As some of you know, I collected plots for many years before I actually started writing. I have around seven series and more stand alones floating around in my head, and captured in a OneNote database, and the characters are currently having an argument that I hope you might help me resolve.

This weekend, I’m finishing the third round of editing on Prudence in Love. It goes to Mari Christie on Monday, and she will undoubtedly send it back with more work to do, but in effect, it is on paper and out of my brain.

By the end of the month, the same will apply to The Bluestocking and the Barbarian. And, by the end of the month if not sooner, I’ll be at the halfway point in the first draft of A Raging Madness.

Hence my dilemma. Next month, I’ll want to start another first draft, so I have something to turn to when Alex and Ella won’t cooperate. But of what?

At first, I was going to do them all in chronological order. But if you look at the image above, where colours relate to series and italics to books that are either finished or well on the way to being finished, you’ll see that I’ve skipped ahead with Barbarian.

And I’ve added some books that weren’t in the original scheme.

To make things simple, I’ve taken out a heap of books that I probably won’t look at until I’ve finished some of the other series, but which one should I do next?

It was going to be Lord Danwood’s Dilemma, and then the rest of the Wages of Virtue series (Faith, Hope, and Charity are waiting in the wings).

But the book about Prudence and David turned into two books, and I plan to end Prudence in Love with the first chapter of Prudence in Peril, in which Prudence and Jonathan are imprisoned and about to be taken south to sold into slavery.

On the other hand, A Raging Madness introduces the hero of The Realm of Silence, and reintroduces its heroine, as well as the heroine of Unkept Promises. What about them? Should I keep writing the Golden Redepennings?

And at Christmas, the Belles box set will include the first of the Children of the Mountain King series, The Bluestocking and the Barbarian. It repeats the hint I gave at the end of A Baron for Becky. The Marquis of Aldridge is in love with the niece of his father’s enemy, and the lady wants no part of him. Their story is third in the Mountain King series, The Rake and the Reformer. So should I write The Healer and the Hermit next? Then, too, Lord Jonathan Grenford (Gren, Aldridge’s younger brother) makes an appearance in The Bluestocking and the Barbarian, leaving partway through to face either execution or marriage in an East European kingdom.

“What you propose is not safe, my darling boy. The Grand Army is in your way. You could be shot as a spy,” the duchess said. “Why, this friend of yours cannot even give you assurance that the Grand Duchess will not behead you on sight. It is possible that…”

“Mama, all things are possible.” Gren was lit from within, bouncing on the balls of his feet as if his joy were too big to contain. “All things but one. I have tried living without the woman I love, Mama, and that, that is impossible. Anything else, I can do. Wait and see.”

So you tell me. Which book do you think I should start on in May?