Anachronisms ‘R’ Us: Alison Morton discusses balancing accuracy and entertainment in historical fiction

I’m delighted to welcome Alison Morton back to the Fictionfire blog! Last time she visited she talked about plotting her series of thrillers and before that she talked about rejacketing her books. Now she is celebrating publishing the next in her Roma Nova series. Set in the 4th century, it is the second in a two-part Foundation story, harking back to the beginnings of Roma Nova, a country where a remnant of the Roman Empire survives, ruled by women, into the 21st century. It is an absolute tour de force of the ‘what if’ power of imagination that writers – and readers – love! Rome and its way of life is corrupted and disintegrating; as the risks grow, the central characters in Exsilium realise they must escape and make a new life for themselves. The result is an incredibly detailed and involving journey, as compelling as any tale of wagon trains heading across the prairies to California! What I love about Alison’s fiction is that you care about the people but you also learn so much – and it’s often the tiny details and references that are the most telling, whisking you back into a lost way of life and way of thinking.

Here are Alison’s thoughts on that eternal tension between being true to the past and to the needs of modern readers.



If I pick up a book set in the 14th century and I hear a character say, ‘Have you reached out to her?’, my fingers itch for a red pen. If that book is set in the 2nd century, I throw my Kindle on the floor. No Roman or Medieval speaker used the expression ‘reached out’; they spoke or talked to the other person, possibly reasoned with them, depending on the context.  

Romans spoke British English, of course(!). Who hasn’t watched I Claudius or HBO’s Rome? To be serious for a moment, we don’t know how people spoke in the past. Surviving written sources show us how they wrote in certain contexts such as reporting speeches, writing travel accounts, book-keeping, recipes, laws, political appointments, even informal letters with dinner party invitations or moaning about bar bills. 

In our own world and that of our parents and perhaps grandparents, we know how differently people of different ages, backgrounds, education and experience speak or spoke. Society is far less hierarchical now than it was previous times, even up to the Second World War. In Jane Austen’s time, sisters spoke in one mode to each other, a more respectful way to their parents and in a third way to servants. Comportment (or behaviour, as we now call it) reflected a person’s position in society as well as their age.  

Romans were very mindful of each tiny slice of societal position and dinner invitations would be handed out, or not, according to these rules. Some slaves could be punished for the least impudent word or look while others, such as personal attendants, secretaries or hairdressers, had more leeway, but they still knew their place. When I read a scene in a recent novel where a young female slave backchatted a male head of household, I sighed. Hard though it may seem to us, if that slave had done that in reality, she would have been whipped and possibly sent out to field work or sold. 

Immersing ourselves as modern writers within a historical setting with alien values and outlooks can be difficult, even upsetting, but our task must be to form a bridge for the reader between that past and our present. Our novels may convey the flavours (more likely smells) of our chosen period, the ways people acted, their appearance, the luxury or misery of their surroundings, their artisanship, coins, laws and food. However, they are still people, human beings like us. They will feel joy, hope, unhappiness, fear and pleasure as we do. How significant those feelings are in the context of their lives and how they communicate them is another question.  

For the novelist, one of the best ways to show characters’ thoughts and feelings is through dialogue. Young Marcus and his buddy, Antonius, might be going off on a spree, but being adolescents, they might be worried about bunking off their lessons and their consequent punishment – probably a thorough beating. While these boys’ conversation will be informal, it will not include ‘like’ or ‘innit’ every other word, or ‘wicked’ or ‘cool’. 

Roman males spoke robustly; elite males were rigorously trained in oratory as part of a demanding education, so their speech was necessarily formal especially when talking with their fellow senators. Members of the military would have used a version of ‘squaddie speak’: short, succinct dialogue with often denigrating remarks about non-Roman peoples, lumping them together as barbarians.  

Roman women were brought up to be wives and mothers, learn household skills and were often given at least basic literacy and numeracy skills. They would defer to their male head of household, but, of course, like women throughout the ages, many would know how to circumvent the worst aspects of situations they disliked. Poorer women worked and their dialogue would be plain, with a smaller vocabulary and probably more world-weariness than wealthier sisters. 

