Living with Caligula

I've just come back from a research trip to Rome and am once again left marvelling at the wonderful, vibrant city it is: the breathtaking history, stupendous architecture, the astonishing prices, the miriad opportunities to be ripped off and the generous, hospitable Romans who entirely offset the last couple of observations.

It's my third trip to the Eternal City and in the last year it seems to have changed - for better and worse. Worse is the fact that you now have to pay to walk in the Roman forum, one of the world's foremost heritage sites, a place of pilgrimage for anyone interested in Roman history. Much of the action in Caligula takes place in, around and under the forum and the two hills which dominate it; the Palatine and the Capitoline. For me, ghosts walk here; the ghosts of Emperors and senators, gladiators and animal trainers, beggars and merchants, and the fact that you now have to queue up to buy a ticket and walk through a turnstile has somehow devalued it. Sure, it makes economic sense in a country which is as big a basket case as our own to cash in on one of the planet's greatest attractions, but the romantic in me thinks it should be open to everyone and not just to those prepared to pay 12 euros and be out by 5pm.

On the plus side, there seemed to be about a tenth of the visitors this time - although most of the others appeared to be queueing up to get into St Peter's at the Vatican. I also get the feeeling there's less traffic in the city centre, though after a couple of taxi trips I have nothing but respect for anyone who takes to the roads, especially around the Piazza Venezia.

One of the most amusing pastimes in Rome is to find yourself a little pavement cafe and watch the herds - or should that be flocks - of tourists straggle by, tormented by heat and thirst and always led by a matriachal/patriachal figure waving an umberella, a rolled newspaper or one of those roses the conmen keep thrusting at you for 'the pretty lady'. If you're particularly fortunate you'll be in a very narrow street and two of them will come along at once, in opposite directions, like two trains meeting in a tunnel. At this point I have to confess that I once visited Rome from a cruise ship and followed the umberella like a love-struck sheep along with the rest. Never again.

During the trip I stumbled upon the Emperor Nero's Golden House, the Domus Aurus, but unfortunately they were conducting an archaeological dig and I couldn't get inside. Nero and his sidekick Seneca will have a fairly major part to play in book three of what I still think of as The Emperor's Elephant trilogy.

My friend Ewan has shown me the template for the website and a very classy affair it is too. It'll have an in-depth biography, synopses and background on the writing of the two books so far, a pictorial section on Caligula and Claudius's Rome, a link to this blog and many of the historical sites I used to research the books. Hopefully it will also allow me to interact more closely with my readers. I've had another couple of reviews. One on Amazon, three stars but containing a lot of positives, which ended with the soul-destroying 'this won't set the world alight, but it's a good read'. It's always good to have an objective opinion though, so if anyone is thinking about putting in a review, good, bad or indifferent, please do. The other one was, interestingly, for an e-book version of Caligula and read, in its entirety, 'a good read'.

No news yet on the latest rewrite of Claudius. Simon is off to the Frankfurt Book Fair, which caused much excitement for me last year, but didn't deliver as much as I'd hoped. Still, another year, another book. Who knows!

Living with Caligula

One of the greatest pleasures of having a book published is when people you barely know or haven't met for twenty years come up and tell you what a fantastic read it was. It happened twice over the weekend when I was at a birthday party down in Jedburgh. A girl who was in my class at school and who I'd never have tagged as a historical fiction fan told me she loved Caligula, and couldn't wait for the follow up to come out. It was also very clear that the people in my home town are genuinely proud of what I've done, which puts the thing in some sort of perspective. I had the same thing in figures today in a story on the wires at work. Apparently six million people in Britain think they could write a book, three million have started writing one and a million have completed one that will probably never be published. It's a sobering thought.


