Blog | Alison Morton Author

A little drop of magic and spellbinding

A Roman magic stone

My fellow writer, Janice Horton, is throwing a “Spellbindingly Fun Blog Party” today and as a little light relief, I’m joining in.

Magic was an integral part of Roman life – astrology, amulets, incantations, spells, healing and cursing formulas. Pliny’s conclusion, however, was cautious: though he dismissed magic as ineffective and infamous, it nevertheless contained “shadows of truth”, particularly of the “arts of making poisons”. Yet, Pliny states, “there is no one who is not afraid of spells” (including himself presumably!). He neither commended or condemned the amulets and charms that people wore as preventive medicine but instead suggested that it was better to err on the side of caution, just in case a new kind of magic, a magic that really worked, might be developed at any time.

The emperor Constantine I in the 4th century AD issued a ruling about all charges of magic. He distinguished between helpful charms, not punishable, and “antagonistic” spells. Roman authorities specifically decided what forms of magic were acceptable and which were not. Those that were not acceptable were termed “magic”; those that were acceptable were usually defined as traditions of the state or practices of the state’s religions. Talk about rationalisation!

So, on to Janice’s Spellbinding party. All participants have to prepare a spell (hopefully not counting as “antagonistic”) and may mention their object of desire at the end. At the end of the spell, you may not be totally surprise by my object of desire, given my previous post.

The spell:
Feather of a golden eagle, brush the dragon’s tears and stardust into one. Crush three wild rose petals into the mix and add five drops of snake venom. Chant the incantation, dip your finger into the potion, touch your head and heart with your fingertip then pour the mixture over the parchment paper on which your desire is written.

My object of desire:

INCEPTIO
Kindle Edition
Average Review: ***** (52 reviews)
Current Sales Rank: #1 in Kindle Store

INCEPTIO
Paperback Edition
Average Review: ***** (38 reviews)
Current Sales Rank: #1 in Crime, Thrillers & Mystery
#1 in Alternate History

Huge news!

I have signed a publishing agreement with SilverWood Books. INCEPTIO will appear in paperback and ebook format. We are looking at Spring 2013. If it changes, I’ll let you know!

So what is my book about? Romans, alternate history, romance, action-adventure, loss, self-growth, recognition? All of those.

Suppose you’re an ordinary young woman in New York, nearly twenty-five years old. You work in an office Monday to Friday. It’s pretty routine. You don’t have a college degree so other people overtake you, but you don’t mind too much. Well, sometimes, but generally not.

Why? Because you have the best weekend volunteer job in the world, in the city park – a huge green paradise over 800 acres. Breathing fresh air, helping people, laughing with kids, losing yourself in the trees. It reminds you of your happy childhood home, the one you lost when your father died when you were twelve.

It’s what you live for, it’s what keeps you sane.

That’s your life – five days so-so, two days exhilaration. Life is safe, if a tad boring and going nowhere.

Then you throw a stoned kid and his two friends out of the park for beating up an old man. Problem is his father’s the second most powerful person in the country. Result – you get sacked from your beloved volunteer job. You are devastated.

But you get a promotion at work and meet an attractive foreign spy disguised as an interpreter. He’s from a mysterious European country founded centuries ago by Romans.

Soon a sinister enforcer from your own government is trying to wipe you out. And the pretty hot foreign spy is trying to convince you he’s the good guy.

But this world isn’t the one this blog is written in – it has a different history and different rules…

Photo contest – WINNER!

I decided to have a new author photo to use across all platforms. Sometimes, I may use it in black and white, other times colour. Like a true Libran, I was dithering. So I ran a poll to ask readers which did they think was best.

STOP PRESS 26 OCTOBER 2012: The winner is Photo2! (70%). Second was Photo1 with 20% and Photo3 was a valiant third with 10%

Many thanks to all those who took part.


Photo 2 (colour)	Photo 2 (black & white)

Poll closed

The journey home

Lagos, Portugal, six a.m. Luggage bundled into the car, fumbling in the dark with the satnav. Farewell waves from my magic circle, then eighty kilometers to Faro Airport. The ex-pat South African banters as the receives my hire car back into his fold. I escape from the wrong passport queue – I’m in Schengen, unlike my fellow Brits.

