"The Next Big Thing"

This questionnaire, entitled “The Next Big Thing,” seems to be doing the rounds on the internet (it was brought to my attention by fellow writer Nancy Bilyeau – http://nancybilyeau.blogspot.com), so I thought it would be interesting to answer the questions and introduce my next major writing project.

What is your working title of your book?

An Accidental King.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

When I was a child, growing up in Jersey, we used to take a two week holiday most years, spending the first week in the New Forest and the second week with my grandfather in East Sussex. My parents did everything they could to encourage my interest in archaeology and history and, since Fishbourne Roman Palace (near Chichester) was roughly midway on our journey, we generally stopped there. I must have been 8 years old when I first saw it, and immediately wanted to know more about it: why it was built, and who lived there. Since then I have studied and taught archaeology, but those questions have kept coming back to my mind.

What genre does your book fall under?

Historical fiction.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Difficult to answer, since the book covers the events of four decades (43 AD-80 AD). Essentially, my protagonist, the client King, Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus, looks back on his life from his late 60’s, so I’d love for that role to be played by Sir Ian McKellan. We might need to find someone else to play him in his younger days. It would be great for Sir Derek Jacobi to return to his earlier role as the Emperor Claudius, and for Sir Patrick Stewart to play Vespasian.

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Tiberius Claudius Cogidubnus, the pro-Roman client King of Southern Britain, looks back on his life and reign; at his friendship with the Emperor Claudius, and the future Emperor, Vespasian; at his attempts to maintain peace & prosperity in his kingdom, to prevent the Boudican Revolt (and, later, to limit its extent and deal with its aftermath); and at the shifting nature of the relationship between Britain and Rome.  

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I don’t intend to self-publish. Whether or not it will be represented by an agency is subject to on-going discussions.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I think it took about a year (working full-time for around half of this) to write the first draft. It has taken me a further three years (working part-time) to get it to its current point (i.e. the submission stage – Draft 12), with professional assistance from The Literary Consultancy (www.literaryconsultancy.co.uk) and help, also, from an online critique group.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

It is written in the first person, so the obvious points of comparison are Robert Graves’s Claudius novels and Marguerite Yourcenar’s Memoirs of Hadrian, both of which I love. It is written, however, for a 21st Century readership, so the writing style is quite different. Also, the focus is specifically on Britain and, in this sense, it comes closer to Manda Scott’s Boudica Dreaming series, though told, of course, from the completely opposite point of view.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

Apart from my early visits to Fishbourne (which many archaeologists and historians believe to have been built for Cogidubnus by Vespasian), my subsequent academic studies and countless conversations with colleagues and students, I have frequently made connections with more recent events.

This, in one sense, is my response to 9/11. I can so easily imagine someone like Cogidubnus being seduced by elements of Roman culture (the architecture of the Forum – which my fictional Cogidubnus sees as a young man, the beauty of the written word in the poetry of Virgil & Ovid) in much the same way that, all over the world, people of my parents’ generation were seduced by aspects of American culture (Jazz, Rock & Roll, Hollywood, not to mention the charisma of politicians such as FDR and JFK).

A Mosaic floor at Fishbourne, probably from Cogidubnus's time (photo: Immanuel Guel).

 

 The Roman Forum, through which my fictional Cogidubnus rides alongside Vespasian, in the Triumph of the Emperor Claudius (photo: Carla Tavares).

 

The ancient mine-shaft on Iceni territory, where the protagonist is held hostage in the aftermath of the Boudican Revolt (photo: Ashley Dace).

 

The realisation of the unequal nature of the “special relationships” that arise from such a seduction comes later, and draws a variety of responses, which are not easy to reconcile.

 
What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?
 
The central part of the book gives a graphic account of the Boudican Revolt, from the perspective of its victims (most of whom would have been British, rather than “Roman” in the strict sense), and in a way which, I hope, has strong contemporary resonances.

Historical Fiction and the 2012 Man Booker Prize

Here is the 2012 long-list for the Man Booker Prize. Those high-lighted in blue are those that have made it onto the short-list. The final result will be announced on 16^th October.

 

Bring Up The Bodies                                      Hilary Mantel

Narcopolis                                                       Jeet Thayil

Swimming Home                                             Deborah Levy

The Garden of Evening Mists                         Tan Twan Eng

Umbrella                                                         Will Self

The Lighthouse                                                Alison Moore

Communion Town                                           Sam Thompson

Philida                                                             André Brink

Skios                                                                Michael Frayn

The Teleportation Accident                             Ned Beauman

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry          Rachel Joyce

The Yips                                                           Nicola Barker.

