What is your background and how did you get into writing?

I think writing is a natural human desire. Who wouldn’t write if they could afford to? After studying Classics at University, I taught at The Manchester Grammar School for 25 years. Then my family moved to the Middle East for my husband’s work, and there was no demand for Latin teachers. That was my opportunity so I started writing and now I’m back in the UK with six books published by Sharpe Books.

Your current series stars the Roman poet Ovid as your detective. Why did you choose him?

In 8 CE, the Roman poet Ovid was in crisis – and that is a good start for any novel. From being the most famous and popular poet alive, he was banished to the very edge of the Empire. I researched his exile to the Black Sea town of Tomis and read the poetry he wrote there and my fictional Ovid was born. He is a bit off-putting at first because he is so miserable in exile, always complaining about how cold it is and how much he misses Rome. But I hope he grows on the reader. I figured that anyone who came up with the poetry Ovid wrote over his lifetime had to be charming and confident in at least some areas of life. Now I say that I am at the forefront of a new trend in crime fiction – to make your main character a writer, often a writer from real life. And yes, I frequently confuse the real Ovid with my version.

What does your daily routine look like?

I get all the boring stuff, like housework and errands done in the mornings. Work begins in the afternoon when I log on to Second Life, a Virtual Reality world, and join my writing group in a sim called Milk Wood. It is strange but true that if my avatar sits and does a virtual writing sprint, I have to write in real life. I can get in four or five hours before I must go back to reality. In the evening, I read. I usually have a beta request on the go, and I read a lot of books for review.

This platform is called Aspects of Crime. What are the aspects of crime writing that attract you to a book?

I have always enjoyed three things about crime books from when I was about eleven and reading my first Sherlock Holmes stories. Firstly, I approve of the way that good defeats evil (usually). I think human beings like to feel there are still knights defeating dragons out there. Secondly I like the puzzle. I am the ideal reader of crime fiction because I never work out who the murderer is. I can even reread Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh because I forget the plot so easily. Well, not The Murder of Roger Akroyd or Murder on the Orient Express, even I can’t forget those. And thirdly, the whole human experience can fit into a crime novel. It’s impossible to imagine Jane Austen putting a murder into one of her novels, but you can put Jane Austen into a crime novel.

What does your workspace look like?

Full of books and very messy. I have a shelf of books I need for day to day, a shelf for the particular project I’m working on, and two bookcases of Roman source materials. A Roman legionary’s helmet stands on the bookcase, alongside a bust of Cicero and an owl for Athena. I have the poster for Robert Harris’ Imperium plays up on the wall, alongside a photo of my father-in-law sitting on a camel in front of the Pyramids when he served in Egypt during 1943. There are vast numbers of notebooks, and lots of nice pens, so naturally I do most of my work straight onto the laptop.

All your main characters are based on real-life Romans like Sestius, Junia Tertia or Ovid. Why don’t you make up your own main characters?

I found all my main characters while researching other things, and something about each one leapt out at me. I’m afraid once that happened, there was no choice. Sestius and Junia only get a handful of brief mentions in the sources, so for me there were gaps begging to be filled in. Ovid was slightly different, we have a mass of evidence on him, mostly written by him, and that had to be looked at and weighed before I could see him as a character that would be the hero of a series of books. I use the word “hero” with some trepidation – my Ovid is not traditionally heroic.

There has been a lot of interest recently in developing support for writers – it’s a famously lonely occupation. What does your support network look like?

It all comes down to other writers. My advice to any new writer is to find a writers’ group, make friends online through social media, join a platform like this where you meet other people who “get” you. I started writing in Qatar, and just as I was feeling the need for human contact and support, the National Library opened and held Creative Writing groups for various languages. It is a beautiful library and has a very good Greek and Roman History section which helped. And a very fine café. Online, as I mentioned, I have a lot of writerly friends in Second Life, and once a month I see a group of fellow writers on Zoom, just to sit and laugh for an hour while we catch up. I also have a lovely independent bookshop in the next village which stocks my books and cheers me on.

What themes do you like to explore in your writing?

I like to examine people dealing with crisis and change. I set all my books at a very interesting time in Rome’s history, the hundred years or so as the Republic crumbled in a mess of civil war, then was reborn as the Roman Empire. How do ordinary people cope with such a change? My current series is set in a town that has been Greek for six hundred years but knows it is about to be made a part of the Empire. What does this mean for the people of the town? New taxes, new opportunities, lots of patronising Romans trampling over their history and culture?

It took me four books to realise that I put a poet in all my stories. I am not entirely sure why…

Can you tell us about the project you are working on at the moment?

I’m on the third of my Black Sea series and things are getting very hot for Ovid with the death of the first emperor, Augustus.  He may be languishing in exile at the end of the known world, but Rome still doesn’t trust him – except for Augustus’ widow, Livia, who has a dangerous job for Ovid. The skullduggery of this era is delightful – think of the television version of “I, Claudius” at the moment where Augustus dies while Livia is talking over him. The viewer still doesn’t really know if she poisoned him or not. That is all based on the gossipy, biased and slanderous sources of the time! It’s great material.

What is your greatest achievement outside of writing?

Playing Bev in “Abigail’s Party”. Ghastly woman.