Coincidence

I’m reading a book called Rogue Herries. It’s a very good book. It was written by Hugh Walpole early last century and has only recently been brought back into print. Hugh Walpole used to holiday near Gosforth in West Cumbria (which, for those of you who don’t know, is where I grew up) and eventually he moved to Cumbria properly.

As some of you may be aware, I cm currently working on a novel. Now. There are a few similarities between Rogue Herries and the novel I’m working on… any one taken in isolation is not that remarkable, but together… I don’t know. It’s a bit weird. I’m going to list them here, for the sake of General Interest.

1) Both feature main characters who move from northern England (Manchester in the case of my book, Doncaster in the case of Walpole’s – although in the first draft of mine, the main character moved from Wakefield. Both Yorkshire!) to West Cumbria. And the places where they settle are not far apart, at all.

2) Both of these characters are called ‘Francis’.

3) Both have, as important settings, houses called Fell House. This blog is named after the house in my novel.

4) In both books, Francis is wandering around his respective valley and bumps into the Devil – a meeting which has far-reaching consequences, as you might expect.

I should point out that I wrote all of these things into my book before reading any of Walpole’s.

I am quite excited at all of this.

But maybe I am just easily pleased.