A Roman day out

I’m lucky enough to live close to Wroxeter—the site of the fourth largest Roman city in Britain. 

Now all that’s left is a few stones and bricks in a field and it’s hard to imagine how it must have been in Roman times. However, this weekend a group of re-enactors moved in and brought the place back to life. I had the time of my life, chatting to all the participants and getting a glimpse of what life in Roman Britain was like. Of course, I took loads of photos and made pages of notes for my WIP which is set in Roman Britain.

Surgical instruments and wound plugs

Trepanning demonstration

For me, the highlights were the surgeon (medicus) and the midwife (obstetrix). My mother—a former nurse—informs me that some of the instruments used were remarkably similar to ones in use today. We saw catheters (metal, rather than latex, obviously), a trepanning tool (used for relieving pressure within the skull as a result of a depressed fracture) and an eye-watering speculum. Oh, and haemorrhoid clamps! 

Midwife's sign - a copy of a tomb relief found in Ostia. Not much doubt what's happening there!

A birthing stool

In addition to the medics, there was also a cookery demonstration, a potter, weaving and military displays. It was so useful to be able to chat to the participants and get a feel for the practicalities of daily life in Roman times. An invaluable experience for a historical novelist!

Roman armour. I picked up a shield - it was so heavy I couldn't imagine carrying it on a 26-mile march!

Potter's wheel

A Roman kitchen

Quick update and locations

I’ve got some time on my hands at the moment. Last week was all excitement, because I got my NWS report back on The Welsh King’s Spy and was told it’s ‘almost ready’. As a result I devoted all my spare time to making the suggested adjustments, which I finished on Sunday. Now it’s with my beta reader (the gorgeous Janice Preston—if you haven’t read her wonderful debut novel, Mary and the Marquis, yet, drop everything and order it now!) So there’s nothing more I can do on TWKS until I get it back.

It feels wrong to be doing nothing writing-wise, though. I do have two novellas that are at different stages of editing, but I’m finding it hard to immerse myself in the lives of those characters when I might have to get back into the heads of Matilda and Huw in a few days. Therefore I’ve decided to start planning my next full-length novel. 

I had an idea for a hero and heroine back in the summer. Of course I was committed to my rewrite of TWKS by that time, so I jotted down the idea in my notebook, wrote the opening scene that had come to me, then forgot about it. I dug my notes out yesterday and I think the story has potential. So I’ve decided to develop the characters and come up with a plot outline. There’s just one problem – I’m not very familiar with the location.

Hawkstone Follies - I always find inspiration here

So far all my novels/novellas have been set in Shropshire and just over the border in Wales. It’s where I live, which makes research dead easy. I just have to go for a walk or bike ride and I’m exploring the landscape that my characters inhabit, seeing the same skyline, the building materials, the trees, plants and animals… I have visited the place where my new story is set, but I haven’t built up anything like the same feel for the place. Still, I’ve decided to go for it – any excuse for a research trip to a beautiful location!

Do you prefer to set your stories in familiar locations, or would you rather research new places?

In search of heroes

It takes a special kind of hero to look good in lycra

Yes, I know I've been quiet, but now the Olympics are over, I can get back to posting here more regularly. I will admit to being distracted during the games, but who can blame me with the inspiring heroes and heroines performing there?

I'm going to stick with the heroes in this post. I write historical romance, set in post-Roman and medieval Britain. My heroes are driven warriors, struggling to carve out a life for themselves in dangerous times. I'm always looking for inspiration for my next hero, but living in a time so different from the ones I write about means there's a dearth of brooding warlords roaming the streets.

But now my eyes have been opened. The Olympics were full of exactly the type of man I model my heroes on. Maybe they've swapped their destriers for bicycles and swords for javelins, but they've all made sacrifices to achieve their goals, struggled against set-backs and fought tooth and nail to gain the edge over their rivals. Every Olympian is a winner, whether or not they are a medalist. And they all have a story to tell. If I find myself needing fresh inspiration, I now now where to turn.

Roll on Rio!

Progress report and Scrivener

I started work on my first draft this week and so far I've exceeded my target of writing eight hundred words a day. It doesn't sound like much, but if I set out to write, say, fifteen hundred words, I freeze and convince myself I'll never do it. The best way I've found of fighting the fear is by convincing it there's no reason to start whispering to me in the first place. I know I can easily manage eight hundred words and once I've got going I can usually do much more.

My progress has also been helped by the discovery of Scrivener. I downloaded it a while ago, on the recommendation of a writing group friend. However I was in the middle of my previous novel at the time and because it looked complicated I didn't think it was worth the bother of switching over from Word.

I wish I had. It's quite simply the best way I've found of organising my writing. And it's not so complicated. I spent an hour going through the tutorial project and that's all I needed to grasp the basics. Now all my research notes, outlines, character sheets etc are one click away, on the same page that I'm working on. Previously I had to save everything into folders, or bookmark web pages and I was always mislaying things.

There's no way I can talk about all the features, but there are two I've found particularly useful this week. Firstly, it's dead simple to create a template. Eg a blank character sheet or location sheet. I used a tip from Jessica Hart and cribbed her scene sheets. I've found these so useful for planning each scene and it saves me a lot of time in the long run as I don't have to work it out when I write the scene. The second thing is the target setting gadget. I can set a target word count for each scene and as I type, a red line gets longer and gradually turns green as I approach my target. It's a great motivator.

I can't recommend Scrivener highly enough. Give it a try if you haven't already. (I use the Mac version BTW, but a Windows version is also available.)

New books and research

My book from Nicola Cornick arrived today - Whisper of Scandal. As it looks like being a wet weekend, I'm going to enjoy curling up in my conservatory to read that. When I'm not chasing around with buckets, trying to catch the drips...

It was a bumper post today. I also got Hedgerow Medicine by Julie Bruton-Seal and Matthew Seal - the first of the books I bought with the Amazon token. It's a fascinating read. It lists fifty British herbs and their uses in medicine. Not only that, but it gives instructions on how and when to harvest, store and create recipes. I've been wanting to get a book on herbal remedies for ages, because several times I've found my characters needing to treat ailments or wounds. I've spent hours searching websites, looking for information on the herbs they would have available. Now I've got all the information I need in one book.

I've been hooked on historical fiction ever since I read my first Rosemary Sutcliffe book, but it's only since I started to write it myself that I fully appreciated how much research is needed. Not so much into the events surrounding the chosen time period - although that's important too - but the everyday details. Like what my characters would eat, what utensils they would use, what they would wear etc. When I was writing the first draft of my post-Roman Britain story I kept stumbling over niggling details that weren't vital to the plot, but were really difficult to find out. I've now read so much about the archaeology of Roman and post-Roman Britain that I wonder if I shouldn't go the whole hog and do an archaeology degree.

Of course, now I've completed that ms I've decided to set my next novel in twelfth-century England and Wales. So I've got to start my research from scratch. It's a good thing I enjoy it!