Riptide 4th Anniversary Celebration! Welcome Lisa Henry!

@RiptideBooks @lisahenryonline #Celebration #Giveaway

Thank you for joining Riptide on our 4th Anniversary blog tour! We are excited to bring you new guest posts from our authors and a behind the scenes insights from Riptide. The full tour schedule can be found at http://riptidepublishing.com/events/tours/riptides-4th-anniversary-celebration. Don't miss the limited time discounts and Free Books for a Year giveaway at the end of this post!

Please welcome Lisa Henry to the tour.

Soundtrack to an Ancient World

When I write, I often have my own soundtrack to whatever story I’m working on. Sometimes I use this as the ultimate procrastination tool: No, I absolutely cannot write yet until I find a song that is word-for-word perfect for this particular character! But mostly I pick a wide range of songs that relate to the characters or theme, and playing those songs as I write is a quick and easy way to get into the right mindset to pick up the story again.

I also like to get to know my characters better by picking songs that I think they would listen to. Except, when it came to He is Worthy—my novella set in Ancient Rome—I had nothing. Absolutely nothing. It was easy enough to find songs that helped put me into the mood of the story, but then I found myself getting stuck on the idea that there was nothing in my (admittedly weird) iTunes catalogue that any of my characters would even recognize as music.

If anyone has seen the excellent HBO series Rome, you’ll get the feel for Roman music in that. It’s full of drums and cymbals and strings and pipes. But I didn’t want to listen to the Rome soundtrack while I wrote my Roman story. It’s important, when I write, to find my own inspiration. I don’t want to risk cross-contamination, if you like. I was writing He is Worthy, not Rome fanfiction. I didn’t want to be influenced too much by someone else’s vision. (Note to self: I should totally write Rome fanfiction.)

But what I did find myself coming thinking of, over and over again, were two words: hellatorius victorialis. A few years ago, I used to obsessively play Rome: Total War. Or, in my case, Rome: Where the Hell Did All those Barbarians Come From? Oh no, I’m Dead. When you play a game for hours and hours, however badly, the soundtrack sometimes gets stuck in your head.

If you haven’t heard the song before, here’s a link.

And here are the lyrics, with a translation direct from a Rome: Total War chatroom. So, you know, they’re bound to be accurate. The song is apparently called Divinitus, and it lists the traits of a Roman:

hellatorius; victorialis
erastus; necessitas
honararius; despondeo
spiritus; obdormio
patriota; gladiator
afflictio; ommento
divinitus; salutaris
furtivus; libertas

I didn’t actually look for a translation for a while. I mean, I got the general gist: victory, honour, fighter, etc. For the purposes of He is Worthy, all I knew was that the words were in Latin, had a martial bent, and the song itself sounds melancholy. It sounded exactly like the sort of song that a former soldier might get in his head, as he’s facing death again. But then, a while after I’d already finished He is Worthy, I actually got curious enough (it was late, and I was looking for a way to procrastinate again) and actually looked the song up. And it reads a little like a very sparse kind of poem:

warlike; victory

lovers; death

honour; despair

life; death

country; fighter

pain: waiting

heaven; salvation

furtive love; freedom

Divinitus, it turns out, is the perfect song for He is Worthy. And that last line? A total coincidence.

About Warriors of Rome

In this collection, we've gathered together two novels and two novellas that explore the breadth of the Roman Empire. From slave gladiators to senators, Roman sexuality to Roman politics, these stories reveal the lives and trials of those fighting for the Empire in one way or another—on the sands or in the villas, or even on the senate floor.

In The Left Hand of Calvus, a gladiator sent undercover to another ludus must decide which master to betray.

In He Is Worthy, a Bructeri slave and a Roman patrician make strange—and literal—bedfellows in the plot to assassinate Nero.

In The City War, Senator Marcus Brutus must decide what he's willing to do for his lover—and for Rome. A stable boy with a secret and a leader-cum-tyrant push Brutus onto a path from which he can never return.

In Mark of the Gladiator, a disfavored gladiator is bought to train a group of female warrior slaves for the arena. Thrust into the middle of a murder conspiracy, Anazâr must find a way to protect his charges—and his heart—from his new master and a patrician family feud.

http://www.riptidepublishing.com/titles/collections/warriors-rome

About Lisa Henry

Lisa likes to tell stories, mostly with hot guys and happily ever afters.

Lisa lives in tropical North Queensland, Australia. She doesn’t know why, because she hates the heat, but she suspects she’s too lazy to move. She spends half her time slaving away as a government minion, and the other half plotting her escape.

She attended university at sixteen, not because she was a child prodigy or anything, but because of a mix-up between international school systems early in life. She studied History and English, neither of them very thoroughly. 

She shares her house with too many cats, a green tree frog that swims in the toilet, and as many possums as can break in every night. This is not how she imagined life as a grown-up.

Connect with Lisa:

·Blog: lisahenryonline.blogspot.com

·Twitter: @lisahenryonline

·Goodreads: goodreads.com/LisaHenry

Anniversary Sale

The Warriors of Rome collection is being sold in a special discounted bundle by Riptide this week only. Check out the sale on this series and other bundles at http://www.riptidepublishing.com/anniversary-sale

Giveaway

To celebrate our anniversary, Riptide Publishing is giving away free books for a year! Your first comment at each blog stop on the Anniversary Tour will count as an entry and give you a chance to win this great prize. Giveaway ends at midnight, October 31, 2015, and is not restricted to US entries.