A Grant-aided Trip to Swansea

In which The Author meets a proper author

Back in the summer of 2015, I was coming home from a hospital appointment and reading Ben Aaronovitch's latest novel, Foxglove Summer, on the bus.

Actually, I've jumped the gun slightly. Let me start again ...

In about 2013, I was browsing in The Works in Aberdare when I found a book in the history section called Rivers of London. Thinking it was going to be about the actual rivers – the Fleet, Tyburn, Westbourne, and so forth – that lie beneath the streets of the modern city, I picked it up and started reading the jacket.

As soon as I saw the Gollancz colophon (that's a posh word for a publisher's logo, in case you're wondering) I knew the book was in the wrong place. Gollancz has long been regarded as one of the leading UK publishers of science fiction and fantasy. This was turning into a promising discovery.

It turned out to be a contemporary crime novel about a young Metropolitan Police constable named Peter Grant. He's out on patrol in Covent Garden one weekend and discovers a headless corpse in the portico of St Paul's Church. The body is very recent. And the only eyewitness to the brutal murder has been dead for two hundred years. That leads Peter to a secret department of the Metropolitan Police who investigate supernatural and paranormal happenings.

That was enough to spark my interest. I took it to the counter and mentioned to Stacey that it had been misplaced. She laughed, and we compared notes on the 'frequent flyers' you come across when you work in a bookshop. Then Stacey told me that it was in their offer, along with the next two books in the series (Moon Over Soho and Whispers Underground).

I bought all three and proceeded to enjoy them thoroughly over the next few weeks. It took me a while to track down the fourth one, though. Eventually Neil R. bought me Broken Homes as a Xmas present. He knew I was a big fan of the books and I couldn't afford to go hunting it down myself. By now I was using Twitter, and occasionally put a message up saying how much I'd enjoyed reading a particular book. One of the authors I was following was Ben Aaronovitch, needless to say. I always liked reading his day word count, his queries aimed at his small army of Tech Support experts, and his random thoughts on everyday life.

That brings us to the summer of 2015, and my hospital appointment. On the way there I called into Waterstones in Putney and bought Foxglove Summer to read in the waiting room. It had only come out in paperback a week or so earlier, and I made a beeline for Waterstones as soon as I arrived in the vicinity of the hospital.

By then I'd signed up for the Gollancz newsletter, which gives subscribers advance warning of new publications. I'd also looked at the Gollancz website, to see if they ever wanted proofreaders. Virtually the first thing it said was that they 'currently have all the freelance help they need'.

It therefore came as something of a surprise to find a number of production errors in a finished book. I was about halfway through it when I arrived home, and it was like reading one of the uncorrected bound proofs which the trade reps would drop off in the shop. (By chance, one of the reps who generously kept me supplied with practice material was Graham Ireland from Orion.) Some were very minor things – missing punctuation, simple typos like from instead of form, that sort of thing – but some were more like the sort of thing that shouldn't really have made it to proof stage. One officer was promoted from Detective Constable to Detective Sergeant in just a few pages. The spelling of one character's name changed from time to time. Another character's surname changed without explanation.

Pretty much the first thing I did when I got to the library the following day was log into Twitter. I tweeted that I was thoroughly enjoying Foxglove Summer, but added that Orion (Gollancz's parent company) really didn't have all the freelance proofreading help they needed.

About quarter of an hour later I had a notification that someone had replied to my post. I checked, and found a message from someone named Gillian Redfearn. She asked if I was reading the hardback, and added that they'd had the text 'redone since for obvious reasons'.

I didn't know who Ms Redfearn was, but a quick click revealed that she was Deputy Publishing Director at Orion.

Now here was an interesting situation. Should I reply in earnest? Or should I just laugh it off?

I decided to go for Plan A. I replied that it was a paperback, bought the previous day. A short period of time elapsed before Ms Redfearn responded. She invited me ('in that case', as she said) to send in anything I found.

