Sarah Broadley has been catching up the lovely Marie Basting as part of the My Family And Other Romans blog tour. Read on to hear about Marie’s inspiration and discover where you can find the best preserved Roman latrines in the UK…and more!
- What an amazing adventure you’ve created in ‘My Family & Other Romans’. Can you tell us a little about what made you pick Ancient Rome for Silvia to journey back in time to?
Thank you so much! Call it a gift from the gods but the decision around the Ancient Roman setting was kind of made for me – the idea that grew into My Family and Other Romans coming to me in a dream. The dream was in glorious technicolour – red caped legionaries, glowing amber as they boarded a gleaming silver bullet train. Vulcan’s lava army was born in my sleep.
- Flavia Sorrentino has brought Silvia, Bellona, Vulcan, Titus and so many characters to life. What was the process between you both to get the details right for each one?
I had very little direct dialogue with Flavia, the Chicken House publishing team commissioning the illustrations and acting as her main contact. I think this is pretty normal in children’s publishing. It means the illustrator, who works to a brief from the publisher, has the creative freedom to interpret the characters without the author annoying them all the time. There is room for the author to comment in the later stages, but I was happy to leave Flavia too it. As you can see, she did a fabulous job. So much so, I actually cried when I saw the cover illustration.
- Remus and Romulus are fantastic characters, along with many other well-known Romans mentioned within the storyline – how did you choose who would play which role and their importance in Silvia’s adventure?
Coupled with the dream comment, this probably makes me sound all vague and arty and no doubt a bit annoying, but I never really plan out the cast for my novels. I’ll have a main character in mind, but otherwise my characters and their role come to me during the process of writing. Roman mythology was obviously a key inspiration, but as with Princess BMX, I gave things a twist, taking ideas from various myths and weaving them together to create what I hope are interesting and unique characters.
- Ancient Rome is a place many readers would love to visit. Are there specific things about Rome that you’d love to see? Have you been there before?
Confession time, I have never actually been to Rome! This is something I intend to correct as soon as possible. I have no idea why a trip to Rome has so far not materialised as I have been fascinated with the Romans since I was nine-year’s old and my picture of a burning Pompei was put on the wall in my head teacher’s office. This is still one of my proudest moments and probably the peak of my artistic endeavours given I was rewarded with a much-coveted Mars Bar…anyway, in terms of what I’d like to see – all of it!!!! The colosseum, the Forum Romanum, the catacombs, The Pantheon…I could go on and on.
- Hadrian’s wall is a well-known attraction in the UK, did you do much research there? Did you visit any other sites before settling on the wall to be where the action begins?
Hadrian’s Wall was the obvious choice for the real-world action. I have visited several times over the years and have been blown away by its magnitude and the sense of history provoked when wandering around its forts and museums each and every time. And why would I choose anywhere else when I could choose a village called Once Brewed and a fort with the best preserved Roman latrines in the UK!
- What’s next for Marie Basting?
Ooh, now that would be telling…but let’s just say I’m not quite done with mythology yet!
Follow the rest of the blog tour for more!
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