Blog

Research!

Some people revel in it. Good on them. Research makes me yawn, even when it’s something I’m really interested in – like Justinian’s Constantinople. I just don’t like details!

Just for the fun of it, I’m writing a novel set in the sixth century AD in the fabled provinces of the Eastern Roman Empire. You know, where they invented the word Byzantine? When I think Byzantine, I see people with big almond-shaped eyes and long noses. I see chariot races, and horridly complicated public punishments, and shifty looking people lurking in the dim corners of the palace plotting their next move in the Game of Empires…

It was an extraordinarily interesting period (yawn). For instance, Justinian’s uncle was a horny-handed peasant, and his wife used to be a prostitute. According to a contemporary chronicler, the royal couple used to scuttle about the palace at night transformed into giant rats….

Interesting factoid…some historians reckon Justinian created the first pandemic!

And then there’s the Ayia Sofia – Justinian’s greatest work (well, technically, other people built it, he just paid) – and the Code of Justinian – the foundation of the modern legal system. Hate lawyers? Blame Justinian. In those days Byzantines were obsessed with two things – horse racing and religion. Who now knows the difference between a Monophysite and an Arian, and cares whether Jesus’ foreskin was divine or, erm, human and therefore subject to decay? But back then, people came to blows over it….wonder if some future civilisation will be equally mystified by Republicans and Democrats?

Anyway that’s all fascinating (yawn) but what I’m concerned with is the adventurous career of Clodia, famed (retired) courtesan of Constantinople, as she traverses the provinces in search of her ex-lover’s annoying teenage bride. It sounds easy – lots of sex, swashbuckling and dead bodies – but there’s no getting away from the damn research! What did she travel in? (clue – not a chariot) What did she travel on? (a Roman road, yes, but which one?) What did she wear? (for preference, a gauzy tunica, but even courtesans have to make concessions to the weather sometimes). And so on and so forth…

Pity I can’t just go there!

Anyone have the same trouble?

As a writer I’m always tempted to try something new. The easiest thing for me is to sit down and write straight fantasy – something like Lady Charlotte’s Dilemma or even the Like Flies trilogy (although when I’m done I find myself spending the next three months trying to untie the plot knots I got myself into!). It’s fun.

But then I get restless. Which is why, one day, I decided to write a thriller. The idea was simple enough. Two sisters go to an idyllic coastal town to investigate a death. The coroner says it was an accident. The victim’s ex-husband says that her boyfriend did it. But as time goes on, the town seems less and less idyllic.

That was the idea. But once I started, the book began to write itself in an entirely different direction. The sisters began to take on a life of their own, with complex and dark back stories. The bad guy insisted he wasn’t so bad after all, and the good guy began to look distinctly evil. And finally, the book insisted it wasn’t about murder, but about something much less dramatic – shame. The kind of shame you feel when you do something awful and no-one knows (but you do). The shame you feel when you’ve successfully projected an image to the world, and now you’re about to be exposed as someone much less delightful. The shame you feel when someone’s treated you as if you’re worthless, and now you think you must be.

Anyway, Shame will be published in a few months. Meanwhile, here’s an excerpt.

Ps…I haven’t had the cover designed yet. But the beach photo is by Photoholgic on Unsplash.