THREE CLUES TO A MYSTERY

So why these three images on the new cover? I suppose the funeral procession at the bottom is obvious. It helped me a lot to envisage the scene of Klereides’ funeral in Chapter 6.

The image on the left? Well, I had registered that there must have been plenty of merchant ships carrying supplies to and from big cities like Athens of timber, grain, wine, pottery, olive oil and more and, of course, passengers like my heroes Lysanias and Sindron.

They and crews would need water on the journey and I worked out what the big vessels for holding this, supported in harnesses of rope or leather to prevent spillage, would have looked like, even before I came across this picture. The multiple handles would take the harness. Something like this became the murder weapon in my novel and the ‘amphora’ of the title.

And the blacksmiths at the top? It seemed to me that the taking of power from the aristocrats in 461BC must be seen as tantamount to a revolution. And I knew that similar times in later history had resulted in interest by artists in depicting ordinary people and work situations.

Greek Blacksmiths at work

When I came across it, this bas relief scene of blacksmiths at work seemed just such a piece and it gave me the inspiration for a dramatic incident at the funeral party also in Chapter 6. Incidentally, the muscular arms and hammers suggested the working class violence that the aristocrats may have feared at the time.

Put them together and what have you got? A new cover but also an indication of the thinking behind at least some of the novel.

RE-ACTIVATION

Time to re-activate my blog after a long break when other things got in the way. 

Why now? 

Because my novel Death Comes by Amphora is now under my own control and available from Amazon in a Kindle edition as well as in print, both with a brand new cover design. 

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

On top of that, next week (from 16th) will see it at a special low price, so why not check it out on Amazon. Watch out for more posts.

BOUCHERCON IN SAN FRANCISCO

Bouchercon 2010. Wow! 

Over 1400 people, a third of them authors. Staggering. How does one get to meet and chat with anyone in a crowd like that? Well, you do, I discovered. 

For authors that one knows, either from past conventions or from online chat-groups, the fallback is making contact before or after panels they are on (or they with you), if you haven’t bumped into them before then in the bar or the very excellent hospitality room with its endless supplies. 

That’s how it was with Rhys Bowen, Carola Dunn, Nancy Means Wright, Jeri Westerson, Colin Campbell, Laurie King, Adrian Magson, Ken Isaacson, Ali Karim, Kelli Stanley and my heroes Steven Saylor, Lindsay Davis and John Maddox Roberts, the first and greatest Romans of them all and all three of them on the same panel. 

All achieved, except for Sunny Frazier, who I had wanted to thank personally, like some of the others, for helpful pre-convention advice. Thanks, Sunny. 

As she suggested, I dutifully topped up every day my small piles of bookmarks and flyers on tables in common areas, which must have contributed to the very respectable book sales and to the packed and enthusiastic audience, including 20 standing round the walls, for the enjoyable and entertaining panel I was on titled “Bitter Wine” where I swapped opinions and anecdotes with Rebecca Cabntrell, Candace Robb, Caroline and Charles Todd and moderator Oline Cogdill. But that’s nothing to the massive Grand Ballroom packed solid for the Lee Child interview.

I'd like to have seen historical crime getting more attention - only three panels dedicated and those not all easy to identify, though they were all excellent - but crime is a big field to cover.

Otherwise, yes, contacts were pretty random, though wouldn’t it be helpful if authors and fans name-tags were colour-coded in some way to differentiate them, maybe agents and publishers too? 

However, opportunities were many, starting with the Newbies Breakfast on the first morning, where flyers and bookmarks immediately came into play, to the parties and publishers’ receptions whose animated conversations flowed over into nearby restaurants and bars. 

Most unexpected occasion was the meeting of the Scowrers and Molly Maguires, the local Sherlock Holmes association, held in a German restaurant which served a surprisingly respectable pint of Guinness (I am from Ireland) with very elderly members who recalled their memories of the group’s founder, the ubiquitous Anthony Boucher. I felt justified in attending as Shots magazine had compared my own heroes Lysanias and Sindron to Holmes and Watson, though I’m not sure which would be which.

I also met my personal nemesis Gary Corby, the young Australian author whose series just launched is set in exactly my own time period in Ancient Athens, with Perikles (though spelt Pericles) as a significant character. 

