HOW YOU CAN GET INVOLVED (safely):

Roman Tours, who organised the event, would love to build a Roman marching fort – and they may be one step nearer to it very soon. They’ve been chosen by Barclays as finalists in the ‘Take one small step’ competition for grant money. You can see their entry – and vote for it - here:   Or just text ‘ROMAN’ to 62555. Even better, do both.

I’m the author of four mysteries featuring Roman Army medic and reluctant sleuth, Gaius Petreius Ruso. In his latest adventure, he and his British partner Tilla find themselves in a whole lot of trouble while hunting down a tax-man who’s run off with the cash. You’ll find it inside one of the covers on the right, depending on where you live, and like all the other titles, it’s also available as an e-book.

To find out more about the books – including news of Book Five and why every story has two titles – click here. Events are listed on this page, but if we can’t meet in person, you can always contact me here. This is where you can find out that an author’s life is not as exciting as that of her characters, and below are the latest musings on the blog.

Want to hear a different voice? Meet my guests,  Vicki León , Sarah Bower  and Jane Finnis.

So, apologies for the dearth of posts over the last few weeks. It’s looking like a quiet Christmas here at Downie Towers – but hopefully a cheerful New Year.

Author’s aren’t consulted about Large Print covers (or at least, I’m not) so there was no chance to ask where this shot was taken. I’d love to know because the background is not unlike Corbridge, where I spent many happy hours researching the second of  Ruso’s  adventures.

If anyone knows who the tip of that nose belongs to, please pass on my thanks.

I’ll be taking over from the excellent Jane Finnis, who’s making the coffee for the previous half-hour, so hopefully there will be some crossover*.  If it’s quiet we can have a chat over the washing-up about some gloriously obscure aspect of Roman Britain and the  fiction we both weave around it .

As regards the technical aspects  – ‘fraid I haven’t a clue how this sort of thing works, nor what time 4.30 will be across the rest of the virtual community, but people who DO know have made it all clear on the Webcon site.

*LATER – no there won’t, not unless something goes seriously wrong, as the final schedule says there should be a half-hour gap between us.  I’ll be sharing the hosting with Jenny White – hopefully that’s the right link!

We got home from Tokyo yesterday evening, which was really six this morning, and it’s now 7.30 am or halfway through the afternoon, depending which bit of my brain is operating. Possibly neither, after six flights, three countries and three increasingly baffling languages in a fortnight.

The original mission was to visit Vladivostok. For those who don’t know, as I didn’t, it’s at the far end of Trans Siberian Railway from Moscow, and locals can hop on a ferry for Japan or Korea, or catch the train to China. Youngest son has been studying there for the last nine months, and we planned to travel home with him and his huge quantity of amassed baggage and DVD’s. (Should the jetlag keep us awake again tonight, we can sit up and watch Daniel Craig being James Bond in fluent Russian.)

Naturally mission creep began to occur as soon as the trip was announced. Husband found himself explaining to Tokyo airport security that the mysterious objects on the x-ray were two tins of Lyons black treacle, being delivered to a friend in Japan with a hankering for a taste of home.

Another friend needed medicines delivered to Japan from her mother in Russia. Unfortunately there was also a pot of jam (?) which was not only technically a liquid but, by the time it reached Tokyo airport, leaky. (We had already, with regret, refused to take the plastic bag full of white powder. We were assured it was nothing sinister, but we didn’t know the Japanese for ‘this is only Bicarbonate of Soda,  officer.’)

More later. Hopefully some fascinating multicultural insights will float up through the haze. And I’ll remember to mention Korea. Or maybe I’ll just post a few photos.

The annual Whitehall Roman Villa dig started today. It’s good to see old friends, meet new people and get muddy together as we unearth more evidence of what it was like to live in Northamptonshire under Roman rule.

Jeremy Cooper’s doing a blog on the dig website. This enables people who aren’t there to see what’s going on and those of us who are to find out what it is we’re actually doing. When you’re head down in a trench, it’s sometimes hard to tell.

Click here to find out more about the Open Day on Sunday 12 July.

Just back from a great afternoon at Milton Keynes’ Living Library.  The original idea behind the Living Library – as you’d guess from the shot above – was to give borrowers a chance to meet people about whom they might already have  fixed ideas. The local version expanded into the chance to meet all sorts of interesting folk – not only the ‘living books’ but the readers, who turned out to be a fascinating bunch.

I guess we all move in our own  restricted circles, and in mine I don’t think there’s anyone who can chat to customers across her supermarket till in six different languages, or who earns a living wage as an artist, or who is brave enough to speak publicly about overcoming depression.   Ever heard of Korfball? I hadn’t, but thanks to a conversation in the Green Room I now know it’s a sport that even I might have taken up at school, had it been on offer.

Several budding writers dropped by to chat about promising projects, and it was good to think through my own strategies for getting work done (none of which is entirely successful, to be honest). Some people came because they enjoy reading and wanted to meet a writer, and others because they thought the Living Library was a fine idea and wanted to support it.

Everyone involved in this venture was taking a risk of some kind – the staff that nobody would want to join in, the readers that their book would be disappointing, and the books themselves that they might disappoint their readers – or that nobody would want to talk to them in the first place. I guess the whole thing was an exercise in trust – and in discovering the extraordinary nature of seemingly ordinary people.

Not sure  if anybody’s told the Library staff, but as I left,  several of the books were beginning sentences with, ‘When we do this next year…’

‘Let there be festivity, a Christmas tree, presents and sweets, and may all good and kind omens come true. Let snowflakes twirl in their round dances, and may you have joy. Happy New Year!’

(I think it may have lost something in the translation, but the sentiment is there.)