Time for a quick ‘here’s where we are’ check. I’ll be doing a more detailed version at the end of the calendar year, as usual, but I thought you might like a quick peek at two things on my personal writing horizon: the next 1920s series and my progress towards a series in the 1480s and the time of the Pact.

Before we get there, Apt to be Suspicious (Edmund Carillon’s romance in the 1947-1948 year at Oxford) will be out on November 7th. It features cryptic crosswords, punting on the river, a particular mystery, and cryptography, among other joys. All the pre-order links and more details there!

And I’m keeping the details close, but there will also be a novella-length Solstice extra coming on December 20th! (You might want some baked goods handy for this one.) Folks on the newsletter or Patreon will hear about it first, though it’ll also get a page here with all my other extras.

On to the other plans!

Mysterious Societies

Distilling Sunlight, the last book in the current 1920s Mysterious Arts series is on track for editing starting in November! That means figuring out what I’m doing with the next 1920s series in a little more detail than scattered notes in my files. (There are a lot of those. Ideas for books is never the hard part for me.)

I’ve now got a rough order for the series, and here’s what I can tell you now! The books will be taking place between 1919 and 1929, with the dates running in sequence within the series.

1 : Each of the seven books will be focusing on one of Albion’s secret societies in more detail. We’ve seen several of them so far (particularly the Dwellers at the Forge and the Society of the White Horse) but I’m excited to spend more time with all of them.

2 : We’re going to be spending a lot of time in and around the main Trellech Library. This is going to include at least one romance with a librarian, and – well. A lot of you, my lovely readers, are also librarians, so a certain amount of library geekery. (One of my current projects is reading a lot of library history and figuring out how they arrange their stacks and how that’s changed over time.)

3 : Most of the romances we’re getting are with new characters – but some favourites will definitely be making an appearance. (This includes Jehan Knox.) One of the romances is something Gabe and Rathna refer to briefly at the end of Upon A Summer’s Day, and so on…

More on the writing stack in the end of year posts, but I expect to start writing the first of the Mysterious Societies books in May 2026, with it coming out in February of 2027. This feels ridiculously far in the future, but planning is what it is. From there, I’ll be alternating with other time periods. (There are several other books in the pipeline before that!)

Progress toward the Pact

Speaking of other time periods… I’m making steady progress on the background research toward the Pact. In November I’ll be reading about Henry V. I plan to spend December reading several fiction (and fantasy) books set in the 1480s for a bit of fun and a sense of the existing landscape. You can find my existing research reading posts over on Patreon (they’re all free to read), and there will be one about Edward II, Edward III, and Richard II at the end of the month.

And then I’m going to be diving into the more detailed research so I can plot out a series set in the 1480s. My hope is to have most of that work done by early 2027, so I can start writing something in the middle of the year.

I currently have 119 things on my reading list for the period, so there’s a Fox House like ambition here. Also Owl House, wanting to know all the things. I’m looking forward to it!

I am not actually planning to read all 119 of those things, but I will be spending my vacation from my day job in December figuring out which ones are getting priority, and also setting up a lot of map, timeline, and family tree files so I can drop details into the right places easily as I start the reading.

If you look through my existing research posts, I’m reading 3-4 full length books most months (sometimes 5) for the research parts of this project, so that’s about the sort of pace I want to keep as we head into the Wars of the Roses. Parts of the process are different, though, since part of what I need to do is keep track of dates and locations of people in a lot more detail for my later planning and outlining.

My actual plan is to read things in chronological order of publication. I’m interested in this for three reasons.

1 : It will let me see how various lines of thought and new history and discoveries play out. (And means that the most recent thing I’ve read has the newest additional research in play, which will be handy as I get to those bits).

2 : It means I’m not reading a stack of books about exactly the same angle on a topic all at once. (Otherwise I was looking at about 6 books about the Princes in the Tower in a row.)

3 : When new books come out (a reader let me know about an upcoming book about Margaret Beaufort that’s coming out in March!) I can just tack them onto the end of the list.

I might start with an overview or two, however, just so I can get the general sense of key events firmly embedded in my brain. And I need to figure out how to sequence podcast episodes, where the chronological factor is not generally as useful.

Anyway, more to come about all these plans!