The strangeness, and freedom, of writing a trilogy

Guest post by Alison Morton.

This month, Successio, the third book in my Roma Nova alternate history thriller series, is out in the world. But as I raise a glass of bubbly with friends, fans and fellow writers to celebrate, I can’t help but smile.

When I started my first novel, Inceptio, I had no idea what I was doing – writing it was an impulse, a reaction to a dire film and thinking I could produce something better. But not even halfway through the first draft, I realized I had a far bigger story and a far more complex imagined world than I’d anticipated. So I did the classic thing – I decided it was going to be a trilogy.

While I was scribbling book 1, my focus shifted to planning book 2, which was going to be the pivot for books 1 and 3. Some trilogies develop from book 1 and the original story can widen out into an impossible sprawl in order to make each book more exciting than the previous one.

Although I saw it differently at the time, the eighteen months of rejections of book 1 gave me an invaluable period in which to plan, draft and hone the whole trilogy. I blush at what Inceptio would have been like without that maturation.

So what did I learn, and what are my tips to pass on to other AH writers?

1. Know your backstory
All three of my books are set in an imaginary country, Roma Nova, which was founded 1600 years before the ‘present’. The point of divergence was in AD 395, when the final edict by Christian Emperor Theodosius banned all pagan religious practice; the sacred flame of Rome that had burned for over a thousand years was extinguished, temples ransacked, and priests and Vestals thrown on to the street.  The Roman senatorial families pleaded for religious tolerance, but Theodosius made any pagan practice, even dropping a pinch of incense on a family altar in a private home, into a capital offence. And his ‘religious police’ driven by the austere and ambitious bishop Ambrosius of Milan, became increasingly active in pursuing pagans…this really happened.

In my alternate timeline, over four hundred Romans loyal to the old gods, and so in danger of execution, decided to trek north out of Italy to a semi-mountainous area similar to modern Slovenia. Led by Senator Apulius at the head of twelve senatorial families, they established a colony based initially on land owned by Apulius’ Celtic father-in-law. By purchase, alliance and conquest, this grew into Roma Nova.

Researching the POD time and writing this out not only fixes it in your mind but prepares you for the inevitable questions that fans and followers will ask you when your book is published. The bonus is that you can ‘mine’ the backstory for references when writing your story in the ‘present’.

2. Work out the entire plot in advance
My books follow the adventures of the same heroine, Praetorian Carina Mitela, from when she (and the reader!) discovers Roma Nova to sixteen years later. Of course, she will save the world and hopefully herself. But that’s too vague. Each book needs its own separate and distinct story, but one which contributes to the plot arc of the trilogy.

Crudely speaking, apart from the individual thriller story, book 1 sets the scene, introduces the world, the ‘rules’ of that world and the main characters. Book 2 consolidates, widens and sets the ground for the final reckoning in book 3. But remember that a reader may pick up book 2 first and while they may be eager to find out what went before and what happened afterwards, they must have a satisfying read from the book they bought. Writers need to drip in enough backstory to bring the new reader up to speed without boring the established fan.

3. Know your characters in advance
Adding a raft of new characters in each book is tempting. I confess to a fair number, but Roma Nova, like ancient Rome operates on collectivities like families, military, even criminal organisations, so I need a support group for my protagonist.

As for Carina herself, I've had in-depth conversations with her. In fact, her life, attitudes and feelings would be my specialist subject on the Mastermind TV quiz show! Here’s an early interview with her from the time of Inceptio and a later one, fifteen years (in book time!) after the first.

Recycling characters in each book not only helps eliminate ‘character creep’, but is a pleasure for both writer and reader as we see each individual develop his or her own story.  However, you do need new people now and again and however reluctantly, you should kill off one or two or you risk making your world too much like Shangri-La or Pleasantville.

4. Work out big secrets in advance and scatter little ones throughout all the books
As a reader, I like a good, heavy surprise or a grand dramatic showdown at the end of books, or at least a ‘twist in the tale’.  Hints about this should pop up throughout the book.  As a writer, I love laying ‘Easter eggs’ in one book that hatch in another. I was lucky that I was able to do this with Inceptio, Perfiditas and Successio as I had all first drafts written before Inceptio finally went to print.

