Writing the next novel

I’ve had an idea for a while that my next novel will be set in 10th century France and Norway and be called Sigrid: The Secret Viking, however I got off to a slow start for two reasons: it seems a kind of betrayal of my first heroine, Almodis, and the characters of her household, to turn to someone else!, but also I wasn’t quite sure who my secret viking was. My writing method is to research historical facts and then to imagine on and around those facts – so although Sigrid is a fictional character, I’ve been looking for the right historical facts to relate her to. I finally had a breakthrough with this and so, after several false starts, writing Sigrid is now under way, and begins in the slave market of Tallinn where three Norwegian children are being sold by Estonian pirates who captured them at sea…