Blog | Alison Morton Author

Books I've read and enjoyed in 2023

As in 2022, reading books has given me enormous pleasure. This year, I published a special 10th Anniversary hardback edition of INCEPTIO with a gorgeous case cover and dust jacket by Jessica Bell Design, plus contributed a story called ‘My Sister’ to a collection Historical Stories of Exile.

Enough of me, the writer; in this post I’m writing as a reader.

This is not a beauty contest nor a selection. I chose the books that make up the image randomly. The list below contains just books I’ve read this year and enjoyed. Some made me catch my breath, others made me weep with joy or sorrow and others appalled me. But I loved the experience of reading them all.

I’m not mentioning those I didn’t enjoy or part-read – that’s not fair to the authors concerned as I’m probably not their ideal reader.

I’m a fussy reader. I use Amazon’s ‘Send a free sample’ service mercilessly, especially if it’s an author new to me. But I have discovered some real gems that way.

Oh, and I’ve read a few non-fiction for research and ‘professional development’.

Fiction

Restless, William Boyd (re-read)
Legion XXII: The Capsarius, Simon Turney
Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr
The Lost Apothecary, Sarah Penner
Alternate Endings: A Short Story Anthology of Historical What Ifs, by Samantha Wilcoxson, Sharon Bennett Connolly, Michael Ross, Cathie Dunn, Karen Heenan, Salina B Baker, Virginia Crow, Elizabeth K Corbett & Stephanie Churchill
Winter Wedding at Bletchley Park, Molly Green
Mistake of Murder, Helen Hollick
Dark Earth, Rebecca Stott
The Glass Painter, Clare Flynn
The Ides of April, Lindsey Davis
City of Vengeance, D V Bishop
The Contraband Killings, Lucienne Boyce
A Tidy Ending, Joanna Cannon
The Venice Secret, Anita Chapman
Lost in Time, A G Riddle
Caesar’s Soldier, Alex Gough
The Weather Woman, Sally Gardner
The Maids of Biddenden, G D Harper
The Secrets We Keep, A J Wills
Sisters of Castle Leod, Elizabeth Hutchison Bernard
Promises of the Runes, Christina Courtenay
Siren Song, J J Marsh
Saturnalia, Lindsey Davis (re-read)
A Quiet Death in Italy, Tom Benjamin
Rocco and the Snow Angel, Adrian Magson
Death on the Marais, Adrian Magson
Murder Imperial, Paul Doherty
The Wild Poppy, Julia Bell
The Secrets of Hawthorn Place
The Wall, Douglas Jackson
Times of Turmoil, Anna Belfrage
Falling Sky, Harry Sidebottom
A Meadow Murder, Helen Hollick
Artful Antics at St Brides, Debbie Young
Signal Moon, Kate Quinn
Deadly Election, Lindsey Davis
The Garden of the Hesperides, Lindsey Davis
Rogue, Charlene Newcomb
The Husband Criteria, Catherine Kullman
The King’s Jewel, Elizabeth Chadwick
Lessons in Chemistry, Bonnie Garmus
Third Nero, Lindsey Davis (re-read)
The Beacon at Alexandria
The Maid of Linden Hall, Katie Hutton
Salt of the Earth, J J Marsh
Moonshadows, Melinda Hammond
Secret Meetings, J G Harlond
Iron Maiden, J T Maicke
The Gladiator Only dies Once, Steven Saylor (re-read)
The Secrets of Morgarten, L S Mangos
Fatal Legacy, Lindsey Davis
A Vain and Indecent Woman, Colin Falconer
The Emperor’s Games, Damion Hunter
Catalina’s Riddle, Steven Saylor
Christmas with Sophie Sayers, Debbie Young
Blackshirt Masquerade, Jason Monaghan
The Picture House Murders, Fiona Veitch Smith

Non Fiction

How To Survive in Ancient Rome, L J Trafford
Blurb Your Enthusiasm, Louise Willder
The Fall of the Roman Empire, Peter Heather
How to Best Optimize Blog Posts for SEO, Rachel Thompson
The Darkening Age: the Christian Destruction of the Classical World, Catherine Nixey
Vindobona, Michaela Kronberger
The Idea of the City in Roman Thought, Lidia Storini Mazzolani, trans. S. O’Donnell
How to Be Right, James O’Brien

On to 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, will be out in February 2024.