Now, imagine my dilemma. I hadn't done any paper proofreading since leaving university, and I was a bit rusty on the BS symbols. Also, I was reluctant to mark up a brand new paperback and post it back to London without knowing when I'd be able to get my hands on a replacement copy. In the event I decided to go old-school on the book. Luckily for me the weather was glorious that weekend. I took my trusty Chambers Dictionary, my notebook, a couple of pens, a ruler, and Foxglove Summer itself, to Aberdare Park on the Saturday morning. I found a fairly quiet spot to sit in the sunshine and started working my way through the text, line by line, noting anything that seemed not to ring true. I even found myself googling a real church in Herefordshire, to see whether it has a tower or a spire.

But I enjoy doing that sort of thing. It wasn't work, it was a pleasant way to spend a weekend without spending any money. I spent two full days beside the lake, reading the book for the second time, but in microscopic detail. Back at home, I typed up my findings and wrote a nice covering letter explaining a bit about my background. I put everything in the post and sat back to see what transpired.

It was the start of the summer holidays. Probably not the best time to expect a rapid response to a job application, never mind a cheeky 'side door' approach to a large company. Consequently a few weeks went by until an email pinged into my inbox from a chap named Craig Leyenaar. Headed Foxglove Summer - Proofreader, this is what it said:

Dear Steve, Gillian Redfearn passed your notes on Foxglove Summer to me. The close reading was impressive and you caught many errors that we will be correcting. Thanks for that. We are happy to consider this your 'proofreading test', but before we are able to pass on any jobs could you give us some more details? Are you happy to do both proofreading and copy-editing on screen? How long did it take you to proofread Foxglove Summer? What is your hourly rate? After we've received this information and we can all agree on terms we'll put together a contract and move on from there.

Well, that was the foot in the door I'd been hoping for. I sent Craig the extra bits and pieces, and I was away. Sort of …

It didn't take long until my first assignment arrived in the post. It was the final part of a trilogy by Gavin G. Smith: a very strange SF novel called The Beauty of Destruction. Craig also sent me PDFs of the first two books, so I could check for any continuity errors that might have sneaked into the mix. And I'm not lying when I say that this huge pile of paper sat on my desk for two whole days while I pondered what to do next.

You see, from just reading the first few chapters I could see that I had an uphill struggle ahead of me. As well as a great many typos, missing punctuation, dubious hyphenation (especially of Welsh words), and the usual typesetting glitches I was used to from the bound proofs, there were numerous inconsistent spellings, changes of name, incorrect spellings of real places, real companies and so forth … In short, it was a bloody mess. I was afraid to touch it without seeking some advice first. If I fucked it up, I'd never hear from Orion again and I'd be back to square one.

I emailed Rob H., an old friend who's been proofreading for close to twenty years. His advice was simple, practical and sensible – just what I needed to hear, in fact. He reminded me that I was being paid to find mistakes in the text. That's exactly what I should do. Mark everything up, he said, and send it back. He added that he'd come across books where the copy-editor seemed to have 'fallen asleep at the wheel', and pointed out that that's why publishers use proofreaders as the final line of defence. So that's exactly what I did.

In the event I typed out about eighty separate queries, as well as correcting factual errors like the names of various armaments manufacturers. (I was almost expecting to find the library on lockdown, with snipers on the roof of the Jokecentre, because Echelon had picked up my google searches and decided that a major terrorist cell was based in Aberdare.) I marked up the proof with so much red ink that it looked like a crime scene, posted it back to Orion, and emailed all my paperwork to Craig. The die was cast.

I was prepared for an email thanking me for my work on The Beauty of Destruction and paying me off, never to darken Orion's door again. Instead, once he'd had chance to go through everything, I had a very positive email from Craig. This sentence in particular gave me a great boost: 'After going through it, I think I'd be happy to send you some copy-editing work as well as proof reading.'

Craig was as good as his word, fair play. The next assignment I had from Gollancz was the typescript of Rig by Jon Wallace, for copy-edit. This was a bit of a curveball, because that was also the final part of a trilogy. That meant that I was slightly confined by stylistic choices made by the previous copy-editor. (In fact I was rather surprised that the three books weren't assigned to the same person.) It was a bit of a learning curve, because I had to use features of LibreOffice I hadn't come across before. But it's all good grist to the mill. I enjoy new challenges, and I've always enjoyed researching things in books and via the Internet. It seemed as though I'd finally landed the job Rowland and my other friends had told me I should have been doing years earlier.

