Blog | Alison Morton's Thrillers

The peerless History of Rome podcast

For all Roman ‘nuts’ out there, I have to tell you about a fantastic podcast called The History of Rome. Mike Duncan, a political science and philosophy graduate from Western Washington University, has the knack of neatly dissecting the political and imperial essentials of the Kingdom, Republic and Empire and communicating them with clarity and verve.

His laconic American tones and informal language make complex political intrigue clear and accessible without losing any of the authority. And his apologies if he gets anything wrong (rarely!) are charming and self-deprecating. I think he must be a teacher or lecturer as his talks have the classic ‘introduction/overview-exposition-summary-preface to next talk’ structure.

Although he posted the first episode in July 2007, I only discovered him on iTunes a few months ago and have had the luxury of continuous listening to over 150 back episodes! In between cooking coq au vin, weeding the geraniums, feeding the cat and sorting socks, I have listened entranced to Sulla’s machinations, the Marian reforms, Julian the Apostate, Constantine the Great’s stitch-up.

I’m now at the 390s AD, where my novel’s heroine’s ancestors start altering the course of history…

Reading allowed. Or not

Writers are encouraged to read their ms aloud. You arm yourself with a long drink, fend off all household pleas and settle down with the ms or screen in front of you and a notepad to jot down quick notes. Hopefully, the rest of your family hasn’t called the white coat men as you mumble away to yourself and you bash on.

I thought I’d be really clever. I’d load my ms as a personal document on to my Kindle and get it to read it using its text-to-speech feature. Easy-peasy. My throat would love me. Email sent off to Kindle with the attached ms and downloaded shortly after, I propped my Kindle up on the table (More on the fancy cover with a stand here). I opened the ms personal document in the list of books and selected Text-to-speech.

Oh dear!

The electronic voice was American – no problem as my protagonist starts life as a US citizen – and a light baritone. Word for word, it wasn’t bad. ‘C’mon’ came out as ‘See Monday’ but that was the only real blooper. The intonation was a bit haywire, but not a deal-breaker.

It was the way the voice ran straight into the next sentence and even worse, the next paragraph. A human would have paused for breath. After five minutes, my other half brandished headphones in my face and after ten, I had to turn it off.

But I’ve tried it. And you have to try things in life.

So it’s back to the read-aloud-a-thon. We need to hear the intonation, the pauses, the cadences, the flow and the emotion in the sentences. When we read silently, as the normal person does, we hear these in our heads as our neural and linguistic pathways insert them automatically.

Sorry, Kindle, although I love you as an e-book reader, you’re still just a machine.

Are some genres more equal than others?

I love bookshops. I love bookstalls at charity dos and the second-hand paperback club. I love the book table at conferences. The second and third are informal; the offer is either serendipity or confined to the books written by speakers (and certainly in the case of the RNA) attendees. Running my hands over the spines of books, opening the cover and reading the first paragraphs really is like opening a box of chocolates.

But bookshops give you a glimpse of all-round heaven.

On a recent trip, I noticed how strangely books are offered. I’m not talking the tables or the bestsellers’ or new racks, just the standard shelves of novels for adults. In the London, Tunbridge Wells and Birkenhead branches of a well-known book chainstore, the system was identical: crime; sci-fi, horror & fantasy; young adult; and authors A-Z. Even a delightful independent, Linghams Books in Heswall, Wirral, followed the same classification.

I often find SF/fantasy next to horror and dark fantasy. Timeslip/time travel and alternate history are jumbled in with steampunk, space opera, the classics like Asimov and Dick and the more literary end of SF e.g. China Miéville. But some speculative fiction such as Margaret Attwood’s dystopias Oryx & Crake or The Handmaid’s Tale is in the A-Z . That in itself is an interesting decision.

Now, I may hallucinating, but I remember as a kid that bookshops used to subdivide the A-Z section and I could find romance, historicals and thrillers grouped together. Now I have to dig around the A-Z for Katie Fforde, Ian Fleming, Simon Scarrow and Howard Jacobson.

Maybe it’s because genres are blurring; where does Diana Gabaldon fit? History, romance or SF/timeslip? Maybe it’s because space is limited in retail outlets? The bestseller and new displays attract a lot of interest – I go there myself when I step through the door. But say you’ve read all the books by your favourite historical writer and you want to find something similar, but by a different author, then you’ll have to search through the entire A-Z.

And if you’re a writer, researching where your book will be placed in the shop once it’s published (and it’s an absolute requirement by agents and publishers that you nail your genre and sub-genre in your submission), if it’s not in crime, sci-fi, horror & fantasy or young adult then you’re going to be lumped in with A-Z.