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.

10 reasons why a book is a good read?

Yep, it’s an old question, but a good one. Choosing and enjoying a book is very personal and each reader’s view is subjective. This is why reviews of any one book can vary so much!

I read across many genres – historical, thriller, crime, literary, romantic, sci-fi – you name it –plus all their various sub-genres.

Here’s my personal take on what makes a good read for me (YMMV).

A strong story – Well-paced, with a solid, hopefully clever plot. I need to be intrigued, entranced, captivated so I’ll read to the end. Stories should have a purpose, otherwise why tell them?

Good style – Clean and clear so that the story unfolds without me feeling puzzled. I don’t mean super-clever or self-referential or so clipped you don’t know where you are. Some stories unfold piece by piece, others go straight to the point, but all need to be well-written. Poor grammar, punctuation, sloppy construction and misuse of vocabulary jolt me as a reader out of a story. And as for those linguistic anachronisms… 🙄

A plausible world – Not necessarily real, but authentic for its supposed time and place. Whether it’s the 1980s City of London, a Mars colony or 4th century Rome, the characters should talk, work and act appropriately and not just be early 21st century people in shoulder pads, spacesuits or tunics.

However… (Makes a change from ‘but’)

Detail vs. info-dump – Enough detail to trigger my imagination, some small things to set the scene, but NOT a blow-by-blow description of every brick in every house in every town, known inelegantly as an info-dump. Details should be dripped in or woven into the book’s world so that the reader hardly notices, but accepts without question as they become immersed into that world.

Characters – Ones I can identify with, so I can find some common attitudes, experiences and feelings. They’re not me and I’m not them, but I want to connect. I’m not terrifically fond of being inside a sadistic serial killer’s head – although it could be interesting in one way – but I want to read characters who have different aspects to their personalities. A goody-two-shoes can be just as wearing as a continuously snarling villain. Will somebody please throw a bucket of water over the first and treat the second to a psychotherapy session or induce a love of kittens, I shriek! Characters should have off days, feel frustrated at traffic jams, forget a password or turn up late as well as save the world.

Dialogue – Yes, please and lots of it! Lively dialogue not only carries the story forward, it illuminates characters’ attitudes, motivations and inner conflicts. If we ‘hear’ a character ‘talking’, we feel we are in the room with them. My favourite is Elizabeth Bennet’s demolition of Darcy’s character. I find myself flinching and cheering at the same time. Jane Austen is the mistress of great dialogue.

Showing me, not telling me – This is where the story leads me and shows me what the characters do and how they react, rather than the author just telling me. Sometimes a story has to let some time go by, but clever authors will do this in one or two sentences: ‘Later that summer,’ or ‘This continued for the next few weeks.’

Change – I don’t mind whether characters are comfortable or not with their lives as long as they have made some change or developed in some way by the end of the story. Lack of knowledge or education, flaws, temper, uncertainties and vulnerabilities are all fine to start with, but please, not TSTL (Too stupid to live) or I’ll chuck the book in the bin. But most importantly, I like a character to develop from where they started in Chapter 1. They may acquire knowledge, learn to open up to others, leave one life behind, accept new realities.

Moral balance – Some characters do the right thing for the right reasons, even if it’s against ‘the rules’. But they can definitely be a bit naughty and do some morally dubious things as long as they get to the honourable goal without wrecking too much on the way. As humans, whatever is happening in the world, we like to hope a story will end in a satisfactory resolution. I haven’t used the word ‘happy’ as there is often at least a touch of sadness or loss in the course of any story.

That’s nine things. Over to you. What’s your tenth?

(Updated and republished)

No writer is an island

Author photo, Château du Rivaud

Sadly, there have been reports on social media and in the national press about a debut writer running a review campaign against her fellow writers. Using a number of accounts she created under different names, she’s been marking down all her perceived “competition” with 1-star negative reviews on a well known readers’ website. She also orchestrated artificial 5-star support for her own book.

This is BAD FORM. As a result, she’s lost her contract with a very prominent publishing house and gained (writing) worldwide notoriety. You have to ask where were her agent, her advisors, her friends? (Note: I understand her agent has resigned from representing her.)

