Why the Roman Empire?

I’m asked this a fair bit. Usually it starts with: ‘You write books? How do you do that?’ or ‘That’s weird!’ before moving on to ‘What sort of books do you write?’

‘Historical fiction. Roman Empire,’ I reply, and usually what follows is a slightly awkward pause as the other person digests this. There will the be an offhand comment about Julius Caesar (everyone knows him, right?) or they’ll say they saw HBO’S Rome years a go when it came out (you should have, it’s really good) but other than that I find it to be a bit of a conversation killer.

It’s only readers of the genre or other writers where you can really talk about why you do it, how you do it, what drives you etc. Everyone else (in my experience) just thinks you’re a bit odd.

So here I’m going to break down how I came to be a writer in the first place and just why it is that Rome has such a hold over me.

It all started when I was around 16. I was going on holiday for a couple of weeks and was browsing an airport bookshop for a few books to bring with me. I can remember I bought three. One of them was Excalibur by Bernard Cornwell. I hadn’t really read a lot of historical fiction before then, had no idea that I would be worshipping Bernard as some sort of god within a few years. But it had a cool cover, and I thought it would serve.

Long story short, I read it three times in two weeks. Didn’t care that it was the third in a trilogy and I hadn’t read the previous two. It hooked me. Completely. The magic of Merlin, the magnificence of Arthur. The battles, the brotherhood, it was sheer escapism and I was all for it.

Don’t ask me what the other books I bought were, I’ve no idea. I do remember at the time I was reading a fair bit of John Grisham and Dan Brown, also working my way through some by Paul Sussman. All good reads. But very different to what would go on to be an obsession.

Returning from my holiday I raced to my local bookshop and scoured the shelves for the first two Arthur books. Found them, devoured them. Then I was back in the same bookshop looking for similar titles. What I found was The Gates of Rome by Conn Iggulden. It quite literally changed my life. The first of five books about Julius Caesar and Marcus Brutus. A lifelong friendship that would end in betrayal and murder. It was so well written, so immersive, so captivating, I just wanted to read more and more books set in the same place.

So I was back in the bookshop, and I discovered Ben Kane, Douglas Jackson, Simon Scarrow, Manda Scott, Robert Harris, Harry Sidebottom, Robert Fabbri etc etc – I could list them for an age!

Point is, it wasn’t in a classroom or pouring over history texts that I found a love of Rome. It was through fiction, through stories and the worlds the writers had created. I think I knew by about 21 that I wanted to write. Wishing I had made better decisions at school (and you know, actually paid attention) it wasn’t until I was around 25 that I decided I was going to have a go.

For my first try I actually picked a similar place in time to where Eagle and the Flame is set. I planned a book around the battle of Adrianople in 378 AD. Set in the Eastern empire rather than the West like Eagle and the Flame is. I managed about 40k words. Every one of them was awful. I still have the file, and every now and again when I feel like a book is beating me or I can’t write to save my life, I go back and look at that file, and realise what I’m writing isn’t so bad after all!

It wasn’t until around two years later I thought I would try again. I went back to the classical age of the Roman empire, with dressed legions of five thousand men carrying red rectangular shields, and The Centurion’s Son was born. It was published when I was 29, which is still fairly young for an author, but it felt as though I had been building towards that for years.

Eight years on, and I’m just beginning work on Shadow of Rome #4, which will hit the shelves next autumn. It will be my tenth book, and I’m still just in love with writing about the Romans as I was when I started!

Out July 30th!