Guest post by author, Alison Morton

INCEPTIO: a novel of Roma Nova

Writing history “alternately”

Stepping into a book’s world is always the start of an exciting adventure, especially going back to the past to hear the clash and smash of Agincourt, admire the frocks and pelisses of Jane Austen’s Bath or even smell the stench of Victorian slums.

But what if that past is an “alternate” one where history developed differently?

What if King Harold had won the Battle of Hastings in 1066? Or George Washington had failed to cross the Delaware River on Christmas night in 1776? Or that firm favourite, if Hitler had won the Second World War?

More intriguing is when something that seems obscure at the time turns out to have a massive impact, e.g. the thought not occurring to Tim Berners-Lee to link up hypertext and the embryonic Internet to ease CERN scientists’ daily working lives or if hadn’t rained the night before Agincourt.

Alison Morton, author of INCEPTIO

So what defines alternate history?
A story can take place can take place in the past, present or future, but the point of divergence (POD) from the standard timeline must be in the past. The diverted timeline can’t be changed back by some clever plot development, time machine or technical gizmo (or waking up and finding it’s all been a dream, or possibly a nightmare!). And lastly, the narrative should show some of the consequences of the change and describe how the alternate world works.

In my Roma Nova thrillers, the trigger in the past was the final brutal suppression of paganism by Roman emperor Theodosius in 395 AD which sent four hundred non-Christian Romans north to find a safe place to live.

 Over the following sixteen centuries, the late fourth century colony battled its way through history to become Roma Nova, a high tech, financial mini-state which retained and developed Roman values, but with a twist.  And Roma Nova’s very existence has altered the world’s history.

Stories with Romans are usually about famous emperors, epic battles, depravity, intrigue, wicked empresses and a lot of sandals, tunics and swords.

But imagine the Roman theme projected sixteen hundred years further forward into the 21st century where thriller story of INCEPTIO takes place...

What is the most difficult thing about writing stories set in an alternate history timeline?

Reaching into the past means getting inside the heads of the characters, imagining what they see in their everyday world, what they smell, eat and touch. For stories set in a different country, writers can visit the places the characters would live in, smell the sea, touch the plants, walk under the hot blue sky, or freeze in a biting wind.

But if a writer invents that country, then the task is doubled; no sources and no research visits.

Not only history, but geography and social, economic and political development must be worked out carefully; this sounds dry, but every living person is a product of their local conditions. And to keep the story plausible, it must develop in a historically logical way.

I firmly believe you must know your history before you attempt “alternating” it!

As with all history-based fiction, research should be worn lightly and not dumped on the reader. One way to stay plausible and keep the reader engaged is to infuse, but not flood, the story with detail which reinforces the original setting the writer has introduced.

Even though INCEPTIO is mostly set in the 21st century, the Roman characters still say things like 'I wouldn't be in your sandals (not shoes) when he finds out.'

And there are honey-coated biscuits, not chocolate digestives, in the police squad room.

Above all, when writing in an unfamiliar setting the characters should display normal emotions and behaviour. Human beings of all ages and cultures have similar needs, hurts and joys, often expressed in alienating or (to us) peculiar ways.  But the emotions of a romantic relationship are the same whether set in ancient Rome, the reign of Henry VIII or the 21^st century.

Ultimately, alternate history allows your imagination to explore outside the confines of the set timeline and to introduce conflict and challenges to history in your own terms.

And that’s a lot of fun!

INCEPTIO is available on Amazon UK http://www.amazon.co.uk/Inceptio-Roma-Nova-Alison-Morton/dp/1781320624 

and Amazon US http://www.amazon.com/Inceptio-Roma-Nova-Alison-Morton/dp/1781320624

You can read more about Alison, Romans, alternate history and writing here on her blog at www.alison-morton.com

or on Facebook: www.facebook.com/AlisonMortonAuthor  

and Twitter: @alison_morton

Vote for Witchfall on Goodreads!

Witchfall on Amazon

If you're a Goodreads member, and looking forward to the publication of my paranormal romance Witchfall this summer, I'd be hugely grateful if you could vote for Witchfall on this Goodreads list of new and forthcoming UK YA for 2013.

Witchfall is within the Top Ten at the moment, but to get any higher or stay there, it needs a constant stream of votes.

Many thanks for your help!

Victoria x

The Birth of William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was probably born around this day in 1564. As we only have records of baptisms from that time, not birth certificates, we cannot pinpoint the exact day of his birth.

Since baby Will was baptised in the small Warwickshire town of Stratford upon Avon on April 26th 1564, it's fair to assume he would have been born a few days earlier. Most babies were baptised as soon as possible after birth, long before the mother was allowed to leave her room following her 'confinement'. This traditional 'lying in' period may first have been observed to lessen the chance of infections, but by then was shrouded with religious mystery. If the mother bore a boy, she had to remain in her birthing room, untouched by her husband, for thirty days. If a girl, that was extended to forty. (One could cynically speculate why there was a difference between the sexes.) She would then be 'churched' in a special ceremony, and after that normal life could resume.

Infant mortality rates were very high, so parents preferred not to delay baptism. This was in case the child died before it could be baptised - in which case, the child's soul could not enter heaven unshriven, according to the law of original sin. At a time when belief in God and the afterlife was absolute, such a terrible fate was not to be treated lightly. No mother wished to think of their dead child's soul howling in the wilderness or being condemned forever to Purgatory. On All Souls' Day, November 2nd, prayers were said to free all 'trapped souls', including those who had died before baptism.

