Today, Brook Cottage Books’ friend Alison Morton launches SUCCESSIO, the third novel in her award-winning Roma Nova series featuring sassy detective Carina Mitela. As writer and broadcaster Sue Cook says, it’s a “A real edge-of-the-seat read, genuinely hard to put down.”
So how does she do it? Over to you, Alison!
“Thanks, JB! All the usual good ‘craft’ rules: cracking story, engaging, and hopefully slightly quirky characters, emotional pressure, dilemmas and conflict, snappy and purposeful dialogue and, of course, a badly tangled love life.
Writing thrillers means keeping your imagination going at full belt, but setting it in an alternative timeline means you have to use some of the same tools as writers of regular historical fiction. More on my blogsite.
But the main things, apart from a solid plot, are thinking through the setting that has formed your characters and making sure your characters live, and love, naturally within their world.”
What’s SUCCESSIO about?
SUCCESSIO continues the story of Carina, whom we met in the first two books in the series, INCEPTIO and PERFIDITAS. What’s a little different is that the next generation steps up to take an important part in the action.
Roma Nova – the last remnant of the Roman Empire that has survived into the 21stcentury – is at peace. Carina Mitela, the heir of a leading family, but choosing the life of an officer in the Praetorian Guard Special Forces, is not so sure.
She senses danger crawling towards her when she encounters a strangely self-possessed member of the unit hosting their exchange exercise in Britain. When a blackmailing letter arrives from a woman claiming to be her husband Conrad’s lost daughter and Conrad tries to shut Carina out, sheknows the threat is real.
Trying to resolve a young man’s indiscretion twenty-five years before turns into a nightmare that not only threatens to destroy all the Mitelae but also attacks the core of the imperial family itself. With her enemy holding a gun to the head of the heir to the imperial throne, Carina has to make the hardest decision of her life…
Alison’s bio
Alison Morton writes Roman-themed alternate history thrillers with strong heroines. She holds a bachelor’s degree in French, German and Economics, a masters’ in history and lives in France with her husband.
A ‘Roman nut’ since age 11, she has visited sites throughout Europe including the alma mater, Rome. But it was the mosaics at Ampurias (Spain) that started her wondering what a modern Roman society would be like if run by women…
Both INCEPTIO, the first in the Roma Nova series, which was also shortlisted for the 2013 International Rubery Book Award, and PERFIDITAS, the second in series, have been honoured with the B.R.A.G. Medallion®, an award for independent fiction that rejects 90% of its applicants. Alison’s third book SUCCESSIO is being launched now!
SUCCESSIO is available through your local bookshop (paperback) and online as ebook and paperback at multiple retailers.
You can read more about Alison, Romans, alternate history and writing here on her blog at www.alison-morton.com
or on her Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AlisonMortonAuthor
Twitter: @alison_morton
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