My reputation for thoroughness and attention to detail was starting to pay off. In fairly short order Craig asked me to work on the 'definitive' texts of William Gibson's 'Sprawl' novels, an anthology of his short stories, and the 'authors' preferred text' of Good Omens by the late Sir Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. These are far from being newcomers to the scene, after all. To have names like those on my CV was quite an achievement, considering that I'd been officially freelance for only six months or so.

It wasn't long until my name started to circulate within Orion. In my first departure from Science Fiction, Craig's colleague Tom Monson asked me if I fancied copy-editing a historical novel by Christian Cameron. Set during the fag-end of the Peloponnesian War, Rage of Ares was the final instalment of the Long War saga. I think I must have been off school ill for the morning we covered Ancient Greece, because I knew bugger all about the period. Furthermore, my grasp of Classical Greek is limited to a few epigrams from Homer I've picked up from crosswords over the years. But I did my best with the typescript, flagging up marginal queries and compiling a fuller list of Notes and Queries (something that soon became my signature). I must have done an okay job, because Christian was very kind in addressing some of my more obvious questions. It didn't take long before one of Tom's colleagues (another Craig) offered me another of Christian's books – this time, set during the Hundred Years War.

This was a bizarre coincidence. The day I finished working on Rage of Ares and emailed it to Orion, I was in London. (See The Oyster is Your World.) I somehow found myself at the Priory of St John of Jerusalem, in Clerkenwell. I took a few photos, wrote a blog about my discoveries in town, and thought no more of it. When The Green Count arrived, I was amazed to find that Sir William Gold, the protagonist of the series, was raised at the Priory of St John of Jerusalem. (This was the original priory, of course, sacked during the Peasants' Revolt.) I sent the link to Christian via Twitter, and he was kind enough to leave a comment on my blog.

Since then I've worked on another four of Christian's books (two historical fiction, two fantasy), and we've pencilled in a couple of pints when he's in the UK next year. (He's based in Toronto.) We work via Twitter and/or email to iron out any problems in the text, and always have fun discussing obscure points of fictional (but real-ish) grammar. He's been generous enough to mention me in the acknowledgments to his books, and to endorse me online. It's going to be great to sit down and talk to him face to face, rather than via cyberspace.

Last October I had an email from an unfamiliar name, sent from a publisher called Bonnier Zaffre. They had a new crime novel for proofreading, and apparently someone in the office had suggested that I was the man for the job. It turned out that one of Orion's editors had moved to a different company and taken her contacts book with her. I knew then that I was moving in the right circles. Since then I've done a number of jobs for them, most recently proofreading the new novels by Lynda La Plante and Wilbur Smith. Yes – the Wilbur Smith.

All of which brings us back to Ben Aaronovitch. At the start of April, Craig emailed me out of the blue:

And so we come full circle . . . the new Ben Aaronovitch is coming up for copy-edit in a fortnight. Would you be available to do it?

Needless to say, I said yes.

It was Lies Sleeping, the latest instalment in the adventures of Peter Grant. I had to refer back to my well-thumbed copies of the earlier books while I was working on the typescript. Ben and I got to discuss some points via Twitter when I sent the edited typescript back, and I think we got each other's sense of humour. And then came the best news of all. A couple of months ago Gollancz announced that Ben would be touring the country, giving talks and signing Lies Sleeping. Best of all, he was coming to Cardiff and Swansea.

Wales tends to get overlooked when it comes to author signings. If they get as far as Cardiff we can count ourselves lucky. Swansea is pretty much terra incognita for mainstream UK publishers. Unfortunately, it's also pretty much inaccessible from Aberdare by public transport.

Cardiff was a more realistic prospect – a Thursday lunchtime signing in an independent shop in the Bay – but by the time Rhian and I got round to booking the tickets, it was sold out. (Rhian's also a big fan of the books, so I made sure she had the day off before proceeding any further.) I commented on Twitter, saying how disappointed we were to have missed out. Luckily Craig spotted it, and said that he could put us on the guest list if needs be.

