Pepys Mysteries F.A.Q.
Who was Samuel Pepys?
Unbeknown to himself, Samuel Pepys, son of a tailor and a washerwoman, born February 1633, is one of the world’s most famous published diarists. (If not the most famous?)
He was not celebrated as such during his lifetime, partly because he didn’t tell anybody he was writing a diary, and partly because few would have cared had they been aware.
Pepys would never have shown them to anyone. He wrote in shorthand and further disguised his romantic liaisons by writing them up in foreign languages – he also kept the diaries under lock and key – precisely to stop anyone from reading his innermost thoughts.
Samuel Pepys was – you’ll hear Jacob parrot this a lot in the Pepys Mysteries – Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board. One of the highest positions in King Charles II’s navy, it was a chief administrator’s role, to put it in more modern terms.
Thus Sam lived in an expensive house – courtesy of the Navy; he loved a freebie – with a half-French wife, Elizabeth, with whom he had the occasional explosive row and, despite his own multiple affairs, of whose male acquaintances he was apt to become obsessively jealous.
How do we know of these shortcomings? Because he tells us about them in the diary. He’s unflinchingly honest – presumably never expecting his writings to become public knowledge helped – and that is just one of the joys of the diaries.
Another is his descriptions of historic events that have rolled down the ages, never losing their fascination. Pepys began his diary on 1 January 1660 and continued for nigh on a decade; so he witnessed the Great Plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of London the following year. We have first-hand accounts of those devastating events – and for an amateur writer, our Sam can really nail a story.
When he died in 1703, he bequeathed his extensive library of 3,000 books, including the six leather-bound diary volumes, to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where it currently resides in the Pepys Library.
Are all your characters – besides Pepys, obvs – fictional?
My original plan was to use real characters from the diaries, which was of course insanity. Fictional characters offer considerably more licence, plus learning enough about each person in the diary – many of whom are but skimpily cited – is the work of a scholar. As I am very happy to admit, I am an enthusiast, not an academic, which is why I write cosy historical mysteries rather than historical fiction. I take the history in my books very seriously indeed, and strive for factual correctness, but the mystery for me is key, which I wrap in history.
Naturally, the Samuel Pepys in my books is based – very loosely – on Sam himself. His close relatives – mother and father, Margaret and John Pepys, and sister, Paulina – appear in The Brampton Witch Murders. Their historical backgrounds are factual and I’ve teased a personality for Paulina from what little Pepys wrote of her in his diary, which I hope is not vastly distant from that of the woman herself. We shall never know.
BWM (as I call it) also features the fictional son of a real person: the Witchfinder General himself, Matthew Hopkins, made famous in a rather tacky 1968 horror film starring Vincent Price. A neat touch, I hope.
So we have the Pepys family, loosely based in reality, and fictional relatives of real historical figures.
I also base some of my fictional supporting characters on real friends and colleagues of Pepys. For example, Lord Fairfax in BWM, and his Ravenscourt Estate, are my fictionalised take on Pepys’s mentor, Edward Montgu, 1st Earl of Sandwich, and his Brampton pile, Hinchingbrooke House. I used views of Hinchingbrooke online to help describe my Ravenscourt Estate. The gatehouses are one and the same.
Is your dialogue pure 17th-century?
Nay, nay and thrice nay! I offer an approximation of the Early Modern English language of 1666, to help nail the historical setting, and to give a sense of how people of that age spoke. It’s part of the bigger picture. I do, strenuously – though no doubt some slip through the net – attempt to excise any modern vernacular. If Jacob starting banging on – there’s one: “banging on” – about things being “cool”, it would be awfully jarring. I will confess, it is a lot harder work than writing modern dialogue, which I could churn out – but I hope my extra effort is worth it, in giving a more vivid sense of time and place.
Are you a plotter or a pantser?
In case that means nothing to you – as it did to me, until January 2024 – a “plotter” plots out a book before they start writing (OK, I knew that one) and a “pantser” starts writing and allows the plot to take shape organically. Aka by the seat of their pants, hence the term.
Up until March 2024, I had never attempted to plot a mystery book. The idea had crossed my mind previously, as a published author in a different guise, and I’d always thought it would be impossible. For one thing, I felt that I lacked the patience.
However, I’d contend that it is impossible to write a credible mystery by making it up as you go along, which left me no choice but to learn to plot one.
I watched dozens of videos on YouTube concerning the art, I threw cats up trees then rescued them, I researched all sorts of templates and techniques and settled upon the software Plottr. Already, I swear by it.
The mystery template I use breaks the story down into beats: this has to happen here, that has to happen there, etc.
