We are in Sydney this Anzac Day weekend to see the Rameses exhibition at the Australian Museum. One can easily arrive at the conclusion that Ramses II was a master of spin way before the social media era. More than 3000 years after, we can still see and feel the reverberations of his media campaign. He was victorious in all the wars he waged; he built colossal monuments. He was the greatest, most celebrated, and most powerful ruler. So, he claimed.
Viewing almost 200 ancient artifacts and a virtual reality show made us hungry. We walked for about a kilometer and a half to the cafe at 428 George St. You do know where we're going with this little story, right?
Orchard Bookshop moved from the Adelaide Central Market to Adelaide Arcade about two years ago. Not too long after, I moved jobs and found myself a hop and a skip from the bookshop. My morning route to the office these days invariably includes looking at Orchard's window display and dropping in at lunchbreaks. I love their curated collection especially on the ancients and philosophy.
Today, I found a young lovely lady minding the shop and she told me her parents were away. "Goodness," I said to her. "Do you know you have the best job in the woooooorld?"
Happy International Women's Day! Here's to strong women: May we know them, may we be them, may we raise them (sharing my March TBR pile).
There, just finished Natalie Haynes’s “Divine Might”, released last 28 September. “Beguiled” is my state at the moment after going through her seven books the last three months.
“Classics” and “entertainment” are juxtaposing terms, but Natalie Haynes has managed to meld these two in her writing. You’d think that someone who is steeped in ancient history would be stuck in her ivory tower looking down on the heathen population. But no, Haynes, with aplomb and humour, joins the dots between the ancients and popular culture while injecting her staunch feminist position and political opinions.
It is tempting to stalk Haynes (she also does shows!), invite her to tea, and talk about the fantastic things she has written about. She must be prescient and aware of her powers as she's issued a veiled warning in “Amber Fury” to those who fall hopelessly in love with her and her work.
Natalie Haynes is a rockstar and a goddess reincarnate. 
At 10 years old, he's completed reading the Harry Potter series, watched the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play, and caught the golden snitch!
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Roma (#1)
Astoundingly ambitious and utterly successful weaving of the personal
stories of the Potitii and Pinarii ancient Roman families into the tumultuous
"history" of Rome years before the time of Romulus and Remus, the
rise and fall of the Roman republic, up to the assassination of Julius Caesar
and the ascension of Rome's first emperor.
Empire #2
An incredibly massive story spanning five generations of the Pinarii
(Lucius the Lightning Reader, Titus and Kaeso the twins, Lucius the Seeker,
Marcus the Sculptor, and Lucius, comrade of Marcus Aurelius) amidst the
backdrop of Imperial Rome (from the Julio-Claudian dynasty to the Year of the
Four Emperors, the Flavian Dynasty and finally to the end of the reign of
Hadrian of the Nerva-Antonine dynasty) and the mysterious fascinus which had
made its way from one Pinarius family member to the next.
Dominus #3
The last of the trilogy, I read it as slowly as I could. It may be a
while before Steven Saylor writes another book (or maybe this is it, he will
retire!). I was heartened, however, to read this article:
Quo Vadis, Mr. Saylor?
by Steven Saylor
In 2018, I wrote “the end” not just to the novel The Throne of Caesar, but to the whole “Roma Sub Rosa” series featuring Gordianus the Finder, sleuth of ancient Rome. Roman Blood kicked off the series in 1991; another thirteen novels and two collections of short stories followed (with countless murders, conspiracies, kidnappings, robberies, and other crimes along the way). The series took place over the final four decades of the Roman Republic, from Cicero’s first murder trial to the assassination of Julius Caesar, and spanned 27 years of my writing career.
Along the way, I produced a couple of stand-alone novels set in my native Texas, A Twist at the End (serial murders in 1885 Austin) and Have You Seen Dawn? (contemporary suspense in a small Texas town uncannily like the one where I grew up).
Right now I’m in the final editing stages of Dominus, a third novel to complete the trilogy that began with Roma and Empire. It’s a family saga that follows the fortunes of the aristocratic Pinarius clan from the earliest beginnings of Rome, as a small trading post on the Tiber River, to the reign of Constantine the Great, first Christian emperor—who moved the imperial capital away from Rome to his own new city, Constantinople (modern Istanbul). Dominus will be published in June 2021.
So where do I go next? Or as Gordianus might have asked, “Quo vadis?”
For the first time since 1991, I’m not locked into a publishing contract, which means I have no deadline looming. Having that deadline year after year always represented security—I send in the book, they send me a check. But not having a deadline gives me a sensation of freedom and relaxation I haven’t felt in many years.
Also, I’m rapidly approaching age 65, looking forward to Medicare and all those senior discounts.
So, what’s next? I’m going to retire, of course!
Only problem: everyone tells me that writers never retire. My husband insists that writers can’t retire—it’s categorically impossible, like walking on the ceiling.
I feel awfully lucky to have finished, to my own satisfaction and at my own pace, not one but two series. No plot-threads left hanging. No nagging sense of something left unsaid, some corner of history unexplored, some crime unsolved. I’ve said what I wanted to say. And I think that the quality of my writing, whatever its intrinsic worth, has been pretty consistent from start to finish. I don’t want to be one of those writers who keeps turning out reams of prose longer than he or she should. (I’ll name no names, but I suspect most readers could cite a favorite author or two whose work “went off” toward the end.)
In 2013, I saw the late Ursula K. Le Guin speak to a packed auditorium on the UC Berkeley campus. (Famed for her fantasy and science fiction, Le Guin also visited ancient Rome in her novel Lavinia.) She talked about getting older, which she characterized as a progressive diminishment of every aspect of life. In her eighties, Le Guin wasn’t exactly retired, but she had left novel-writing behind; she attended a local writing circle and wrote poetry. She said she simply no longer had the physical or mental stamina to produce a novel.
I’m nowhere near 80 yet, and I suspect I could write more novels. But should I?
If life has taught me one thing, it’s to never say never. I learned that early in my career, when I initially thought Roman Blood was strictly a stand-alone, then, when my publisher wanted a sequel, I told interviewers that my Roman mystery series would comprise three or four books, at most. I’m glad I was wrong.
"Dominus" ends with the reign of Constantine and with the Pinariis moving to Constantinople, the new Rome. There's still almost two centuries before the barbarian general Odoacer deposes the last Western emperor. I really hope that Steven Saylor carries on with the magic of weaving the Pinarii saga into Rome's history.