For the writer in any Roman period, even a time in transition such as the world of late 4th century EXSILIUM,  or the Medieval period, there are more subtle traps. In 1995, Bernard Cornwell published The Winter King, the first of a trilogy about King Arthur. In the book, set in the 6th century, he mentioned snowdrops. ‘You fool!’ a correspondent wrote to him, ‘Everyone knows snowdrops were not introduced to Britain till the 12th century!’ Cornwell confessed he had not known, but reported he was amazed by how a trivial error could prompt letters of seething rage. 

I recently fell headlong into a major hole when drafting EXSILIUM, but caught it in the second version of the uncorrected proof sent out to advance readers. Dozen and half-dozen are such common and harmless everyday words that I hadn’t noticed how often I’d used them to mean small groups. The main problem was that Romans didn’t have the concept of a dozen. It derives from old French dozaine or doseine meaning a collection of twelve things or units with first use c. 1300. Ironically, it’s founded on the Latin number for twelve duodecim, but its sense as a word for a group was not in use in the Roman period.  

Luckily, I knew not to use minutes and seconds for short intervals of time – also not current in the Roman period – and so moments, instants, breaths and heartbeats are scattered throughout EXSILIUM. Furniture is another trap and I consigned a sofa to oblivion and replaced it with a stool.  

But in a comforting way, I discovered with my writer’s eye a monumental blooper when I re-read a favourite Roman novel by A Famous Author which was set in the 2nd century AD. I had bought the book nearly twenty years ago. Our hero on horseback was stuck in traffic when approaching the gate of Rome and stood up in his stirrups to get a better view of the obstacle ahead. The problem? The Romans didn’t have stirrups until the East Romans adopted them, possibly from the Avars, in the 6th century. I smiled, then read on.

Writers go to a lot of trouble to bring the past to life!

Exsilium: exile is living death to a Roman

AD 395. In a Christian Roman Empire, the penalty for holding true to the traditional gods is execution.

Maelia Mitela, her dead husband condemned as a pagan traitor, leaving her on the brink of ruin, grieves for her son lost to the Christians and is fearful of committing to another man.

Lucius Apulius, ex-military tribune, faithful to the old gods and fixed on his memories of his wife Julia’s homeland of Noricum, will risk everything to protect his children’s future.

Galla Apulia, loyal to her father and only too aware of not being the desired son, is desperate to escape Rome after the humiliation of betrayal by her feckless husband.

For all of them, the only way to survive is exile.

Buy on Amazon here and other retailers here.


Alison Morton writes award-winning thrillers featuring tough but compassionate heroines. Her ten-book Roma Nova series is set in an imaginary European country where a remnant of the Roman Empire has survived into the 21st century and is ruled by women who face conspiracy, revolution and heartache but use a sharp line in dialogue. The latest, EXSILIUM, plunges us back to the late 4th century, to the very foundation of Roma Nova.

She blends her fascination for Ancient Rome with six years’ military service and a life of reading crime, historical and thriller fiction. On the way, she collected a BA in modern languages and an MA in history. 

 Alison now lives in Poitou in France, the home of Mélisende, the heroine of her two contemporary thrillers, Double Identity and Double Pursuit.

 Social media links

Connect with Alison on her thriller site: https://alison-morton.com

Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/AlisonMortonAuthor

X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/alison_morton     @alison_morton

Alison’s writing blog: https://alisonmortonauthor.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alisonmortonauthor/

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5783095.Alison_Morton
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@alisonmortonauthor

Alison’s Amazon page: https://Author.to/AlisonMortonAmazon

Newsletter sign-up: https://www.alison-morton.com/newsletter/

 

How can you keep a grip on your story? Thriller writer Alison Morton shares her plotting safety-net

Publishing a book is exciting. All those months and months (sometimes years) of hard slog at the keyboard have come to a point. You’ve been through several rounds of editing: your own red-pen-wielding self-edit, your critique partner’s input (mine has the instincts of a velociraptor) and the professional copy edit. You’ve commissioned a beautiful cover that conveys something intrinsic about your story to induce the potential buyer to pick it up or click on it. 

