Blog | Alison Morton Author

Writing Challenge Day 6: How the writing all began

Ampurias mosaic

I’ve always enjoy writing, but not fiction; essays at school (often fictional), civil service papers and reports, business plans, company PR materials, insurance analyses (so exciting!); corporate documentation, brochures, military reports and fifteen years’ worth of translation and editing.

Words fascinate me, how they’re derived, how they’re used and what they can do. And the fascination spreads over into other languages. Nobody likes comparative word registers and vocabulary analysis like me. (Well, perhaps somebody else does…)

My imagination gets out of hand all the time and I enjoy telling a tale, but write a story? A whole book? Nah!

Then three things came together.

The first was when a memory of when I was on holiday near Ampurias in Spain one summer. Here’s the story…

A small child, curls bobbing on a head she’s forgotten to cover with the sunhat her mother insists on, crouched down on a Roman mosaic floor in north-east Spain. Mesmerised by the purity of the black and white pattern, the craftsmanship and the tiny marble squares, she almost didn’t hear her father calling her to the next one.

Jumping up, she eagerly ran to him, babbling questions like many eleven year olds do: who were the people who lived here, what were they called, what did they do, where have they gone?

The father, a numismatist and senior ‘Roman nut’, started telling her about the Greek town of Emporion founded 575 BC which became Roman Emporiæ in 218 BC, where traders sailed in and out with their cargoes of olive oil, wine, textiles, glass and metals; where people lived in higgledy-piggeldy houses, traded from little shops; where the Roman army based its operations; where money was minted. And the people came from every corner of the Roman Empire to live and work. Boys went to schools and girls learnt to be good wives and mothers.

The little girl listened carefully to every word, sifting the information. Her hand in his, she turned as they leave, looked back at the mosaics and asked her father a final question.

“What would it be like if Roman women were in charge, instead of the men?”

Maybe it was the fierce sun boiling my brain that day, maybe I was just a precocious kid asking a smartarse question. But clever man, my father replied:

“What do you think it would be like?”

The second piece of the jigsaw was when I picked up Robert Harris’ Fatherland in my local independent bookshop in 1992. The emotional high of the breaching and tumbling down of the Berlin Wall was only three years before. Germany, and Europe, was redefining itself. Into this whirling pot was thrown the concept of ‘what if Nazi Germany had won the war?’ Others had tackled it before; I had a vague memory of watching An Englishman’s Castle starring Kenneth More when I was younger, but it hadn’t clicked then.

Reading Fatherland, I started to speculate on what would have been the alternate path of history? Suppose Elizabeth I had married and had children? Suppose Julius Caesar hadn’t been assassinated? Suppose women had got the vote in Britain when New Zealand women did in 1893? Suppose, suppose, suppose…

Until then, I hadn’t realised you really could project history forward in a different line, but in a non-fantasy logical progression. Revelation!

But the third thing, the trigger that made me sit down and wear my fingers out for the next few months writing INCEPTIO?

Ewan McGregor

In 2010 my husband and I (as they say) were sitting in a darkened cinema theatre, waiting for the movie to start. We’d picked this film, based on a popular novel, as it was the least worst on offer at the local multiplex. And it had Ewan McGregor in a key role…

The film started; exciting music, great cinematography, but thirty minutes in, we realised the plot was dire and narration hacked and chopped so many times the story was unintelligible.

‘I could do better than that,’ I whispered to my husband.

‘So why don’t you?’

We drove home, my brain bursting with an idea I’d had forty years ago in Spain, fuelled by Robert Harris’s alternative history, tempered by the feminism of my student days and my six years in a military uniform. Ninety days and 96,000 words later, I typed ‘The End’ on page 306 of the first draft of INCEPTIO, the first of the Roma Nova series.

And that is how I started writing fiction!

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Writing challenges so far:

Day 5: What inspired the book I’m working on
Day 4: The setting for the new Roma Nova book
Day 3: Introducing the main characters Julia and Apulius
Day 2: Introduce your work in progress
Day 1: Starting with revealing information

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, is now out.