 

Of the twelve books on the long-list, three can be considered as historical fiction (Bring Up The Bodies, The Garden of Evening Mists and Philida), and two of these have been short-listed. To return to an earlier discussion (my blog post of 6^th May), this does not quite suggest “a somewhat gimcrack genre, not exactly jammed with greatness.”

 

Of the books on the short-list, one of the historical novels, Hilary Mantel’s Bring Up The Bodies seems to be emerging as the hot favourite to win the prize. My money was on this book from the start. To my mind, it is a worthy sequel to Wolf Hall, and I can’t wait to read the third book in the series. Mantel pulls off brilliantly the difficult task of getting the reader to see a past world through the eyes of someone who could so easily be seen (and so often has been seen) as a villain. She does not make Thomas Cromwell a hero: his ruthlessness and vindictiveness are not glossed over by any means; but she also shows another side to him – a caring family man; loyal to his true friends; capable of pity and compassion as well as cruelty; in short, a three dimensional human character. The reader is continually confronted with the question (as I have heard the author herself remark) “if you were Thomas Cromwell, what would you have done in this situation?” The easy answer might be to say that I would never have become the kind of person that Thomas Cromwell was; but this is a 21^st Century response, and Mantel does not allow her readers to get away so easily. This is historical fiction at its challenging best.

 

 

 

The judges, of course, might prefer to back a less well-established writer (Mantel has already won the award for Wolf Hall and is, I suspect, set for yet more exalted heights of international literary recognition in the future). If there is one author on the short-list who could give her a run for her money, I think it is probably Tan Twan Eng, with his second published novel, The Garden of Evening Mists, set against the background of the Japanese occupation of Malaya.

As a recent reviewer in The Guardian pointed out, it is “impossible to resist” a book which begins: “On a mountain above the clouds once lived a man who had been the gardener of the Emperor of Japan." That same reviewer, however, describes the book as “bland,” a sentiment with which I cannot possibly agree. It charts the growing relationship between this old man and a retired Malayan woman judge, Teoh Yun Ling, as they build a garden together amid the mists of the mountain. It is a book with an almost magical sense of place. I don’t envy the judges their task of choosing between such different books (not to mention the contemporary fiction works on the list, not all of which I have read), but I look forward to hearing the result, and am glad to see historical fiction holding its own amid such a wealth of diverse literary offerings. 

Are there books on the long-list that you think deserved to be on the short-list but aren't? Are there other books that you think should have been on the long-list (mine might include Andrew Miller's Pure and Katie Ward's Girl Reading).    

Guest Blog with Nancy Jardine

I'm delighted today to introduce my fellow author, Nancy Jardine, who will tell you a little about her book, The Beltane Choice. I'm currently writing about this period myself, so very much looking forward to reading Nancy's book!

 

 

Why Celtic Britain?

 

I’m delighted to be with you today, Mark, to explain a little background to my first historical adventure-The Beltane Choice-released yesterday by Crooked{Cat}Publishing.

 

 

 

Why did I set The Beltane Choice in AD 71 when the Romans were invading Britain? Researching for a Regency, or a Victorian, novel might have been easier, but the truth is my Celtic and Roman studies weren’t undertaken for writing a novel.

 

During my teaching career I taught 11-12 year olds who typically learned about World War 2, and The Victorian Era-though on rare occasions I taught about the might of the Roman Empire swooping onto the shores of Celtic Britain. Since I live in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, ancient history is on my doorstep. I used local archaeological evidence; collected information from public library sources; bought suitable books to use with the kids, and scaled it down for classroom use. Those were my first Roman /Celtic researches.

 

Archaeological digs, at the Deer’s Den site, in my home village of Kintore during 2002 to 2004 sparked my imagination further. The digs had been funded because the Victorian built village school was being replaced by a brand new building. The foundations for the new school would encroach on land long-designated as a historical site of Roman occupation, and no building work could happen till the digs were undertaken. The results were spectacular. Evidence of more than one Roman occupation of the area was uncovered- over two hundred and fifty bread ovens unearthed a stunning amount. The findings from Neolithic times were numerous, too.

