Children of Apollo - Excerpt

In Children of Apollo, we have the opportunity to visit many places about the Roman Empire. We see the deserts and cities of North Africa, Etruria, Cumae and, the caput mundi itself, Rome.

Today I thought I would share a short excerpt from Chapter XIV - Pater and Filius.

In this scene, Lucius has just returned to Rome and is walking through the Forum Romanum for the first time in many years, on his way to meet with the Emperor.

The Forum was the centre of social, political and religious life in Rome. It was also a place where Lucius Metellus Anguis spent a lot of time as a young boy.

Here is a bit of a taste of life in the Forum Romanum.

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It had been a long time since he had passed through the heart of Rome, seen politicians and priests and the massed mob milling about the paving slabs. As Lucius passed through the narrow street between the Temple of Saturn and the Basilica Julia he was greeted by the familiar play of sunlight and shadow cast by the towering white columns that reached to the sky, ornate pediments and godly statues.

       He stepped onto the Via Sacra, a gust of cool morning air rippling his cloak and the horsehair crest of his helmet. The crowd on the street parted for a procession of priests and augurs who were making their way to the Capitol for their daily sacrifices and readings of the omens. A beautiful lady accompanied them, obviously wealthy, not necessarily Roman, because of her dark complexion. She was veiled by a rich, yellow, hooded cloak over a white and purple stola. She held her head high as she walked alongside the priests and another gust of wind came rolling up the street behind them, like a divine breath urging them toward the temples.

       Once they had passed, everyone went back about their business and the street filled up again. Lucius however, kept watching, curious. As he peered over the tops of the crowd’s heads he spotted the Senate house, the Curia, where senators’ litters were parked, their slaves waiting patiently about, Nubians, Gauls and Germans, as their masters conversed on the steps before going inside to discuss the business of the Empire. One of the senators pointed at something large directly in front of the Senate, his hands waving madly in a fit of angry gestures. “It’s an outrage! Completely inappropriate!” he bawled. The structure was covered with scaffolding and leather sheets to restrict the public’s view. Only the sound of chiselling could be heard above the old man’s ranting just several paces from the numerous artisans’ carts at the base of the structure.

       The street grew more crowded and where before people avoided bumping into an armed tribune, they now pushed Lucius from every side in their efforts to get by. His reverie broken, he pressed on to his right where he spotted the new Temple of Vesta next to the house of the Vestal Virgins. The round temple was beautifully ornamented with pure white columns supporting elaborate friezes around the top. He remembered his mother mentioning that the Emperor’s wife, Julia Domna, had paid for its construction. She had spared no expense and it showed. What sort of woman was she?

            Farther down the street, Lucius came to the large paved ramp that led up onto the Palatine and the imperial complexes. As a child he used to marvel at the thought of the hill, the place where Rome was born, a small village. From huts hundreds of years ago, to this: ornate gardens, fountains, exotic orchards, baths and stadiums surrounding the most ornate, luxuriously marbled palaces. And to think, the Metelli used to live up here. The thought still took his breath away. It was quiet on the hill. All that could be heard was the splashing coming from tucked-away fountains and the song of birds singing in the approach of spring. Lucius enjoyed this as he walked, breathed it all in but he felt his nerves begin to take hold on him and his heart begin to pound as he came under the watchful eyes of the Praetorian guards lining the hedgerows above the street.

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I hope you enjoyed reading this short piece from Children of Apollo. I will be posting more as time goes by.

Cheers and thank you for reading!

Picture Postcard #9 – Pythia

The Games had run their course. Delphi had emptied, its song having been sung.

When the last pilgrim emerged from the temple, red-eyed and shaking, I stepped forward with a young goat under my arm and a laurel branch clutched in my hand.

A hunched priest led me to an altar where I rinsed my hands and face with Castalian water, and made my offering to Apollo. The goat flinched when its throat was slit and soon slept in a pool of its own blood.

I fanned myself with the laurels as the priest’s knife cut with precision, his old hands unshaking.

He nodded and I was led down the flight of steps where another priest muttered instructions that I did not hear.

