Vampire Outlaw: the Immortal Knight Chronicles first draft is going well. I’m averaging about 3,000 a day, which is great considering we just had Christmas and New Year. Some days I’ve put in over 6,000 words to keep that average up.
Right now, I am halfway through the final act. I should get that done by the end of Sunday… maybe. I’ll get the second draft done by the end of January, then it will go out to my wonderful beta readers at that point. Hopefully I can get feedback within a couple of weeks, then final polishing and proofreading… it’ll be tight but I’d love for it to be released by the end of February.
This has been a lot of fun to write. I’ve researched plenty about the period. The book takes places in 1216/17 England, during the French invasion when Louis the Prince of France was proclaimed King of England. It covers the death of King John, the coronation of Henry III, the Sieges of Dover Castle and the Battle of Lincoln.
The big battle scene was particularly exciting and takes up a pretty big portion of the middle of the book. The rebel barons had taken and occupied the town of Lincoln but the garrison held out. The royalist forces – loyal to the 9-year-old King Henry III – marched on the city. It was a vitally important place geographically, being a crossroads of Ermine Street and the Fosse Way and situated in a gap in the Lincoln Cliff (a major escarpment in central Lincolnshire) where it is cut through by the River Witham. The battle was decisive and was the great turning point in the war. And a vampire knight played the key role in securing the victory.
One of the walls of Lincoln Castle
Then there’s been researching the historic town and castle of Nottingham and the Castle of Newark, where Bad King John shat himself to death shortly after dropping his entire treasury into the Wash. I’ve also become completely familiar with the contemporary extent and legal administration of Sherwood Forest.
I’ve been writing about the greatest knight who ever lived, William Marshal who sort-of-loyally served four kings and served as Regent more than once. His finest hour, perhaps, comes during the period the book covers, when he steered England out of the crisis of the First Baron’s War.
And I’ve just written a scene where my heroic vampire smashes all of Will Scarlet’s limbs with a hammer. Oh yeah, this is all about Robin Hood, too.
If you would like to see some of these marvellous locations, I have created a Pinterest board especially for the book, with tons of photos for references purposes. There’s some 13th century type clothing, armour and weapons, too.
The Druid Stone of Blidworth, the village where WIll Scarlet is supposedly buried but he probably ain’t, is he, cos he’s just a character from stories…
I can’t wait to finish this. In fact, I better get back to it right now.