takes in unduly frosty landladies and unduly cantankerous old men who have married their unduly plebeian housekeepers, or, as they apparently wish to be styled (as if it made a ha'porth of difference), 'Lady Housekeepers'.

It is not as if Miss Silverdale's circumstances are exactly unpropitious. A household containing an unmarried daughter and an ineffectual father (ineffectual as a result of having died some years earlier, but that is beside the point) discovers that a nearby house has been occupied by a single man in possession of a fortune. If the house is not called 'Nether-something' then at least the single gentleman is. This is surely something that a heyeroine with a ready intelligence and a good sense of humour could make something of - perhaps the new neighbour, who after all is bound to fall in love with somebody in the household, might have a good friend who is rich and handsome, but lacking in manners?

Or if not that, then what about the female servant whose loyalty to the woman she still considers as her mistress is threatened by a new arrival, an apparent interloper who has been swept off her feet and delivered to the house without anyone really having thought things through, and who, as a result, ends up in very real danger of her life. Could Miss Silverdale really not come up with the idea that somebody might, one night, have dreamed they went to Inglehurst?

But no. Miss Silverdale appears to believe that she should take as a role model Lady Hester Theale, and do the dutiful wet-goose thing. Such behaviour in one described by no less an authority than Simon Carrington as "sound as a trout" simply will not do. What if Fitzwilliam Darcy had decided that, rather than hanging out with Bingley and generally making things happen, he would prefer to be as dull an old stick as Henry Tilney? What if John Melmoth had stayed at home? What if Montoni had brought in an architect to remodel Udolpho along Palladian lines?

It is simply not to be thought of, and yet in Miss Henrietta Silverdale we have a heyeroine so lacking in romantic sensibility that instead of a cat fight between Miss Charity Steane and the frightful Mrs Danvers Hepzibah Cardle we have Wilfred Steane in a purple jacket being tedious with Simon Carrington; instead of wild happenings in the stormy woods around Otranto Inglehurst we have Desford's groom getting into a snit. This is not Byronic, this is not Gothic, this is not remotely horrid.

If this is what we must expect from our heyeroines, we might as well go back to the Brontës.


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There has been a fair amount of discussion of viewpoint in the last few days on ROMNA, the mailing list (or, as it calls itself, the cyber chapter) of the Romantic Novelists' Association. Hilary Johnson, who runs a highly respected Authors' Advisory Service, has said that viewpoint is the single biggest source of problems in the typescripts that she is sent.

I know that some writers have trouble with viewpoint, but until today I had thought that I found it easy enough to understand, and to handle. It is, after all, simply a matter of deciding through whose eyes you are seeing the action, and only writing about what that character sees, feels or knows.

The important part is sticking to the same viewpoint through a whole scene. In some cases, of course, it is a matter of sticking to the same viewpoint for the whole book. With the fairly convoluted plot of Lord Alexander's Cipher; or, the Bridekirk Behemoth I knew that I would not be able to manage this.

So, what has been my problem today?

I was rewriting a scene early in the book, and I wanted to use it to cast a bit more light on Lord Alexander, without going in for too much internal reflection - I need to keep the pace up at this point in the story. I therefore chose to use the other character in the scene as the viewpoint character. This made it easier to describe our hero, in terms of his dress, his manner, the colour of his eyes. However it became much harder to drive the action forward.

My viewpoint character's role in the scene was rather reactive. He knows things that Lord Alexander needs to learn, but he doesn't do anything to drive the story along. This turned out to be a problem, because I couldn't use his knowledge directly. It was no good his thinking about what he knows; he still had to tell Lord Alexander, and the repetition was killing the pace. If he didn't think about it, then the whole scene became a load of telling, not showing, and that made for dead prose too.

In the end I had to scrap the whole rewrite, after about 2,000 words, and start again, with Lord Alexander as the viewpoint character. Once I made that rather painful decision everything started flowing much more easily, and I am sure that the result will be much tauter.

I just can't afford to make this sort of mistake too often, because I have at least a soft deadline ahead of me.

Some six months ago, in my very first post on Wenlock I said:

I am currently working on a Romantic Regency Romp, James Bond meets Georgette Heyer, complete with fireworks and at least one elephant.

Rather a presumptious statement, now I look back on it.

James Bond was, of course, the creation of Ian Fleming. Ian Fleming's literary agent was a man called Peter Janson-Smith. In 2003 he joined up with Peter Buckman to form the Ampersand Agency. The most notable name on their client list is (the estate of) Georgette Heyer.

At some point soon another name will be going up on that client list - mine. Having started by claiming literary kinship with two of the most popular authors of the last 50 years, I now find myself represented by an agency with strong connections to both.

Which is nice.

There is a much misquoted remark by Anton Chekhov that originally read something like

One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.
(From a letter to Aleksandr Semenovich Lazarev, 1 November 1889)

(although on the web it is usually described as putting pistols on mantelpieces.)