We agreed not to read one another’s work to avoid cross influence, as, apparently, do Davis, Saylor and Roberts, the last two of whom also landed in the same Roman period and have written books around the same historical incidents. 

Gary is a nice guy and, with a respected and active publisher, it looks as though his book "The Pericles Commission" is doing well. Does it mean interest in Ancient Athens as a fiction location is growing? Let’s hope. Now to complete my own No.2. It is going well but illness and the problems of real life have been interfering.

An amazing convention and incredibly well-organised and run by the many enthusiastic volunteers. A bonus for me was the opportunity after it ended to visit North Beach, old stamping ground of Kerouac and Ginsberg, to browse the Beat Museum and Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Bookstore, and read my poems at an Open Mic in the Caffe Greco. 

The whole six days a succession of highs, not least coming out of my modest hotel every morning and setting off into a San Francisco immediately familiar from Hollywood crime movies walking from Chinatown down the hill complete with cable car towards the concrete and glass towers of the Financial District and the convention hotel. Memorable!

Apologies for lateness of report but it's been a tough time since. Bouchercon was 14-17 October.

AND SO TO BOUCHERCON

Book launches over and successfully with many thanks to friends who helped. The poetry book looking good, everyone very appreciative. Now it’s off to Bouchercon next Wednesday. The big event of the crime fiction year, this absolutely massive convention is this year in San Francisco with over 2,000 attendees, a quarter of them authors. 

Imagine all those authors vying for attention! But other authors tell me they thoroughly enjoy it and it is productive for them, with the aim not so much to sell books at it but to catch the attention of potential readers in the expectation that they will buy when they get home.

It’s a packed schedule with five streams of panels going at the same time over four days plus authors in continuous conversation, one-author statements and interviews and activities in the craft room. Add to that social events in the evenings. It threatens to be utterly exhausting on top of the jetlag and biological clock disorientation of longhaul flights but also very exciting.

The panel I am on is called Bitter Wine at 3pm on the Friday in Room Seacliff C. It is about the need for historical accuracy in historical mystery novels among other aspects. With me are Candace Robb, Rebecca Cantrell and Caroline and Charles Todd so we range from Ancient Greece through the English Middle Ages to 20th century Europe. Sounds like a great panel and great discussion. Moderator is Oline Cogdill.

What I wasn’t prepared for is to find another author siting their novel in precisely my time and place yet there he is. Australian author Gary Corby is launching “The Pericles Commission” at Bouchercon and appearing on a panel with Steven Saylor, Lindsay Davis and John Maddox Roberts all with famous series in Ancient Rome. 

Gary’s novel sets off from the assassination of Ephialtes in Ancient Athens in 461BC and features Pericles just like me. Good to know someone else is as keen on this bit of history as me. It will be interesting to see how he has handled it and what he has come up with to fill the many gaps in the historical record, one of the most difficult aspects of writing historical fiction.

I’m looking forward to meeting lots of new people and making new friends, all enthusiastic about the same things I am. Can’t wait. I’ll let you know how it goes.

HIJACKED BY POETRY

Loads of time lately devoted to organising and publicising and sending out invites for the book-launch in Drogheda of my new poetry collection from Lapwing Publications of Belfast - probably the only poetry publisher around would take on my long poems (some here up to 5 and 7 pages). 

It's called GREYBELL WOOD AND BEYOND. 

55 pages of quirky and idiosyncratic stuff offering snapshots and mini-dramas from my life experiences and observations and my first solo run at poetry. I now have copies - looks good. On the cover is the black-and-white photo taken by my dad long years ago of my mum, sister and me sitting on a fallen tree in a bluebell wood. 

It's what prompted the title poem "Greybell Wood", which started as a fairly short nostalgia piece but grew over successive revises into a study of the way memory works and the power of photographs to trigger emotions and other cogitations. Strange where the creative process takes you. 

The same could be said of other poems including "Reunion" which follows my year at college through their lives and careers over 50 years - now there's ambitious for you! 

The book-launch is on 21st September followed by one in Dublin on October 5th. Otherwise, nail-biting time waiting to hear if I'm on a panel at Bouchercon 2010, the big crime fiction convention in San Francisco I'm going to in October.