 

Since I live opposite the school building, I was involved as a village resident and as a teacher. We were invited to view the excavations a few times over the duration of the dig. My class worked on stories where an invented character lived in a Celtic roundhouse village near the Deer’s Den site when the Romans attack- a short story of my own having been drafted as an example for the kids. Though an avid reader, I hadn’t been serious about writing fiction before then. That dig was the catalyst!

 

My fledgling writing career began, though it had a very shaky start. I wrote the first draft of a time-travel novel where contemporary children travel back to the Kintore of AD 83/84, and are involved in the battle of Mons Graupius – Romans against the Celtic tribes of the north. I sited the battle at Bennachie, a range of hills with a distinctive conical peak which lies 9 miles away from our village.  Sadly, that draft was abandoned since non-fiction writing projects took up my vacation time for the next few years.

 

In 2008 I wrote the first draft of a Celtic/Roman adventure. That eventually evolved- I’m delighted to say- into The Beltane Choice now published by Crooked{Cat}Publishing. Though, instead of setting my historical novel in Aberdeenshire, I set it in the border areas between Scotland and England, at an earlier time of AD 71. Any knowledge of Celtic life I’ve used in the writing of The Beltane Choice is my own interpretation of historical facts I’ve learned through my teaching. My hero and heroine are, respectively, from Brigante and Selgovae tribes. I used the Roman mobilisations around Eboracum (present day York) as a reason to bring what were warring Celtic tribes together. This scenario is a total fabrication on my part, though I have made a conscious effort to make the novel appear as authentic as possible.

 

However, I have started a sequel to The Beltane Choice which will take the protagonists on to the Battle of Mons Graupius…

 

Some readers may be interested to know my children’s novel has also been redrafted, but now covers the Roman Severan Campaigns of AD 210, in north-east Scotland-the action happening around Kintore and Bennachie. I’m hoping to see that work published some time, too.

 

I’d be very interested to know what might have been the catalyst that spurred other authors to take up their pen. What was your trigger?

Blurb for The Beltane Choice:

Can the Celtic Tribes repel the Roman army?

Banished from the nemeton, becoming a priestess is no longer the future for Nara, a princess of the Selgovae tribe. Now charged with choosing a suitable mate before Beltane, her plan is thwarted by Lorcan, an enemy Brigante prince, who captures her and takes her to his hill fort. Despite their tribes fighting each other, Nara feels drawn to her captor, but time runs out for her secret quest.

 

As armies of the Roman Empire march relentlessly northwards, Lorcan intends to use Nara as a marriage bargain, knowing all Celtic tribes must unite to be strong enough to repel imminent Roman attack. Nara’s father, Callan, agrees to a marriage alliance between Selgovae and Brigante, but has impossible stipulations. Lorcan is torn between loyalty to his tribe and growing love for Nara.  

 

When danger and death arrive in the form of the mighty Roman forces, will Nara be able to choose her Beltane lover?

 

Buy links for The Beltane Choice: http://www.crookedcatbooks.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=63 Book Trailer for the Beltane Choice: http://youtu.be/igJmfBoXRhQ

 

Tags: historical, romantic, Celtic, adventure

 

Author Bio:

Nancy Jardine lives in the picturesque castle country of Aberdeenshire, Scotland, with her husband who feeds her well or she’d starve! Ancestry research is one of her hobbies, as is participating in exciting events with her family which drag her away from the keyboard. In her large garden she now grows spectacular weeds, which she’s becoming very fond of! She cherishes the couple of days a week when she child-minds her gorgeous granddaughter.

 

 

Author Links: http://nancyjardine.blogspot.com   http://nancyjardineauthor.weebly.com    http://facebook.com/nancy.jardine.56    Twitter @nansjar

Other books by Nancy Jardine:

MONOGAMY TWIST Amazon.co.uk: http://amzn.to/OmXH3V Book Trailer for Monogamy Twist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJVzbrkJQzA

TAKE ME NOW  http://bit.ly/MQJXvw   amazon.co.uk http://amzn.to/TPynpq  Book Trailer for Take Me Now:  http://youtu.be/stDC4Yhm2r0

 

 

Why Paulo Coelho is wrong about Joyce's Ulysses.

Paulo Coelho is one of the World’s greatest living writers. He deserves his place alongside Homer, Dante, Shakespeare and (at the risk of offending him, but risk has always been my friend), James Joyce.

