After 199 days; 82,231 words; countless trips to the Lit and Phil and more cups of hot chocolate than I’d care to admit to I finally have a completed first draft and a draft cover design too. (Because I am a design geek and I can’t have one without the other.) I cannot say how much of a relief it has been to finish the first draft; I have a nice new red pen at the ready for the editing process to begin in earnest.

The working title of the novel is The Blue Rose of Vitebsk, though I have also considered 1812: A Novel and Ekaterina. I may yet plump for something different altogether but The Blue Rose of Vitebsk is the favourite at the moment because I like the old fashioned feel of it as a title.  The novel is set during Napoleon’s doomed invasion of Russia in 1812.

The paintings on the cover are Édouard Detaille’s Cossacks Attacking a squad of the Gardes d’honneur and Battle of Borodino by Peter von Hess.