Blog | Alison Morton Author

The peerless History of Rome podcast

For all Roman ‘nuts’ out there, I have to tell you about a fantastic podcast called The History of Rome. Mike Duncan, a political science and philosophy graduate from Western Washington University, has the knack of neatly dissecting the political and imperial essentials of the Kingdom, Republic and Empire and communicating them with clarity and verve.

His laconic American tones and informal language make complex political intrigue clear and accessible without losing any of the authority. And his apologies if he gets anything wrong (rarely!) are charming and self-deprecating. I think he must be a teacher or lecturer as his talks have the classic ‘introduction/overview-exposition-summary-preface to next talk’ structure.

Although he posted the first episode in July 2007, I only discovered him on iTunes a few months ago and have had the luxury of continuous listening to over 150 back episodes! In between cooking coq au vin, weeding the geraniums, feeding the cat and sorting socks, I have listened entranced to Sulla’s machinations, the Marian reforms, Julian the Apostate, Constantine the Great’s stitch-up.

I’m now at the 390s AD, where my novel’s heroine’s ancestors start altering the course of history…

Reading allowed. Or not

Writers are encouraged to read their ms aloud. You arm yourself with a long drink, fend off all household pleas and settle down with the ms or screen in front of you and a notepad to jot down quick notes. Hopefully, the rest of your family hasn’t called the white coat men as you mumble away to yourself and you bash on.

I thought I’d be really clever. I’d load my ms as a personal document on to my Kindle and get it to read it using its text-to-speech feature. Easy-peasy. My throat would love me. Email sent off to Kindle with the attached ms and downloaded shortly after, I propped my Kindle up on the table (More on the fancy cover with a stand here). I opened the ms personal document in the list of books and selected Text-to-speech.

Oh dear!

The electronic voice was American – no problem as my protagonist starts life as a US citizen – and a light baritone. Word for word, it wasn’t bad. ‘C’mon’ came out as ‘See Monday’ but that was the only real blooper. The intonation was a bit haywire, but not a deal-breaker.

It was the way the voice ran straight into the next sentence and even worse, the next paragraph. A human would have paused for breath. After five minutes, my other half brandished headphones in my face and after ten, I had to turn it off.

But I’ve tried it. And you have to try things in life.

So it’s back to the read-aloud-a-thon. We need to hear the intonation, the pauses, the cadences, the flow and the emotion in the sentences. When we read silently, as the normal person does, we hear these in our heads as our neural and linguistic pathways insert them automatically.

Sorry, Kindle, although I love you as an e-book reader, you’re still just a machine.

Are some genres more equal than others?

I love bookshops. I love bookstalls at charity dos and the second-hand paperback club. I love the book table at conferences. The second and third are informal; the offer is either serendipity or confined to the books written by speakers (and certainly in the case of the RNA) attendees. Running my hands over the spines of books, opening the cover and reading the first paragraphs really is like opening a box of chocolates.

But bookshops give you a glimpse of all-round heaven.

On a recent trip, I noticed how strangely books are offered. I’m not talking the tables or the bestsellers’ or new racks, just the standard shelves of novels for adults. In the London, Tunbridge Wells and Birkenhead branches of a well-known book chainstore, the system was identical: crime; sci-fi, horror & fantasy; young adult; and authors A-Z. Even a delightful independent, Linghams Books in Heswall, Wirral, followed the same classification.

I often find SF/fantasy next to horror and dark fantasy. Timeslip/time travel and alternate history are jumbled in with steampunk, space opera, the classics like Asimov and Dick and the more literary end of SF e.g. China Miéville. But some speculative fiction such as Margaret Attwood’s dystopias Oryx & Crake or The Handmaid’s Tale is in the A-Z . That in itself is an interesting decision.

Now, I may hallucinating, but I remember as a kid that bookshops used to subdivide the A-Z section and I could find romance, historicals and thrillers grouped together. Now I have to dig around the A-Z for Katie Fforde, Ian Fleming, Simon Scarrow and Howard Jacobson.

Maybe it’s because genres are blurring; where does Diana Gabaldon fit? History, romance or SF/timeslip? Maybe it’s because space is limited in retail outlets? The bestseller and new displays attract a lot of interest – I go there myself when I step through the door. But say you’ve read all the books by your favourite historical writer and you want to find something similar, but by a different author, then you’ll have to search through the entire A-Z.

And if you’re a writer, researching where your book will be placed in the shop once it’s published (and it’s an absolute requirement by agents and publishers that you nail your genre and sub-genre in your submission), if it’s not in crime, sci-fi, horror & fantasy or young adult then you’re going to be lumped in with A-Z.

Updated 2024: 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.

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.

Rejection - why it shouldn't be followed by dejection

I wrote this back in 2011 when I was considering going the traditional publishing route, but even in 2019 it’s still very relevant, so please forgive any anachronisms and read on…

I’m busy writing Book 3 but in the meantime, sending Book 1 out into the world. I’ve polished my manuscript, I’ve hand-crafted my cover letter and honed my one-page synopsis. My critique partners, beta readers, expert publishing professionals, even the odd agent here and there have given me excellent feedback.

