The Idea Grinder

I've been struggling with the same cold for the past ten days. I went to the doctor today, finally. My lungs are clear, my sinuses stuffed. The nice lady doctor told me it's probably viral, but she gave me an antibiotic just in case it turns bacterial. Rest, liquids, the usual.

I've got an idea for another book and I'm trying to lay out the timeline. Its hero and heroine are a couple background characters from Dolly of Palo Pinto, Ben Cooper and Lenie Garcia, along with her father, Mando, the Gonzales brothers, and my usual cast of characters. I'm having a problem laying out the timeline, but I've gotten myself interested with the first three chapters, so I'm hoping it comes together.

I still haven't forgotten Del of Kerao. He's gotten back from his trip, Netti's with child, Baito's married, Del's fingered the bad guy but he hasn't laid eyes on him yet physically. Now I've got to figure how to write the blowoff, bringing a handful of strings together in the big clash between Empire and Loyalists. I think I keep putting it off because I've got to kill off a character I've come to really like. If I don't, then the sequel won't work.

I'm also poking over the idea of The Bigamist's Wives. It'll be based on a true story (not out of True Crime Tales, just a story I know.) Having poked the idea, I discover I don't know quite enough about the story. So far we've come up with seven wives, but there my be more. There are six children I know of for sure, plus three or four more probables. I'm pretty sure there are kids with each of them. There are a few mistresses in there as well. There's lots of story, but not a lot of point of view, since the common element is the guy. He's dead now, so I can't ask him, and I can't write it from his point of view because I don't like him. I'm tempted to name him Raskolnikov.

The Bigamist, I think, isn't really going to be Rodion Raskolnikov, even though he does have an enormous ego. His crimes don't involve murder, at least not that I know of, but the serial abandonment of his numerous progeny. His interest isn't the kids, but the women. He's a serial seducer, and I think he's too soft-hearted to say no and too prominent to run away when the subject of matrimony comes up. His resemblance to Raskolnikov comes in his assumption that he's smart enough to get away with it, which in fact he mostly does.

Perhaps the way to tie it together would be for one or two of the kids to do a little research, and then all I'd have to do would be to build the scenarios.

I think I'll write the Ben and Lenie story first though.

Captain Ravenshaw, or the Maid of Cheapside

Some books are interesting. Some are amusing. In the best of them you can fall into a time and place you've never been, and in the very best of them you can have laugh-out-loud fun.

Here's roaring Captain Ravenshaw, an officer whose unit has been disbanded, set afoot to live by his wits in Elizabeth Regina's England. He falls in with a poor scholar, Holyday, after a dispute culminating in a flung capon in a tavern. Falling in with three other gents of quality they free a country fellow, in town without his wife's permission, from the watch after curfew. Then they come upon a Faire Maiden, being accosted on the street, have a little fun roaring at the accosters, and let her go scampering back to her father's house from which she's run away.

Now that's the setup. Ravenshaw's a bully boy with a foul reputation. Holyday's a poor, mostly meek scholar who's scared of women. The guys in the alley are a couple of hard gents getting ready for a sea voyage that'll maybe make them rich -- think Drake, Hawkins, Grenville -- unless they're lost at sea or eaten by natives or something. They're not above kidnapping cute girlies roaming the streets after dark. In fact, one of them, Jerningham, is fascinated by the girl and must have her, by hook or preferably crook, since he has no intention of offering matrimony to the daughter of a merchant.

Ravenshaw, being an actual gent rather than having merely been born to that station, is determined not to let that happen. Maid Millicent, who seems to be about seventeen or eighteen and is pretty as a portrait, ran away from home rather than go through with her engagement to Sir Peregrine Medway, who's, I'd guess, around seventy but trying to appear forty, or maybe even thirty. Ravenshaw's determined not to let that happen either.

The convolutions that follow are laugh-out-loud funny. You think you know who's going to get the girl in the end. Then you don't. Then you do. The only certainty is that Sir Peregrine's not going to spend any time lying between those comely young thighs.  I may not have ever read an adventure novel quite so adventurous, and given my love of Sabbatini that's saying a lot.