So I’m coming to the end of my Society of Gentlemen trilogy. For the reader, it’s only just starting. The first book is out now but there are still all kinds of political intrigue, kink, class war and superbly polished Hessians to come. But I’ve delivered book 3 to the publisher. I’ve scrubbed the family tree, the multiple question marks and scrawled arrows, off the blackboard. I’ve archived the Scrivener folder. For you, KJ, the war is over.

And this means I need to tidy up my office. Damn.

I work in a writing shed in the garden. I write at a treadmill desk; my conventional desk is for when I need to sit down and do serious reading. This is where I keep the work in progress reference books.

Here it is now.

(You can get an A-Z of Regency London, and indeed many other periods, from the London Topographical Society. Did you know that, historical writers? Look closely at the marked buildings and squee.)

But that was then. I have no current need for books on the Cato Street Conspiracy or the radical underground printing movement. I have the next thing to write, and that means a new set of books.

We’re going Victorian. I wrote a story, ‘A Queer Trade’, that appeared in the recent Charmed & Dangerous anthology. I liked the characters, an idea sparked, and I’m delighted to say that the full novel Rag and Bone will be coming from Samhain next spring. Less pleasingly, I have to write it.

This is set in the universe of my Charm of Magpies stories, magical Victorian London. Crispin is a practitioner—actually a reformed warlock trying to go straight. Ned is a waste-paper salesman. And their adventure has to do with the rag and bottle shop next door. (Not ‘rag and bone’. The Victorians recycled everything, and had very specific trades for doing it. Nobody would mix up bones with perfectly good rags. But I don’t think Rag and Bottle would be a very evocative title, so cut me some slack.)

So, what do we need to hand? My trusty folklore references to check I have my central idea right. Mayhew, the invaluable resource for lower class London. My ridiculously unreliable Victorian slang dictionary. More maps.

A few picture references such as Doré’s illustrations from London, a Pilgrimage.

And a few colour references for Victorian working men too.

This book’s easy, of course, since it’ll be my fifth novel set in the Magpie universe. After that, I am moving on to Edwardian, bigstyle. This means serious reading.

And that’s just for starters.

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KJ Charles is an editor and writer. A Fashionable Indulgence and Charmed & Dangerous are out now. Follow on Twitter @kj_charles, bracing for a flurry of random Victoriana and weird Edwardian facts.