So, you think, why haven’t I got 99-book deal?

Several things, actually…
– numbers: there are an awful lot of people out there nourishing, cherishing and polishing their oeuvre. Publishing gurus say many are poorly presented, badly written, punctuated, have a poor plot, implausible characters. Of those which are perfect on those counts, there are still quite a lot competing with my beautiful book;

– agents’ lists: many agents have a full list of clients, so obviously spend 98% of their work time looking after them (as you would hope to be). Sure, they all keep a weather eye out for The Next Big Thing. I mean, who wants to miss the next Harry Potter? Or Lee Child? But when that eye droops with tiredness at a 32 hour day, then perhaps we can understand;

– publishers’ lists: some do a wide spread of book types, others narrower, so your well-written, innovative and exciting book may not fit in with the rest of their catalogue. They may also have full schedules for a good period in the future. And they have the same problem with the 5,000 manuscripts they have to read each week.

But I think the big one is failure to resonate, also known as ‘I didn’t love it enough.’ As a wannabe author, it’s such a teeth-gnashingly irritating answer and something entirely out of your control. But set aside the anger and despair, have a think about it.

A bookish comparison
Picture yourself in your favourite bookshop. You have 30 minutes before the other half comes back from selecting your Christmas present. You browse the best-sellers, the tables, the 3-for-2, the new stuff, the ‘We recommend’ books, you look to see if your favourite author has brought another one out. But how do you choose what to buy? You read the blurb, you admire the cover, you read the first page or so, then you decide. Why? Because it calls you, it has a certain something that pulls you to it, that resonates. So I often get to the cash desk with a thriller, a historical, a fantasy adventure and the Booker Prize finalist. No logical pattern, just what attracts me.

So despite your beautiful oeuvre and perfect package (if you see what I mean), an agent or publisher may not ‘get’ your book. A very difficult thing to accept, but something writers need to swallow when submitting and reacting to rejections.

I was given a hard piece of advice. When you get a rejection, get another submission out the same day. If your book really is ready for market and your package so good, it should only take a few tweaks. This takes a bit of the sting out and you feel more in control of events. Another writer friend who has several books published says to submit widely (not to the agent not taking your genre, obviously!). You just never know who your idea is going to resonate with.

And lastly, all writers get rejections. Don’t take it too seriously, but here are some famous ones. You’re not alone. It’s never easy, even for the best writers.

Happy persisting!

Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, INSURRECTIO and RETALIO. CARINA, a novella, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories, are now available. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. NEXUS, an Aurelia Mitela novella, will be out on 12 September 2019.

Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines… Download ‘Welcome to Roma Nova’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email newsletter. You’ll also be first to know about Roma Nova news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.

The Antonine Plague - the germs that killed an empire

Welcome to the home of the Roma Nova thrillers, INCEPTIO, PERFIDITAS and SUCCESSIO. Please look around while you are here.

Nails and horses, a stitch in time, plugging a hole, greasing a cartridge, dropping a letter, not changing the batteries – all tiny things which can spark off heavy consequences. And a great technique for writers to plant an insignificant seed at the beginning of their book which later becomes a full-blooming crisis. The clever reader picks it up and thinks ‘Aha!’. But the clever writer scatters a load of them to confuse the clever reader…

But nobody could have foreseen the catastrophic effect tiny germs could have on the largest superpower the world had ever seen.

In AD 165 a plague hit the Roman Empire which by AD 180 had killed thirty percent of the population. A pandemic, possibly smallpox or measles, followed soldiers returning home from campaigns in the Middle East. It rampaged throughout the Empire from Persia to Spain and from Britain to Egypt. It probably killed Lucius Verus, the co-emperor and brother of Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The impact of this was so great politically and morally that the plague was called ‘Antonine’ after the brothers’ family name. In AD 178 it caused 2,000 deaths a day in Rome, a quarter of those infected, according to Roman historian Dio Cassius. Total deaths are reckoned at around five million.

The results were catastrophic: it decimated (reduced by 1 in 10) the Roman Army, by now consisting mostly of non-Italians and struggling against barbarians in the north and Persians in the east; it cut a naturally dwindling population by a third, wiping out whole villages, even towns; it weakened trade, shrank the labour force, diminished the reliability of transport links, so wrecking the whole economy; and promoted increasing religious fervour which split Romans from their traditional martial and pragmatic values, further undermining social disintegration.

In brief, the Antonine Plague may well have created the conditions for the decline of the Roman Empire and, afterwards, for its fall in the West in the fifth century AD.

So it’s not only taxes, corruption and apathy that get you, but the tiny little bugs.

Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers, INCEPTIO, and PERFIDITAS. Third in series, SUCCESSIO, is now out.

Find out about Roma Nova news, writing tips and info by signing up for my free monthly email newsletter.