What’s been revelatory is how differently the plots turn out, given that apparently rigid structure. Coffee House Murders, which I’ve just finished at the time of writing this FAQ, took on a life of its own.
Having broken through my thick veil of self-doubt, I now love writing mysteries – who’d have thought it?
Each of the books so far has taken about a week to plot out… which reminds me, I should start on The King’s Court Murders soon.
Are the Samuel Peps Mysteries “cozies”?
Another term I encountered for the first time back in January.
A cozy mystery (cosy here in the UK) follows certain rules or exhibits certain tropes. They are, as the term suggests, a “cosy” read. So there’s no blood and guts, no profanity, the detectives are amateurs and the crime takes place in the same distinct “world” in each book.
Those are the main rules; I’ve read of several others.
I specifically chose to go down that path with the Pepys Mysteries. It absolutely suits my light-touch writing style. I’ve never been one for reams of high-faluting description. Tell. The. Story. Then go!
On the obverse of the same coin are “historical mysteries”, which are more scholarly affairs, of far greater length (cosies tend to be around 200-240 pages; historical mysteries can be twice that, often way more).
I’m a history lover as opposed to scholar. I also plot using a cosy mystery template. Since I do take the historical side very seriously, I use the term “cosy historical mystery” for the Pepys Mysteries.
I avoid blood and guts; there’s no profanity; my inquisitors, Abby and Jacob, are decidedly amateur… My “world” is basically the world of Samuel Pepys – wherever he might go, I might go. Most Pepys Mysteries will be set in London, where he lived; he also had family in Brampton, so I went there, too. Is it a cake shop or bakery (popular settings for cosies)? No, it very much is not. It’s 17th century England.
I see my books are cosies in the same way that I’ve seen Agatha Christie, Holmes and Cadfael described as cosy. I’m definitely in a cosy/historical crossover area – hence my “cosy historical” – and I can see that annoying some readers. To them, I’d just say, Give it a go, there’s room for all sorts (and Sorry!).
I’ll just have to find my niche, which I’m certain is out there.
How many Samuel Pepys Mysteries will there be?
I have strong titles – ie titles that elicit ready tales – for twelve Samuel Pepys Mysteries, and have written the first four of those. At three books per year post 2024, that’s two-and-two-thirds years’-worth. I’m sure I can find another one, at least, to take us up to the end of…2027! The beauty of Samuel Pepys is that his life and character were so rich and varied, which, coupled with the 17th-century-England setting, practically lobs great mystery ideas to me in my sleep.
How authentic is the history?
As I said, getting the history right really matters to me. My knowledge of the 17th century was distinctly hazy before I embarked upon this mammoth project, so I went all in. In a few short months, I collected and read a shelf-load of titles (which I’ll detail individually on social and in my newsletters). Six months down the line, I’m by no means an expert on the era, but I could tell you about the Rump Parliament, the price of a cup of coffee (considerably cheaper than it is from Costa) and gentlemen’s shoe-buckle fashions. So I’m getting there.
In sharp contrast to school history lessons, it’s been a joy to deep-dive into that stuff. Show me a 17th-century rabbit-hole and I’ll be the first down.
I guess it’s an age thing.
Who does your amazing covers?
I’ll also detail the covers saga in a future newsletter. Lordy. It nearly all went horribly wrong.
I was saved by an old friend and colleague, Tim Brown, who just happens to have been a professional designer. I don’t recall how it came about that I sent him one of my increasingly awful originals, but the next thing I knew, he’d emailed me the cover of Mr Pepys’s Missing Diaries, practically good to go. “How’s this?” he asked.
IT’S PERFECT!
Tim also happens to be a history buff, so not only is he my cover designer, he’s also my editor. I owe the man a vast debt of gratitude.
Fortuitously, when he first accepted the roles, I failed to mention my plan to publish at least ten Pepys Mysteries.
As he emailed back, when I finally got around to telling him: “Wait! What?!”
Who is Ellis Blackwood?
I was a journalist for more than 25 years, based in London, starting on the music press and ending up writing for assorted national newspapers and magazines. Entertainment was my specialism, particularly television. I also had a few books published in the noughties, which are a world away from the Pepys Mysteries. So, to draw a line under those, I adopted a new author name. Ellis Blackwood is – whisper it – a pen name. My friend, Lou, helped me choose it, and I must say it has a lovely 17th century ring to it. I also love the mystery of a pen name. Perfectly fitting.
If there’s a question you’d like answered, which you think would fit the FAQ, do please drop me a line via the Contact form at the foot of the homepage.