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.

Writing Challenge Day 5: What inspired the book I'm working on

That’s an easy one – the readers!

No, really! I wrote The Girl from the Market after a suggestion in the Roma Nova Enthusiasts’ Group. Legend had it (in the earlier Roma Nova novels) that in AD 370 Julia Bacausa was a tough and fiery woman and Apulius a strong Roman of the traditional sort. It was always going to be an encounter full of conflict, but also passion. I loaded in his arrogance and her pigheadedness and independence and The Girl was written.

But he was smarting from arbitrary dismissal from a glittering career path and she was suffering from her uncertain status as a ‘half-divorced’ woman.

It isn’t a 21st century politically correct story; it’s set in the late Roman Empire full of culture clash and religious conflict, but writing the full story gives the opportunity to expand and enhance the pared down account in the original short story.

And readers want to know what happened in the succeeding decades… 😉

Oh, but the research! The Roman Empire in the late fourth century is a very different one from the one Augustus created in the first.

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Writing challenges so far:

Day 4: The setting for the new Roma Nova book
Day 3: Introducing the main characters Julia and Apulius
Day 2: Introduce your work in progress
Day 1: Starting with revealing information

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.

Anna Belfrage: Brain freeze – the dreaded writer’s block

This week’s guest is Anna Belfrage, historical fiction writer extraordinaire. Had Anna been allowed to choose, she’d have become a time-traveller. As this was impossible, she became a financial professional with two absorbing interests: history and writing. Anna is the author of the acclaimed time travelling series The Graham Saga, set in 17th century Scotland and Maryland, as well as the equally acclaimed medieval series The King’s Greatest Enemy, which is set in 14th century England.

More recently, Anna has published The Wanderer, a fast-paced contemporary romantic suspense trilogy with paranormal and time-slip ingredients. While she loved stepping out of her comfort zone (and will likely do so again) she is delighted to be back in medieval times in her September 2020 release, His Castilian Hawk, set against the complications of Edward I’s invasion of Wales. It’s a story of loyalty, integrity—and love…

And we’ll both be contributing to an anthology of historical stories about betrayal due out in November.

Over to Anna!

The cursor blinks tauntingly.
“Come on, come on,” I mutter.
That never helps. Blink, blink, blink goes the cursor. Thrum, thrum, thrum go my fingers. After an hour or so of this futile exercise I give up. I have been afflicted by that most dreaded of conditions among authors: Writer’s Block. I don’t panic—after all, by now I’ve been around the block (ha-ha) a few times.

When I first set out to finally write that novel I’ve always wanted to pen, I lived in constant fear of forgetting my great ideas, of not being diligent enough in jotting them down before they disappeared and Ms Inspiration (my personal muse) turned mute. Ms Inspiration is a fickle being and rarely believes in nine-to-five. No, Ms Inspiration tends to be most active around two a.m., which led to a lot of disturbed sleep and illegible scrawled messages to self on the large pad I kept by my bed. Writer’s Block was not an issue. It was more of a Writer’s Deluge—which comes with its own challenges but is not the subject of this post.

Soon enough, though, Writer’s Block began to surface at regular intervals. Mostly, it was a case of a fertile mind with a huge strip of duct tape over its mouth, i.e. the brain continued to whisper stories, but something got lost in translation. It’s as if the words lined up along the edges of my subconscious, close enough that I could taste them, too far away for me to actually catch them. This type of block was frustrating. However, those times when my fertile mind went completely arid—not one single withered idea in any direction—was far, far worse. That type of block is terrifying, along the lines of “OMG, I have lost my mojo, and I bet it is permanent and I will never—never!—be able to weave words together into a story again!”.