No writer can succeed by themselves in the competitive environment of the book world. Perhaps that’s a surprise, but that’s how it is. And pi**ing on your fellow writers is not the way to behave.

The isolated writer?

Sitting by yourself, in a spare bedroom, study, or even at the dining room table, and tapping away on a keyboard can be a lonely business. People wonder why you don’t go outdoors on a sunny day or wander into the village for a leisurely drink at the local bar or browse around the market. But you don’t want to see, let alone talk, to other people. You are absorbed in your writing world.

Of course, you need to get the word count or the hours in on your latest work in progress – that’s understood. But why do you need to interact with other people? Ninety per cent of people probably aren’t interested in writing or in your latest work, you mutter to yourself. You’ve often watched their eyes glaze over when you reply honestly to the enquiry about how your writing is going. But ten per cent are interested and you need to find them.

Why do you need others?

Your mental health – you’re a human being who needs contact with like-minded souls
To learn from others’ experiences – competitions, agents, the ever-increasing number of routes to publication, especially self/indie publishing, conferences, the best courses and advisors, writing and book events
To obtain critiques from other writers – not Auntie Maud who taught English or your mate at work who has a way with words
To learn new writing techniques and approaches to work – not just how to sling words together, but about characterisation, the senses, novel or poetry structure, research
To network to make those vital contacts to get your book published and to learn marketing skills from others to publicise your work yourself
Not to bore your nearest and dearest, but to have fun with like-minded people

So where are these fellow-writers?

Starting locally, try to find a writing group. Look in the local press, the library and online. Ask anybody who has a faint connection with writing. Ask at your local book club – some of them may be writers. Have a chat to the organiser and go and try out such a group. The main requirements are a supportive open atmosphere, honesty and a lack of ego-tripping.

Next are writing associations, usually specific to a genre of writing, such as the Crime Writers’ Association, the Romantic Novelists’ Association or the Historical Novel Society. They have events, regional groups, newsletters, Facebook pages, websites, blogs – you name it! If you are thinking of self-publishing nothing beats the camaraderie of the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi). Even remotely, you can benefit enormously.

My nostalgia photo – ALLI authors meet up at the London Book Fair April 2014

Online critique groups can be a little daunting at first, but as you grow a writer’s thick skin, you’re likely to find it helpful and inspiring as well as immensely valuable. But you’ll need to plunge in!

Going to conferences can be a real boost to your writing. There are hundreds of literary festivals each year in the UK and abroad, including practical ones for writers such as the Jericho Writers events or the International Dublin Writers’ Festival where you can meet fellow writers, agents and publishers.

Moreover, you may hook up with another writer you can develop into a writing buddy, or more formally, critique partner. With Skype, Zoom and email it’s no problem to discuss and work on writing together at distance. The writing buddy must be someone you trust, so it may take a little while to get to know them. Mine has kept me sane and grounded over the years so they’re worth their weight in gold!

Writers at the Eboracum Roman Festival 2023 (Photo: Tracey Turney)

As in life, as a writer you need other people – they are NOT your competitors.
As in life, if you behave like an arse in a community, you’ll get thrown out.
As in life, friendship and collaboration lead to a hell of a better result than floundering around alone.

JG Harlond - Victory in Exile

I’m delighted to welcome J G (Jane) Harlond to the blog to talk about being in ‘Exile’. Jane writes award-winning, page-turning novels set in the mid-17^th and mid-20^th centuries. Each story weaves fictional characters into real events. She describes her WWII Bob Robbins Home Front Mysteries as ‘cosy crime with a sinister twist’. Prior to becoming a full-time author, Jane taught English and World Literature in international colleges. She also wrote school text books for many years using her married name.

Jane is married to a retired Spanish naval officer and they have a large, grown-up family living in various parts of Europe and the USA. After travelling widely (she has lived in or visited most of the places that feature in her novels) they are now settled near Málaga in Spain.

J.G. Harlond is a member of the British Crime Writers Association and the Dorothy Dunnett Society.