It turned out that social media came to the rescue again. My old friend John works in the centre of Swansea, and offered us a lift there and back again after the event. I told Craig that we'd be heading for Swansea instead, and he said he thought it would be a better event anyway. Instead of just a signing, Ben would be giving a talk as well. We booked our tickets straight away.

Rhian, Liam (a big fan of Doctor Who, for which Ben wrote a couple of scripts back in the Classic era), and I set off in John's car at 8.00 on a hazy Thursday morning two weeks ago, and were in town just after 9.00. We decided to have breakfast in Thereisnospoon (as good as anywhere), and then jumped on a bus to Limeslade. We had the day to ourselves, and for £4.50 we could kill a couple of hours and get some sea air. We got to the beach at high tide, by which time the clouds had burned off and the sun was well and truly out. We walked the cliff path to Langland Bay, stopped off in Langland's Brasserie (a couple of converted beach huts) for second breakfast, and then walked to Caswell village to get the bus back into town.

We killed some more time at the Waterfront Museum, which wasn't as exciting as I'd hoped it might be, then made our way to the No Sign Bar for something to eat. It's not far from there to Waterstones, and we had time to browse before the event started. I picked up The Gradual, a 2016 novel by Christopher Priest that sneaked into the bookshops while my back was turned. (I finished it on the way back from London on Tuesday, and very good it is too.) Obviously I needed to buy Lies Sleeping. And I needed a new copy of Rivers of London, the first book in the sequence, because mine is currently circulating among the bar staff in Thereisnospoon in Aberdare. I had a nice chat with the Waterstones people while I was updating my loyalty card. I had the rest of Ben's backlist in my bag, after checking with the management that he'd be happy to sign those as well. John joined us when he finished work, and we all headed to the top of the building for the event itself.

The talk was entertaining, informative, and light-hearted. Ben has a rather warped sense of humour (which comes across in his books), and he's very down to earth about his writing, his family, and his writing process. It was good to be with so many people who clearly love the books as much as I do. He was even kind enough to ask if his copy-editor was there. We had a bit of banter about publisher's house style, public transport in Wales (Ben was travelling by train), and assorted odds and ends.

We queued for the signing (towards the end of the queue, because I had half a dozen books as well as Lies Sleeping) and we had a chat with the PR lady from Gollancz while we were waiting. (I can't remember her name, alas, but she was very pleasant.) It was nice to know that we were expected, as she called us 'the Aberdare contingent' when she came over to talk to us. Ben and I had a good chat while he signed my books, and I explained how the paperback of Foxglove Summer had opened the door to what I'm doing now. It was really lovely to tie everything up in a big loop, face to face with the author himself.

Afterwards the PR lady told me that Christian Cameron will be on the Gollancz Authors events list next year. (I knew that already from the horse's mouth, so to speak.) It seems that my name is quite well known in the offices. I asked her to pass on my thanks to Craig, for arranging for us to come to the event. I also emailed him the following day to tell him how the day had panned out and thanking him for having faith in me back in the summer of 2015.

John dropped us off in Aberdare and Rhian and I repaired to Jacs for a pint. It was only then that I realised Ben had given me a namecheck in Lies Sleeping, for my 'meticulous' copy-editing. That's as big a vote of confidence that I could have hoped for. All in all it's been a long, strange trip, and meeting the man who indirectly started the whole thing off was the perfect way to end a very busy, educational, entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable year of freelance work.

Do you Know Who I Am?

In which The Author (and his friends) are the victims of mistaken identity

Yesterday afternoon, to mark the successful completion of another book by Christian Cameron (the third historical novel of his which I've copy-edited), I popped into the Glosters for a pint. Wayne L., the guvnor, was behind the bar, and we were chatting when a young woman walked in. She said hello to us both, and I said hello back – even though I had no idea who the hell she was. I recognised her, certainly, but placing her was a different matter entirely.

Anyway, she and Wayne were talking just out of sight when I heard her mention 'Sensodyne' and 'bleach' and 'teeth', and the penny dropped. She's one of the nurses in the dental surgery next door to the pub.

