Countdown to Caligula

Two days to go. The interview David Robinson did with me appeared in the Scotsman arts section Critique today and it's a great read. He really caught the effort and the passion that went into Caligula and the rollercoaster road to publication, I think the picture, with Stirling Castle in the background, makes me look pale and interesting (the photographer, Ian Rutherford is brilliant - in this case he had to be) but decide for yourself. Don't be fooled by the headline, nothing in life is that easy!

http://living.scotsman.com/books?articleid=4281808

Yesterday I walked up to Blackwell's bookshop to say hello to the manager and thank him for playing host at the book launch. When I reached the shop I discovered a display of my books in the window, along with a photograph. It was a great moment, but as I studied myself in the window I wondered what would happen if someone came along and stood beside me. Slightly surreal, to say the least.
I can't wait 'til Monday, even though I've got a dentists appointment. I plan to tour the local bookshops. Hope I'm not disppaointed.
The speech is written for Tuesday. I've kept it short, which will be a relief for the sixty people who have confirmed they are coming. The response has been fantastic.
I've also been signing copies for friends and family, which is great, but you actually spend more time agonising over what to say than you did on some passages of the book.

Countdown to Caligula

I woke up this morning and suddenly realised there were only six days to go. How did that happen? Everything's been moving along like treacle and now it's as if I'm at the wheel of a runaway train and I don't know where the brakes are. Publication is on Monday, the launch party is on Tuesday night. I haven't even looked at my speech, never mind written it. The two readings I'm planning to do are still just that; plans. I've got an idea what they'll be, but is the first one too short and the second one too long? I won't know until I've practised in front of an invited audience, but I'm working late every night this week, so when. I can't stand up on the train and start spouting like a Roman Emperor, they'll have me in a strait-jacket and off for a meeting with Napoleon and Henry the Eighth before you can say Scotrail.
Still, everybody says I'm cool, calm and collected in a crisis. It WILL be alright on the night. Now where did I leave my toga?

Countdown to Caligula

The last time I was live on the radio was about 25 years ago when I used to get up at 6.30 in the morning to do a sports bulletin for the then thriving BBC Radio Tweed. So it was a relief to discover that the thought of appearing on Scotland’s top books programme to promote Caligula didn’t have me completely stressed out - only nearly.
I was fortunate that guest presenter Alistair Moffat, who counts among his day jobs successful author and boss of the Borders Book Festival, is also an accomplished broadcaster and interviewer. He made me completely at ease during the countdown to BBC Scotland’s Book Café and was extremely complimentary about Caligula, which is just what a nervous author about to do his first interview plugging his debut novel needs. We chatted about our shared love of the Borders and about the festival, which was an outstanding success again this year despite a downpour that threatened to bring down the main marquee on the Saturday.
Then it was three minutes to go, two minutes to go, one minute to go. We’re on.
It took me a while to get into my stride as we talked about my motivation for writing the book and what attracted me to the malignant Caligula, but Alistair eased me into the interview and I relaxed and began to enjoy the experience. He liked what I’d done juxtaposing Rufus’s gentle love of his animals with the brutality of the relationships in Caligula’s palace, but I couldn’t take the credit for planning that. It’s really just a consequence of the story as most the really clever things I’ve been credited with are. Or are they? When I was preparing for the interview I was struck by how much of the book was written by the subconscious me and how amazing it was that buried somewhere deep was another person capable of achieving something that I didn’t think was remotely possible a couple of years ago. Maybe he/it/we planned the novel while I was half asleep, the same way he/it/we wrote what has been flatteringly described as page-turning narrative. It gives you a real buzz when someone tells you they picked up your book to take a look at it and was still reading it an hour later, especially someone who I suspect is inundated with books throughout the year.
The only point I wasn’t sure whether I’d done Caligula justice was when Alistair asked me for examples of his decadence. I should have talked about the three mile bridge of boats he built from Baiae to Puteoli and then rode across on his chariot, instead I rattled on about his legendary cruelty, which we’d already covered. The interview ended with a laugh as I was asked what my mum thought of the rather graphic sex scenes, then Alistair concluded by more or less telling the listeners to get out and buy it.
Success? That’s for someone else to decide. But I had a great time and I’d cheerfully do it again and I won’t say ‘you know’ half as often.
Alistair Moffat said he enjoyed my book and I have to take this opportunity to reciprocate. By complete coincidence I was given his latest piece of historical non-fiction The Wall, to review for The Scotsman about ten days ago. It’s a must-read for anyone who’s interested about Romans; highly readable and full of fascinating facts and insight it takes an in-depth look at the history of Hadrian’s Wall.
You can listen again to Radio Scotland’s Book Café on http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/mainframe.shtml?http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/scotland_aod.shtml?scotland/radiocafe_mon and read my review of The Wall at http://living.scotsman.com/books/Book-review-The-emperor39s-new.4209001.jp
I almost forgot. Caligula is being published in hardback in Canada in January next year, just a couple of weeks before the paperback version is out in the UK. That’s what I love about all this, there’s always something new on the horizon.

Countdown to Caligula

Another of those wonderful one-off moments when I came home from work tonight. I hold in my hot little hand the first hardback copy of Caligula. It's heavy and shiny, with that menacing gladiator glowering from the front, and the title and the sign off 'Can a slave decide the fate of an Emperor' in Romanesque writing of Imperial purple. It has my name on it, not only on the front cover, but also on the spine of the inner book in silver against dark blue. It is, in short, a proper book.
It also has Manda Scott's wonderful endorsement on the back cover and when I read it, I still couldn't believe she was talking about me.
The invites for the book launch are out. It turns out I know a lot more people than I thought, and quite a few of them have already said to me that they'll be there, so I won't be on my own.

