Many moons ago, I wrote a book, then a sequel and what I thought was the third of a trilogy. Set in the ‘present’, they featured a young woman, Carina Mitela, who had been brought up for the first part of her life as Karen Brown in the Eastern United States. INCEPTIO gave us a story of transformation to Carina and her self-empowerment when she was twenty-four years old. In PERFIDITAS, she was thirty-two and well-established in her Roma Novan life and finally, SUCCESSIO when she was thirty-nine, brought her story to a conclusion. Readers liked the stories which won accolades, good reviews and awards. So we had Books I, II and III.
But I was stealthily writing another book, AURELIA, which was in the ‘wrong’ order because it went back to an earlier period in Roma Nova’s history – the late 1960s – and featured the story of the younger version of Carina’s grandmother, Aurelia Mitela. Then I grasped the very sharp nettle and wrote about the Great Rebellion ((INSURRECTIO) and its aftermath (RETALIO) in which Aurelia Mitela was said to have played a secret, and speculative part. Writing a coup d’état, repression, resistance and retaliation involved quite a lot of research. So it seemed we had a second trilogy – Books IV, V and VI, sort of a prequel trilogy, even thought it was written afterwards. I was slightly uneasy about this numbering, but what could I do? The stories had to be told!
Then I went and messed it all up.
What would I write next? Everybody seemed to be writing novellas and although I thought of myself as a long-form writer (88-100,000 words) and wondered how on earth I would write anything as short as 35,000 words, I thought I’d give it a go. I’d always wanted to expand on Carina and Daniel’s infamous castle climbing incident, plus I wanted to send her back to North America which was quite a bit different to our North America. CARINA was the result. But how to number it? I could hardly call it ‘IS’ (S for semi), the Latin way of signifying 1.5, in today’s political climate. So it received no number on the retailer sites.
 Two orphans… In the meantime, I wrote a collection of Roma Nova short stories stretching across two millennia – also fated to receive no number or place in the series on some retailer sites, especially the one beginning with A.
It was a truly imperial mess.
But Roma Nova stories were still tumbling out of my head. When I was drafting NEXUS, a novella to slot in between AURELIA and INSURRECTIO, I knew I HAD TO DO SOMETHING. After a lot of dithering, I went for a radical solution. I decided to change the covers and rework the series. It would become two mini-series within the overall Roma Nova series. So here, in brief, is the new Roma Nova world order:
The Carina strand
INCEPTIO, where New Yorker Karen Brown is thrown into a new life in mysterious Roma Nova and fights to stay alive with a killer hunting her..
CARINA, a novella, Carina’s first mission abroad. What could go wrong?
PERFIDITAS, six years on, where betrayal and rebellion are in the air, threatening to topple Roma Nova and ruin Carina’s life.
SUCCESSIO, where a mistake from the past threatens to destroy the next generation.
The Aurelia strand
AURELIA, in late 1960s Roma Nova, Aurelia Mitela battles silver smuggling and illegal trading and must make the heartbreaking choice between her love, her child and her country…
NEXUS, Mid 1970s, London, where a simple favour for a friend becomes a chilling pursuit across Europe
INSURRECTIO, where Aurelia Mitela struggles against a manipulative tyrant grabbing power. But it may already be too late to save Roma Nova…
RETALIO, a classic tale of resistance and retribution – the endgame between Aurelia and Caius
Extras
ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories from AD 370 to the present (where both Carina and Aurelia make an appearance).
THE OFFICIAL ROMA NOVA READING GUIDE (Free!), an introduction to the whole series, cover images, publication dates, links to stores, short synopses, why Alison wrote each book, a suggested reading order, plus first chapters from each book. And at the end a short version of the Roma Nova story.
New covers, new name
I’ve called the two groups ‘strands‘, like strands of existence, of thread, of thought. The Oxford Dictionaries defines ‘strand’ in this sense as: “An element that forms part of a complex whole.” I reckon that works well with Roma Nova!
But the one thing that’s common to all the books, whether the first edition or this new re-ordering, is that the heroines are courageous, determined and decisive, and go well beyond their duty, even at peril of their lives and loves. But they make some equally terrible foul-ups, sometimes from fear, but usually from the best of motives. And we know how that turns out.
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, CARINA (novella), PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, NEXUS (novella), INSURRECTIO and RETALIO, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. Double Identity, a contemporary conspiracy, starts a new series of thrillers. JULIA PRIMA, a new Roma Nova story set in the late 4th century, is now out.
Download ‘Welcome to Alison Morton’s Thriller Worlds’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email update. You’ll also be among the first to know about news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
If you enjoyed this post, do share it with your friends!Like this:Like Loading...
 Yes, the author proofs of the NEXUS paperback have arrived! And they are looking good! Thank you, Ingram Spark/ Lightning Source.
I’m sending out advance copies to bloggers and reviewers at the moment, but I’ll be running a competition for signed giveaways during launch month 12-30th September.
And it’s just as exciting sliding your fingers across the cover, flicking the pages full of the words your story and holding the printed book in your hand for the ninth story as for the first!
NEXUS is a novella that sits in between AURELIA and INSURRECTIO in the Aurelia strand. It fills a few gaps and answers a few questions…
You can pre-order the ebook now.
Click this link to go to your favourite store: https://books2read.com/NEXUSRomaNova
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, INSURRECTIO and RETALIO. CARINA, a novella, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories, are now available. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. NEXUS, an Aurelia Mitela novella, will be out on 12 September 2019.