5. Intrigue by revelation over a longer stretch
With a trilogy, you have the advantage of being able to reveal backstory and other facets of your characters over a longer span. This needs to be done carefully and not be an excuse for padding. In an epic, saga or high concept story, we all love ‘deep lore from the past’, hidden family secrets or a forbidden passion. Timely revelations also strengthen the bonds between the books.

6. Keep to ‘da rulz’
Make the point your alternative timeline diverges from the standard historical timeline logical – nobody likes contrived plot points.  Linked with this is the need to research that point thoroughly so you can set the scene in your current story accurately and project it forward without losing the reader’s trust. Anchor the POD in your narration if it takes place a while afterwards (mine is 1600 years afterwards!) through references to the past (battles, heroes, traitors, pivotal events, ties with other nations). And finally, use elements from the historic record carefully, but not fearfully.

7. Practicalities
Your head may be stuffed with information about your setting, you may have notebooks or files full of research or you may just live in your books’ world. But you need to have consistent information to hand on the internal values and culture, governmental, societal and economic structures, geography, history, sources of income, education, food, religion and, of course, language.

I don’t have a map, but I do know where Roma Nova is and that Castra Lucilla in to the south of the city and Aquae Caesaris and Brancadorum are to the west and east respectively.

I maintain a list of characters for each book, remembering to update it in the next as characters change job, get promoted, married, or move on. Something I've found indispensable is a spreadsheet of ages, tracking who is what age when something happens and preventing character X being older that his mother.

The very worst thing?
I’m speaking as a reader here. When something or somebody pops up like a deus ex machina (aka alien space bat) in a sequel or directly contradicts something in a previous book and there has not been the least hint about it. Even if you, as a writer, think up the cleverest idea in the world for book 3, but you haven’t mentioned it before, don’t do it! Star Trek fans will cringe at the memory of the controversy over the changed Klingon physical appearance. In an episode where Captain Picard and team went back to Captain Kirk’s time, all that distinguished Klingons from humans were bushy eyebrows and bad attitude. Modern Klingon Lieut-Cdr Worf  growled at the humans, telling them not to ask – it was a Klingon-only secret – and hinted it was due to a terrible disease in the past. Hmm.

The trilogy in evolution?
Well, Successio, the third Roma Nova thriller, sets off into the world this month. But the books don’t end here – readers are clamouring for further Roma Nova stories and I have plenty more in my story box. So now I've turned the trilogy into the start of a series. But the golden key is that I have my world well and truly built, from the weapon the modern Praetorians practice with to hone close combat skills to childcare provision, from the solidi coins and notes to the grape and olive harvest times, from the imperatrix’s collecting hobby to the Twelve Families legal code.

I have at least three more books planned around a significant secondary character – also a Praetorian special forces officer – and then, who knows?

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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. Inceptio was shortlisted for the 2013 International Rubery Book Award, Perfiditas was honoured with the B.R.A.G. Medallion and both were shortlisted for Writing Magazine’s 2014 Self-Publishing Book of the Year Award.

INCEPTIO – An Alternate View

Guest post by Alison Morton.

When I wrote INCEPTIO, the first of my series of Roma Nova thrillers that was published last week, my aim was to produce a cracking story full of suspense, mystery, heroism, humanity and the odd touch of humour. The characters had to be well-defined and realistic, true products of their societies.

The core story is of a twenty-five year old living in New York who faces total disruption to her life when a sinister government enforcer determined to eliminate her pursues her to Europe. Add in a spy from her dead mother’s homeland who can’t make up his mind whether he likes her or not. And the strange country that she feels at home in, but hasn't adapted to. And the killer’s still after her...

That sounds as if it could be set anywhere, but New York is an Autonomous City in the Eastern United States (EUS) that the Dutch only left in 1813 and the British in 1865. The New World French states of Louisiane and Québec are ruled by Gouverneur-Généraux on behalf of Napoléon VI, California and Texas belong to the Spanish Empire and the Western Territories are a protected area for the Indigenous Peoples. These are only background details as the New World is only the setting for the first chapters. But as J K Rowling knew with Harry Potter’s world, although you don’t put it in the books, you have to have worked it all out in your head.

