Sons of Rome is the first book in the brand new Rise of Emperors series, an action-packed historical thriller set in the 3rd century AD. It follows the lives of two men whose destinies are inextricably linked after a chance meeting in the city of Treverorum in their youth. They must share glory and heartbreak along with the Roman empire itself as it endures an era of tyranny and dread.
But just how did two authors decide to bring two characters together - in the same book. Well, here's how it all came about from the authors themselves.
How it Happened by Gordon Doherty & Simon Turney
Gordon and Simon have been friends and co-conspirators for more than a decade. They first came into contact on a peer-review writing website, on which they both honed their debut Roman novels. By 2012 they were firm friends and arranged to meet up at the annual Festival of History at Kelmarsh. It so happened that this particular year, the heavens opened, appalling rains flooded the site and the festival was cancelled. This left Gordon and Simon, along with a number of other friends, far from home in Leicestershire and with no festival to visit.
Cue a weekend spent largely in the pub. And like many great (and many awful) ideas, the notion of writing a joint novel was born in those hours of carousing and historical discussion that weekend. Initially, all that arose was the idea that it could be done. At that point even the plot and characters had not been decided. It was a nice idea that seemed nicer with every beer…
Then, the festival over, they returned home. However, unlike many pub-born ideas, this one refused to let go, and the project continued to nag at both of them. Ideas came in flurries, and emails were exchanged. Simon was at the time specialising in Republican Rome, and Gordon in the Late Roman Empire – periods over four hundred years apart. How then to bring their skills and knowledge together? It was a conundrum at first, but gradually the clouds parted and the most perfect answer was revealed.
The story of Constantine and Maxentius – two giants of history from the period that irreversibly reshaped the Roman world, bridging Simon’s era to Gordon’s – was perfect. Even better, they realised, each of them could take on the ‘voice’ of one protagonist, and tell the tale in alternating chapters. It all snowballed dramatically from there.
They arranged to meet up to discuss all their plans. That meeting occurred in Gilsland on Hadrian’s Wall in 2013, involving laptops, scribbled notepads, Roman tattoos, visits to ruins and… yes, beer. One of the biggest decisions they made concerned the narrative point of view. The tale, they decided, would only work when told in the first person. Though this limited the scenes to events that happened in the presence of the protagonists, the point of view allowed for a much greater depth of emotion and character understanding than in third person. At the end of that weekend, the outline of the ‘Rise of Emperors’ series was already taking shape.
Fuelled with the desire to write this fascinating tale and to create these two larger than life characters, Simon and Gordon returned home to their respective writing desks. The story began to take shape one chapter at a time from the deeply detailed plan formed at Hadrian’s Wall. The notion was simple. Gordon would write a chapter from Constantine’s point of view. Simon would then read Gordon’s chapter and pick up with the next sequence of events in the story, these ones recounted from Maxentius’s point of view. This way, they crafted a seamless tale, making the reader privy to the escalating and entangling troubles of both characters – a fly on the walls of Rome’s imperial palace and on the battlements of the northern forts. Moreover, it meant that tweaks could be made throughout to keep things in line. The fact that there were two pairs of eyes on every passage in the book meant hiccups could be caught and be ironed out rapidly.
Further meetups followed – at least twice a year – always with Roman ruins nearby for inspiration, always with new scribbled notebooks, straining laptops, and always… always, with beer. And each time, the plot of the trilogy became better focused, more polished and tighter. It felt like a lifetime achievement when in 2015 the first book Sons of Rome was finished, and yet that was but the start. Simon and Gordon had scratched the surface, taking two young princes and propelling them to power. But now Maxentius and Constantine were adults with a destiny, and two more books awaited to bring the series to a conclusion. That meant… another meetup. More notes. More ruins. More laptops. More beer!
The Rise of Emperors trilogy began as an enjoyable experiment to see whether such a method of working in conjunction was possible. An experiment that became an obsession, which became an epic.