Jane contributed a story to the Historical Stories of Exile collection and tells us about the background at the end of the Second World War…

Many years ago, a dear friend told me how her Polish parents met and married in post-war London. I thought at the time the story merited a full-length novel, but have never dared start, largely because I have never been to Poland and lack even a basic grasp of the language. The story, however, has stayed in my mind and morphed in various directions for other reasons.

To start with, I’ve had a life-long interest in the civilian experience of war, which partly explains my Bob Robbins Home Front Mystery series. My grandfather was a policeman during WWII and some of his anecdotes must have lodged in my memory. My mother, who was all set to go to ballet school before the events of 1939 turned her into a sedentary telephonist, had a tremendous nostalgia for wartime social clubs and GI dances, mixed with a private rage at having lost out on what might have been a glorious career. Nobody’s life in wartime Europe remained unaffected or unchanged.

Czech refugees from the Sudetenland, October 1938 (Public domain)

The determination to carry on regardless, fun laced with gut-churning fear during air-raids, and anger at the injustice of it all is a potent mix. Awareness of this strange combination, terror and gaiety, led to my M.A. dissertation on the British Home Front.

Years later, when my husband, a Spanish naval officer, was posted to The Hague, I had long conversations with our neighbour about living under Nazi occupation. I read up on how the Netherlands got through the war, heard first-hand how they were so hungry they ate tulip bulbs. . . You can see how over the years I’ve been accumulating true stories and learning more from research and reading. For me, the politics behind warfare and how non-combatants survive are always interesting, but it’s the refugee handcarts that really get me.

I was watching a French documentary recently about Charles de Gaulle, and there they were again; kilometres and kilometres of exhausted refugees pushing or pulling handcarts containing all they’ve been able to salvage from their homes to take into exile – heaven knows where. This didn’t happen in the British Isles, except perhaps in Plymouth during the Blitz when city-dwellers stuffed blankets, toddlers and grannies into anything with wheels to get them out onto Dartmoor and relative safety for the night. If you know anything about West-Country rainfall you’ll appreciate how awful that must have been, never mind the bombs.

Heavy bombing followed by occupation – this brings me back to how my friend’s parents got to London. Her father became a pilot when war broke out and ended up flying with the British RAF. Her mother’s family, Roman Catholic academics, were forced out of their comfortable Warsaw home and sent on a south-eastwards trek to walk as far as they could get from hostilities. They got to Istanbul. From there they got to Málaga, and from Málaga to London. They had a sewing machine in their handcart, enabling them to make do and mend other people’s clothes along the way.

Russian refugees, near Stalingrad 1942 (Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-J19568 / Gehrmann, Friedrich / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE)

Can you imagine walking from Warsaw to the Bosporus with two teenage daughters? Apart from the physical effort, consider the mental strain, the risks and dangers they had to confront. And the terrible thing is it is all happening again.

Well, this is the background inspiration to my ‘Victory in Exile’ story, where I have woven together tales told by my Dutch neighbour and the tragedy of innocent refugees trying to find a safe haven in a world at war. A challenge that may require someone to create a whole new persona.

To this, I have added my own experience of being a voluntary exile. I live in Spain permanently now, but I have lived in various different countries and I know what it is like not to speak the language, not to share commonly acknowledged values; what it is like to be gaped at because your appearance or style doesn’t fit with the locals. I’ve been here on and off over 30 years and even last Saturday somebody asked me where I was from. I bristled, but it was a friendly query – and a timely reminder of what being an involuntary exile must be like for those who can never go home.

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Connect with J G Harlond
Website: https://www.jgharlond.com
Twitter: @JaneGHarlond https://twitter.com/JaneGHarlond
Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/JGHarlondauthor
Penmore Press: www.penmorepress.com
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Read Jane’s latest book:

Secret Meetings

So,” Bob said to Laurie, “all we have to do is rumble a double agent and find a cold-blooded assassin. Or nail one of three homely women for a domestic homicide. School-boy like you and an old codger like me, should be a piece of cake.”

Cornwall, Spring, 1944

A lone traveller arrives at a harbour inn carrying a satchel of weapons, then appears in the grounds of River Lodge, a typical English country house in wartime.

Except with a scandalous family history, the reluctant host’s wife and servants harbouring secrets and grievances, a glamourous trans-Atlantic socialite and an uninvited American professor in residence there is nothing normal about River Lodge.