So, where did the Roma Nova in my books come from? 

In our own timeline, the Western Roman Empire didn’t ‘fall’ in a cataclysmic event as often portrayed in film and television. It localised and dissolved like chain mail fragmenting into separate links, giving way to rump states, local city states and petty kingdoms all facing the dynamic rise of the new peoples of Europe particularly the Franks, Visigoths, Burgundians and Alamans - see my post on the Domain of Soissons. The Eastern Roman Empire survived, albeit as the much diminished city state of Byzantium, until it fell in 1453 to the Muslim Ottoman Empire.

Some scholars think that Christianity fatally weakened the traditional Roman way of life and was a significant factor in the Western Empire’s collapse. Emperor Constantine's personal conversion to Christianity in AD 313 was a turning point for the new religion. By AD 394, his several times successor, Theodosius, banned all traditional Roman religious practice, closed and destroyed temples and dismissed all priests. The sacred flame that had burned for over a thousand years in the College of Vestals was extinguished and the Vestal Virgins expelled. The Altar of Victory, said to guard the fortune of Rome, was hauled away from the Senate building and disappeared from history. The Roman senatorial families pleaded for religious tolerance, but Theodosius made any pagan practice, even dropping a pinch of incense on a family altar in a private home, into a capital offence. And his ‘religious police’ driven by the austere and ambitious bishop Ambrosius of Milan, became increasingly active in pursuing pagans...

The alternate Roma Nova timeline

In AD 395, three months after Theodosius’ last decree banning all pagan religions, over four hundred Romans loyal to the old gods, and so in danger of execution, trekked north out of Italy to a semi-mountainous area in the direction of Raetia/Noricum. Led by Senator Apulius at the head of twelve senatorial families, they established a colony based initially on land owned by Apulius’ Celtic father-in-law. By purchase, alliance and conquest, this grew into Roma Nova.

Norman Davies in Vanished Kingdoms: The History of Half-Forgotten Europe reminds us that:

…in order to survive, newborn states need to possess a set of viable internal organs, including a functioning executive, a defence force, a revenue system and a diplomatic force. If they possess none of these things, they lack the means to sustain an autonomous existence and they perish before they can breathe and flourish. 

I would add history and willpower as essential factors. Roma Nova survived by changing its social structure; as men constantly fought to defend the new colony, women took over the social, political and economic roles, weaving new power and influence networks based on family structures.

Ancient Roman attitudes to women were legally repressive, but towards the later Imperial period women gained much more freedom to act, trade and own property and to run businesses of all types. Although adultery could be fatal, divorce was easy and step and adopted families were commonplace. The leader of Roma Nova’s founders was married to an influential Celtic noble from a society in which although Romanised for several generations, women in her family made decisions, fought in battles and managed property. Their four daughters were amongst the first pioneers so necessarily had to act more decisively than they would have in a traditional urban Roman setting. So I don’t think that it’s too far a stretch for women to have developed leadership roles over the next sixteen centuries.

Given the unstable, dangerous times in Roma Nova’s first hundred years, eventually the daughters as well as sons had to put on armour and carry weapons to defend their homeland and their way of life. Driven by the need to survive, service to the state was valued higher than personal advantage, echoing Roman Republican virtues. Women heading the families guarded and enhanced these values to provide a core philosophy throughout the centuries.

Roma Nova’s continued existence has been favoured by three factors: the discovery and exploitation of high-grade silver in their mountains, their efficient technology, and their robust response to any threat. Remembering their Byzantine cousins’ defeat in the Fall of Constantinople, Roma Novan troops assisted the western nations at the Battle of Vienna in 1683 to halt the Ottoman advance into Europe. Nearly two hundred years later, they used their diplomatic skills to help forge an alliance to push Napoleon IV back across the Rhine as he attempted to expand his grandfather’s empire.

