laura_seabrook | Roman Stuff

Will attempting to get back into the swing of doing my Tales of the Galli strip (which I like to have some authenticity in, even if it's only a little), I've been reading and investigating different sorts of connections.

You might remember I was reading lots of ancient Roman detective stories.

I'm still doing that, but have discovered a couple more authors from which to read. The first is Rosemary Rowe, who writes about the freedman Libertus, a mosaic maker in Britannia who mostly investigates for his Roman patron. Only read the the first book so far but I found the character a real contrast from the others I've read.

Paul Doherty is an author I've come back to after failing to read one of his books last year. I find the style of writing to be a tad patronising, with characters telling each other things that maybe they wouldn't, but do so that the reader will understand. If this were done in an SF story it'd be dead boring exposition. The main character in this series is Claudia, a spy for the Empress Helena who has the ability "not to be noticed". I'm reading this currently as it's set in the same locale and period as my story. Hmmm - phosphorus matches in 313 CE?

CivCity Rome is a PC game I've picked up where the player has to build a functioning Roman city or town. There are different "missions" one gave go on with different goals and objectives. I quite like the idea of building Rome or Ostia from scratch. I also had the idea that maybe it'd be a cheap way of creating backgrounds for the strip.

That is, until I came across Google Earth Rome. This morning I used Google Earth (minus the ancient Rome bits) to help me a map for the strip. It's a mixture of accuracy and fantasy, but at least I got some details right.

And finally, just because I could, I bought a dual package of Rome and Rome: Barbarian Invasions on the Total War series of games. The expansion is about the right period for my strip and might just be fun to play too.