NaNoWriMo 2024

Ten years later, here I am again picking up Lord Foxbridge for a month, and furthering what I'm projecting to be the second half of the third book. The first half will be "The Verevale Hunt," which I got pretty far into but didn't finish in 2014. I still have to tweak up the second book, too, but I am excited to get back into his world.

This story is going to be about the Herzoslovakian Embassy, which is situated in Foxy's family home in London; visiting the mansion after a catastrophic storm and flood in January 1928 (which actually happened) Foxy discovers a body that had been buried in the garden rather recently and been unearthed by the flood. The main characters will be the ambassador, his charge d'affaires, and his military attache; the body, who turns out to be a rentboy whom Foxy knows called Magpie; Foxy's father the Earl of Vere, his mentor Lord Arthur Longueville aka Silenus, and his lover Twister (Sir Oliver Paget). Various others will turn up here and there but those are the stars.

Here's what I wrote last year when I tried the same thing for NaNoWriMo 2023 but didn't get very far.

I used AI to make up portraits of the dramatis personae specific to this story:

His Excellency Count Mirko Dimitri Plamenatz, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Kingdom of Herzoslovakia to the Court of Saint James (born 1893)

Kiro Radovanovitch (Radovanović), Chargé d'Affaires to the Embassy (in charge of the facilities) - born 1903, friend of Prince Nicholas of Romania while at Eton.

Colonel (Pukovnik) Miladin Djukanovitch (Đukanović), Military Attaché (in charge of security), born 1887

"The Magpie" - Antony Nuttall, born 1907

If you're a big fan of Agatha Christie, you may recognize the name Herzoslovakia, I lifted it bodily from her early funfest The Secret of Chimneys, along with the names of the king and queen, assuming that the world of Christie's book into the same universe as mine. I did the same in the first book with characters from P.G. Wodehouse. It's an idea that I had before I read James Anderson's Burford mysteries, but understood how to do it when I read The Affair of the Blood-Stained Egg Cosy.

In the meantime, you can read the unfinished draft of "The Verevale Hunt" here; it will, with "The Magpie at the Embassy", comprise Lord Foxbridge Goes To Town someday in the not so different future.

So, wish me luck! Over the top we go...