I’ve started a new writing project (under a pseudonym)
An Update
Hello lovelies,
For a while I’ve written here & painted some art, but recently I’ve been having far too much fun with something completely different.
Under the name Professor V. Laine, a fictional historian of sixteenth-century Sicily, I’ve launched a new Substack called The Chronicles of Don John.
It begins with a simple question:
What happened to Don John after the end of Much Ado About Nothing?
If you’ve forgotten your Shakespeare, Don John is the villain. The illegitimate brother who wrecks Hero’s wedding, gets arrested, and then is quietly removed from the story.
The play ends.
History, unfortunately, continues.
The premise is that a cache of newly discovered manuscripts has revealed the rest of his life: smugglers, fugitives, former soldiers, disgraced clergy, stolen property, Mediterranean intrigue, extremely questionable decisions, and the occasional disaster.
The papers are presented and annotated by Professor V Laine,1 whose increasingly desperate attempts to maintain academic standards are becoming a story in their own right.
Think historical adventure, found manuscripts, rogues wandering across seventeenth-century Sicily, and a historian who is beginning to suspect her research subjects are laughing at her.
If that sounds like your sort of thing, you’re very welcome to join me.
In other news
I am still amazed that so many of you read this now defunct letter. Parkinson’s is still being its bloody annoying self but as you can tell from the above I am resisting. Or drinking too much red wine…or both.
I am still very grateful for your lovely emails many of you send me! Thank you and it’s a delight not to feel too alone in the quagmire of this daft and horrid disease.
Love as ever
Emma xxx
The more pun-ish and astute of you might snigger at the name…