Leonid Pasternak (father of Boris ‘Doctor Zhivago’ Pasternak

This spring has been one long sequence of writer’s block. When I spoke to Alison about it, she referred to all of us being impacted by “background anxiety”—an excellent term which I have now stolen with pride. And yes, in this very strange year dominated by a pandemic, anxiety in one form or other has likely affected most of us. In some cases, the involuntary reclusive lifestyle may have led to extreme productivity. In my case, I have struggled with feeling that my writing is extremely irrelevant—hence the lack of words.

That sensation of irrelevance is hard to fight, Writer’s Block, in my experience, generally isn’t.

I have three strategies to combat my non-productivity:

When the block is a consequence of a drought in ideas, I find that the best thing to do is to take a total break. I draw a thick red line through two weeks of my calendar and write NO WRITING ALLOWED in capital letters above the line. The idea is to trick my brain into wanting to write because it is now forbidden to write. It works surprisingly well—probably not because of the less than subtle psychological approach, but rather because a lack of ideas flags a genuine need for a rest from creative endeavours.

When the block I am facing is one of “plenty of ideas, no words”, I choose between my other two strategies. One is to simply set all new writing aside and pull up one of the stories I have ripening away in my little WIP larder (Work In Progress larder) and submerge myself in editing. I love editing. I adore rewriting. As I expend my efforts on honing something I have already written, I often rediscover the words I need to capture the elusive storyline gestating in my brain.

My other alternative is the “soldier on” approach. This is when I do some serious talking to self before setting myself a daily word target.
“But I can’t!” self whines. (These conversations take place in my head. I do NOT go around talking to myself out loud.)
“Huh,” I tell self. “Of course you can!”
And I can. What I write under duress is rarely worth keeping, but the actual writing, however stilted, however lacking in esprit, helps stimulate my brain. Those mandatory 500 words a day help focus the plotline, and one day I’ll sit down to write the required 500 words and reappear from my creative bubble six hours later with 2 300 words. My Writer’s Block is history—at least for this time.

This time round, though, it has been harder than usual. This time, I’ve been obliged to combine my methods. But after weeks of no writing, followed by ‘edits only’ time and a couple of days of mandatory words, I am making progress—as evidenced, I believe, by this post. And by the fact that I am over 12,000 words into a new book. At last!

(And we’re all looking forward to reading it!)

Find out more about Anna and her excellent books
on her website: www.annabelfrage.com
Amazon page: http://Author.to/ABG
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/annabelfrageauthor/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/abelfrageauthor @abelfrageauthor

A taste of what’s in store for us…

For bastard-born Robert FitzStephan, being given Eleanor d’Outremer in marriage is an honour. For Eleanor, this forced wedding is anything but a fairy tale.

Robert FitzStephan has served Edward Longshanks loyally since the age of twelve. Now he is riding with his king to once and for all bring Wales under English control.

Eleanor d’Outremer—Noor to family—lost her Castilian mother as a child and is left entirely alone when her father and brother are killed. When ordered to wed the unknown Robert FitzStephan, she has no choice but to comply.

Two strangers in a marriage bed is not easy. Things are further complicated by Noor’s blood-ties to the Welsh princes and by covetous Edith who has warmed Robert’s bed for years.

Robert’s new wife may be young and innocent, but he is soon to discover that not only is she spirited and proud, she is also brave. Because when Wales lies gasping and Edward I exacts terrible justice on the last prince and his children, Noor is determined to save at least one member of the House of Aberffraw from the English king.

Will years of ingrained service have Robert standing with his king or will he follow his heart and protect his wife, his beautiful and fierce Castilian hawk?

Wow! Now available for pre-order on Amazon UK Amazon US Out 28 September 2020

Writing challenge Day 4: The setting for the new Roma Nova book

Ah, this one’s easy! I’ve written quite a lot on my Roma Nova blog about this as it’s the setting for nine previous books! So I’m going to cheat and repost the piece I wrote about what Roma Nova looks like…

Roma Nova an alpine country with lower lying valleys a few small towns (Castra Lucilla to the south of the main city, Brancadorum at the east, Aquae Caesaris to the west) and a river city full of columns, a forum, Senate house and temples.