On the subject of Joyce’s Ulysses, however, I believe that Coelho is, quite simply, wrong. He says that it has “harmed literature.” How can any book do this? Bad books (history alone will judge whether any of mine, or Paulo’s, fall into this category) fade into obscurity and harm nobody. Occasionally one of my postgraduates unearths one, and uses it to make some comment on the time in which it was written. Will people still be reading Ulysses in a thousand years’ time? I don’t know, but if there are bookmakers in Heaven (or in Hell), I will put a few pounds on it (as I will on Coelho’s Aleph).

Ulysses is, according to Coelho, “pure style,” by which, presumably, he means that it has no real substance, just, perhaps, some sort of literary eloquence. Well, I accuse Coelho of literary eloquence, and would even like to claim some measure of it for myself! But there is substance, also, in Ulysses, an attempt to create an epic from the mundane: to say that, in the lives of the most ordinary people, there hides an Odysseus, a Telemachus, a Circe. If this does not ennoble the human spirit (which I think is what literature ought to do), then I don’t know what does.   

One of my friends, a fellow writer, commented recently that she would have to live 142 years in order to read all the books she would wish to read. My response was that it would take me far longer. But perhaps, if I were immortal (which, of course, I’m not), I could spend 142 years or more just reading and re-reading Ulysses. I’ve read it, I think, six times now, each time discovering new and different things. The Irish-American writer, Frank Delaney, has a fantastic podcast (www.frankdelaney.com) which puts a new gloss on it, even for me. He is taking his time, as the book deserves, aiming to finish, I think, in his hundredth year. At that point, I think I might just be ready to take on his mantle, and do something similar with Finnegan’s Wake.      

  

Gold: Power and Allure

Among the hidden secrets of London are the collections of historical objects held by the city’s 108 livery companies: not hidden, in many cases, in the sense of being inaccessible to the public (most of the collections can be viewed by arrangement), but hidden, nonetheless, in the sense that, with all of the competing attractions, most Londoners, let alone visitors, rarely do see them.

The exhibition, Gold: Power and Allure, currently showing at Goldsmiths’ Hall[1] brings together many of the treasures from the livery companies, together with items from public and private collections around the country, to tell the story of the goldsmith’s art over 4500 years of British history. Highlights include several of the pages’ jackets made for the coronation of George IV, sumptuously ornamented with gold wire; a gold facsimile of the Portland Vase made as a trophy for the Epsom races in 1884; a signet ring made for William the Conqueror’s son; and, the ultimate present for someone who has everything, a life-sized mouse automaton made in Switzerland in 1810. There are also some truly stunning examples of work by the very best modern goldsmiths.

I was naturally drawn, however, to some of the very earliest gold-work from the British Isles dating back 4500 years, the more so since there are objects here that I wrote about in Undreamed Shores. Hair ornaments, similar to these ones found at Amesbury in Wiltshire, are among the first objects that my protagonist notices after he is rescued from the sea on the Dorset coast. They make a real impression on him, both because they are worn by a stunningly beautiful woman, and because they are the first metal objects he has ever seen:

“Although most of her hair hung loose, each side of her softly rounded face was framed by a single plaited tress…Half way down each of these tresses was attached an ornament, made of a material he had never seen before. It was a material smoother than polished stone, and it shone like the sun’s rays on the ripples of the sea…”

Later, he sees the woman’s father (a character I based on the man who was buried with the ornaments now on display at Goldsmiths’ Hall) making one of these ornaments:

“Amzai watched as Arthmael placed the gold on the curved surface of the stone, carefully scored a shape on it with the flint knife, and then started to cut the shape out…”

There are gold collars or “lunulae,” also, in the exhibition, similar to the one worn by another character in the book, a significant object in the plot, since the jealousy it inspires propels the story towards its conclusion:

 (Photo: John Maynard Friedman).

“She held it up a final time, and Amzai became aware of a presence behind him, listening as they spoke. “May I look at it?” Harritz asked…He held it up to the light and watched as it shimmered…”[2]

My visit to the exhibition not only provided a welcome break from the final editing (hopefully) of my next novel, An Accidental King (set in the early years of Roman Britain), but provided me with an idea for a future novel as well. In the same room as the hair ornaments and lunulae is an enigmatic object of the 1^st or 2^nd Century AD, made for a man who, to judge from his name and dates, could plausibly be the great-grandson of my protagonist in An Accidental King (I’m not suggesting that, historically, this was the case – there isn’t enough evidence to support this – merely that it could make for a good story). Here, however, I am thinking far into the future, since I won’t be telling this man’s story until I have told his grandmother’s: I was reading a letter about her in the British Library last week and, yesterday, on my way to and from the exhibition, I was walking the streets she once walked.

