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Dorset based author and Classicist Annelise Gray answers some of our questions. We hope you enjoy reading her answers.
What are your top 5 writing essentials?
1. The willpower to turn off the Wi-Fi (not always successful).
2. A choice of different places to work. I have a writing desk at home but sometimes the Muse does not visit me there, no matter how many lures I put out for her, and it can be helpful to have a change of scenery. I might take my laptop to the library at the school where I teach, or to a local café.
3. Coffee and tea on tap, plus a range of semi-virtuous snacks. Sometimes only chocolate will fuel my creativity though.
4. Noise cancelling headphones. I try to keep things fairly quiet, but for certain scenes, music can get me in the right head space. I like the Gladiator soundtrack for chariot-race scenes.
5. Knowing that at the end of the day, I can close my laptop and there will be supper, a sofa, TV and my husband to look forward to. Something I’m really trying to work on is to remember that there are plenty of other things that define me besides being a writer.
![Race to the death book cover](https://i0.wp.com/baneslibraries.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/VL-Book-cover-Template-21.png?resize=1410%2C2250&ssl=1)
What do you love most about this time of year?
I grew up in Bermuda, which is pretty hot and beachy, but I really enjoy the colder seasons here. Partly that’s because I much prefer winter clothes to summer ones – cosy jumpers and scarves win out every time over dresses and shorts for me. I also love the change in food seasons – seeing different fruit and vegetables in the shops and cooking lovely warming dishes like porridge for breakfast or soups and stews for the evening.
What are your favourite festive traditions?
My mother is very crafty and she made a lot of our Christmas decorations when I was little – I can remember sitting next to her while she cut out stencils and painted them. She has passed some of them on to me and hanging them on our tree feels almost like a sacred act. My other favourite festive tradition is watching Carols from King’s on Christmas Eve – that’s when I know Christmas has really begun.
How do you research and plan before beginning to write?
I’m a Classicist by training and did several months of historical research before writing the first Circus Maximus book, Race to the Death, finding out as much as I could about chariot-racing in the first instance but also trying to accumulate the sort of everyday, sensory detail that would help me paint a portrait of life as lived by my main character, Dido, on the mean streets of Rome and also in North Africa where parts of the books are set. While I’m writing, I do refer to that research but I try not to get too bogged down in it. You can always go back and fix things later and ultimately your main focus has to be on finding the emotional heartbeat of the story, rather than worrying about whether you’ve described someone’s clothes accurately.
As far as planning goes, I sketch out a rough scene by scene at the start, and the book usually ends up where I originally envisaged. But in between the A and Z, I always go off piste. Sometimes, you have to let the story flow where it wants.
Are you working on anything new that you would like to share with us?
The third book in the Circus Maximus series, Rider of the Storm, comes out on March 2nd (World Book Day) and I can’t wait to share that story with people. It was the toughest of the trilogy so far to write but I’m very proud of it and I think it stands up well to the other two. I’m happy to report that there’s also going to be a book 4 (as yet untitled) and I’m sketching out ideas for that now.
![Riders of the storm book cover](https://i0.wp.com/baneslibraries.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/VL-Book-cover-Template-22.png?resize=1410%2C2250&ssl=1)
This interview was conducted in 2022.