Insights | Alison Morton Author

Writing people or writing stuff?

Talking online with some colleagues about historical and alternative historical writing, the conversation inevitably turned to research and how it was woven in or dripped into the story. We all declaimed against the dreaded info dump when the poor reader gets a JCB bucket size load of history book content poured on them. But how […]

Are the Roma Nova books feminist?

Yes, but ‘feminist-lite’. Let me explain…

First, where do I stand? I believe that women and men should be treated equally. We are different from each other biologically and studies have shown that we have broadly different aptitudes, strengths and approaches dating back well beyond the Stone Age to when we were evolving from […]

Collaborating authors

ALLI authors meet up at the London Book Fair April 2014

Writing is a solitary thing – it’s you, the writing medium and hard graft alone together. Your imagination/brain/mind/muse and the pen or keyboard are it. Perhaps you have a writing buddy, known sometimes as a critique partner, or belong to a writers’ […]

So what does SUCCESSIO mean to me?

Writing a book is hard work but a privilege. Sitting down, slogging away, oblivious to neck and shoulders becoming rigid, you ignore the blurring eyes, the headache creeping up over the crown of your head because you are lost in the imaginary country of your book’s world.

Your characters smell the pines, shiver at the […]

Tough heroines

“Boadicea Haranguing the Britons” by John Opie (1761-1807)

‘Tough’, ‘feisty’, ‘kick-ass’ – clichés, ironic or signposts? And, provocative question, would you apply them to men? Perhaps the first one and possibly the third, but I can’t remember reading about a ‘feisty hero’.

That aside, how do you recognise a tough heroine? Boudica, queen […]