So little William would have been wrapped in his swaddling clothes, which were more like a straitjacket combined with a cocoon than today's easy-stretch baby-gro, and carried to the parish church for his baptism. This was Stratford's Holy Trinity Church, where his baptism appears in the register in Latin: Gulielmus filius Johannes Shakespeare.

It was likely to be the midwife who took him there, his father John Shakespeare possibly accompanying her, along with a white linen 'chrisom', a garment used solely for the christening service, and in which the baby would be laid following the anointing of his body and the prayers of his godparents.

April 23rd is also St George's Day, of course. So it makes sense to have combined the special day dedicated to England's patron saint with a day commemorating England's greatest writer. Perhaps the world's greatest writer of all time. Homer aside, that is.

My new novel His Dark Lady is a Tudor novel set in London and at the court of Elizabeth I. Part of the narrative follows Shakespeare as a young actor in London, shortly after the birth of his own first child, Susannah.

Interview at the Pittsburgh Examiner

For those who enjoy the quick Ten Questions style interview - including the traditional tea or coffee question - there's a new one with me up at the Pittsburgh Examiner.

Enjoy!

Vx

Win RNA Award-nominated book set at the Guardian!

There's a fantastic opportunity at the Guardian newspaper right now to win a full set of all this year's Young Adult RNA Award-nominated novels, including my own novel, Witchstruck, which won the award.

To enter, follow this link to The Guardian online.The deadline for entries is April 29th.

Good luck!

Victoria x

Harlequin Teen cover for US edition of Witchstruck

Witchstruck, already available in the UK, will be published in the US this autumn.

Autism Awareness Month

April is Autism Awareness Month, and I want to celebrate my wonderful twin sons, who are both autistic.

My twin boys are ten years old now, and are marvellous people. They are polite and friendly, they love books and computer games, they help out around the house - with a little push from Mum, ahem - and sometimes they even think about keeping their bedroom tidy. Though the actual tidying doesn't happen very often.

Our family at Christmas 2012

In other words, they are perfectly ordinary ten year old boys. 

Autism, for our family, is just how things are. Like a character trait, it's just one part of who our boys are and how their world works. But that's not the only way autism can be viewed. Every child is different, and every family approaches this condition differently.

Many people, perhaps surprisingly, are still not aware of autism or what kind of condition it is. This partly stems from what a broad range autism encompasses as a condition. For our boys, it largely affects the way they see the world - and sometimes the way the world sees them. But we're hopeful that the more people become aware of autism, and bring it into the mainstream, the easier it will be for those with autism to be understood and appreciated for what they bring to society.

Was Shakespeare A Love-Rat?

Was Shakespeare a 'love-rat' or just an over-imaginative poet?

My new historical novel, His Dark Lady, is set at the court of Elizabeth I, and amongst other storylines traces the relationship between William Shakespeare and his "Dark Lady of the Sonnets". In my account, Lucy Morgan takes on that role, a young African singer and court lady. Her character was introduced in The Queen's Secret, where she met William at the age of eleven, and her story will conclude in book three.

When writing His Dark Lady, I was very aware of my own attitude towards this relationship between Shakespeare and Lucy Morgan. Shakespeare married very young, before coming to London to make his way as an actor. By the time he meets Lucy again, he already has a child. His wife, Anne Hathaway, is back in his home town of Stratford, living with his parents, and probably never joined her husband in London. Indeed, she may only ever have seen him during his theatrical touring visits to Warwickshire.

Some might consider that his love sonnets are wholly imaginary constructs, with no reference to the poet's life whatsoever. That Shakespeare 'made it all up', in other words, in a spirit of sensationalism or possibly harking back to the medieval traditions of courtly love. But if you reject that as unlikely - and certainly a fictionalised account of his life must address the torrid love affairs mentioned in his sonnets at some point - it only leaves us with the hard cold truth of adultery.

Given the above, it became impossible for me to portray Shakespeare in His Dark Lady as anything but what the tabloids call a 'love-rat'.

His Dark Lady is set in Stratford and at the court of Elizabeth I.

Yet despite his adultery, I do feel some sympathy for Shakespeare. He married at eighteen - very young indeed by Tudor standards - probably because he had made his older bride Anne Hathaway pregnant; the two of them were then welded together for life by this reckless act. It must have been a very common problem, the Tudor equivalent of a shotgun marriage. And men in this position - who led freer lives than their wives - may well have been tempted to conduct affairs outside their marriages, knowing they were safe enough from most social censure.

While we must strive, as historical novelists, to look at our characters through the eyes of their age, it is in some cases very difficult not to pass a more twenty-first century judgement on certain behaviours, as we do when we look at Henry VIII's barbaric and unjust treatment of his wives. So Shakespeare's infidelity becomes a terrible weight on his love for Lucy Morgan, a weight which even he must feel in this story, as a sensitive man, and which colours their love from the start.

As for Lucy herself, she goes into this affair blinded by love, refusing to suspect that William may already be married. For Lucy to have been aware of his married state from the beginning - and still have entered into an adulterous affair with him - would have gone against her very nature, which is honest above all else.

Lucy's faults are innocence and sexual inexperience. But Shakespeare's faults are those of the love-rat, the married man who lies to the woman he desires in his desperation to seize a little happiness.

Unfortunately for Lucy, the 'other woman' usually comes out the loser in these extramarital affairs. Especially when the woman in question is one of Elizabeth I's ladies-in-waiting, whose punishments for the unchaste maid at court were notoriously harsh ...

Read more about HIS DARK LADY.