The rewriting that I am doing at the moment is in part a matter of removing undischarged rifles from the stage. Having done no plotting at all when I started to write, I put quite a number of contrivances and devices into the early chapters because I thought that they might come in handy later on. I was actually surprised how many of them did turn out to be useful - including a walk-on Frenchman and, most importantly, a scene-stealing elephant. But not all of them were winners.

My problem is that the rifles are not always that easy to remove. Some of them are like the Dude's rug in The Big Lebowski. That rug really tied the room together. Take it away, and there is a big empty space.

There is one particular rifle that I am working on at the moment. In fact it is a Japanese miniature tinder pistol. I saw this picture of it and decided that it would be a perfect gadget for Lord Alexander to carry with him and use in an emergency, just as James Bond is equipped with various miniature gadgets usually disguised as fountain pens or watches.

The tinder pistol formed the basis of a conversation in Chapter One between Lord Alexander and his friend Sir Peregrine Caradoc (a slightly eccentric Natural Philosopher) during which they revealed some of the backstory. The problem was that at no subsequent point in the plot did a situation arise in which Lord Alexander needed to start a fire. So I find that I must confiscate the tinder pistol and give him something else to discuss with Sir Peregrine.

Luckily I also need to put a few rifles onto the stage too: rifles that are fired, but fired a little implausibly because we hadn't already been alerted to their existence. In this particular case I have found myself removing a miniature-tinder-pistol-shaped rifle, and replacing it with a very-large-gas-balloon-shaped one. Not surprisingly, this has required me to completely rebuild the stage.

It is at times like this that I think how lucky I am that my agent could see enough good stuff in Lord Alexander's Cipher; or, the Bridekirk Behemoth that she was not put off by such flaws.

I try not to do negative or grumpy posts on Wenlock, but some times things make me a bit cross. A case in point was today's Open Book on BBC Radio 4. You can listen to the programme from the BBC website for the next seven days (it needs Real Player).

A listener called the programme's Readers' Clinic asking for to be recommended romantic comedy for an intelligent reader. I was so taken aback by what was suggested for her that I ended up e-mailing Open Book to complain. Since their automatic response says that they don't read or reply to all their e-mails I thought that I would post my message here.

I was very disappointed with the response on today's programme to your reader's query about romantic comedy for intelligent readers. The tone was set by Mariella's flippant remark about the term being an oxymoron, but it was Tim Lott's selection of books which was the biggest problem.

There is nothing wrong with any of the books per se. Two are already classics of modern American literature[John Updike's Rabbit Run and Anne Tyler's The Accidental Tourist], and the other two [Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections and Nick Hornby's About a Boy] will no doubt achieve similar status in time, but, with the possible exception of the Nick Hornby, none of them would strike an intelligent reader as being romantic comedy.

I am an intelligent reader who reads romantic fiction, and I can suggest a number of authors who would fit your listener's requirements somewhat better than Anne Tyler, John Updike and Jonathan Franzen.

I would start with Georgette Heyer, whose historical romances are stuffed with wit and humour. Frederica is one of her best.

Then there is Katie Fforde, whose books cannot easily be dismissed as light-weight "chick lit". The characters are engaging, the situations are plausible, the outcomes are just the thing to drive away midwinter blues. Try Paradise Fields.

I won't go on, but I will point out that romantic fiction is probably second only to crime in terms of its popularity. Surely Open Book can serve readers of romantic fiction better than it does?

cheers
Stephen Bowden
(a member of the Romantic Novelists' Association team that reached the final of University Challenge - the Professionals last year)

Unlike other BBC arts programmes (such as the always excellent Front Row), Open Book has a bit of a track record of sneering at romantic fiction, which is a great pity.

One of the changes that I am going to have to make to Lord Alexander's Cipher; or, the Bridekirk Behemoth is the title. It's not the length, nor the punctuation. It's just that, as my agent pointed out to me, it isn't really Lord Alexander's cipher at all. He didn't create it (that was the French), nor did he break it (that was his mathematical friend Piers Monkhopton).

The cipher is, of course, critical to the plot, and Lord Alexander Hawkshead is the hero, but combining them both into a snappy but meaningful title isn't quite that easy. On the other hand, my agent likes the Bridekirk Behemoth part, so that will stay for the time being.

Another change that I fear will be necessary is to Lord Alexander's surname. Having spent a year writing an exciting and vaguely romantic adventure story about French spies and English heroes in the early 19th Century, I have now discovered that I am not the only one.

I haven't read James McGee's Ratcatcher yet (and I won't do so until I have delivered my rewrites), but my agent read it in manuscript a while back. She doesn't think that it scuppers me in any way, although it has probably holed some of my ideas for the sequel (Lady Cardington's Folly; or, the Limehouse Leviathan) below the waterline.

