We arrived back from the beach yesterday afternoon. I’m almost unpacked —although not quite. We returned to piles of magazines, mail (bills), Christmas cards, plus several books I’d ordered before we left. Two of these are on the Affair of the Poisons, which features in The Next Novel. One, Strange Revelations, is a scholarly work, and recently published, so I am eager to read it.

Immediately I skimmed the index and skimmed the bits about Claude des Oeillets, the main character of my novel. I was rather disturbed to descover that the author of this book, Lynn Wood Mollenauer, states that Claude “probably” plotted to kill the king.

affairofpoison

Well! Strange revelations indeed. This would put a rather different cast on my character and a bomb in my plot. First, I have to be convinced myself.

Nous verrons!