And here it is. In my case my eleventh novel. By now, I have an idea of how to put my stories together. They’re thrillers, so I use the traditional structure: inciting incident, three crisis/turning points, the black moment where everything falls apart, the climax and the resolution.  

I like to keep my readers on their toes, so I shoot through the standard twists and turns with curveballs, decoys and gambits, mainly because that’s the sort of thing I enjoy reading. 

But there’s a bit of a problem with that…  

Writing the first book of my Roma Nova series in 2012, I became so engrossed in producing the story that I inadvertently put events in the wrong sequence or found myself introducing one character to another I’d killed off three chapters before. Luckily, I had avoided that old cliché – the eleventh month pregnancy. 

My heroine was going on a long journey: not just physical but personal, emotional and empowering. I desperately needed some way of tracking all these different and interwoven threads; not only the action but also its timing.  

Although I was a computer geek, I rejected using a spreadsheet like Excel. I didn’t need all those columns. So I developed a grid in MS Word which tracks timeline, summarises the scenes in each chapter and where I could note down the word count for each chapter. (I rather pompously called it ‘structure analysis’ at the time and the name has stuck – sorry.)  

Entering the details after each day’s writing not only kept the grid up to date, but also made me re-examine the coherence of the plot. These days, I enter the details at the beginning of the next session’s writing as it reminds me of the action and context of what has gone before. 

The added bonus is that the completed grid is invaluable for reviewing, editing and revising the first draft. Plot holes jump out and poke you (figuratively) in the eye. You can then sort them out before they become embarrassing. 

Is this still necessary eleven books and nine years later? 

YES! In Double Pursuit, my latest, my heroine travels all over the place: Poitou, Rome, Brussels, Strasbourg, Montpellier, Tilbury and the African Sahel. She makes progress, has setbacks, has useful conversations and arguments with her lover, gathers titbits of intelligence, and works out strategies. Clues have to be laid at specific points – not so soon it spoils the story and not so late that it looks as if the villain has been ‘parachuted’ in near the end.  

Thrillers, especially crime thrillers and spy stories, are necessarily convoluted, so the author needs to remember who said what to whom, or who did what to whom, and the decisions taken at one point in the story that affect another. I have a good memory, but I’m not Mr Spock from Star Trek. And you’ll be pleased to know I’m using it for my current work in progress and even halfway through I’ve been able to prevent some horrible plot holes. The velociraptor critique partner I mentioned at the beginning reports that she uses the grid religiously when writing her own novels and admits it’s saved her much embarrassment on many an occasion! I couldn’t possibly comment… 

If you’d like to try it, you can find an empty grid and a sample, part-filled grid in the files area on my writing blog. Please feel free to download and use them. 

Happy writing!

 

About Alison:

Alison Morton writes award-winning thrillers featuring tough but compassionate heroines. Her nine-book Roma Nova series is set in an imaginary European country where a remnant of the ancient Roman Empire has survived into the 21st century and is ruled by women who face conspiracy, revolution and heartache but with a sharp line in dialogue.  

She blends her deep love of France with six years’ military service and a life of reading crime, historical and thriller fiction. On the way, she collected a BA in modern languages and an MA in history.   

Alison now lives in Poitou in France, the home of Mélisende, the heroine of her latest two contemporary thrillers, Double Identity and Double Pursuit. Oh, and she’s writing the next Roma Nova story.


About Double Pursuit:

One dead body, two badly injured operatives and five crates of hijacked rifles.

She’s hunting arms smugglers. But who is hunting her

In Rome, former French special forces intelligence analyst Mélisende des Pittones is frustrated by obnoxious local cops and ruthless thugs. Despite the backing of the powerful European Investigation and Regulation Service, her case is going nowhere. Then an unknown woman tries to blow her head off. 

