Just a one-stop page to help you find all the Behind the Books articles and character details more easily.
Character Guide already exists
A lot of readers of the Midlife Recorder in Gretna Green series ask for a character guide, an artist’s representation of the Gateway, or an overview of all the realms. Unfortunately, I haven’t found an artist who can do a realistic representation of the Gateway yet. And that won’t be helped by the changes that are coming in book six.
A character guide would be multiple spoilers in disguise unless I kept it so bland it was almost useless. So you can’t have that until the first ten books in the series are completed.
HOWEVER – if you’re reading on your Kindle all my books are X-Ray enabled – which means you can highlight a character’s name to remind yourself who they are. There’s a lot of information hidden behind the scenes in the X-Ray feature.
Example:
Select any character’s name. In this instance Nick’s.
And then if you select Open X-Ray you will get this
And then if you hit the back arrow < at the top to the left of the word Nick. You will get the full X-Ray menu and see something like this:
All my books are X-Ray enabled at publication. In reality, with a newly published book, it can take Amazon a day or two to fully enable it. But I do go in and edit some entries manually.
Because most of the X-Ray features are currently compiled on a book by book basis, you are much less likely to find spoilers for the later books in the Midlife Recorder series.
Do you remember back in the day some of us took our tea break with a game of Solitaire?
Well, thirty-some years on, I often edit the X-Ray results for the Midlife Recorder series while I’m taking a break from writing or editing.
So, while they’re not infallible and spoilers are definitely still possible —it’s much less likely than with a character list.
I hope it helps.
Linzi
Behind the Books
Mabon and Pant y Wern – read the inspiration for the messy Red Celt capital.
Coming soon:
Gretna Green — how does the reality stack up to the Midlife Recorder series? This may end up being in several parts.
Simnel Cake — As featured in all the books but especially Code Yellow in Gretna Green—what it is and isn’t.