Download ‘Welcome to Roma Nova’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email newsletter. You’ll also be first to know about Roma Nova news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
If you enjoyed this post, do share it with your friends!Like this:Like Loading...
 Good question! I’ll try and explain…
Firstly, what’s a novella?
Essentially a short novel, but with a difference. Currently immensely popular as an ebook, ”…it allows for more extended development of theme and character than does the short story, without making the elaborate structural demands of the full-length book. Thus it provides an intense, detailed exploration of its subject, providing to some degree both the concentrated focus of the short story and the broad scope of the novel.” (Robert Silverberg)
There you have the long and the short of it. 😉
More seriously, today a novella is often written in between novels, as an accompaniment or complement to other books in a series. Sometimes, an author may be trying out a new genre, character or storyline; other times, they may tell the story of a secondary character. These are quick reads, but no less enjoyable and are typically 20,000 to 45,000 words.
War of the Worlds by H G Wells and Animal Farm by George Orwell are famous examples. My own first experiment was CARINA (35,000 words), which tells of an incident referred to in later books and a mission that sits between the full-length INCEPTIO and PERFIDITAS.
So where does NEXUS fit in?
We’re still in Roma Nova, the remnant of the Roman Empire that’s toughed it out into the modern age. It’s an alternative 20th century with many aspects exactly the same as in our own timeline, but some are distinctly different; Praetorian Guards exist for one. They guard the imperatrix of Roma Nova and act as an intelligence and special forces service.
We meet Aurelia Mitela at ages 28 to 30 in AURELIA when she’s firmly established with ten years as an officer in the Praetorian Guard under her belt. She has a mother who’s a senior councillor to Imperatrix Justina and head of the Mitela family. And Aurelia’s young daughter, Marina, is the emotional centre of her life. Of course, that doesn’t stay stable past the first chapter…
When we next encounter Aurelia in INSURRECTIO, she’s in her mid-forties, and has climbed to become a senator, the deputy foreign minister of Roma Nova and chief councillor to Justina’s daughter, the ineffective Imperatrix Severina. Marina is a bright, carefree young woman. But darkness hovers over Roma Nova and Aurelia has to use all her intelligence, wit and experience to fight it.
Shortly afterwards, in RETALIO, resilience, resistance and retribution are Aurelia’s watchwords and she has to call for help on old friends outside Roma Nova as well as act as a leader for those struggling to survive inside.
Until now I’ve skipped other years as her life wasn’t at a special crisis point until the time of each of the stories in those three main books. This reflects our own lives with brief highs in a continuous flow. I would think, though, that Aurelia’s life is more stressful (although more exciting) than our own, even in the more mundane periods.
Readers have asked me what had been happening to various characters after Aurelia’s searing encounter with Caius Tellus in AURELIA, so I thought I’d explore the long gap between that book and INSURRECTIO; NEXUS is the result.
 I’ve always wanted to place Aurelia in London at some point and speculate on how much of Roman London would have survived in her timeline. I used to work in the City of London (the financial quarter of London) and in my lunchtime would sit by the remnants of the Roman fortifications with my sandwiches regretting that modern town planning had blasted through the original London Wall with a road and modernist (rather ugly) blocks of flats. Of course, that didn’t happen in the Roma Nova timeline. 🙂
It’s been a real pleasure seeing some of them again: Miklós, her life’s love; tough, sarcastic spymaster Plico; daughter Marina asserting herself a little more; Licinia, the Praetorian captain in Vienna; and David Soane, the Viennese banker cousin. But most of all, we find out why Harry Carter, a powerful minister in the British government in RETALIO, wants to help Aurelia. NEXUS is that story.
So why a shorter book?
I wanted to write a standalone adventure for Aurelia – she deserved it – but not one with the same complexity and depth of disaster for Roma Nova. And we needed a break from the relentless bitter rivalry with Caius Tellus, horribly fascinating though it is.
When I read, I can’t bear ‘padding’ or dragging out for artificial reasons. Stories have a natural length which the wise writer respects, hence my recent set of short stories, ROMA NOVA EXTRA. NEXUS is a more convoluted story – after all, it means connections, ties, obligations – so it deserved a longer text than a short story. It’s emerged (after various rounds of editing and revisions, of course!) at just under 39,000 words which was a perfect length.
Readers have told me they like short, sharp reads as a change. I hope I’ve given them, i.e. you, an entertaining one and also added to the Roma Nova canon. Happy reading!
Interested?
Ebook: Amazon (Kindle) Apple Kobo B&N Nook
Paperback: Barnes & Noble Book Depository Amazon worldwide Waterstones Online
Alison Morton is the author of Roma Nova thrillers – INCEPTIO, PERFIDITAS, SUCCESSIO, AURELIA, INSURRECTIO and RETALIO. CARINA, a novella, and ROMA NOVA EXTRA, a collection of short stories, are now available. Audiobooks are available for four of the series. NEXUS, an Aurelia Mitela novella, is now out.
Download ‘Welcome to Roma Nova’, a FREE eBook, as a thank you gift when you sign up to Alison’s monthly email newsletter. You’ll also be first to know about Roma Nova news and book progress before everybody else, and take part in giveaways.
If you enjoyed this post, do share it with your friends!Like this:Like Loading...
|
Subscribe to Blog via Email
Join 37 other subscribers.
Buy AURELIA from Apple!
UK
US
|