Prioritising survival, Roma Nova remained neutral in the Great War of the 20th century that lasted from 1925 to 1935. The Greater German Empire, stretching from Jutland in the north, Alsace in the west, Tyrol in the south and Bulgaria in the east, was broken up afterwards into its former small kingdoms, duchies and counties. Some became republics. There was no sign of an Austrian-born corporal with a short, square moustache.

Twenty-three years before the action of INCEPTIO in the early 21st century, Roma Nova was nearly destroyed by a coup, a brutal male-dominated consulship and civil war. A weak leader, sclerotic and outmoded systems that had not developed since the last great reform in the 1700s and a neglected economy let in a clever and ruthless tyrant. But with characteristic resilience, the families’ structures fought back and reconstructed their society, re-learning the basic principles of Republican virtue, while subtly changing it to a more representational model for modern times.  Today, the tiny country has become one of the highest per capita income states in the world.

How to write in an alternate history setting

Setting a story in the past or in another country is a challenge. But if you invent the country and have to meld it into history that the reader already knows, then the task is doubled. Unless writing post-apocalyptic, which is too fantastic for me, the geography and climate must resemble the ones in the region where the imagined country lies. I’ll make a confession: I ‘borrowed’ Slovenia as the model.  And no writer can neglect their imagined country’s social, economic and political development. This sounds dry, but every living person is a product of their local conditions. Their experience of living in a place and struggle to make sense of it is expressed through their culture.

The key is plausibility. Take a character working in law enforcement. Readers can accept cops being gentle or tough, enthusiastic, intellectual or world-weary. Law enforcers come from all genders, classes, races and ages and stand in different places along the personal morality ruler. But whether corrupt or clean, they must act like a recognisable form of cop. They catch criminals, arrest and charge them and operate within a judicial system. Legal practicalities may differ significantly from those we know, but they must be consistent with that society while remaining plausible for the reader. But a flashing blue light, or an oscillating siren on a police car, is a universal symbol that instantly connects readers back to their own world.

Almost every story hinges upon implausibility – a set-up or a problem the writer has purposefully created. Readers will engage with it and follow as long as the writer keeps their trust. One way to do this is to infuse, but not flood, the story with corroborative detail so that it verifies and reinforces the original setting the writer has introduced.  Even though my book is set in the 21st century, the Roman characters still say things like 'I wouldn't be in your sandals (not shoes) when he finds out.'  And there are honey-coated biscuits (honey was important for the ancient Romans) not chocolate digestives (iconic British chocolate-coated cookie much favoured by police officers) in the squad room.

Another way to connect to readers when writing from an unfamiliar setting is to ensure the characters display normal behavior  Human beings of all ages and cultures have similar emotional needs, hurts and joys. Of course, they're expressed differently, sometimes in an alienating or (to us) peculiar way. But we can identify with a romantic relationship, whether painful, instant, careful or intense - it binds us into the characters’ stories.

To sum up, I approach the alternate history aspect from a historian’s viewpoint; there are no special powers, aliens, time slip, time travel, ghosts, or even gods directing the actions of mortals. My stories centre on people, their dilemmas and how they deal with them in the extraordinary culture they live in.

So what’s INCEPTIO about?

New York, present day. Karen Brown, angry and frightened after surviving a kidnap attempt, has a harsh choice – being eliminated by government enforcer Jeffery Renschman or fleeing to the mysterious Roma Nova, her dead mother’s homeland in Europe.

Founded sixteen centuries ago by Roman exiles and ruled by women, Roma Nova gives Karen safety and a ready-made family. But a shocking discovery about her new lover, the fascinating but arrogant special forces officer Conrad Tellus who rescued her in America, isolates her.

Renschman reaches into her new home and nearly kills her. Recovering, she is desperate to find out why he is hunting her so viciously. Unable to rely on anybody else, she undergoes intensive training, develops fighting skills and becomes an undercover cop. But crazy with bitterness at his past failures, Renschman sets a trap for her, knowing she has no choice but to spring it...

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Alison Morton muses on writing, Romans and alternate/alternative history at her blog. Check out her new novel Inceptio, the first in a trilogy, now available in the United States and the UK (in paperback and e-book). You can find her on Facebook and Twitter (@alison_morton).