Doing the Right Thing

I have been trying to write The Prince and the Paladin for over ten years, since long before I published The Forgotten Village.  In fact, I used concepts in The Forgotten Village that I had been kicking around for a while.  I must have written a dozen starts to it.  Currently I'm just over 16,000 words into the current version - around a quarter if it is the same length as The Forgotten Village and I've managed that since Wednesday.  I've just dropped a character and suddenly everything is rattling out.  I may get back to the White Hart before you know it.

I've also, coincidentally, added a new character.  I'd noticed that back in the trade directory of the 1790s was a widow who was listed as an apothecary.  A few years later a 'chemist and druggist' with the same surname but male was listed as a 'chemist and druggist' and, at one point, 'East India Company Agent' was listed in Briggate.  I've rattled through some of the trade directories in Leeds Library for the nineteenth century and there's been a chemist under that name for most of the century and a lot further on.  They moved shops a few times and seemed to have had branches in other places.  The name, which is quite unusual, is still extant in Leeds.  I don't know if the person I found on Facebook is descended from the widow selling medicines back in the 1790s, but I can't risk it.  I'm going to have to find a different name that is a lot less distinctive.  I can't make someone's grandfather or great grandfather randomly into a vampire, no matter how interesting the story sounds.  I'll play around with names and details.  It's the right thing to do.  I don't want to, though.  The name was awesome and perfect for an early nineteenth century vampire.  I'll never manage to make up something with the same ring to it.  Darn it to heck. 

On another note, in their infinite wisdom Leeds City Council have decided that the Central Library only needs one, single stall, gender neutral toilet and one disabled toilet.  The queue was horrendous.

And I have to share a gem I found as I leafed through some of the directories I found this gem in the 1857-58 directory.  Henry Elam, Human Mechanician, provided Elastic Spring Uterus Supporters and 'Machines for the Deformity of the Human Form' from his shop at 34, Beast Market, Huddersfield.

Just to prove I left the house, a picture of the exit from Leeds Library that I took today

It makes me feel like a proper writer when I do research in a building with stonework like that.  I have to go back for some further research and I'll take some more photos of the good bits.