OF ANCIENT POLITICS AND THE DOUBLE LIFE

Lets look at what I’ve been reading lately and why. I tend to avoid reading books very close to my period. Well, yes, because of the risk I might find myself plagiarising unintentionally but also because, on the one occasion I broke this rule, I suddenly found I was confusing the reality from my own research with the other author’s fiction – which may have been based on sound research or invented. Best to stay clear.

But I found the politics of 5th century Athens becoming more and more important in my sequel, so I became keen to see how other authors deal with this. Then I registered that Robert Harris’ series about Cicero’s life – Imperium and Lustrum, were straight historicals rather than histmysts so little risk of pollution. So far I’ve read only Imperium and exciting it is. Raw power politics with menace and not much else but very compelling, a real page turner. 

The same author’s Pompeii I hadn’t liked at all. Uninteresting cardboard characters, unbelievable plot sequences, solid undigested lumps of Pliny the Younger (and Elder) plonked on the page, little real understanding of how such a town would work – no thanks. Now here was the real thing – Republican Rome red in tooth and claw. Fascinating. 

But could I learn anything from it? Maybe not. As a histmyst writer, any political background has to serve and be integrated with the crimes the hero has to solve, though some of these may have a political motive. But the pace and excitement? Can I achieve that? Lets see. But, for now, I’m dying to get into Lustrum.

Then, by chance, I came across a bargain price copy of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, a novel I had never read before. Apart from the glowing quality of the writing and gradually tiring of Wilde’s epigrams and aphorisms in the mouth of Sir Henry Wotton, what’s fascinating here is Dorian’s double life and the way it reflected Wilde’s own and the whole novel almost forecasts Wilde’s own future life and downfall. Lets stick to the double life for now. 

My hero, Lysanias, inherits the estate of his uncle, a wealthy aristocrat in ancient Athens, and all the social expectations that implies yet he has been brought up his father in a distant colony as an artisan, a carpenter, and developed sympathies with craftsmen and workers. 

Now that’s very convenient for me as author (indeed why I invented the device) for Athens is split politically between the aristocrats and the radical people’s party and to be able to investigate his uncle’s death, Lysanias needs to be able to talk to individuals on both sides and get answers. 

So I invented it for story reasons but did it occur to me because my own life carries elements of similarity? Times when I have worked for a PR agency promoting the cause of, say, property developers while, in my spare time active in community organisations campaigning against specific projects of such people or even involved in plays attacking their whole ethos. Whether that was a cause, obviously it must have helped me to write effectively what it feels like to have that ambivalence, having to balance two different ways of thinking and understanding. 

That was fine in No.1. How does it work now when there are people on both sides who know of his connections with their opponents? That’s what I’m working out at the moment.

CLASSICS, CRIME AND LOADS OF CHAT

I attended the excellent Summer School of the Classical Association of Ireland at Trinity College this weekend. Two really fascinating talks by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill about how the ruins of Herculaneum (the other Roman town buried by Vesuvius at the same time as Pompeii) were discovered and at least partially unearthed over succeeding centuries and about how the parts so far exposed are being restored and preserved. 

The problems here are that the volcanic material that overtook the town and flowed into all spaces solidified into rock which is difficult to drill out plus that a modern town was built on top, which doesn’t make the archaeologists’ work easy. 

Some beautiful and revealing photographs and interesting old newsreel material of archaeological teams at work in the first half of the 20th. century. Useful titbits garnered as well from other talks about ancient Greek houses and temples. Individuals among this gathering of very friendly people – teachers, academics and enthusiasts - showed interest in my novel and there was much congenial conversation.

Launch of my new collection of poems Bluebell Wood and Beyond comes next in late September and early October in Drogheda and Dublin and then, in mid-November, the big adventure of attending Bouchercon in San Francisco, perhaps the most heavily attended of all the crime fiction conventions. 

It sounds very exciting. 

With luck I get to meet my heroes – Steven Saylor and Lindsey Davis whose series of novels in their different styles about Ancient Roman detectives Gordianus and Falco defined the genre and laid down the high standard to be aimed for.