Roma Novans don’t have a different name for their capital; like the ancients, they just call it “the city”.

The original Roman architecture from the late fourth century is surrounded by buildings from the intervening centuries, so you’ll see medieval, Renaissance, Biedermeier (Regency in English) and later. More photos here.

If it’s not a real country, how did you dream it up?
Sadly, you can’t use Google maps to view Roma Nova’s geography from space nor load a Wikipedia page for its history. But inventing a country doesn’t mean you can throw any old facts into your book. They have to hang together.

If you look back to when those first Roman dissidents left Italy in AD 395 and trekked north to found Roma Nova, you can find out quite a bit about Roman life and culture at that time. This gives you a starting point: their mindset, their customs, their concerns, their ways of doing things. For instance, the first chapters of Christopher Wickham’s book The Inheritance of Rome draws a clear and detailed picture.

For a quick overview, you can read ‘Living at the Roman dusk’.

With the Roma Nova books, I’ve used terms that people might already know like the Roman sword, gladius, greeting such as salve, solidi as money, ranks like legate and centurion. But I’ve made the gladius carbon steel, the solidi have currency notes and debit cards as well as coins, and I’ve mixed in other European military ranks such as captain. It gives a sense of history that’s gone forward and adapted to the modern age. Read more about ‘New Romans for old’ here.

Ancient Romans were fabulous engineers and technologists, organised and determined to apply practical solutions to the needs of their complex and demanding civilisation, so I’ve positioned them in the 21st century at the forefront of the communications and digital revolutions.

The silver mines and processing industry that underpinned Roma Nova’s early economy, and still play an extremely important role in 21st century Roma Nova, are another allusion to ancient Rome. Silver was a big reason the Romans wanted Britannia. Dacia (Romania) and Noricum (Austria) in central Europe were of special significance, as they were very rich in high quality deposits.

Giving Roma Nova silver deposits provides a plausible reason for its economic survival through the ages. I also needed mountains, a river, land where farmers could work vineyards, grow olives, wheat and vegetables, and raise animals. I also wanted my imaginary country to be near Italy and Austria. So it had to be in south central Europe. In the end I pinched Slovenia as my model.

This and a previous post give you a glimpse into the world of Roma Nova. What else would you like to know?

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Writing challenges so far:

Day 3: Introducing the main characters Julia and Apulius
Day 2: Introduce your work in progress
Day 1: Starting with revealing information

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.

Find out more about Roma Nova, its origins, stories and heroines and taste the latest contemporary thriller… 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 newsletter. You’ll also be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.

Writing Challenge Day 3: Introduce the main character(s) Julia and Apulius

Julia Bacausa

AD 370, Virunum, Roman Noricum

Julia Bacausa, passionate daughter of a local Celtic ruler, miserable and tense after a failed marriage and only half-divorced, can see no future life for herself.

Lucius Apulius, a bright young military tribune thrown out of a prestigious command that would have made his career. He’s posted to a backwater in the mountains of Noricum (Where? Even the tribune asks that).

We ‘met’ Julia and Apulius briefly in The Girl from the Market but this was a mere dip into the late fourth century. Now I’m writing their full story. So who are they?

Lucius Apulius
In his mid twenties, the son of an old senatorial family. Even though it’s late in the Roman Empire, he’s still trying to follow the cursus honorum, the sequential order of military and public administration posts to be held by aspiring politicians in the Roman Republic and the early Roman Empire. However, by the late fourth century, many traditional offices had been replaced by more pragmatic, administrative ones. But for now Apulius is making a success of his military career.

in fact, he’s a rising star on Count Theodosius’s staff, taking part in restoring order in Britannia and as a reward promised his own command in Western Britain – a big step for an ambitious tribune. But…

(You knew there was a ‘but’.)

