This Writer's Diary
April 27th to May 3rd, 2025
The perpetual conflict between writing and birding reaches its peak in May, migration season. There are warblers arriving! I’ve only managed two walks this week, both in the evening, when the migrants tend to be less active. But the early spring wildflowers are at their peak, white and yellow dominating. The progress of the emerging leaves on shrubs and trees is almost visible in real time. Ephemeral spring: the flowers brief, the songbirds, for the most part, passing through. So easy to miss.
The Baltimore oriole alternating between singing and feeding high in a tree; the catbird mewing from a thicket; the purple finches that appeared at the feeder this week and the song sparrow at the drinking bowl: all these will stay to nest. The hummingbird feeder, up a few days now, remains untouched.
***
There are few things better than a shower to shake loose ideas from wherever they hide in my mind. I was having difficulty crafting the response of the character Audun — eighteen years old, travelling to university in a land he doesn’t know — to some revelations from two of the adults in his life. But as soon as I stepped into the shower one morning this week, Audun started to talk. Like many young men at the start of their own life’s adventure, he really doesn’t want to know the secrets and problems of his elders.
Kirt as a dutiful son went against everything Audun had ever heard about the man. A memory flashed into Audun’s mind: Kirt playing at Ferrand’s Inn, and his own thought then that the music held the key to understanding him. The songs played that night had been complex, with an undercurrent of melancholy: a reflection, Audun thought again, of the true man, unlike the tales told.
If the true man was one with responsibilities that bound him to the woman whose house they were in, then why did he hide it – especially from Audun’s father? The sense of being caught between them, asked to be involved far more than he wished, rose again, and with it anger.
While this chapter unfolds — it’s a pivotal one in An Unwise Prince, and a pivotal one for Audun, too, although he doesn’t of course know that — I’ve also spent two days at the neighbouring city’s university, taking notes on A Companion to the Hanseatic League.1 It’s provided me with the best understanding of the Hanseatic League since I started researching it over a year ago. In An Unwise Prince, which is the first book in a two-or-three book series called The Casillard Confederacy, the Casillard is a trade alliance conceptually based on the Hanseatic League. I’d been looking for a good overview of the Hanse, not just its ‘mechanics’, but its influence on the social and political cultures of the Hanse cities. This book met that need, worth the two days of driving back and forth (an 80 minute round trip) and the parking cost. Although waking at 3 a.m., my brain fizzing with ways to restructure the Casillard, was not a welcome (although not unexpected) result!
Now, on a cool but sunny Sunday morning, I’m going birding. Audun made me wait long enough; now it’s his turn to be patient. I’ll get back to his story later.
Like what you read? Donations for my local foodbank are gratefully received.
Find all my books at https://scarletferret.com/authors/marian-l-thorpe
Free books! Here, until May 17th, here until May 26th, here until June 2, 2025. and here until July 17.
Donald J. Harrold, ed., Brill, 2015.
I envy you being able to do your research in situ!