Robert Allen Johnson's Blog, page 2
March 25, 2014
Finding MAGNUS
Rising Sun
I was never satisfied with normal. I was so unsatisfied with it, in fact, that I tore up my return plane ticket in 2005 and chose to remain in Southeast Asia for the next three years.
Car still in the U.S.? Who cares? Boss in the U.S. waiting for me to return on Monday? Keep him waiting!
In retrospect, I can honestly say my actions teetered on the edge of foolishness. Having said that, I wouldn't have changed a thing (okay, okay... I would have picked up the phone and called my brother, warning him not to needlessly drive around in circles for an hour outside the aiport awaiting my arrival).
One of the greatest gifts of my three year stint abroad was unexpectedly stumbling into historical fiction. Truth be told, I hated history as a child. I hated the memorization of dates and events, the cramming of 1000 years of history into one or two weeks' time. Who in their right mind would like that? So it took me off guard when I read my first historical fiction books by John Jakes (North and South) and Bernard Cornwell (Sharpe Series) and actually found that I loved them.
Scratch that. I found that I loved history.
Soon enough, I caught myself falling even deeper into the canyon of time; all the way back to Ancient Rome, to be more precise. I never made it much further than Remus and Romulus' founding of Rome, but boy... why would you want to keep going any further when there are a lifetime of stories to be found in those few hundred years since the Seven Hills were spotted until Caesar Augustus drew his last breath?
I kid of course. As much as I love Ancient Rome, there are just as many fascinating stories to be found in Greece, Persia, Egypt, and more recently Britain, France and even the United States (and this is just the tip of the iceberg, saying nothing at all of Asia, Africa and South America).
Perhaps I'll delve into those other eras and cultures someday, but for now my love affair is with a specific 100 year period within Ancient Rome. If you don't know what I'm talking about, let me throw some names out there: Julius Caesar, assassin Marcus Brutus, Rome's first emperor Caesar Augustus, Pompey the Great, Cleopatra's lover Mark Antony (or Marcus Antonius, as he should be named), history's most famous orator Marcus Cicero, the wealthiest man of all time Crassus, seven-time consul Gaius Marius, his enemy the dictator Cornelius Sulla, the firebrand Clodius and his equally outgrageous sister Clodia, etc, etc, etc.
While all of these characters have secured their places in the halls of literary fiction, most have only played supporting roles in the incredible true story of Julius Caesar. Robert Harris put himself out on a limb a few years ago and began a (still unfinished) trilogy about the life of Cicero. Aside from that, all of the characters above - excluding the Caesars, of course - haven't been so lucky as to fill an entire book with the tale of their lives. Caesar has always been the easy, normal target for writers.
Seven years ago, I wondered if I could attack the story of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus - or Pompey the Great as we know him in the west - but discarded it as an idea that was much too grandiose. It was merely a dream that would never come to pass, at least when it came to me writing it.
I put it off year after year until I set out on the journey in 2013. The opening paragraphs of the story came to me one night and swirled around my head for a couple of months. After weeks of putting it off, I sat down and threw the dice, as Caesar would have said, forsaking normalcy to pen the true but fictional tale of Pompey the Great for the first time in literary history. Finally, in March 2014, I published Rising Sun, the first book in the three-part MAGNUS (the Latin word for Great) series.
So what made Gnaeus Pompey so great and far from normal? Check out MAGNUS: Rising Sun and dive into the story of a boy who marched to battle, found himself on the wrong side of a civil war, and rose an illegal army of his own to come to Rome's aid - all before he was halfway through his 20's!
I was never satisfied with normal. I was so unsatisfied with it, in fact, that I tore up my return plane ticket in 2005 and chose to remain in Southeast Asia for the next three years.
Car still in the U.S.? Who cares? Boss in the U.S. waiting for me to return on Monday? Keep him waiting!
In retrospect, I can honestly say my actions teetered on the edge of foolishness. Having said that, I wouldn't have changed a thing (okay, okay... I would have picked up the phone and called my brother, warning him not to needlessly drive around in circles for an hour outside the aiport awaiting my arrival).
One of the greatest gifts of my three year stint abroad was unexpectedly stumbling into historical fiction. Truth be told, I hated history as a child. I hated the memorization of dates and events, the cramming of 1000 years of history into one or two weeks' time. Who in their right mind would like that? So it took me off guard when I read my first historical fiction books by John Jakes (North and South) and Bernard Cornwell (Sharpe Series) and actually found that I loved them.
Scratch that. I found that I loved history.
Soon enough, I caught myself falling even deeper into the canyon of time; all the way back to Ancient Rome, to be more precise. I never made it much further than Remus and Romulus' founding of Rome, but boy... why would you want to keep going any further when there are a lifetime of stories to be found in those few hundred years since the Seven Hills were spotted until Caesar Augustus drew his last breath?
I kid of course. As much as I love Ancient Rome, there are just as many fascinating stories to be found in Greece, Persia, Egypt, and more recently Britain, France and even the United States (and this is just the tip of the iceberg, saying nothing at all of Asia, Africa and South America).
Perhaps I'll delve into those other eras and cultures someday, but for now my love affair is with a specific 100 year period within Ancient Rome. If you don't know what I'm talking about, let me throw some names out there: Julius Caesar, assassin Marcus Brutus, Rome's first emperor Caesar Augustus, Pompey the Great, Cleopatra's lover Mark Antony (or Marcus Antonius, as he should be named), history's most famous orator Marcus Cicero, the wealthiest man of all time Crassus, seven-time consul Gaius Marius, his enemy the dictator Cornelius Sulla, the firebrand Clodius and his equally outgrageous sister Clodia, etc, etc, etc.
While all of these characters have secured their places in the halls of literary fiction, most have only played supporting roles in the incredible true story of Julius Caesar. Robert Harris put himself out on a limb a few years ago and began a (still unfinished) trilogy about the life of Cicero. Aside from that, all of the characters above - excluding the Caesars, of course - haven't been so lucky as to fill an entire book with the tale of their lives. Caesar has always been the easy, normal target for writers.
Seven years ago, I wondered if I could attack the story of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus - or Pompey the Great as we know him in the west - but discarded it as an idea that was much too grandiose. It was merely a dream that would never come to pass, at least when it came to me writing it.
I put it off year after year until I set out on the journey in 2013. The opening paragraphs of the story came to me one night and swirled around my head for a couple of months. After weeks of putting it off, I sat down and threw the dice, as Caesar would have said, forsaking normalcy to pen the true but fictional tale of Pompey the Great for the first time in literary history. Finally, in March 2014, I published Rising Sun, the first book in the three-part MAGNUS (the Latin word for Great) series.
So what made Gnaeus Pompey so great and far from normal? Check out MAGNUS: Rising Sun and dive into the story of a boy who marched to battle, found himself on the wrong side of a civil war, and rose an illegal army of his own to come to Rome's aid - all before he was halfway through his 20's!
