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The Secret of
"The Last Roman"
By Alla Drokina
Author BK Greenwood draws on various time periods and cultures to create a three-part book series called “The Last Roman” about a time traveling protagonist forced to deal with his immortal condition.
Greenwood combines historical facts with his own fictional narrative to create a grappling read. The time traveling aspect encompasses traversing through ancient Rome and modern-day society.
As a young and avid reader, Greenwood was influenced by historical and action, adventure books, so it’s no wonder the series may bear intentional resemblances to Indiana Jones, Highlander, and DaVinci Code.
The first two books, “Exile” and “Abyss,” are already out, while the final book titled, “Absolution,” is slated for release spring 2022.
Can you talk a little bit about how your background has informed your writing?
Probably the biggest influence on my writing would be the amount of reading I did as a kid and as a teenager. We did a lot of moving around when I was young. It was really hard to settle into the schools.
I actually went to seven different elementary schools and three junior high schools, so I kind of got used to doing a lot of reading, because reading was pretty easy, pretty simple; I didn't have to make new friends.
I read on just about every topic you can imagine, history of animals, the Serengeti, the Amazon, and so forth. I would just pick up subjects and just read as much as I could about them.
That really kind of established the ability for me to create stories in my mind from words on a page, so I kind of just reversed it around into putting words on a page to create a story, as I got older. I think that's probably the biggest influence I had.
What was your favorite book series growing up?
Tarzan of the Apes. I believe it's twenty-two books in that series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. I probably read each one of them at least twice, if not three or four times.
Actually, at one point, I rode my bike around to all the different bookstores, in the different malls, to chase down all the paperback copies of the book and eventually got them all. It took me about three or four years to do it.
Edgar Rice Burroughs actually wrote several other series as well that I read, so he was probably my favorite author and most influential, when I was growing up.
How do you find the balance between sticking to facts and creating your own narrative when writing historical fiction?
That's kind of a similar question by someone else who said they like to read historical fiction, but then they get worried that they may quote something out of it that's not accurate, because it's hard to tell what are the facts or what the author made up.
From my perspective, what I try to do is I try to keep the narrative itself, the whole background of the event, as accurate as possible. There's obviously interpretations.
Sometimes, people may think if you're talking about a certain battle that it lasted three days, some people say it lasted seven days. That's fine, because you can’t nail that down, but I like to use facts to set the story.
Who won the battle, people that were the leaders in the battle who died—all those things I keep very accurate, and I try not to mess with them in any way.
What I fill that in with is the actual story that my characters are doing, the dialogue between the characters, even the dialogue between real historical figures—that, to me, is kind of open game to anything I'd like to do.
We don't have recordings like we do on this call … To me, that's kind of the poetic license I can build in there.
How did you come up with this specific storyline for the books and the time periods and locations?
Yeah, so I've always had an affinity—I've always liked the Roman period … it has its own culture, it's so influential.
The Romans themselves were really interesting in that they didn't just squash out another culture. If they came across it, they would actually take the best parts of that culture and incorporate it into their own … There's probably a half dozen chapters that are Roman based, but there's actually at least another dozen or so chapters that are based at other times in history.
You also mentioned elements of religion, which I know there’s a little bit of the Da Vinci Code influence. So, when you say crucifixion, are you talking about the crucifixion of Christ?
Yeah, there's two parts of it. One is that during the three years when Christ is prophesying, anybody he heals … they become immortal. He basically makes the perfect as physically perfect. They don’t get diseases. They don’t age. They’re strong and fast.
[In the books], you have these two immortals that are kind of battling each other throughout the 2,000 years. And then the modern-day story is kind of the culmination of the bad things that the character Thomas is trying to do. … That's how religion plays in.
Now, that's kind of the extent to religion. I don't really delve into religion much more after that. I don't make any judgments on it. It’s just used as the backdrop to how they become immortal. And then, my story kicks off, and it's kind of an action, adventure from there. Like you said, Indiana Jones.
What have been the most rewarding things so far about you pursuing your passion and being an author?
There's probably two different things that were the biggest, satisfying moments.
One is the old cliche of actually getting your physical book, because you can open up and flip through the pages and see the words on the page and see the name and art. That’s kind of a cool, fleeting type of satisfaction.
But to me, the real satisfaction was when I started getting completely organic reviews from strangers. It's great if my brother or my sister-in-law does a great review on Amazon.
But when you start getting people in the UK, for example, complete strangers that leave you five stars who say they really enjoyed the book, and they can't wait for the next one, or that they picked it up, and they couldn't put it down for a day and a half—that is where it reaffirms that, at least, you're not a terrible writer, right?
It affirms that this may be something that you can continue to do and be successful at if you could just get the right level of exposure and the right level of interest across the board.
For further information visit: bkgreenwood.com.
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