THE PURPLE PARCHMENT
—Martha’s blog—
When Rubies of the Viper was published, I created a free-standing, novel-focused blog called The Purple Parchment. I liked that name so much that I decided to keep it when I imported its posts into this website. New posts appear here now as my writing schedule permits. Here’s the latest one: Pleasures and Pitfalls of Writing a Fictional Sequel.
I’ve organized my blog posts into three categories.
Section 1: FASCINATING FACTS covers a variety of subjects related to the first century AD: agriculture, cities, houses, language, rural places, slavery, travel, women, etc.
Section 2: CHARACTERS gives insights into both the historical characters—Nero, Otho (on the coin), Poppaea Sabina (at right), Josephus, Berenice, and the Flavians: Vespasian, Titus, Domitian, and Flavia Domitilla—and the fictional characters—Theodosia, Alexander, Stefan, Nikolaos, Doros, Lycos, Myrine, and Iocaste—who populate my novels and bring them to life.
Section 3: WRITING CHALLENGES discusses issues that arise in the course of writing historical fiction, problems to be solved, etc. For example…
Writers dealing with people who actually lived long ago (Real People in Historical Fiction) often struggle to make their ancient speech sound right, especially when dialogues are written in modern English (Avoiding Jabberwocky and So, how would they talk?)
Writers of fictional sequels wrestle with a series of Pleasures and Pitfalls.
Except as noted, all blog content is © Martha Marks.