After all that flapping around and deleting half the book, I’m finally nearing the end of a Captured Shadows draft I’m happy(ish) with – five outlined chapters left to write, but I think it’s going to end up more. Then I’m going to close the file and leave it alone for a month. I’m at the point now where I’ve worked so much on it in such a short space of time to make up everything I scrapped that I’m dreaming about it and everything. I feel too close to it to do a decent job of editing, like I’ve lost all concept of what’s good drama and what’s the awful daytime soap sort of drama. I have this horrible feeling I’ll come back to it after that month off, re-read the first paragraph, and quietly decide to disappear and never write again.

Also not really sure how to warn people that if they’re after something clean and pleasant, this is not the book to read…! There’s blood and shit and bad Victorian teeth and nobody bathes that often. I say bum quite a lot (very underused in rudey books since the 19th century if you ask me). Girls with furry legs and corset scars. Disgusting old quasi-incestuous pederasts. There’s romance too, of course, and if people are half as into Jim and Archie as they have been with Lindsay and Pip then I’ll be happy. It’s just a verrry different setting to Stockholm Syndrome, and even after glossing over a lot of the grimness it’s still pretty grim at times. I don’t want people coming into this expecting some kind of flawless swoony Mills & Boon historical romance starring identikit Hollywood hunks, because it’s not happening :P