If that sounds as if I'm getting cocky about being an author, nothing could be further from the truth. I'm still filled with the same doubts and fears that have plagued me all along the way, expect more so because there's now a weight of expectation, not least from myself. I don't worry about the words or the sentences, but I do worry about what I'm doing with them and if I'm creating the kind of story someone wants to read. I'm not a conscious writer at all, I don't sit down and think, 'what am I trying to achieve?'. All I do is write, and if I'm writing the wrong thing I don't know if I'm consciously clever enough to mould it into something appreciably different. I've just sent the rewrite of Claudius, the follow up to Caligula, to Simon at Transworld. As I've explained in past blogs, there were some fairly fundamental changes and when I was working on the book I was constantly wondering if I was doing the right thing, going in the right direction. There were passages that seemed at odds with everything I'd done before. Yet when I read it three times in the last couple of weeks the whole thing seemed to blend together as if it had only ever been meant that way. And still I had that feeling of not wanting to let go, to keep it and change a word here, or a phrase there: to keep polishing it until it glowed. What you forget is that there is probably still another nine or ten months until it's published and that you're going to get another half a dozen goes at it before it's wrenched from you for the final time.

The trains are on strike this week which means I couldn't have done any writing in any case, so I'm having a short break before I launch into another book. It's half written in my head and the main characters are all real to me, but it'll be a complicated beast and I think I have to do a bit more plotting - or at least place a significant number of signposts - before I get started.

I'm still working with someone on a website, but we've passed a significant hurdle and it could be less than a month before it's up and running. This blog will be linked to it. Can't wait to see what it's like.

Living with Caligula

Just got back from bonnie Galloway and the Wigtown Book Festival and what a great weekend it was. Wigtown's a tiny place but it comes alive for the book festival and the atmosphere was fantastic. We joined about four hundred other people to hear actor Bill Paterson talk about his childhood in the east end Glasgow enclave of Dennistoun, living in the shadow of the nuclear bomb and the characters he grew up with. Bill has a wonderful voice, huge charm and a great sense of humour and deserved the ovation he got at the end. It was a bit strange, though, to hear about the genesis of Tales from the Back Green. He cheerfully confesses that it was never intended as a book, just a series of radio scripts, and that the only reason it was published was because a firm approached him. For someone who has heard hundreds of hard-luck stories from talented writers desperate to get into print that was a bit surreal.
I had a nice chat with Stuart Kelly from Scotland on Sunday, who are media sponsors this year, and I met up with Lee Randall, the Scotsman's features supremo who was there to chair a couple of events and interview some of the authors.
One of the biggest highlights of the weekend was the house we stayed in at Newton Stewart. The Brewery Pool of the River Cree flowed as dark as Guinness about four feet below the balcony of our bedroom, full of salmon and sea trout on their way to spawn upriver. In two days I saw a kingfisher, a mink, a cormorant and was treated to an impromptu flypast by a pair of herons skidding along just above the water. Our alarm call on Saturday morning came courtesy of about twenty mallards and three geese who gathered under the window demanding breakfast. Idyllic doesn't quite describe it, glorious is closer.
Dumfries and Galloway is off the beaten track, but it's full of history and beautiful wild countryside and stunning coastal views. If you get a chance to visit it, don't miss it!

Living with Caligula

Off to the Wigtown Book Festival this weekend, not to appear, just to soak up the atmosphere.
We'll be staying at a holiday cottage with our friends John and Elaine and we're all booked to see Scots actor Bill Paterson talk about Tales from the Back Green his memoir of growing up in Glasgow in the 50s and 60s. I'll let you know how we got on next week.
I've been through the follow up to Caligula again this week, polishing here, cutting there, and, as always, wondering if it's as good as I can make it. It's the story of the Emperor Claudius's invasion of Britain in 43 AD seen through the eyes of Rufus, keeper of the Emperor's elephant and hero of Caligula. I had great fun writing it, especially the battle scenes, and there's some great stuff in it. Robert Graves created the popular vision of a drooling, crippled figure of fun in I, Claudius, which like most Roman novels has its origins in the works of Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio. Suetonius throws away the Claudian invasion in a couple of lines and calls it, rather disdainfully, a minor campaign. But the fragmentary remains of a commemorative arch in Rome say Claudius fought six battles and was hailed Imperator (victorious general) by his troops 22 times, which isn't bad going considering he was only in Britain for 16 days. I tell the story of how the cripple became a conqueror with a little help from his spymaster, Narcissus, and, of course, the Emperor's elephant.
There's also been interest this week in my crime book Brothers in Arms, and I was asked to put together synopses for another three novels based around the main characters. I've always had plans to do a series so I had them pretty much to hand and they're on their way. There's a real sense of excitement when you throw your work out into the world - you never know what kind of impact it's going to make!

