I have never been good at writing traditional chapter by chapter outlines.  Before I start a book I always know the historical period in detail, the beginning and the end of a story, and something about most of the characters. But in terms of actually writing the book,  I need to find my way from Once Upon a Time to Happily Ever After in the doing of the thing. Fortunately after many books and many years that's usually okay.  But even my terrific agent needs something to bargain with, so I've developed what I call a matrix.  I do the opening of the book - usually the first thirty to fifty ms pages which will be twenty to thirty book pages - and follow on with the matrix.  These efforts are different for each book, but basically they're a short primer on the history of the period, interspersed with some of what will probably be the highlights of the dramatic story I'm setting in that history.  Here is the one I did for City of Glory, still carrying it's working title of Kingdom Come.  

Warning - Even though I never write the story exactly the way I think I will at this early stage, THERE ARE SPOILERS HERE!  If you don't want to know any of the surprises, read the book first.

The historical underpinning of this story is the almost-secession from the Union of New England (and in this book New York) during the last few months of the War of 1812.  Little known but well documented, it was instigated by the Federalist party, and came perilously close to splitting the infant nation long before there would have been any realistic possibility that the states left behind could have prevented the six (or any configuration of some of them) from leaving, if they had decided to do so.  Probably what saved the Union is the that there were various factions involved in a variety of schemes, each with an individual notion of the shape a separate nation should take.   In KINGDOM COME Gornt Blakeman believes he can co-opt at least one group (to which Bastard Devrey belongs, and whose cooperation Blakeman plans to secure because of the amount of Devrey scrip he controls) and eventually declare himself king of a new country that has New York City as its capital.

Blakeman's audacity is fueled by the secret hidden in the cargo of the Star of Canton, the fabulous almost-two-hundred-carat diamond known as the Great Mogul.  Described as a high-crowned, rose cut stone with incredible clarity and brilliance but a flaw at the bottom, Europe first heard of it in the late 1600s when it was shown to a trading jeweler called Jean Baptiste Tavernier.  For a time the Great Mogul belonged to Jehan, the Mogul Emperor who built the Taj Mahal, later to the Mogul Aurangzeb, who made it part of his fabled Peacock Throne.  In 1739 that throne was captured by the Persians and taken to Persia (present day Iran). 

According to some sources, the Great Mogul disappeared soon after the assassination of the Persian ruler Nader Shah in 1747 and has never been found.  Others claim it was cut to become the Koh-i-noor.  Still others point to the Koh-i-noor's well documented original lack of brilliance and fire to disprove that assertion.  In this book the Great Mogul has turned up in Canton, and thence in New York.  As such it is to be the foundation of the treasury of Blakeman's new nation.  (And the claim of the Koh-i-noor will dealt with in the context of the story when Gornt Blakeman's enemies attempt to prove his stone is not what it seems.)

Opposing him in this scheme is Joyful Patrick Turner, now called upon to become the patriot his father and his cousin Andrew were before him.  Apart from courage, intelligence, and determination, Joyful has scant resources.  But now that Andrew has given him the note that was originally hidden in the gold horse's head that Squaw DaSilva buried on Bedloe's Island, Joyful has some hope of acquiring more.  "Seventy-four degrees and thirty minutes west of Greenwich," it says.  "Just south of twenty-four degrees north.  Twice around and thrice back."  If the booty actually exists, and if he is to use it to help him stop Blakeman, Joyful must find it sooner rather than later.  But it is no easy thing to sail off into the teeth of a British blockade.

Added to the patriotic impetus that fuels his quest, and the necessity to earn a living by setting up as a Canton trader now that he can no longer practice surgery, is Joyful's love for Manon Vionne, whom he can marry only if he is sure he can support her.

Joyful's efforts to decipher Morgan Turner's cryptic instructions and take possession of the treasure involve him not just with the old Canton hand, Captain Finbar O'Toole, but with the mysterious Tintin, and through him Jean Lafitte of the Baratarian pirates, and with the Cantonese stowaway, Thumbless Wu.  It is Captain O'Toole who smuggled Wu into New York, the first Chinese to arrive there, a chore he performed in payment of a huge gambling debt incurred in Canton, where Wu ran a similar establishment to Delight Higgins's Dancing Knave.  But with the addition of opium smoking. 