Twenty days and counting!

Countdown to Caligula

Today is June 14; in exactly one month's time Caligula will hit the shops, and what a relief that will be. It seems like a lifetime since I started this blog and it's exactly a year to the day tomorrow that Stan called me to say that he'd accepted the offer from Transworld and that I was about to become a published author.

Things picked up speed this week and I did my first full length newspaper interview. I wasn't too nervous, because I know the interviewer, but it was still a strange and strangely exhausting experience. You have to dig very deep to come up with the motivations for something that you actually started writing about four years ago. I didn't realise there were so many versions of The Emperor's Elephant/Caligula until I tried to explain the chronology of its development and tied myself in knots. You also have to give a lot of yourself, and for someone who is naturally reticent that can be difficult. There is so much to tell that I found myself going off at tangents,which is something I'm going to have to correct for my radio interview in a couple of weeks time.

This blog is about the downs as well as the ups and I have to record that my first published review was a bit disappointing. It was in our local paper and the reviewer seemed more interested in showing how clever he was than actually getting into what the book is about. Then again, maybe I'm expecting too much. He liked it well enough, and said he was involved enough to want to know what happened next to Rufus, the main character. He signed off by saying 'This book won't change your life', which is true, it isn't the Bible. But you could argue that any book that really involves you and draws you in does change your life for the hours you spend reading it. And one thing I know for certain, it has certainly changed mine.

The date and time has been set for the book launch party. If anyone's going to be around Edinburgh on Tuesday July 15 let me know and I'll put you on the invitation list.

Countdown to Caligula

Just a very quick update before I head for the train. I got an e-mail yesterday from Radio Scotland's Book Cafe programme asking if I could do a live interview about Caligula at the end of the month. Scary, but exciting. There'll be guest presenter on that day, a guy called Alistair Moffat, who runs the Borders Book Festival. He's also an author of some fascinating historical books on the early Celts - and his latest is about Hadrian's Wall, so he knows his Romans. I'm a big fan and we're from towns about 10 miles apart so it should be interesting!
Also doing an interview with The Scotsman's literary editor next week, which will run the Saturday before publication.
Sent Brothers in Arms to agent Stan on Tuesday. When I hit the button I had a huge sense of anticipation. I think the latest version sizzles, and the characters are people you really care about.
Spent yesterday putting together information for my web site (where do you start with setting up a web site?). Today I'll start on the final book of the Rufus trilogy.
Got to go. Have a great weekend.

Countdown to Caligula

This blog is all about the highs and lows of a writer stumbling blindly towards the publication of his first novel. Looking back, it's difficult to pick out the high point so far. Was it when I finished the Emperor's Elephant and realised I could actually write a book, even if it was a flawed one? Or when I completed the rewrite after binning 80,000 words of the original and sensed I had created something good? Or maybe it was the day when Stan told me Simon had made an offer for it that was meant to chase everyone else away and I had to ask him to repeat the figure twice.
Well Thursday topped them all.
For the past couple of weeks Simon and his team have been trying to round up endorsements for the back cover of Caligula from writers with proven track records and major followings. We've had knockbacks from some of the biggest names in historical fiction. It's hardly surprising. Writers are usually busy writing, why should someone take time from their own novel to read the work of an untried unknown? Where is the incentive in promoting a potential rival's work?
On Wednesday, Simon was about to sign off on the cover. There would be lots if interesting empty space where the endorsement quotes were supposed to go.
On Thursday morning he sent me a message which read: 'Something to cheer up your day' and five minutes later I was doing cartwheels around the office.
Manda Scott's superb Boudica books shed light on the life of Britain's most legendary heroine and on a time which I know from experience is incredibly difficult to capture from the few historical sources available. She is hugely knowledgable, hugely talented and, I now know, a very nice person.
To have someone of Manda's stature say anything about Caligula would have been amazing, but this?

'Douglas Jackson takes us by the hand and heart and leads us into the crazy, power-soaked world of Caligula, maddest of the mad Roman emperors - and in doing so gives us an insight into the man behind the madness, the fragile, bloody balances of power and the depths to which men were forced to sink simply to stay alive. It's light and dark in equal measure, colourful, thoughtful and bracing. A worthy addition to the world of Roman historical fiction.'

It was one of those wonderful moments when you sit back and think: 'Is that me she's talking about?'

I had to read it about three times before it sank in. There was more of the same and Manda found hidden depths in Caligula I didn't realise were there: things I had subconsciously been vaguely aware of, but not consciously trying to achieve. David Robinson, the Scotsman's literary editor, made the same kind of comments, but about different areas of it, and I'm beginning to realise that Caligula is no longer my book. It belongs to, and my writing will be interpreted by, anybody who reads it. They will make their own judgments on things I've written that I barely thought about at the time.

Not everyone will like Caligula, I understand that; Rufus inhabits a cruel, unforgiving world that won't be to everyone's taste. But there is a theme emerging in the feedback from those who've read it. So far, not only have they enjoyed it - they think it's special.


On Thursday I also finally completed the rewrite of Brothers in Arms ... I have a feeling it may be special too in an entirely different way. But more of that another day.