Living with Caligula

One of the things I enjoy most about being an author is the little suprises that arrive when you're least expecting them. On thursday night I came home to find I'd been sent four copies of the Polish version of Caligula, which has been published by Amber and was actually on the streets of Warsaw a week before it was my book was available in Britain. It's a compact soft-backed version with the same picture on the cover and it's fascinating to see your words in a different language and to think that Kaligula is being read by people in Krakow and Gdansk.
The English version has already ended up in some surprising places. I discovered on the net that it's out on loan from two libraries in Tasmania and half a dozen in New Zealand. It's stocked in a big bookshop in Singapore, available in Norway, Sweden and Switzerland, and you can buy it on line on Amazon Japan, Germany and France. That's not to mention the editions that will soon be published in Italian, Russian, Serb, Portuguese and Romanian.
Obviously I'd been waiting to see if it would be picked up by a US publisher, but that hasn't happened. It is going to be published in America though, simultaneously in the United States and Canada on January 27. And the mass-market paperback version comes out in this country on February 12. So there's plenty to look forward to!

I completed the latest version of the follow up to Caligula on the train on Thursday night and I'm polishing it at the moment before I send it to Simon next week or the week after. It's amazing the buzz you get when you finally reach those two lovely words .........'The End'......... even though you know that there will be more revisions to come. There are a couple of things I'm not certain about - I've made some pretty radical changes - but it's a much better book. The beauty of rewriting is that small changes, a word here and there, can make such a big difference. You'd think you'd get bored of reading the same thing twenty times over, but I love it because I know that every time I'll find something to improve.

Caligula continues to do well on the Amazon historical fiction charts, jockeying for position with another couple of Roman books by first-time authors, and sitting at about seventh among the historical hardbacks, behind Conn Iggulden, Philipa Gregory and Bernard Cornwell. So I'm in pretty good company. It's interesting to compare the reviews each book has. The other debutants have about five or six times more reviews than I have, but a stange pattern has developed in one of them. It started out with a host of five-stars right after publication, but just lately there have been half a dozen one and two stars. The latest one complains he didn't even finish the book and he's been conned into buying it by the earlier reviews, which are very obviously by friends and family. Looking back over them, I think he's right and that the Amazon review system is pretty flawed. When someone puts a title on their review saying Buy this Book you can be pretty certain they're not coming at it objectively! Naturally all of mine are completely kosher. :-)

Living with Caligula

Caligula has been making the headlines.
Unfortunately it's not my Caligula, but the 1979 softporn/hardcore (depending on your point of view) movie of the name, which stars Malcolm McDowell and Helen Mirren. It was hugely controversial when it came out because Bob Guccione spiced up the sex scenes after all the big names had finished shooting the film, with the result that they all, including original script writer Gore Vidal, completely disowned the final result. It was banned in Britain, but now the censors have decided to give it an 18 certificate because of its 'historical interest'.
The result is that Caligula is in the news, with stories throughout the week and a double page spread in today's outraged Daily Mail.
So is this good or bad for Caligula, the novel, with its tasteful and (comparitively) understated scenes of incest, sex, cruelty, torture and murder, and its fascinating insight into the life and true nature of the psychotic young Emperor?
The answer is that I'm not sure. On the one hand the fact that the name Caligula is emblazoned in 120pt type across two pages of Britain's biggest-selling mid-market tabloid can only be good for the book's profile, if only for the curiosity value if it provides. ie 'I wonder what Caligula was really like?' On the other, is it a good idea to be linked to what is widely regarded as one of the worst historical films ever made and a total box-office turkey?
And what does it do for my prospects of having the book turned into a film? Quite a few people who've read Caligula have commented on the fact that it would make a great blockbuster, which is exactly what you want to hear, but if it ever does come out as a movie I doubt it will be under the same name!

