I asked… you answered. As I prepare to go through the whole thing with a keen eye and red pen, I’ll keep you occupied with a new chapter preview from the upcoming Sin & Secrecy!

Been analysing my own work recently. I tend to just tell the story as I want, and think about the deeper details later. Like, what are the themes of The Berylford Scandals: Lust & Liberty and the upcoming sequel, Sin & Secrecy? Loyalty is a key one in both books. But in Sin & Secrecy, a recurring theme is family animosity. Uncles versus nephews; sons versus mothers. And while sibling has battled sibling since Cain and Abel, in the novels of the period we’re talking about in Berylford, they all seem to get along reasonably well. Natasha Rostova and her brother Nikolai are very close in War & Peace, as are Andrei Bolkonsky and his sister Marya. Many argue, in the same novel, that Hélène Kuragina and her brother Anatole are a bit too close. Then think the Bennet sisters in Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice. Right down to their forming alliances for antagonistic purposes in the works of Dickens and Mervyn Peake, e.g. Samson and Sally Brass in The Old Curiosity Shop and Cora and Clarice Groan in Gormenghast.

In more recent times, if you try to name an antagonistic brother-sister relationship, my mind automatically turns to Cersei and Tyrion Lannister in the A Song of Ice and Fire series. However, strangely enough, I poured none of this influence into creating the domestic warfare between Abel and Rebecca Stirkwhistle for the Berylford novels. It started off as just a one-off argument, with Abel actually having some affection for his sister. But as I wrote, I found it was far more fun to write their scenes if they were sniping and threatening one another all the time. You can find the beginnings of that in the latter half of Lust & Liberty, and it continues into Sin & Secrecy as you’ll find previewed below:

Excerpt from The Berylford Scandals: Sin & Secrecy — Chapter IV: Who Holds the Power Here?

No idea what I’m talking about? Get up to speed with The Berylford Scandals by purchasing Lust & Liberty on Amazon here.

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Quick update on the book progress from the most recent month…

It’s been quite an eventful month on the writer front. There has been progress for me as a public figure. For one thing, we had our first ever engagement as a guest speaker, which was fun! Very pleasantly surprised at how well it went — when I was writing the points of discussion down, I was convinced I would have to inject some on-the-spot humour into it or it would just be boring. To cut a long story short, it worked.

Plus, we sold a few more copies of Lust & Liberty, which is always good. When I last looked, that brought us to 99 copies. One more to go before that all-important 100 mark! For a self-published author, that’s not a bad achievement…

When we hit the century, I plan to run an exciting giveaway — not revealing any details until that last copy goes. Want to know what it is? Maybe you could be the owner of that 100th copy, and then you’ll find out!

The Berylford Scandals: Sin & Secrecy

Aside from sorting out what I’d like to do to celebrate hitting 100 copies of Lust & Liberty, I have been making some progress on the sequel, Sin & Secrecy. After finishing a major part of the story that was more-or-less made up of original content, this next part has been a great deal easier. Mostly revisions, apart from one or two parts that either needed expanding or reworking. In fact, I am now long past the halfway mark and, while a Christmas release is now not looking likely, January or February time could be feasible. As long as I stay on schedule, of course.

There is unfortunately nothing to report on either You Can Hear Chopin from the Attic or the untitled non-fiction project this month. The time to work on those will come after Sin & Secrecy has been completed.

I have also been toying with the idea of writing something for the stage. Given some connections of mine have recently entered into theatre production. There may be an opening or two there. Who knows? Watch this space, I guess…!

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