Welcome to this week’s Feature Friday Futures interview with Jane Jago, author of 10 works about her collaboration with E.M. Swift-Hook and their book Dying to be Roman. A Dai and Julia mystery. This book is the first in a series, more news soon.
Now Jane is a fun person to chat with, and this inteview is a little different as it is an alternate history rather than future science fiction, but but as she put it.
“I don’t really write proper sci-fi (looks embarrassed). I scrape into the SciFi Roundtable on fantasy and on being quite a good egg. I do,alternative history though, and that requires research in the same way hard sci-fi does.”
So with this as an introduction let’s see what she learned.
What was the most surprising thing you found out while researching/writing your latest book?
If the heavy plough had been invented in time it might just have saved the Roman Empire
Why did you choose this setting?
Because it’s a mixture of the known and the unknown. The known is the geography of the United Kingdom, and the history of Rome up to the accession of Diocletian. The unknown is how the world would look if the Romans had never gone away
What’s unique about your world?
It is unique in that Rome dominates most of the world in the present day. We have a few technological ‘differences’ from today as well – allowing a slightly different and accelerated developmental timeline. So we have things such as wristphones instead of cell-phones, transport is automated and hover based rather than wheeled and so forth. Small differences from the world today. Society is divided between those who are citizens and those who are not, and so live second-class lives. But then maybe that is not so different from today….
How real do you think the (science) is in your book? If you ask how real the history is I can answer thus:
The history is very real because even though the story takes place in more or less contemporary times the jumping off point has to be factual or we would be writing fantasy not alternative history. Once you have a solid basis in fact, you can, where necessary, bend it to fit the story. But without a certain scholarship the thing would rapidly fall apart.
What did you include that you wish was real today?
I’d quite like to own a nerve whip….
Links for Jane:
- Amazon author link: Author.to/janejago
- Goodreads author link: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/15097829.Jane_Jago
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Jane-Jagos-Books-676861115818501/
- Book Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/DaiAndJulia/