Still on films, I stumbled across an article on the net the other day about a well-known female newspaper columnist who is being sued by a major film company for the $700,000 dollars they coughed up for the film rights to her book in 2003. It was based on what they obviously thought was a great idea, but unfortunately she allegedly neglected to ever write the book, which I suppose would mean her publisher is also out of pocket. I'm not terribly big on morality, but the thought of taking all that money and then not bothering to produce the goods boggles my mind. But then I'm not a big name newspaper columnist.

Which brings me nicely on to Katie Price, aka Jordan, whose autobiography and chick-lit novels are currently dominating the book charts and coining in a fortune to add to her hard-pressed 'boob job' fund. Katie cheerfully told an interviewer the other day that she doesn't actually write the books, she just comes up with a few chapter ideas and then tosses them to a minion who does all that tiresome stringing the sentences together and putting in dots and commas and whatnot. And there was you thinking it was difficult to get a book published!

My last blog was something of a prolonged whinge about not being invited to book festivals and not the usual upbeat ravings of a demented, would-be bestseller writer. A good friend of mine put this into perpective during the week, when he told me he'd done a gig at Edinburgh and spent hours glad-handing only to find out at the end that he'd sold two books. Another writer I know had a similar experience, which cheered me up no end.

And finally a comment on the strange financial world of book-selling. There are quite a few Caligulas on sale on e-Bay and I thought I'd take a look to see just how much the online opportunists were asking The highest price was £59 - yes, you're reading that correctly - £59 for Caligula, life's work of Douglas Jackson, author, available from Bantam Press and all good book shops for £12.99 minus discount. It turns out the £59 was for a signed, lined and dated copy I'd sweated over (literally: see earlier bubble-wrap blog) for a specialist book company, which means my unpaid efforts have produced a potential 400 per cent mark-up. You learn something new every day.

Living with Caligula

Publicity has been on my mind, and how to get more of it for Caligula.
In a lot of ways I've done pretty well, with a wonderful spread in The Scotsman, very positive reviews in the Mail and the Sunday Express in Scotland, and some big hits in local newspapers in Stirling and the Borders. There was also my radio interview on Radio Scotland.
But where's the national publicity? Where are the reviews in The Times and the Daily Telegraph, The Guardian and the Independent? They feature dozens of books every week but never mine.
Last Saturday I did my first webchat with members of Youwriteon, the website that played such a big part in my development as a writer. It was great fun, and in the end I must have answered fifty questions from people interested in my experiences over the last year or so.
It gave me a lovely warm feeling of belonging.
But sometimes I feel like someone standing outside a window in the snow looking in at a party where people are chatting around a roaring fire.
I went to the Edinburgh Book Festival just after the webchat, to wander around and soak up the atmosphere, and I was left wondering: why am I not here? Hundreds of authors from all over Britain gathered to talk about their books. From the very famous to people I've never heard of. People queueing five deep to buy signed copies from authors who'd written books on the most obscure subjects imaginable. Every publishing house in Britain, large and small, seemed to be represented, and it had the biggest bookshop in the country, with thousands and thousands of titles; in fact every book in the world appeared to be on the shelves - except Caligula. When I talk about it to people, they say: 'You'll definitely be there next year', but we'll just have to wait and see. For a first-time author every book counts and this seemed to be a huge opportunity that I'd missed.

I also have a sense now that when a book is launched it gains a momentum powered by the goodwill of the people who buy it. With an established author that momentum is prolonged by reputation - people will keep picking it up from the shelves because it has his name on it. For someone like me it's different, once everyone you know has bought it and everyone they've told about it, you need something a little special to push it on to the next level. Where will it come from? I don't honestly know, but with Caligula there's always been a little nudge just when it was needed. Maybe it's just around the corner.

I almost forgot. Caligula will now be published in Romanian, which brings the number of languages to six - Russian, Polish (according to one website I'm already a best-seller there, but I syspect that's just hype), Portuguese, Serbian and Italian.