This is Jacquie’s Newsletter, featuring updates about my Roman Britain mystery novels, beginning with The Governor’s Man - the researching and writing, the blood, sweat and tears. If you haven’t yet read Quintus and Tiro’s first adventure, by the way, the ebook will be on Kindle Countdown, 99p/c for a week February 1-8. Do let your friends and fellow readers know! (Normal price is £2.99.)
It’s the end of January 2022, and I’m now deeply embedded in writing the second of the series, working title The Carnelian Phoenix. Actually 20,000 words in, more or less.
Readers often ask about my research and writing processes, which in historical mystery fiction can be convoluted. I find there’s a lot of initial planning to be done with this kind of book: main plot; subplots; twists and turns; red herrings; clues; cliff hangers and climaxes. And all the time, historical research. Sometimes just little but essential things - what did Romans eat? Certainly not chocolate, chips, tomatoes, pineapples… disappointingly, no pizza or pasta either.
My writing becomes an iterative process, in which words lead to ideas, ideas lead to research, which lead to edits and new writing, and so on. At times, I have to pause to follow up a lead. Some examples from my work this week:
Monday: character development. My main character, the Governor’s Man himself Quintus Valerius, has a problematic meeting with a family member. In the process of writing, this not only develops his character arc, but makes the scene much more central to the main plot, which I had not expected. I had to relocate other plot twists for later in the novel. Fortunately, I use Aeon Timeline, so moving plot points around is not a problem. Characters quite often run away with the author, and sometimes you just have to gallop, laptop in hand, to keep up!
Tuesday: a major plot point. This marks the transition between the first act of the book and the second, major act, where the hero (or in my case, three main characters) is/are faced with difficult choices that shape the rest of the story. I had planned these challenges to emerge over several chapters, but in the course of writing it felt better to bang them all into a couple of scenes. I may change this later in the second draft if it doesn’t work.
Wednesday: I introduce a new character, Pompeia Fulvia, to accompany a major new subplot. I was so enthralled with this feisty lady, a wealthy widowed shipowner, that 2500 words just poured out. A good afternoon’s work. However, writing this scene for viewpoint character Julia, on a merchant vessel, produced a significant research challenge - Roman cargo ships and sea trade routes. I had done what I thought was enough preliminary research when planning the book’s outline. Then I realised while writing this scene that I needed more research. For example, were there cabins on cargo ships? If so, where were they positioned, above or below the waterline (i.e. would Julia see daylight when she woke?) How big were such ships, and did they vary according to whether they ventured into deeper one seas? (Answer - yes!) And what exactly did the big Roman Atlantic traders look like in the third century? What were they trading? Could they dock alongside wharfs? And on, and on…
Thursday: thus yesterday. I had to pause producings to check research sources. What I had naïvely hoped would be a quick Google of the Royal Maritime Museum at Greenwich turned out, of course, not to be that simple. In the end, I contacted the fail-safe and brilliant library team at The Hellenic and Roman Library, University of London. I keep raving on about this amazing team of people, but truly the library is a magnificent resource for anyone writing about the Classical period. And sure enough, within minutes, they had not only found the book I requested, but suggested another useful book, and offered to scan two articles for me. Books on their way in the post already, scans via email this morning. I literally could not write the Governor’s Man series without this resource. In the meantime, I noticed that the Dorset port I had planned to feature later in the book does not have a known Latin name. My policy when this happens is to hunt for an earlier Celtic name where such is recorded. Thus I discovered that Poole in Dorset has pre-Roman Iron Age roots, and may have been called Bol. Bol it will be in my book, then.
Friday: and so to today. Friday is usually reserved for promotion: blogs, social media, book reviews. Today, with breaks to bake and ice a birthday cake for our little grandson Alex, I’ve mostly been doing this newsletter. It’s the beginning to what I hope will be a yummy SubStack adventure!