Caesarion
This post is available as a podcast One of the saddest stories I’ve come across in my research for The Third Daughter is that of Caesarion, Cleopatra’s son by Julius Caesar. Born in 47 BCE, and killed in 30 BCE, this young man had no time at all to make a mark on life: there […]
Poetry success!
Third prize in the Virtual Writers’ poem-a-day competition! Go to this website to read “Mariam on Umrah” https://www.virtualwriters.org/poem-a-day-contest-winners-2020/
The Cushion Shop
Now that the first draft of The Third Daughter has been – more or less – hammered out, I’m experimenting a little. I look for images from the ancient world which depict everyday activities and use them to improve my descriptions of Junia Tertia’s childhood and upbringing. I am indebted here to websites like the […]
The Coin
This arose out of another Qatar National Library Writing Circle challenge: to write a story about an object. For a long time, I have wanted to write about the silver denarius minted by Lucius Sestius Quirinalis in Asia, and last year we were fortunate enough to track down a beautiful example of this coin. Minted […]
A day in the life
The Qatar National Library writing group has been busy again! This week, the course leader set us the task of writing a spoof of one of those “Day in the Life” columns which usually end up in Sunday newspapers. You know the sort of thing – celebrities treat us to a description of their breakfast […]
Desert Tracks
New from the Qatar National Library’s creative writing group – the first episode of our podcast, “Desert Tracks”. In particular I recommend the story about the lift singer by Greig Parker – it is about 13 minutes in. https://watch.cloudflarestream.com/4c3898a703799c4487cc68358909a2f6 Greig (find him at greigparker.com) is a talented writer who explores many different genres, and has […]
Cleopatra
What a great subject for research! Having decided that I must include a meeting between the protagonist of the new novel and the infamous Queen of the Nile, I am really enjoying this. Cleopatra is so loaded with our preconceptions that peeling away the layers is proving fascinating – and what we really know about […]
PAD – the poetry challenge
So – my online writers’ group does a challenge every February , and I haven’t managed it once in four years. BUT – I have produced some poems. Today’s prompt was, appropriately enough “Apathetic”, surprisingly easy. Second Lifers, why not sign up to the challenge in Milk Wood? Apathetic Life streams away from me. I […]
Winter poems
It’s been a good year for the roses…
A short story, nothing to do with ancient Rome, but free, so who’s complaining? (Warning: I’ve just had this rejected for being too violent….) Once he was dead, she almost didn’t want to bury him: but she had planned very thoroughly and was pleased with the way it had gone, although, of course, there were […]