As Mel and fellow investigator Jeff McCracken attempt to get a grip on the criminal network as well as on their own unpredictable relationship, all roads point to the place she dreads – the arid and remote African Sahel – where she was once betrayed and nearly died. Can Mel conquer her fear as she races to smash the network and save her colleague’s life? 

Where to buy Double Pursuit:
Amazon

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/fr/en/ebook/double-pursuit

Apple

B&N Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/double-pursuit-alison-morton/1140156361?ean=2940162379614

Books2Read: https://books2read.com/DoublePursuit

Paperback: https://www.alison-morton.com/books-2/double-pursuit/where-to-buy-double-pursuit/


The Posthumous Adventures of Harry Whittaker: in search of the break-out novel – guest post by Bobbie Darbyshire

The Posthumous Adventures of Harry Whittaker: in search of the break-out novel – guest post by Bobbie Darbyshire

‘The problem is the most interesting character is dead.’ As the words left my mouth — ping! — the light came on in my head. I couldn’t wait to start writing. Turn back the clock a little, though, and I’d felt no such thing.

To Change or not to Change? That is the cover question.

Roma Nova books new.jpg

This week, Alison Morton, author of the successful Roma Nova series of thrillers, discusses the when, why and how of changing your book covers. Given that she and her cover designer, Jessica Bell, have done a damn fine job of it, you’ll be interested to read on!

First of all, apologies to Bill for mangling Hamlet’s lines, but weighing up whether to change covers for an established series does make one ‘draw [one’s] breath in pain.’

Excited in the run-up to the publication in 2013 of INCEPTIO, my first book, I was stunned by the cover that SilverWood Books produced. Here was the embodiment of my book: imperial purple, a gold eagle, symbol of Roman power, yet in a thoroughly modern design. Added to that, the ‘proper’ Roman font – Trajan Pro – as seen on inscriptions still visible across Europe. Brilliant!

Eightbooks_original.jpg

And so it has been for the past five years and eight books. Each book has been published with a different jewel-like cover echoing the contents, but the eagle graphic constantly present, making the Roma Nova brand distinctive.

But times change. People change. Habits and wishes change. When historians write about our age, the one expression to characterise it will be ‘continuous change’.

My book sales have been steady, occasionally spiking. From the comments and reviews written by readers, I gather they enjoy the stories enough to give them hundreds of five stars across the series. But I wanted to introduce Roma Nova to more readers. So I dived into the murky business of marketing, beginning with an analysis.

What did potential new readers expect when they saw my book covers? Did they see adventure thrillers featuring strong heroines, a touch of history and mystery, tales of courage, failure, triumph, heartache and resolve? Hm. Perhaps the eagle image, dark colours and formal Roman script no longer had that elusive ‘pick-me-up’ element. Learning point: Emotion and character needed to be brought in.

Did the existing covers convey action and movement? Certainly, they conveyed strength and purposefulness, but there was no hint of risk, personal danger or taking the initiative. And you can’t say that either of my heroines, Carina or Aurelia, is backward in any of those aspects!
Learning point: Show some dynamism.

People vs. patterns. I rejected a cover with a face in 2013 because I couldn’t see it fitting within the graphic. It would have confused the impact of the eagle. From a five years’ later viewpoint, I still think that was the right decision then. Trying to fit everything together is not a good approach, nor is overcrowding a cover. The whole concept needed a rethink. Learning point: Don’t tinker – start again.

It’s hard-headed, but in marketing terms a book cover needs to tell readers what the book is about and entice them to pick it up – all within a second or two. If the cover isn't compelling enough to make passers-by (real or virtual) look further by reading the summary and reviews, they won’t buy.

Researching this was a hard process; I’m not a trained or professional marketer. However, I have run small businesses and am aware how important marketing is. And these days, more than ever, the impact must be instant.

