Watch me crash and burn: writing a follow-up to "The Moonstone"

Crash and burn? Probably. Have a great time doing it? I already am.

I recently re-read Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone for a Crime & Thrillers reading group I attend. I was particularly struck by one of the minor characters who pops up towards the end, the lawyer Mr Bruff’s office boy, Octavius Guy—better known as Gooseberry.

As I read I began to realize that Gooseberry would make a fantastic protagonist for a novel and it occurred to me that here was the perfect project for my summer break—writing and publishing a serialized novel in weekly installments, just as Collins did a hundred and fifty years ago.

I immediately started researching the period, hoping to find some hidden little nugget of history that might begin to suggest a plot—but I discovered zilch! 1852 was a very uneventful year. I also started writing to try to find Gooseberry’s narrative voice—again, nada! So at this point, I’ve no plot and no narrative voice and only two weeks in which to find them.

On the bright side, I have got a title (Gooseberry), a prototype cover, a charming protagonist who now has a fleshed-out back story, and I’ve inherited a number of The Moonstone’s other wonderful characters to play with. Oh, and I’m still hugely excited by the prospect of trying to write a serialization on the hoof!

One thing I’m very clear about: Gooseberry will never be a sequel to The Moonstone. The novel I envisage writing will be a detective story with an historical setting—and quite a comedic one at that. Think Alexander McCall Smith’s No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series, Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce novels, and Colin Cotterell’s Siri Paiboun mysteries.

I’ll be publishing it in weekly installments here on my Goodreads blog, so I do hope you’ll join me. Please wish me luck. I’ve a feeling I’ll need it.

Michael

Michael Gallagher’s Gooseberry (not exactly a sequel to Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone but more of a spin-off) is serialized here at Goodread in weekly installments every Friday from July 4th 2014. You can also follow Michael’s musings on the foolhardiness of this project. Just click on this link to his blog: Writing Gooseberry.