[Apulius speaks] I’d been curious to see Dulcitius in person. Said to be an excellent soldier and a commander with a hard reputation, he’d been thrown out of the army by the late Emperor Julian. Why had Count Theodosius summoned him back? Dulcitius scanned the tent with his dark flashing eyes, nodding at two of the other officers. Then he stopped at me.

‘Aren’t you General Apulius’s son?’ Dulcitius growled and jabbed his finger at me. ‘That pagan who crawled away from Samarra after Julian the Apostate’s death?’

The whole tent fell silent. Count Theodosius looked up from his dispatch. A secretary shuffled scrolls in the background. And all eyes focused on me. Christian eyes.

Lucius Apulius

‘What exactly are you saying, Dulcitius?’ The count leaned back in this chair.

‘He’s from one of those useless aristo families that Diocletian chucked out.’

‘Maybe so, but he’s one of my most promising juniors who’s led several very successful sorties.’ The count turned to me. ‘Lucius?’

‘Sir, I’ve served the emperor for six years to the utmost of my ability, and completely loyally.’ I burned inside with fury at the new dux, but kept my eyes on Theodosius.

‘Ask him who he worships.’ Dulcitius looked at me malevolently.

Ah, problem. Even the careers of even the best were destroyed for not following the late empire’e official religion – Christianity – which is how Apulius ends up in a backwater like Noricum. He was lucky to still have a military job, even the second in command of a local auxiliary force.

Julia Bacausa
Just twenty, daughter of a local Celtic leader and a mother ‘from the tribes’, fiery in appearance with flaming red hair and independent in nature. Hurt and disappointed by a failed marriage with the local bishop’s nephew, she is caught in the religious transition of the time and by her half-divorced status. Apulius first sees her when she’s not at her best – she’s been supervising a through household overhaul and had thrown on an old tunic that morning.

[Apulius speaks] Another bloody provincial semi-barbarian with a plait of red hair. She wore no jewellery; her belt was plain leather without a waist pouch and her tunic didn’t even cover her feet and ankles. A pert farm girl, or somebody’s household slave who had the nerve to measure me up like an equal. But she was worth looking at, I had to admit.

[Julia speaks after exchanging harsh words with him] I knew I’d been rude, but he could at least stop and let me apologise. He didn’t need to be so uncivil, even for a soldier. I hastened after him determined to make him hear me. Nobody turns his back and walks away from me.

When I caught up with him, I stretched my hand out and seized his arm. He instantly grabbed his sword pommel. The gladius was halfway out of the scabbard by the time he saw it was me. He released it, then looked as my hand on his forearm as if it were a viper about to bite.

‘How dare you touch me! Remove your hand or I’ll have you whipped.’ He looked at me as if I were the meanest drudge.

‘You can’t,’ I retorted. ‘You have no right.’

‘We’ll see about that.’ He went to raise his hand – to summon some of his men, I supposed – then he let his hand drop. His eyes gleamed and he looked down his Roman nose.

I caught my breath and tipped my chin up at him. I knew my face was flushed – I could feel the heat – but I was going to teach him a lesson. When he found out who he had insulted he’d be broken and sent back to Rome in disgrace. I opened my mouth to tell him exactly what his fate was going to be, but he prised my fingers off his arm. The hard skin on his hand chafed my softer one. My fingers were jammed together and started tingling. Before I could protest, he grabbed my wrist and pulled me to him. Gods, he was strong, vital. His arm slid round the back of my waist and he crushed me against his body. Solid, hard and unyielding. He smelt of horse, a day’s sweat and pine resin. His eyes narrowed then gleamed. His breath shortened.

I should have struggled, but I didn’t want to. His other hand gripped my buttock. I stared into his eyes and was lost.

Then, of course, Apulius finds out who she really is and she seizes the opportunity to pay him back in full …

Writing two such uncompromising characters who nevertheless are sensitive human beings smarting from life’s unfairnesses is pure joy. Despite the mass of research needed, I think this book is going to be a whole lot of fun.

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Writing challenges so far:

Day 2: Introduce your work in progress
Day 1: Starting with revealing information