Alan Fisk

One day at school in 1961, when I was 11, my English teacher recommended a novel called "Winter Quarters", by Alfred Duggan. It turned out to be a historical novel, and I immediately became addicted, not only to Duggan, but to historical fiction.

A few years later I discovered that my uncle Jean Bassan, who was a French novelist, also wrote historical novels, but I wasn't allowed to read them until I was older (for good reason).

I developed a vague dream of becoming a novelist myself, but did nothing about it until the day before my 20th birthday. I decided that I should start writing my first novel while I was still in my teens! I wrote it in 38 days, and it was unimaginably bad. It wasn't a historical, and neither was my second novel, which I wrote when I was 23, after I had moved to Newfoundland. That one was merely extremely bad.

I had done a lot of reading about Britain in the period following the collapse of the western Roman Empire, and had come across the story of the bard Taliesin, who composed the earliest surviving British poetry. I had the idea of writing a fictional autobiography of Taliesin, which was made easier by the fact that nothing is known of the details of his real life. I also indulged myself by setting part of the story at the Roman villa in Lullingstone in Kent, which has marvellous mosaics and wall-paintings.

This novel, "The Summer Stars" was to be the first novel that I ever tried to get published. It was rejected 52 times in 13 years, but eventually found a home with a publisher in Wales. It was later republished in the United States.

Because it took so long to find a publisher, "The Summer Stars" was leapfrogged by my next novel, also an historical, "The Strange Things of the World", which I wrote after I had moved from Newfoundland to Montreal. It tells the story of what has been called "The World's First Tourist Cruise", when a party of London scholars and gentlemen chartered two ships in 1536, in the reign of Henry VIII, to sail to North America because they wanted to see "the strange things of the world". The voyage ended in disaster and even cannibalism somewhere on the shores of Newfoundland, and it is interesting that English interest in colonising America ceased for nearly half a century afterwards. "The Strange Things of the World" was picked up by a Newfoundland publisher, and became my first published novel.

Although I've also written two modern novels and two science fiction novels, I decided a few years ago that I would stick to writing historical novels, because that's what I really enjoy the most.

My next historical was my only venture into self-publishing. "Lord of Silver" is about a tribesman from north of Hadrian's Wall who, in 366 A.D., crosses into the Roman provinces of Britain, where he hopes to make his home. Once again the Lullingstone Roman villa features prominently in the story, along with the noble lady who is then its owner. I based the story on three elements: a Roman roof tile that is on show in the Museum of London, and on which someone has scrawled "Austalis has been going off on his own for 13 days"; the Barbarian Conspiracy of 367 A.D., when Roman Britain was assaulted simultaneously by the Picts, the Saxons, and the Irish; and my favourite villa. I published "Lord of Silver" through Xlibris in Philadelphia, but I withdrew it from their list a couple of years ago. It is currently under consideration by a new publisher for reissue.

I've never returned to live in Newfoundland, but being away seemed to stimulate my ideas for historical novels set there. "Forty Testoons" arose from an entry in King Henry VII's account books in 1504 about 40 shillings (probably in the then-new "testoon" coins) being paid to "the priest that goeth to the new isle". The young Father Ralph Fletcher takes on this job that no other priest wants, and spends an eventful winter in Newfoundland. "Forty Testoons" was published by Breakwater Books and has recently been republished.

Ralph reappears as a much older man 40 years later in my last published historical novel, "Cupid and the Silent Goddess", currently in print from Twenty First Century Publishers. By then an elderly refugee priest in Florence, he is a minor character in this novel, which imagines the creation of Bronzino's painting "Allegory with Venus and Cupid". The novel is narrated by Bronzino's apprentice Giuseppe, who is forced to model for Cupid. Giuseppe saves an autistic young woman, Angelina, from exploitation after she is made to model for Venus.

My last historical novel, "The Rice Coast", is hidden away in a drawer. Set in 1786, it is about a young man who joins the first settlement expedition to Sierra Leone. When I'd finished it, I looked it over, and realised that the structure was all wrong and that the novel, as it stands, is unpublishable. I've kept it because I may want to rewrite it one day. I'm always preaching persistence and not giving up, but sometimes you have to realise that a novel just hasn't worked.

I'm currently writing another historical, "Letters from Rome", set in Britain in the decades before and after the Roman invasion of 43 A.D. It is pro-Roman, anti-Druid, and anti-Boudicca!

I've worked as a technical writer for many years, and I've also been a tutor on residential weekend courses on topics such as "Writing the Historical Novel" and "Story Theory". I'm a widower living in London.