Living with Caligula

The Christmas shopping outing to Edinburgh has come and gone for another year. Three shops, three pubs and a suitable finale in the bar of the Balmoral Hotel, courtesy of Caligula, while we waited for the train.
The first thing I did was pop into Waterstones to see if my book was still in stock and it gave another nice illustration of the ups and downs of authordom and the way publishing works. My dad asked me how it was selling the other day, because people looking to buy Caligula as a Christmas present hadn't been able to get it in their usual shop in the Borders.
In Waterstones the first thing I noticed was a very prominent display of Warrior of Rome, the Harry Sidebottom debut novel I regard, along with Ben Kane's The Lost Legion, as a kind of benchmark of where I should be. In the first weeks it was published Warrior had a short spell in the Top Ten hardback fiction, which isn't bad.
Waterstones were offering the airport version for half price (under the guise of a special Christmas edition) along with twenty or thirty best-sellers by well-known authors, and had eight or ten out on the shelves. Caligula, on the other hand was represented by a single copy tucked away among the Js in the A-Z. It's in line with what I've found on my wanderings, a copy or two here and there taking their chance at the back of the shop. It's also what I expected, an unknown debut author will, if he's fortunate, have a nice steady rising sales curve, but after a few months, unless he/she's very fortunate it will tail away. I've no complaints about the way Caligula has been promoted, far from it. Transworld have done a great job and I've no doubt it wouldn't have sold half as many copies without the generous discount. The book is on sale from India to Italy, America to Australia and Norway to New Zealand.
And it's beginning to happen again. The first launch was so successful Blackwells in Edinburgh have asked to host the take-off of my second novel. The blog will soon be Countdown to Claudius.
Have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year

Doug

Living with Caligula

I had a couple of interesting pointers this week to what happens when your baby goes out into the wide and unforgiving world. The first was the worst review I've had so far on Amazon, a single star and completely at odds with everything else anyone has said about Caligula. Everyone's entitled to their opinion and I think I've said before on this blog that I know the book won't be to everyone's taste but the tone and the personal nature of some of what was said made me wonder if the reviewer had some sort of axe to grind. He was particularly exercised about the death of Circe early in the book.

"The author seems to take a certain amount of pornographic pleasure in the descriptions of animals being killed. The leopard at the beginning is a case in point. Disgusting."

I'd never deny that the arena scene is a graphic depiction of what happened to animals in the Roman Empire, and I thought long and hard about whether to tone it down, but to accuse an author of taking "pornographic" pleasure in something he's written seems to be missing the whole point of a work of fiction. Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal contain some stomach-churning descriptive writing, but that doesn't make Thomas Harris a serial killer, any more than writing about the reality of the amphitheatre makes me a gladiator or an animal murderer. Which brings me to my second point.

Caligula has just been flagged up on the Animal Liberation Front's Facebook site as an example of cruelty to animals.

You couldn't make it up!

Living with Caligula

Caligula made another breakthrough this week when I got word that a Barcelona publishing company called Ediciones B have bought the world Spanish rights. They seem really forward thinking and it's possible that there could be a Spanish edition in the US, plus editions in Spain and South America. It brings the Caligula United Nations to seven, and came completely out of the blue.
One thing I haven't touched on that might be interesting to would-be writers is the money side of things. I got a great advance for Caligula and Claudius, but that doesn't mean the cheque arrived in the post the next day. I got 25 per cent on signing and the rest has come in bits and pieces (on delivery of the manuscript, hardback publication, paperback publication etc). However, I won't get any royalties until the total advance is paid back. That means any money from rights sales goes to Transworld, plus anything I earn from British/overseas English language sales and from the Polish edition, which has been out since the summer. Rights sales aren't like the advance and the sums involved (at least for me) aren't huge, so it takes quite a few to make a difference. I'll get the first statement around Christmas/New Year time which will let me know forthe first time exactly where I stand. I also experienced the first really major downside - my first tax bill - which made my eyes water. Even though I'd known it was coming and had put money aside it was still a shock to see it in black and white, and a bigger shock to disover that they want half of next year's bill up from at the same time last year's is paid! Ouch!
Still, it's all part of the learning experience, and if I'm ever going to write full time it's something I'll have to get used to.

PS Just had a quick look on the internet and discovered that the Italian edition will be published on November 27 by Newton and Compton and is entitled Morte all'imperatore!, which I think means Death to the Emperor.

Living with Caligula

Not a lot to report on the book front, but I had an interesting e-mail last week from Christina who is translating Caligula into Italian for Newton and Compton. It was on one of those subjects that probably cause historical novelists more soul-searching than anything else: units of measurement. She'd noticed that several times I'd lapsed into using yards as a measurement of distance and the publishers were wondering if all measurements should be metric or possibly we should use the latin equivalent. We agreed that to make everything metric would make the book look a bit daft, but I didn't think it was a good idea to use terms like pedes, heminae and iugera either. They're not terribly well known and I felt I'd have to explain them as I went along. Throughout most of the book I'd talked about paces, as the equivalent of a yard or metre, because this would probably be in use at the time as an approximate estimate of distance, so we agreed on that.

I'd also used 'thousands of gallons' to emphasise something in the sewer scenes below Caligula's palace and I had to find a way of showing it rather than using a measurement. Tiny details, but the kind of stuff that either makes a book feel authentic or not. One thing it shows is the kind of care and attention is going into the Italian edition. Christina has picked up several things I'd never have noticed and I know I couldn't be in better hands. I managed to get a look at the title page the other day and Caligula will be published either as 'L'ultimo Gladiatore di Roma' which I think is The Last Gladiator in Rome, or Death to the Emperor. Can't wait to see it. I wonder what's happening in Russia, Romania, Serbia and Portugal?

Living with Caligula

Claudius has gone. I had an e-mail from Simon in midweek with his reaction to the final rewrite. I have to confess I put off opening it just in case the news was bad, but he liked it a lot. The centrepiece of the book is the battle where the British hero Caratacus attempts to stop the invading Romans at the River Thames. It was great to write, but the scale was frighteningly large and once or twice I wondered if I'd taken on more than I could handle. So I was pretty chuffed when Simon, who doesn't go in for superlatives, described it as "brilliant and epic".
Still, it's always a strange moment to send a book on its way. It's finished/complete, but you know there's more you can do to it. It's now with the copy editor, who did a fantastic job with Caligula, and I'll be interested to see what horrors she spots this time that I failed to see the many dozens of times I've read it.
It's a year since I went through this process, but the memory is as fresh as if it was yesterday. I know I'll get the copy-editors manuscript in the post in a couple of weeks. That'll be followed by the cover art. Then the book proof, then the books themselves. Finally publication day on Thursday July 16. A huge buzz every step of the way. I'll be fascinated to see what the designers come up with for the cover. Caligula was fantastic but with Claudius the opportunities for something really special are enormous.
The Emperor's elephant has taken her next big step!

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.