Then Bob Robbins arrives impersonating Winston Churchill and there is a tragic accident. Or is it daylight murder? And who was the intended victim? Was it caused by the crank stalking Churchill, or is it a domestic homicide? Is it related to the upcoming Allied counter-invasion of France?

To solve the mystery, DS Robbins investigates the crime knowing his own life is in danger. Aided by the studious young PC Laurie Oliver, Bob must identify a murderer, expose a double agent, and ensure the secrecy of the upcoming Normandy Landings.

Buy this book here: https://www.bklnk.com/B0BVKVFHCF

Venture into a new book world...

If I had a euro/dollar/pound for every time a review for one of my books has begun with ‘I don’t normally read this type of book, but…’ or ‘I only read this because a friend said I must read it…‘ and ended with a 5-star super-enthusiastic review, I’d be able to drink champagne every day.

Perhaps the sales info on the retailer pages is giving out the wrong message. Perhaps my covers aren’t conveying the story inside. No, I’m 100% sure it’s not that second one after Jessica Bell’s inspired new images for 2019!

Or perhaps it’s something else entirely…

A different book world?
Every book has its own world whether it’s outer space, inner space, a run-down housing estate, ancient Rome, eighteenth century high seas, a dilapidated Scottish castle or the local supermarket. Some of us even speculate in an alternative timeline. The author builds these worlds in her/his mind then opens the doors to that world and beckons the reader to enter.

But how attractive or repellent is that world to a reader?
I don’t mean whether it’s full of flowers, light and love or a gritty, dangerous and desperate place, but how much curiosity it arouses before the reader even turns the first page. Is its premise likely to stir something in a reader? Is it something they might well have been curious about? Does it resonate ages old mystery or a shared universal theme?

Same old, same old vs. something entirely different, possible scary or disturbing?
We all love comfort books, especially when we’re feeling down, the weather is atrocious or something upsetting in our lives has left us shattered. And comfort can be a Regency romance, a wartime saga or a bloody psychological thriller – everybody’s different. But sometimes we find ourselves reading the same type of book/same setting/same basic story. Quietly, very quietly dissatisfaction murmurs in the background, then grows into boredom.

How often have you heard or read, ‘I knew how it would end within the first twenty pages‘ or ‘Nobody seems to write good books now’? You know the feeling yourself that when you go back to read an old favourite, it isn’t as good as you remember…

Of course, nobody is asking readers to read what they dislike, but it’s worth reading something different, even a galaxy away from your reading comfort zone, to find out whether you might make a new and exciting discovery.

‘I don’t read scifi or funny futuristic stuff.’
Yet Margaret Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments are fascinating millions who are entranced by the dystopian world of Gilead at the hard end of speculative fiction. Her world is horrifying, yet so relatable and full of characters we know: vulnerable, determined, embarrassed, afraid, resistant, ideological, anxious, accommodating, surviving. Scifi is always a trip of the imagination, but the best stories explore the human dilemmas, the characters’ reactions to them and to that world, and their consequent actions.

Written to market
If a writer is under contract to write a book in a certain setting, then the publishing house has probably carried out intensive market research or has wide experience of what sells. That book world is set and is often a purely commercial choice. Second World War has been very popular recently; readers of one 1940s book will graduate easily to another. If written on a popular trend, then that book world is well-established but could be viewed as predictable.

Independent thought
But if you write in a niche or outside the standard environments of popular books, be prepared to work harder at projecting the attractiveness of your world. How is it different from the one in the average thriller or romance? Does it go beyond the usual alien/vampire/werewolf story? Is it set in a era not the Tudors nor the Second World War? Is it in a country not usually written about?

Good writing technique – a vivid narrative with a purposeful story, no info-dumping and above all well-formed multi-faceted characters – will carry a book world through to the reader hopefully to the extent they will be so absorbed by it that they will clamour for more.

But the key thing to remember is that just as writers are all different, readers are all different. Some will ‘get’ your world, others will walk away unmoved. We cannot all like all the same things – that would make us a very dull society. As writers, we should write to grab the reader by our scintillating and fascinating book worlds. As readers, we should venture out down new roads, even if there are hidden bends, We might end up somewhere truly wonderful.

Photo by Sara Hammarbäck

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.