Wu's agenda in New York is to capture a share in the fabulous wealth to be generated by the opium trade with China.  As a Cantonese he knows intimately the underbelly of  his home city, where two thirds of the native population are opium addicts.  They have been made such by the British, who brought the drug to China from their colonies in India in order to have something to trade for the porcelains, silks, and teas that Europeans crave.  So far the British have managed to keep the Americans out of the hugely profitable opium market, but Wu knows that is not a situation that can go on forever.  He intends to be a pioneer of change, and it is his pursuit of this goal that connects him to Jonathan Devrey, son of Rafe and Clare.  KINGDOM COME will also solve the mystery of Jonathan's twin, Molly, and explain how she has spent the last sixteen years posing as a male and a surgeon in Nova Scotia.

A number of historical events form the spine of the tale as it unfolds during the last months of the war.  The British will occupy Maine and, aided by runaway slaves, harass the Chesapeake Bay area.  The Battle of New Orleans will be fought with the British, and ultimately won the American Andrew Jackson, aided by Laffite and his pirates.  And between those two events, the most shattering blow of all, the enemy sails up the Potomac and sets fire to the Executive Mansion.  Here is Dolley Madison writing to her sister, a letter she keeps adding to as events unfold:

"Three o'clock: Will you believe it, my sister? ... here I am still, within sound of the cannon.  Mr. Madison comes not. [He left the previous day when it wasn't known how close the British were.] May God protect us!  Two messengers, covered with dust, come to bid me fly; but here I mean to wait.  A wagon has been procured, and I have had it filled with plate and the most valuable portable articles belonging to the house...  Whether it will reach its destination the "Bank of Maryland" or fall into the hands of British soldiery, events must determine.  Our kind friend, Mr. Carroll, has come to hasten my departure, and in a very bad humor with me, because I insist on waiting until the large picture of General Washington is secured, and it requires to be unscrewed from the wall.  This process was found too tedious for these perilous moments; I have ordered the frame to be broken and the canvas taken out.  It is done! And the precious portrait placed into the hands of two gentlemen of New York for safe keeping.  And now, dear sister, I must leave this house.  When I shall again write to you or where I shall be to-morrow, I cannot say..."

Who are these two men of New York?  History doesn't say, but in KINGDOM COME they will be identified, and the portrait of the revered Washington will help to preserve the integrity of the country he loved and believed in.

The bass note playing beneath all this is the burgeoning of New York City, which, after the devastation of the British occupation during the Revolution, and rejection as the nation's capital, is about to claim her rightful place as America's flagship city, her queen of commerce.

New York at the period of KINGDOM COME has more banks and insurance companies and a greater volume of financial transactions than any other American city, and while the activities on the Tontine Exchange are minuscule by today's standards, they are considerable for the time.  Having Bastard Devrey issue shares in his shipping company to raise money during the difficult war years puts him among a minority of businesses, but it by no means makes him unique in historical terms.  Moreover, the event that opens the story, Blakeman's hostile raid on Devrey Shipping, may sound surprisingly modern, but it is entirely in keeping with the business practices of the time.   And the Tontine offered more to bet on than just stocks.  Elections, sporting events, even international affairs were fair game.  Indeed, the New York exchange functioned as what now looks like a very large bookmaking operation, adding verve and excitement to the simple fact that there was more money going through more hands in New York City than anywhere else in North America. 

Geography also acted in New York's favor.  Her superb harbor is one of the world's finest—deep, directly accessible to the open sea, and seldom icebound—while in Philadelphia the deep-draft vessels of the time can navigate the hundred miles from the mouth of Chesapeake Bay only with the flood tide.  Finally, there is the expansion of New York's outlying territory.  At the time of this story the Six Nations of the Iroquois, so important in SHADOWBROOK, have lost almost all their lands and what we now call Upstate has been overrun by displaced New Englanders, driven from their stony farms to claim the Mohawk Valley and the land across from the Adirondacks.  The Hale Plantation is, of course, in the thick of this transformation and KINGDOM COME will have cameo roles for the descendants of Nicole and Quent.

When the story ends it is early 1815. The riddle of the Fanciful Maiden's treasure is solved, Joyful and Manon are to be married, and Joyful has become head of Devrey Shipping, finally uniting the future of the Turners and the Devreys.  The Treaty of Ghent, ending the last war in which Britain and America were on opposing sides, is about to be signed.  Gornt Blakeman's plan, like all the rest of the secessionist schemes has been thwarted and the Union is safe, at least for another fifty-or-so years.  (The Great Mogul diamond has been spirited away to Europe where it may—or may not—show up as the Orlov diamond in the crown jewels of the Tsars of all the Russias.)