It was dark but for a sputtering torch in an ancient bracket upon the wall.

Above, in the cella and outside, the smell of incense was sweet, the marble white and gleaming in the sun upon the mountainside.

But as I went deeper into the earth, my legs heavy as lead, the walls were of deepest green and black, the smoke not sweet but acrid and overpowering.

A humming drummed in my ears, my mind… my heart… my…

Love…

There she sat.

The girl I had loved in my youth.

The woman I had married.

When I entered the sanctum to see her in the sacred tripod, the blood-red veil shading her once-bright and dancing eyes, I knew she was no longer mine.

I had intended to plead with the god for my Love’s life, to promise a thousand statues or the fall of enemy nations if I could but have her back.

As the question formed upon my trembling lips the fumes suffocated me where they rose out of that black fissure.

My laurels fell and shrivelled, and the god told me to leave.

To leave…even as a single tear bled from those black eyes…for me…for us.

I do not regret my actions beyond the sanctuary boundaries. The noose upon that olive wood branch was tight, and hugged me like a friend.

Now I am free to wander the silver slopes of Parnassos…to wait for the day Apollo releases my Love.

Then…then we shall be together again.

My request granted.

Indie Publishing and Historical Fiction

This post was sparked by an article I read on IndieReader.com by Dr. Alison Baverstock who praises indie authors for their ability to see things through to their end, to take responsibility, to be resourceful, to identify new markets and opportunities and to be supportive of each other.

This is a great little article for those who don’t quite get indie publishing, or folks who are thinking about looking into it. You can read the full article HERE.

It’s true that the indie publishing community is producing work that is equal in quality and artistic value to anything put out by the big publishing houses. In countries like the US, indie author/publishers have gained wide acceptance. At the London Book Fair this Spring, indie authors had some of the spotlight too! These are very exciting times.

I have to admit that, in the past, I saw indie, or rather ‘self-publishing’ as something of a cop-out, the realm of the failed. It is obvious now that that is an out-dated point of view. For several years I was going the recommended route of querying literary agents whom I was told I needed because they were the only way I could get published.

I sent loads of queries out to agents who said that they represented historical fiction, including agents who represented authors I read and respected.

Many agents got back to me with great feedback. I was told by numerous folks that they “loved the story and the characters”, that my “research and historical detail were fantastic”. I was told that they loved “my voice and writing style”. It was all great stuff but at the end of the day, the same answers always came back.

“Times are tough,” and “no publisher is going to take a chance on a debut historical novelist in this economy.” I was told that they liked the book but didn’t “know how to place it.”

My personal favourite was “The story sounds fantastic but you don’t have a marquee character. People would rather read the thousandth novel about Julius Caesar than the first book about an emperor they know nothing about.”

I was left scratching my head. I may not have had a so-called ‘marquee character’ but I certainly have a marquee period.

The Roman Empire and so many other periods in history all make for exciting settings for fiction. And oftentimes, stories about average people in any age are among the most poignant.

This is where indie publishing becomes the historical novelist’s best strategy.

Never mind all the stuff about maintaining artistic control and keeping up to 85% of your profits, releasing whenever you like and as often as you like. That stuff is great.

What I love about indie publishing is that you can write the story you want in the period you want and if you know what you are doing, you will find readers.

The indie author of historical fiction has the power to bring to light people and places that are often overlooked by the mainstream, and if their research is careful and accurate, they can add to our knowledge.

You can explore religious practices that big publishers would not want their names associated with, or you could write alternate history to explore various theories. How about a book in which Carthage won the Punic war and salted the earth about the Seven Hills of Rome? Or how about further exploring the idea of empire by imagining that Alexander the Great did not die in Babylon but moved west all the way to the Pillars of Hercules?

If you are indie, you can do it.

Yes, you have to know your market and be smart about it. You need to write for you, but also for your readership.

The point is that you can if you have a will to. I find it hard to believe that people interested in historical fiction only want to read about Julius Caesar or Henry Tudor. Sure, they are magnificent characters of history but so are many other people and places.

This is indeed an exciting time for indie authors and publishers, but it is also an exciting time for readers.

