Monday 18 February 2013

A change in the air

With the last Falconer finished, I am now working on the next Medieval Murderers book - "The Seven Deadly Sins".  As I mentioned before, my sins are Greed and Gluttony and the book is set in 1348 during an outbreak of plague.  My two stories will be narrated by people associated with my two major characters, William Falconer and Nick Zuliani.  The first will be a tale involving Zuliani told by his granddaughter, Katie Valier.  Those of you who follow my stories will know she appeared in a short story called "A Fiery Death" that appeared in one of Mike Ashley's anthologies entitled "The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction" (check it out on my website).  And she is also in the latest Medieval Murderers book entitled "The False Virgin" due out in September 2013.  In those stories she was a young girl of 16, but now she is in her fifties and recalls a murder case she and Zuliani were involved with concerning the greed of bankers.  Yes, it happened in the fourteenth century too!
The gluttony story will probably be narrated by William Falconer's elderly son, who it emerges has encountered Nick Zuliani at some point in his past.  How will the story of murder involve gluttony?  You will have to wait until next year to find out.
On a personal level, I am just slogging through the bad weather here in England.  Though it has not been as bad in the south-east as the rest of the country.  The one highlight has been the fact that we have sold our villa in Cyprus.  Having lived there for seven years, my wife and I wanted to return to the UK.  Having the villa in Cyprus was a drag on our resources, and the market in Cyprus was poor for houses.  However, it is sold, and we are glad of it.  Flying back and forth to Cyprus every few months to tidy it up was a nuisance.  Sometimes I can miss the weather though.  The last time I returned from Cyprus, I flew from temperatures of 20C to a wet, grey 2C in England.  Roll on Spring.