My French fellow travellers sulk patiently – the flight is thirty minutes late. I see the Pyrenees from the plane window and cloud over Orly. The Orlybus with multiple nationalities, but no eye contact, brings me into the centre of Paris for two minutes. Struggling down the steps into the Métropolitain with 18.5 kilograms of case, I watch for pickpockets. Four stops and I arrive at Montparnasse. I hone in on a coffee shop. A slice of fruit crumble slips easily down to a stomach stretched with a week’s overeating. An hour later, the TGV brings me nearer to my destination. After an hour and a half’s drive, here is home.

No more tea on the terrace watching the warm sun rise before swapping the nightie for the swimsuit and sliding into the swimming pool. No more super-activity talking about writing, doing writing, eating and drinking too much.

Home again in Poitou-Charentes. The geraniums are still blossoming in the rain. Everything is green and cool.

And here are Steve, and George the cat.

(My attempt at flash fiction…)

Update 2022:Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series.Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, a new Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, is now out.

Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines and taste world the latest contemporary thriller Double Identity… Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. You’ll also be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.

Distractions

What? Oh, yes. I just have to finish my coffee, load the dishwasher, clean the cat’s bowl, check my Facebook author page, nip on to Twitter – but only for five minutes – do the filing, have a Skype with my critique partner…

Um, what book?

Even writing this blog is a distraction. So why don’t I settle down and do what I love and lose myself in my book’s imaginary world for hours on end? This is a question that burns into every writer’s consciousness.

Facts:

Books will not write themselves; whatever fantasy you conjure up, the writing elves do not visit overnight.
Editors get cheesed off with undisciplined writers. And then there’s the fearsome agent stalking you… or your self-publishing colleagues repeatedly asking when your next book is out.
The only way to sell more books is to write more books.

Three things to consider:
Lack of concentration
Is your physical environment comfortable? Are your chair and desk at the right height? Are you alone with your door shut to the rest of the world? Is the voice mail/answerphone on?
You can fix the physical. Even if it’s only half an hour or an hour, everybody is entitled to some “me time”. Be ruthless during that time – no Twitter, etc. I was cheered last weekend when a famous author admitted to me that she wrote one paragraph at a time, flitting back and forth to the computer for intense bursts of half an hour at a time in between doing a million other things. She dismissed the idea of x words per day with a wave of her hand. Yet her output is prolific.

Lack of confidence
You ask yourself, ‘Am I churning out rubbish or is there a possibility that somebody, somewhere will love my work?‘
If you’ve had critique or assessment through a writing group, a writers’ organisation, a reputable on-line critique site, feedback from an agent/editor or published authors, you’ve probably got some idea of that and of where to concentrate in order to improve. Even if you think your latest work is total rubbish, you can give yourself permission to write badly because you have the luxury of going back and fixing it by rewriting it. Again and again. And it will improve. 😉 And sometimes, doubt about your beauteous prose can make you look at it with a sharp eye. Perhaps you do need to change that character’s story arc, or inject some emotional punch into that boring scene.

Guilt
Does that doubt whether writing is a proper job still hammer away in the back of your brain?
This is the one that assails many writers. Here’s the answer: yes, it is a proper and fit occupation. How do you think all those books you love to read came about? Some people can’t string a sentence together. It’s a great skill as well as a gift to be able to put together a coherent story of tens of thousands of words that makes people’s spirits soar, takes them on an emotional journey, puts them in the middle of the struggle for survival, or in the shield wall of a famous battle of antiquity. It’s like any other art form, difficult to make a living at, but what is produced brings enormous pleasure individually to many and makes the world a far better place.

If you have any magic solutions, please let me know!
Updated 2025: Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, starts the Foundation stories. The sequel, EXSILIUM, is now out.

Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines and taste world the latest contemporary thriller Double Identity… Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. As a result, you’ll be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers, INCEPTIO, and PERFIDITAS. Third in series, SUCCESSIO, is out early summer 2014.