The dental surgery I attend regularly.

As a rule I only see her when she's wearing her work uniform. Seeing her in jeans and a jacket over a black top meant that she was completely out of context.

After she'd gone, Wayne said, 'I felt a bit embarrassed then, because I couldn't remember her bloody name.'

I said, 'You're one up on me, mate. I didn't even recognise her with her clothes on.'

We went on to talk about similar experiences we've had over the years. I told Wayne about the time I was walking through Queen's Arcade in Cardiff, on a Saturday lunchtime a couple of weeks before Xmas. A chap in his fifties (probably), walking through the arcade with his family, said hello as we passed each other. I said hello back, and spent the rest of my day racking my brains to try and remember where I knew him from. Was he someone who called into the bookshop regularly? Or someone I knew from the pub? Or even a former teacher whom I hadn't seen since my A levels? Maybe he'd been in the Cynon Valley Quiz League, or some other social group I'd been involved with in my younger days.

The mystery was solved on the Monday morning, when I boarded the X7 to Cardiff and he was sitting behind the wheel. Trevor had taken us to Cardiff every weekday (barring holidays) for at least the previous year. Out of his Shamrock uniform and outside his cab, his face just didn't register in my mind. Odd, isn't it?

I was thinking about similar episodes last night. A couple of weeks ago, I was in Jac's Music Venue in Aberdare, chatting to Barrie and Amanda (the managers) over a pint. My phone beeped to signal the arrival of a text message. Since only about half a dozen people have my current number, I was a bit surprised to see only a number instead of a name in the 'Sender' field.

I was even more surprised when I opened the message. It said something like 'Hi Hayley, sorry but Josh won't be able to come to Molly's party tomorrow, he's a bit under the weather.'

I read it out to Barrie and Amanda, and then said, 'There literally is no answer to that.'

I expect this accidental mis-delivery has caused poor Josh to be friendzoned by an angry Molly. (Get used to it, mate. Bitches be crazy!)

I was having a pint in Kitty Flynn's in Cardiff, on a Saturday afternoon about halfway through my second first year at university. A chap I'd never seen before came over to me, told me how much he liked my guitar playing, and offered to buy the next drink. I thanked him and told him I was only killing time between trains (which was true). I couldn't accept a drink on false pretences, could I?

I don't know who this mysterious guitarist actually is, but I was walking through Aberdare a few months ago and someone came up to me out of the blue. He'd obviously had a few (or maybe something stronger and less legally available), but he started ranting on at me about a gig I'd played in Swansea where I'd apparently pissed him off. I told him I hadn't picked up a guitar in public for well over twenty years, but he wouldn't have it. Eventually, I think I said, 'Fuck off, you stupid wanker!' (or words to that effect) and walked away rather quickly.

One of the reps who used to call into the bookshop was a very nice guy called Julian Cooper. He and his partner Glynis lived in South Devon (Newton Abbot, if memory serves), and would come to Cardiff a couple of times a year. Between them they carried an eclectic set of lists, both books and stationery. Julian would visit the bookshops, Glynis would do the stationers', and between them they could do a city centre in a day's visit. We became great friends, and we'd always have a good chat before getting down to the serious business of buying books.

Julian was born in the very early 1950s, and was a bit of a hippy in his younger days. (I think he still was, at heart.) He'd always be very smartly dressed in a suit, but with an open-necked shirt. His wavy hair was greying, but still long enough to identify him as slightly bohemian. He's also about my height and build.

One of his visits was a couple of days after our annual stocktake. We'd always take on a large group of students to help out on the day (and night), and some would stay on for a few days afterwards. Two such were named Ruth and Rebecca, and they were helping to make the shop shipshape (try saying that after a few pints) when Julian walked up the stairs. I was behind the counter, so he strolled over, shook my hand, and we started chatting as usual. As we went to find a quiet corner, we noticed that the girls were whispering to each other and glancing over at us. We didn't think anything of it at the time.

After Julian had gone, Rebecca walked over to me and said, 'Was that your father you were talking to?'

I don't think the possible resemblance had ever crossed my mind (or Julian's) before, but now that she'd mentioned it, it wouldn't have been too hard to imagine.

