‘Nero’ cruelly snatched
Bring home a literary treasure and be forced to wait...
I was really looking forward to reading this book.
I got the author to sign it and sped home clutching my pristine copy of Nero.
Then my wife sneaked off with it while I wasn’t looking.
I have forgiven her – she deserves a moment’s relaxation after all her creative efforts writing and illustrating a children’s book about hedgehogs.
This the first time I have asked an author to scribble his message on the flyleaf but then I had been enthralled by Conn Iggulden’s account of his writing career and his conviction that Nero had suffered a bad press by Roman writers in order to make subsequent emperors look positively angelic in contrast.
The hint that Tacitus and Suetonius had been the ancient equivalent of spin doctors intrigued me. The difference between accounts of Nero’s reign and Julius Caesar’s annals is that Caesar wrote his own story. But the latter was nonetheless a spin doctor on his own behalf and although I use his writings in research, I am disinclined to believe everything I read there.
I’ve been in PR and I understand the temptation to ‘spin’ the story, but for a journalist like me that doesn’t sit well with one’s conscience. You might even see this article as ‘spin’ because I am volunteer PR man for the event’s organiser, the Alderney Literary Trust, but I like that word ‘trust’ and we’re dealing with trustworthy people here.
So did Nero murder his mother and kick his pregnant wife to death? Did he fiddle while Rome burned?
You’ll have to swap Wikipedia for Conn’s series to find out. Whether you believe the author or not, you’ll have enjoyed a great read. You have my wife’s word on that.
Why this island?
The author chose the island where I live, Alderney, as the Channel Islands launchpad for his book launch because he has been unable to attend the annual Alderney Literary Festival as a speaker due to prior commitments.
He was here with fellow Roman-era author Anthony Riches who is always chairman of our literary festival, so I caught up with both of them prior to the event in which Tony fired the odd question mainly so that Conn could pause for breath.
It’s no con
Conn spoke for an hour to an audience of 50 fans about the joy of researching and writing fiction. Then the sell-out book-signing session.
The former English teacher told how he began writing stories as an 11-year-old when his mother advised him that if he wanted to be a writer he needed to know and understand people. His love of ancient history led him to find out more about the time when a 19-year-old Julius Caesar was captured by pirates, giving him his first big break as an author.
“Everywhere in history there are good stories with the dull bits edited out,” he said. “These are stories people have vaguely heard about but they don’t know how they turn out.”
He also revealed how he spent six months in a shed with his brother Hal writing The Dangerous Book for Boys, a how-to book for kids aged eight to eighty featuring all the adventurous things they can make from treehouses and go-karts to binding a flint to an arrow shaft.
For his Conqueror series on Genghis Khan he travelled to Mongolia to explore the vast terrain and meet people whose customs have changed little in 800 years. It’s just like the Brecon Beacons, he said, only much, much bigger and with fewer Welshmen.
He’s written bestselling series on the aforementioned Julius Caesar and Genghis Khan, plus the Wars of the Roses and ancient Athens, as well as two stand-alone novels: Dunstan, set in the red-blooded world of tenth-century England, and The Falcon of Sparta, in which he returned to Ancient World themes.
Quite the inspiration
Surprisingly, my wife hasn’t finished the book yet. It’s only the morning after. She’s just halfway through and occasionally looks up to say things about Conn’s writing that make me insanely jealous.
But then, it was Conn himself who inspired me to write Roman-era novels with his breakthrough series on Julius Caesar. I never knowingly copy any other author – I like to think I have my own voice in historical fiction – but this came close.
So I will read Nero and manfully accept that Conn Iggulden is very, very good.
Meanwhile… true to form, here’s my update on where we’re at with this year’s publication of four of my novels. Next year, the start of my ‘Britannia Conspiracy’ series in which Alderney will play a starring role…
Pre-order Vipers of Rome (due out July 19)
Conn was asked that question at his talk at Rossiter’s in Ross on Wye which I was privileged to attend. If I remember rightly, it was the publisher’s choice, and Conn was vague himself about the origins.
I’m fascinated by that cover… why a wasp?