Heroines' journeys - Not always physical ones

Karen/Carina

As readers, we like to see our main character progress in some way. She or he doesn’t need to save the world, make a grand marriage with a duke or make a groundbreaking journey into space. But their story does need a resolution. It could be acceptance, it could be a move somewhere else, it […]

Historical research – it's a hard road

Roman relief depicting a travelling wagon (raeda) from a tomb from Virunum, Zollfeld, Austria

Drafting my new Roma Nova story set in the fourth century is slow, glacially slow at times. I know Roma Nova, I know its ‘history’, but when you get down to the nitty gritty of writing in a time […]

Roma Nova on Jo Frances Penn's Books and Travel podcast

Travel is a wide concept. It doesn’t just mean trotting up the steps to a plane or sitting back looking out of a train window, or even visiting entrancing and exotic places.

Travel can be in the mind, across hundreds or possibly thousands of years, into other realities and mentalities, even into an alternative […]