I can only suggest that you visit the exhibition for yourself: there is enough material there to inspire a hundred novels!

---

[1] 1^st June to 28^th July, 10.00 to 5.00 Monday to Saturday, admission free, Goldsmiths’ Hall, Foster Lane, London EC2V 6BN.

[2] Undreamed Shores, by Mark Patton, published by Crooked Cat Publications, 2012 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Undreamed-Shores-ebook/dp/B0084UZ530/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&qid=1337840626&sr=8-6).

What makes a book - the content or the format?

I had an exchange on Twitter, with a colleague at the Centre for the Future of Museums (http://futureofmuseums.org), earlier today around the question of “what makes a book, the content or the container?” I expressed the opinion that, surely, it has always been the content, giving the example of The Odyssey. I could not fully explain my point in 140 characters, so will take the opportunity of doing so here.

I won’t rehearse the history of The Odyssey, which I am sure we all know, but the point is that, through history, it has existed in many formats or “containers,” some of which are shown above. 

Now imagine a virtual reading circle consisting of people all around the world. They might include a scholar capable of reading the original papyri, but they might equally include a housewife in Argyll listening to Sir Ian McKellan’s audiobook version, a lawyer in Seattle reading it on a kindle, there might even be people in China, Japan, India, all enjoying it in their own languages. Now there’s a point. Apart from the scholar, they will all be reading translated versions and, among the English speakers, they may have several different translations, which will make more difference to their understanding than the nature of the format. But it would, in each case, be The Odyssey, and in our virtual circle we could all discuss the time where Odysseus drives a stake into the eye of the Cyclops, and the scene in which Circe turns the sailors into pigs. So yes, of course, it is the content that makes the book – the content of the same version, in whatever format, will be the same.

At the book launch for Undreamed Shores last week, someone asked me whether I was disappointed that it had not been published as a “proper book,” only for e-readers. I replied that what I cared about was that it was published and made available for readers. The format didn’t matter to me at all. In time, of course, I would like to think that it will be made available in other formats (and, by the way, if publishers read this, we are open to offers), but if it has content, and is available to readers, as far as I am concerned it is a proper book. If it’s good enough for Homer, it’s good enough for me.

The Languages of Undreamed Shores

Several readers have commented on the languages of Undreamed Shores, and asked how I devised them. This set me worrying. How long before we find either a disgruntled philologist complaining about them or, worse still, someone making a false claim for me along the lines of “Mark Patton has reconstructed the language of the builders of Stonehenge?” I have done no such thing. It’s a trick, just like the ones that Paul Daniels performs on stage. Magicians don’t generally divulge how they perform their tricks. Writers can be a little more free, because our craft does not depend on illusion as such. What we create is fiction, fictional by design, and not by accident.

Semona and Kritenya are fictional languages spoken by fictional characters. To actually reconstruct the language of the builders of Stonehenge is probably impossible. Certainly I would not attempt it. I do have to base the languages on something, however, in order to make them believable. Simply written Jibberish would not be.

The protagonist, Amzai speaks a language that we hardly hear, since the book is entirely narrated from his viewpoint, and the book is, of course, written in English. The names and greetings are based on Basque. Why Basque? It is one of the few pre-Indo-European languages that still exists (Margaret Elphinstone also uses it for her characters in The Gathering Night, and I had to change all my names when her book appeared, so that they didn’t all overlap).

Kritenya is based loosely on Proto-Indo-European, a language ancestral to most European and Indian languages. Archaeologists and philologists cannot agree on when this language group spread into this part of the world, but those who follow the debates will be unsurprised that I (an archaeologist, trained at Cambridge under Professor Colin Renfrew), place it at the time and place I do.

Semona is based loosely on Proto-Celtic, the language ancestral to Welsh, Gaelic, Breton and Cornish. Again, archaeologists and philologists cannot agree on the date at which they spread and frankly, your guess is probably as good as mine.

I make no claim that these were the languages actually spoken, but I do want to give an impression of what it might have been like to arrive in a society where different ethnic groups were mingling for the first time, speaking different languages, in order to explore some of the tensions that must have been involved. I didn’t feel the need to develop a complex “conlang,” like Tolkien’s Elvish or Star-Treck’s Clingon, only to give a flavour of linguistic diversity.