VARIAE LECTIONES
Roger Thurling
A few notes for the reader who might wish to comment:
This is a long book. As of August 2010, including a chronology and genealogy, (neither of which is compatible with Authonomy), it is around 690,000 words, and there is potentially much more ‘in preparation’. Only a little over half a million words has actually been uploaded to Authonomy.
Even for a famous and popular author there is no chance that this would be published in a single volume – I presently envisage it as around six volumes, but I do not intend to split it up until I have the advice of a prospective agent or publisher.
I welcome comments but, in order to reduce multiplication of the same comment, (you might only read yours, but I read them all), please note:
1) I know that this book is long, but eventually it will be several books,
2) I know that there are a lot of characters ... hundreds, but introduced over thousands of pages,
3) As far as ‘show, not tell’ is concerned, I believe that there is a place for both,
4) Please don’t advise me not to use the word ‘that’ – I shan’t agree with you as I believe that (sic) to omit it is sloppy,
5) I know that the beginning (my first two sections) is slow – that’s because it is written in homage to, and in the style of the Herries Chronicles of Sir Hugh Walpole, who was writing in the 1930s.
Technical Notes:
Fonts:
In my MSWord version of this book, the writings of about a dozen characters, in letters, notebooks, journals and diaries, appear each in their own distinctive ‘handwriting’ font, and emails, phone-texts etc each have their own characteristic formats and fonts – all of this is lost in the Authonomy version. For me it is a significant loss.
Footnotes:
Footnotes are a problem. Unless you are fluent in Gaelic, German, Marathi, Finnish, Italian, Spanish ... you will need some of the footnotes for translation, and of course in the Authonomy version there are no ‘pages’, so the footnotes are converted to endnotes, and shifted to the end of each section, where it is very difficult to refer to them. I can’t for the moment see a user-friendly way round this which is compatible with the Authonomy format. Many of the footnotes will be removed from the final text; those that are there for my benefit, eg for copyright checking.
Sir Hugh Walpole:
This work is in no sense a ‘sequel’, but many of the characters are descendants of characters who appear first in a sequence of six books by Hugh Walpole, written in the 1930s, and known collectively as “The Herries Chronicle”. The final events in that chronicle take place in 1932 at Rosthwaite in Cumberland, this book begins in August 1936 in the same field in Rosthwaite.
Fewer than half a dozen of the characters in Walpole’s books appear in this book, most notably Benjie, who survives until the end of “Post War”, and his daughter Sally, who survives until her old age in the twenty-first century.
Comments:
Please tell me of any errors which you spot, particularly errors of fact; I shall be very grateful. If you would like to contact me direct, my email address is on my profile page.
The first few Authonomy ‘chapters’ go like this: (my Section titles in boldface)
1: This note – not part of the book,
2: 1936-1940: Prologue; in the English Lake District, London and Cornwall,
3: 1946-1947: Post War; in the Lake District and London,
4-5: 1954-1976: Kissing Cousins; mainly set in Norwich, and on the Norfolk coast; the births and early years of second cousins Frances Cards and David Herries,
6-9: 1977: Caolas Stocainis; on the island of Harris in the Outer Hebrides, where David, is camping for two weeks,
10-22: 1978-1980: Ditchcombe House School; mainly set at a girls’ independent school in Hampshire, where David is teaching, and later, in 1980, sailing off the south coast of England,
23: 1984: At Mrs Mossby’s; a play group near Woodstock in Oxfordshire.
NB: Only the above sections have been edited, and these would probably form the core of the first volume, were this book to be published in a multi-volume form.
RTDT
Revised Dec 2010