Taking the decision to change the whole look of the Roma Nova covers was excruciating. But by now I had five solid years of experience in the book world: interacting with readers, absorbing reviews, listening to fellow authors, discovering new techniques and trends. I was also expanding the series, firstly by dropping in a novella (CARINA), then a collection of short stories (ROMA NOVA EXTRA). Currently I’m drafting a novella set in the 1970s featuring Aurelia, set between AURELIA and INSURRECTIO, something that would further mess up the existing numbering order!

A fresh approach was needed, and this was the perfect time to reassess and restructure the whole series. So I split the stories into two strands within the Roma Nova series: Carina Mitela adventures and Aurelia Mitela adventures.

Readers have described my books as a cross between Lindsey Davis’ Roman detective Falco and The Hunger Games. They’ve also been likened them to Manda Scott’s and Kate Mosse’s books. Conn Iggleden, Simon Scarrow and Elizabeth Chadwick (among others) have said nice things about them. I’d like to think they’d also appeal to readers of JD Robb and Robert Harris (or is that hubris?).

Back to the covers…
I commissioned designer Jessica Bell to draw up some concepts for the whole series.

I asked her to keep the original background colours: INCEPTIO purple, PERFIDITAS blood red, CARINA in between, SUCCESSIO blue, AURELIA green, INSURRECTIO black and RETALIO amber, and to include the signature eagle graphic in the mix.

She would draw up three concepts and I then had to choose one. But was it really up to me? Did it matter what I thought or felt? No. Definitely no. Which would most appeal to readers? And address the learning points from my analysis?

Disassociating yourself from your book, your baby, that part of your soul that you’ve put on public view is the hardest part of the process.

Jessica was a joy to work with: imaginative, professional and supportive, especially of some of my dafter ideas. But she was also ruthless in a very friendly way when my suggestions were off-piste; she was right every time.

Delighted isn’t the right word. Thrilled is a bit nearer. Shocked and overwhelmed in a very positive way is better still. After five years of beautiful but rather sober covers, the books have taken on a new, dynamic life. I think Roma Nova is about to storm off on some exciting new adventures.


Late 1960s Roma Nova. Retrained as an undercover agent, ex-Praetorian officer Aurelia Mitela is sent to Berlin to investigate silver smuggling, but barely escapes a near-lethal trap. Her lifelong nemesis, Caius Tellus, is determined to eliminate her and ruin Roma Nova.

A former military commander, Aurelia is one of Roma Nova’s strong women, but she doubts in her heart and mind that she can overcome her implacable enemy.

And what part does the mysterious and attractive Miklós play – a smuggler who knows too much?

When Caius Tellus strikes at her most vulnerable point, Aurelia must make an agonising decision – her country, her love or her child?

First in the Aurelia Mitela adventures, where Roman fiction is brought into the 20th century through an alternative history lens and first of the AURELIA trilogy. INSURRECTIO and RETALIO complete the trilogy.

– Historical Novel Society’s indie Editor’s Choice for Autumn 2015
– B.R.A.G. Medallion
– Finalist, 2016 HNS Indie Award

Paperback: https://myBook.to/AURELIA

Amazon: https://myBook.to/AURELIA_Kindle

Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/ebook/aurelia-30

B&N Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/aurelia-alison-morton/1121827041?ean=2940151557450

Apple: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/aurelia/id1378216297


Alison Morton writes the award-winning Roma Nova thriller series featuring modern Praetorian heroines. She blends her deep love of Roman history with six years’ military service and a life of reading crime, adventure and thriller fiction.

A ‘Roman nut’ since age 11, Alison misspent decades clambering over Roman sites throughout Europe. Fascinated by the mosaics at Ampurias (Spain), at their creation by the complex, power and value-driven Roman civilisation, she started wondering what a modern Roman society would be like if run by strong women...

Now she continues to write thrillers, cultivates a Roman herb garden and drinks wine in France with her husband.

Connect with Alison on her Roma Nova site: http://alison-morton.com

Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/AlisonMortonAuthor

Twitter: https://twitter.com/alison_morton @alison_morton

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alisonmortonauthor/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5783095.Alison_Morton
Alison’s Amazon page: http://Author.to/AlisonMortonAmazon