That night, I rang Julian at home and told him what the girls had thought. He found it hilarious, and it became a running joke of ours ever after.

He'd walk into the shop and say, 'How are you, son?'

I'd reply, 'Hello, Dad, good to see you. How's stepmother?'

I'm sure at least one of the younger members of staff thought we were on the level, too.

This next case of mistaken identity also involves my father. (My real father, not the one from South Devon). As Dad got older, his eyesight started to seriously deteriorate, and he didn't make things any easier for himself by not wearing his glasses.

Phil (my brother) has worn glasses since school. He used to have fairly long hair, a bit of a beard, and wore faded denims in an old-school rock style. But at the time I'm talking about, that was quite a common look around the Valleys.

Dad called into the Cambrian for an afternoon pint one day. He knew most of our gang, and they knew him. Nobody was especially surprised when Dad approached Leighton L., who was reading the paper by the bar. Leighton was wearing faded denims, had long hair, and a bit of a beard. He was also wearing his reading glasses.

The way Leighton recounted the story, Dad apparently offered to stand him a pint (which Leighton declined). Dad then asked him about his work situation (hit and miss, the odd 'hobble' here and there), his love life (disastrous), his baby daughter (estranged because of the disastrous love life), and various other topics.

After five minutes or so, the penny dropped. Phil's life and Leighton's were running on exactly parallel lines, so every time Dad asked 'my brother' a question, Leighton was able to give an entirely appropriate answer. I don't know if Leighton ever told Dad that he wasn't actually talking to his younger son, or just decided to keep it until he'd seen us.

Years ago, I was in a pub – possibly the Cambrian, but it might have been the Glandover or the Mount Pleasant, when they still had a live music scene – when a chap I knew by sight came over to me. We chatted for a few minutes about the bands, work, girlfriends, people we both knew, life in general, blah blah blah …

'How's your brother doing these days?' he asked.

I told him Phil was doing OK, and then he completely flummoxed me.

'I like your brother. He's one of the best bass players I've ever seen around here. Tell him I was asking about him.'

And he said goodbye and walked away.

Now, I doubt if Phil knows one end of a bass guitar from the other, let alone how to play the damned thing. To this day, I have no idea who this guy thought I was, or who this very talented sibling is. Maybe Leighton is a closet bass player. Who knows? Maybe we should get him together with my guitarist lookalike and form an O'Gorman Brothers tribute act. Answers on a postcard, please …

Faintheart

In which The Author experiences another mere coincidence

The book I'm currently working on is the third instalment in Christian Cameron's 'Age of Chivalry' series, which began with The Ill-Made Knight and continued in The Long Sword. I’d worked with Christian back in the spring, on the latest part of the 'The Long War' saga, so I was quite flattered when Orion approached me and asked me if I'd like to copy-edit his latest novel. (I won't reveal the title here, because I don't know whether it's been officially announced yet.) I'd like to think I did such a good job on The Rage of Ares that Christian himself asked if I was available. I haven't asked him directly, though. I'm not that conceited, after all.

Since I'm familiar with his style, and I'd had such a great time – buried under a mountain of books in Aberdare Library, some of which had probably been untouched since they arrived on the shelves – I jumped at the chance.

Well, I have to say that it’s been a bit like battling the Hydra. You put one query to bed, only for another two to spring up. I haven’t attempted to draw up a query sheet this time. Instead, I’ve been using the ‘Comment’ feature in LibreOffice Writer (the cheapskate’s Open Source equivalent of MS Word) to insert my Notes and Queries directly into the margin of the document.

Most of them are pretty short – 'Please see my Names Checklist', that sort of thing. A few point out homophones which have crept into the text. It happens to everyone, after all (see The Death of Rhydwen Williams in my other blog). A few of them – concerning points of historical accuracy or linguistic variations – are almost as long as the page they're pinned to.

Needless to say, I've been taking advantage of Aberdare Library's half-decent Reference section to deal with most of the obstacles I've come up against. On Thursday afternoon I took a photo of the collection of books I'd accumulated through the day, and sent it to Christian on Twitter.

