Writing
Davis's interest in history and archaeology led to her writing a historical novel about Vespasian and his lover Antonia Caenis (The Course of Honour), for which she could not find a publisher. She tried again, and her first novel featuring the Roman "detective", Marcus Didius Falco, The Silver Pigs, set in the same time period and published in 1989, was the start of her runaway success as a writer of historical whodunnits. A further nineteen Falco novels have followed, as well as The Course of Honour, which was finally published in 1998. Rebels and Traitors, set in the period of the English Civil War, was published in September 2009, and Falco: The Official Companion in June 2010. In March 2012 she published Master and God, set in ancient Rome and concerning the emperor Domitian. In 2012 Davis and her publishers Hodder & Stoughton and St. Martin's Press announced that she was writing a new series of books centred on Flavia Alba, Falco's British-born adopted daughter and "an established female investigator". The first title, The Ides of April is scheduled for publication on 11 April 2013 in the UK.
Davis has won many literary awards, and was honorary president of the Classical Association from 1997 to 1998.
Read more about this topic: Lindsey Davis
Famous quotes containing the word writing:
“What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist’s presence makes itself felt above that of the model.... With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul’s style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)
“A man who publishes his letters becomes a nudist—nothing shields him from the world’s gaze except his bare skin. A writer, writing away, can always fix himself up to make himself more presentable, but a man who has written a letter is stuck with it for all time.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“In the course of writing one historical book or another, it has happened that I could hardly restrain myself from simply copying entire documents. Indeed, I sometimes sank down among the documents and said to myself, I can’t improve on these.”
—Alfred Döblin (1878–1957)