Good morning from Caffe Nero in Station Square, Cambridge. There’s an autumnal nip in the air. The trees in the square are still green, but it's an old, tired green which will soon give way to browns, yellows and reds. 

The students have returned, and there’s a youthful buzz in the streets and cafes around the ancient university colleges.

I look down at the A4 pad, where I jot down notes in old-school style.

There’s still plenty to do before I complete ‘Now is the Time of Monsters’, but the end is in sight. And as work on the trilogy comes to an end, I have been thinking about what comes next.

What excites me is settling into writing a standalone mystery/thriller/suspense novel. Her Indoors and I round off our evenings by watching the latest Nordic Noir series on Netflix. I’m familiar with the mystery/thriller/suspense genre.

Maybe on the lines of this one

Blood and Sugar: https://bit.ly/429TA7y

You can read a sample to get a flavour of the style.

My novel would be set in the same alternative London as the  Portals trilogy. The same characters would tread the pages - and there is one character who I think is particularly well-suited to be the ‘detective’.

Now who could that be?

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I have also been considering opening an online shop on Payhip.

Some of you have inquired about purchasing signed copies, possibly with a personalised message. That’s a service I would like to offer. 

There are companies, such as IngramSpark, that have print-on-demand services. That means I wouldn’t have to hold stock (well, perhaps just one or two copies). I would make the signed book service available on Payhip.

It then occurred to me I could sell merchandise too. 

I like maps. The maps in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings enthralled me. So maybe a map of Jack and Billy’s London in 1793-94. I did actually make a map so I knew approximate distances between locations and, therefore, could calculate travelling times. 

My map of London could be printed on parchment-style paper.

I used to make treasure maps as a child. My tools were a thin-nibbed dip pen with black ink, and thin yellow water paint to age the paper. Finally, I would hold my map close to the coal fire until it crinkled. 

We lived in my early teens, in a mining town just outside Edinburgh. It was home to the giant Bilston Glen Colliery. And where there’s coal, there’s often ‘fool's gold’. The iron pyrites give the lumps of coal a golden sheen. And so, thrillingly, there was lots and lots of gold ‘treasure’ to be found!