It seemed like a good idea at the time that In Medio Dierum would tell Cate’s story from the beginning, though focusing on her post-university days up until several years before the In Living Memory narrative begins.

It didn’t seem implausible that Cate would have processed a colossal upheaval in her life by constructing a narrative, and from there it seemed even less implausible that a budding novelist might have formed a book from that narrative. But it wasn’t long until it became clear that this wasn’t really Cate’s story, but Gabriella’s. By the time I had finished the draft for In Living Memory, it further became clear that In Medio Dierum should also include the perspectives of Yamini Benoit (from In Absentia Lucis).

In Medio Dierum will be a strange love story. It’s a collage of materials drawn from different sources: it’s part personal diaries, part unfinished novel, part PhD thesis, all held together with a connective tissue of reflective commentary.

However, though the origin of In Medio Dierum might not be so implausible, at this stage I have no idea either how to write it or how it’s going to read.

In Medio Dierum will form connections to the other four books. It will become not only the middle of days, but also the philosophical middle, the character set middle, and the thematic middle. As the other four books proceed in linear time, In Medio Dierum interests them all in cyclical time.