(Incidentally, The Chambers Dictionary is the one I donated myself, as I told you in The Gift of Words. The Oxford Spelling Dictionary was also from my own personal stash, but when I upgraded to the latest edition I didn't need them both at home. I figured that Aberdare Library might take it off my hands, simply so they could say they had two dictionaries published after 1992.)

Anyway, I stayed there until closing time on Thursday, and didn’t bother reshelving them. Instead, I left a note on top of the pile, saying I’d be back in the morning, so they might as well stay there overnight. And on Friday morning I returned, along with five books from my own collection. I had the three Oxford University Press ‘Black Books’ -- essential parts of every proofreader’s and copy-editor’s toolkit. I also had John Julius Norwich’s book on the Popes, and a book on the Knights Templar, both of which I’d picked up in The Works in recent weeks.

I checked my emails and Christian had replied to my Tweet. Since he lives in Toronto, it came in overnight: Are all those for TGC? I replied, They're just the ones I was using yesterday. In the afternoon, I took another photo and Tweeted it to Christian, with the caption We're gonna need a bigger table.

As a matter of fact, we're gonna need a bigger library.

I had a quick look in the history section of the Lending department on Thursday afternoon. This might sound shocking, but as far as the reading public of Aberdare are aware, absolutely nothing happened in the world between the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Napoleon. That extends the so-called 'Dark Ages' to nearly fourteen centuries: there's nothing on the Carolingian Renaissance, the Norman Conquest, the Crusades, the Hundred Years War, the Renaissance, the Wars of the Roses, the Age of Exploration, the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, the English Civil War, the Restoration, the American War of Independence, the Industrial Revolution, the French Revolution …

Even the one book which Rhondda Cynon Taf CBC Libraries do have in stock – a historical account by Judith Barker – covers the second half of the Hundred Years War. I only found that out after I'd requested a transfer. Christian's book is set during the first half. Go figure …

Anyway, the coincidence came about last night, in the Prince of Wales, of all places. Karen and I were chatting about our latest romantic disappointments: mine with Clare; hers with a chap she's keen on, but who – yeah, you've got it in one – 'just likes her as a friend'.

Karen said, 'Your trouble is that you're too much of a gentleman. Girls take advantage of you, because you're kind and good. You've got …' She hesitated for a few moments, searching for the right word. '… chivalry.'

Well, what do you make of that? Karen knew I was working on a book, but she had no idea of the content, or even the historical setting. Why on earth would she have chosen that particular word at this point in my life?

But I thought about it afterwards. As I said in The Return of the King?, I've always been a fan of King Arthur, going back to when I first encountered some of the stories in junior school. In particular, the Grail cycle is a long-standing fascination of mine. And I'm sure everybody knows the bare bones of the Grail myth, even if they haven't read the stories in much detail.

We all know that Lancelot let the side down because he couldn't keep it in his britches. Gawain was a worthy knight and a brave soul, but he failed to find the Grail. Only Galahad – pure of heart and mind and body – was vouchsafed the sight of the Grail, but even he was defeated by his own self-doubt, and the vision faded.

It's still an odd thing for Karen to say, isn't it? I certainly don't fit the description of 'chivalrous' as lived by Sir William Gold in Christian's novels, or as defined by Ramón Llull, who literally wrote the book on the subject. For one thing, with my back and shoulders, I'd be absolutely no bloody use in a fight. I'm hardly a staunch servant of our lord Jesus Christ, either. (We never did heal the schism between the early Church and the Discordian Heresy, after all.) Roistering and wenching aren't really my thing – chance would be a fine thing, as I found out last week.

But, like Sir William, I do like to meet people from different places and cultures, who've had different experiences and hold differing beliefs. My life is certainly richer as a result. In fact, just this morning I was chatting to Jamila on Facebook. I wanted to pick her brains about an aspect of Islam which crops up in the book, and which I wanted to double-check before I finalise the edit. I teased her that, throughout all her time studying Forensic Science, she probably never expected she'd be asked to act as an expert witness in a historical novel.

Anyway, that's this week's mere coincidence. Just thought you'd like to know.