However there is the small matter of our respective heroes. Mine is Lord Alexander Hawkshead; James McGee's is Matthew Hawkwood. You can see the problem. If I changed his name to Handsawhead, would anybody know the difference?

My agent called me yesterday to say that the Agency has changed their mind.

Instead of waiting to see how I got on with the suggestions for rewrites, and then, if all has gone well, to sign me up, they have decided to take me on anyway, right now. The letter is in the post.

Originally the plan was for me not to send anything in before the middle of March, because my agent would be far too busy dealing with the London Book Fair. The new plan is, if I can manage it, for me to send at least the first couple of chapters by mid-February, ahead of the London Book Fair, so that my agent can tout Lord Alexander's Cipher; or, the Bridekirk Behemoth around editors at the ExCel Centre in London's happening Docklands.

I don't know what has triggered this latest development, but I am very happy about it.

Today is the 219th birthday of George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron.

So, we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart be still as loving
And the moon be still as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul wears out the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon.

Well, I had a meeting with my agent on Wednesday, and the fact that I am starting to say "my" agent should give you a clue about how things went. The fact that there are still no names should indicate there's still a long way to go.

We spent two hours going through Lord Alexander's Cipher; or, the Bridekirk Behemoth and discussing all its faults. We barely touched on anything good about it (except that the first scene of the final chapter must not be touched because it is just right). Despite this distinctly unbalanced analysis I came away feeling very positive. After all, unless there was quite a bit right, it wouldn't have been worth the two hours on what is wrong.

So what are the problems? It's too long, by about 10,000 words (it's a smidge over 100,000 at the moment). It's too wordy, and the pace is too even. I think that these all go together - by stripping down the prose in some scenes, particularly in the second half of the book, I should be able to up the pace and lose some length. I'll need to dig out my notes on Pace from Annie Burgh's workshops on the subject.

Some of the characterisation needs a bit of work. The eponymous hero, Lord Alexander, is OK, but the heroine needs a bit of warming up. Some of the secondary characters need a bit more fleshing out, and in one particular case where a character turns up near the end after bowing out of the plot at an early stage, I need to do something to remind the reader of his continuing existence in-between. My favourite character, a nine-year old girl who is intended to be the heroine of the third book of what I see as a linked set of stories, is fine. I just need to develop my mental images of the others to the extent that I have a picture of her.

I need to add more vitality and impetus to the opening few scenes, and in some other places. This is linked to the pace issue above, but it is particularly critical here. The scene at which my agent felt the story really got going was some 20 pages in. Many editors won't get that far if it isn't a bit more tense and urgent from the start. In some of the other scenes that need this tightening I know that there is detail that I can trim, but for the opening scenes I need something else.

I also need to put in more at an early stage that sets the political scene. Readers won't all know just what was happening in the Spring of 1809 (a low point in the Penninsula War, and something of a mess in terms of both British and French politics) and a bit of background helps explain what is going on among the villains. The trouble is that this is precisely the sort of thing that kills pace and tension. I am currently reading Dennis Wheatley's Roger Brook books and he has a really bad habit of having his characters stop everything to discuss the latest political and military developments, whether or not they have a strong bearing on the plot. The last thing I want is for Lord Alexander spending anytime telling his colleagues what they already know.

There are one or two plot implausibilities or even impossibilities that need to be worked through, but luckily none that drive a stake through the heart of the storyline.

In addition to these major issues I need to sort out some stylistic problems (too many "said"s in the dialogue tags, too many "that"s , especially in dialogue, too few commas, too many people saying "indeed" in response to remarks.

And then there are the detailed bits and pieces scattered across most pages - potential anachronisms to be double-checked, infelicitous turns of phrase (including some real clunkers that I should have spotted myself), slip-ups in surnames and relationships, eccentric capitalisation, all that good stuff.

Despite all of this, there wasn't a single moment when I felt that this agent wasn't on my side, or wanted me to write something that wasn't what I had in my head. This is going to be my book, but thanks to her it is going to be a much, much better version of it. And while the title may need a bit of tweaking (the first half more than the second), the elephant still gets to stay in the very final sentence.

So I have a great deal to think about, and a great deal to do. Can I do it? I think that I can. How long have I got? Well, there are no external deadlines, but my agent is expecting to hear from me before the end of April. My own target is the end of March at the latest. I started Lord Alexander's Cipher; or, the Bridekirk Behemoth from scratch - not a single word nor fragment of a plot aready in my head - in the first week of April last year. In her new column in the Telegraph, confusingly titled A novel in a year, Louise Doughty says

Your novel will take you as long as it takes you - but I'm going to stick my neck out and say that if you haven't written a book before and are really serious about it and have a job or a family or - heaven forbid - both, then you are looking at around three years from start to finish.

I'm aiming to shave two years off that. If I can produce a publishable novel in a year, while holding down a full-time office job, then I think that I will be able to hold my head up high.