Blog | Alison Morton's Thrillers

Huge news!

I have signed a publishing agreement with SilverWood Books. INCEPTIO will appear in paperback and ebook format. We are looking at Spring 2013. If it changes, I’ll let you know!

So what is my book about? Romans, alternate history, romance, action-adventure, loss, self-growth, recognition? All of those.

Suppose you’re an ordinary young woman in New York, nearly twenty-five years old. You work in an office Monday to Friday. It’s pretty routine. You don’t have a college degree so other people overtake you, but you don’t mind too much. Well, sometimes, but generally not.

Why? Because you have the best weekend volunteer job in the world, in the city park – a huge green paradise over 800 acres. Breathing fresh air, helping people, laughing with kids, losing yourself in the trees. It reminds you of your happy childhood home, the one you lost when your father died when you were twelve.

It’s what you live for, it’s what keeps you sane.

That’s your life – five days so-so, two days exhilaration. Life is safe, if a tad boring and going nowhere.

Then you throw a stoned kid and his two friends out of the park for beating up an old man. Problem is his father’s the second most powerful person in the country. Result – you get sacked from your beloved volunteer job. You are devastated.

But you get a promotion at work and meet an attractive foreign spy disguised as an interpreter. He’s from a mysterious European country founded centuries ago by Romans.

Soon a sinister enforcer from your own government is trying to wipe you out. And the pretty hot foreign spy is trying to convince you he’s the good guy.

But this world isn’t the one this blog is written in – it has a different history and different rules…

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2016 update: INCEPTIO was indeed published Spring 2013 – more here.
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Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers, INCEPTIO, PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO and AURELIA. The fifth in the series, INSURRECTIO, will be published on 12 April 2016.

Find out Roma Nova news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways by signing up for her free monthly email newsletter.

Photo contest – WINNER!

I decided to have a new author photo to use across all platforms. Sometimes, I may use it in black and white, other times colour. Like a true Libran, I was dithering. So I ran a poll to ask readers which did they think was best.

STOP PRESS 26 OCTOBER 2012: The winner is Photo2! (70%). Second was Photo1 with 20% and Photo3 was a valiant third with 10%

Many thanks to all those who took part.


Photo 2 (colour)	Photo 2 (black & white)

Poll closed

The journey home

Lagos, Portugal, six a.m. Luggage bundled into the car, fumbling in the dark with the satnav. Farewell waves from my magic circle, then eighty kilometers to Faro Airport. The ex-pat South African banters as the receives my hire car back into his fold. I escape from the wrong passport queue – I’m in Schengen, unlike my fellow Brits.

My French fellow travellers sulk patiently – the flight is thirty minutes late. I see the Pyrenees from the plane window and cloud over Orly. The Orlybus with multiple nationalities, but no eye contact, brings me into the centre of Paris for two minutes. Struggling down the steps into the Métropolitain with 18.5 kilograms of case, I watch for pickpockets. Four stops and I arrive at Montparnasse. I hone in on a coffee shop. A slice of fruit crumble slips easily down to a stomach stretched with a week’s overeating. An hour later, the TGV brings me nearer to my destination. After an hour and a half’s drive, here is home.

No more tea on the terrace watching the warm sun rise before swapping the nightie for the swimsuit and sliding into the swimming pool. No more super-activity talking about writing, doing writing, eating and drinking too much.

Home again in Poitou-Charentes. The geraniums are still blossoming in the rain. Everything is green and cool.