In these days of freedom of artistic expression, there is more choice than ever.

So, thanks for reading and whichever book you pick up next, may it be full of adventure, inspiration and all the other things that make historical fiction a wonderful journey. 

Mosaic Masterpieces - Treasures of Roman North Africa

Triton in his Sea Chariot

For a writer of historical fiction, and for an historian, the museum is the place to go for research.

Not only can you learn a lot about people and places, you can also come face to face with the possessions of the people and places about which you are writing. You can interact with the items that decorated and served long-ago worlds – Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Carthage and Rome etc. etc.

In a museum, culture is frozen in time as a sort of gift to future generations, a window to peer through and better understand those who went before us.

I’ve been to a lot of museums in my travels, large and small, great and not-so-great. But there was

Hall of the old Bardo Museum

always something to be learned, something to take away with me that I could use in my writing.

This post, I wanted to touch on a particularly wonderful museum that I visited in Tunisia – The Bardo Museum in Tunis.

When I went to Tunisia to do research for Children of Apollo and Killing the Hydra, visiting Punic and Roman sites on the fringes of the Sahara was one of the biggest thrills of my travels.

When our 4x4 left the desert behind, I was disappointed to be back in the city. Tunis held none of the allure of the southern desert or the fertile green hills of central Tunisia. There were no ruined temples or amphitheatres, no mosaics or ancient streets as open to the sky, unsuffocated by modernity.

Ulysses on his Voyage

We pulled up outside a rather unassuming building and were told this was the ‘famous’ Bardo Museum. I probably rolled my eyes, remembered swaying palms and Saharan sand beneath my feet. I dreaded the dark building before me after so much perceived freedom.

I was so wrong. When we entered the Bardo, my eyes fell upon some of the most magnificent artistic creations I have ever seen.

The walls and floors were absolutely covered with myriad mosaics of such colour, such intricacy – I thought the images would jump right out at me.

And they were tucked away in this little museum that, up until that point, I had never heard mentioned

The 'Days' of the Week

by anyone at university or elsewhere.

I decided this week to look back over some of the photos I took at the museum and enjoyed revisiting those moments when I locked eyes with a tesseraed Triton or the striking statue of a Roman woman.

When I looked at the website for the Bardo Museum, I found that they have moved to a completely new, more spacious building. Here is the link where you can also take a virtual tour of the new Bardo.

The new museum is stunning but for me the mosaics still take centre stage.

A Hunting Scene (left) and
the Nine Muses (right)

What is amazing about these creations is that they were what decorated the homes of the people who inhabited the period about which I was writing.

The visual that these mosaics provided for me and my written world was priceless.

Suddenly, my characters’ homes no longer contained shabby dirt or terra cotta floors, or even plain marble. Triclinii, peristylii and atrii came to life with the mythological and natural scenes that decorated Roman homes.

But these mosaics at the Bardo, and elsewhere, do not only depict the religious or fanciful aspects of belief.

A Gladiator and a Lion in the Arena

More importantly to our knowledge, they depict the everyday activities of people ages ago. We see people hunting, fishing, tilling and bringing in the harvest. We see images of the food they ate, the sports they watched and the heroes they worshiped.

These mosaics tell us so much about a world that would otherwise be lost to us. Thanks to these masterpieces, we know more about the buildings they decorated and the importance placed upon particular rooms within private homes, public and religious spaces.

Champion Chariot Horses

When I stepped out of the Bardo Museum into the setting sunlight on a Tunis street, I felt as though I had been a guest at sumptuous banquet in someone’s home, far off on the edge of the Empire. This was not some flee-infested frontier region. No.

The Roman provinces of Africa Proconsularis and Numidia yielded not only the oil, grain and garum upon which the Empire depended, but also artistic treasures that have left a mark on time.

At the Bardo Museum, you can walk among these treasured mosaics with many silent, sentinel statues as your fellow guests.

If you ever get the chance to visit this place, do so. You will not regret it, and the memory of what you see will linger with you for years to come. 

Gallery Statue

Floor to Ceiling Displays

The Poet Virgil