Now, I know full well that's your Kit Marlowe, but it was almost like I felt I'd read a biography in a sense, if you see what I mean.

Yes.

Well, I'm very pleased to hear you say that because it's one of my favorites, too.

And I had thought for 30 or 40 years I wanted to write a novel about Christopher Marlowe.

And I couldn't think of a way I wanted to do it until I hit on the way I did do it of showing him through the eyes of someone who knew him.

And, of course, I had a particular idea of what Marlowe was like.

I saw him as a rather Dostoevskian character a couple of hundred years before Dostoevsky.

Tell us a little bit about Emily, please.