I have spent the last three years buried in the sequel to Larkswood.
It has been an extraordinary experience. I always knew there would be a sequel, that I intended the novel to be only the first half of the project, but publishing Larkswood took so long and consumed so much energy that by the time the paperback version began to sell like the proverbial hot cakes, I was deeply immersed in Daddy’s Girl and I had anyway founded VMBooks and was cutting sharpened teeth on several other projects.
Then something very strange began to happen. Out of the blue, and then at frequent intervals, I began to get emails from total strangers who had read Larkswood, loved it … and wanted more.
So in the summer of 2022 I stopped what I was doing and spent three months researching the Second World War. Although I never intended Flight of the Lark to be a ‘war book’, it begins on 3 September 1939 and I wanted to start exactly where I’d left off. Except that …
Well, except that I knew that William and Calcutta would introduce my sequel, and that I’d need to do an enormous amount of research to get that not just right, but spot on. I worked out a plan, wrote a first sequence and took fright. Reading about the Second World War was so depressing I couldn’t face it.
For reasons I shall never understand, coming out of Covid alive was enough to convince me I could do it. I reckon William had begun to haunt me, just as he haunts Edward and the rest of the Hamilton clan by the end of Larkswood. I wanted to keep a promise I’d made to myself. I wanted to explore his character, to decide what kind of man he really was … and to bring him back to Larkswood not only to reunite with Edward, but to meet for the first time other members of his family, including Louisa, and indeed including his birth mother, Cynthia, for only the second time in his life.
I also had other big decisions to make. How far into the Second World War did I want to go? How does Louisa get on as a Red Cross nurse? Does Thomas become a brilliant young pilot? What does Edward do during the war? And at every turn, with each decision, I found myself needing to do something else.
To go against the grain.
To defy expectations.
To come up with a storyline about the war that is different but still holds believable water.
And yet to do all that against a background that was essentially as accurate as all the history books I read would allow me to be.
By 1 March 2026 I put down my pen. I’d written 50,000 words. More than the first half of the novel. I also knew exactly what would happen in the second half. The roots I’d put down were strong and resilient. Nobody would be able to guess what would happen next, or who the real evil genius of the reveal would be.
But I had become exceptionally tired.
I decided to give myself a break, tread fresh fields, write new poetry, rewrite a crossover novel of mine that had been standing in the wings for far too long … and throw a party to celebrate having friends and colleagues, and living in the beauty of Woodstock and the marvellous spaces of my cottage and small gardens.
My short intermission will bear fruit. VMBooks will publish the complete novel in April 2027.
I hope and pray it will have been worth the wait, the thinking, the planning, the research, the writing and rewriting, the endless stern editing, the checking of dates and the spelling of names.
There is never any guarantee. But, as my North London Collegiate School upbringing will always tell you:
WE WORK IN HOPE.
