This is work, honest

Saturday was the first springlike day of the year, so I got out my poles and went for a walk. Of course, I wasn’t just enjoying myself. No, I took some of the older trackways and paths on my way to a particular shop three and a half miles away.

I’m writing my sixth pocket novel. It’s set locally in the early 1790’s, just as the industrial revolution is starting to change life forever. For me, that means understanding what the area was like then so I can paint the landscape and home/work life accurately. Fortunately, there are still lots of old houses around, though relatively few that would have been already old back then. The house pictured below is ostensibly an exception.

It’s called Manor House and the date above the door is in the mid-1600s. Wow, I thought. But this is where you have to be careful. The…