'Discovering Flavia'
or
'A Day in Ostia Antica'

(first published as 'About Caroline Lawrence' BIT magazine Spring 2002)

London, England, 18 May 2000. I am sitting in an Italian restaurant having my first lunch with an editor. One of my dreams has come true. She has agreed to publish six books in a series called the Roman Mysteries, all because of one manuscript: The Thieves of Ostia. In fact, I am flying to Ostia that very evening for a bargain one-day break. It will be my first visit to the ancient port of Rome in over thirty years. I am a little dizzy from excitement (and from a glass of champagne) but a bitter espresso clears my head. I replace the tiny cup on the saucer, thank my new editor for a delicious lunch and tell her I must catch my flight. 'I hope you meet Flavia,' she says as I turn to wave goodbye. 'What a strange thing to say,' I muse, walking to the underground.

Ostia, Italy, 19 May 2000. I am enjoying a very different lunch from the day before. I'm sitting in the ancient theatre of Ostia on a
glorious spring day, sipping water and crunching a crisp green apple. I've spent the morning wandering around the site, soaking up the atmosphere while taking notes and
photos. Suddenly, I spy a group of Italian schoolgirls skipping rope on the stage. My eye is drawn to one of the girls: slightly fairer than the others and a bit of a tomboy. Suddenly my editor's words come back to me: 'I hope you meet Flavia.' I swallow and sit up straight. It's her!

It's Flavia!
Dare I take a photo?
'Carpe diem,' I say to myself. 'Seize the day'.
I take a deep breath and approach the girls, whose teachers are safely nearby. In nonexistent Italian, I try to explain about the book I am writing. The girls swarm around me, chattering happily. Then I ask if I can take a photo. I get some group shots and one girl snaps me with the others. I also take a picture of 'Flavia' on her own. She gives me a wonderful smile.

Later, relaxing under a shady umbrella pine near the spot
Flavia's house would have stood, I think about how I came to embark on a career as a writer.

I grew up in California, but when I was 16 my parents sent me to Europe on a study tour. That was when I saw Rome for the first time. And spent a magical afternoon in Ostia. Later, while I was working in Switzerland during my gap year, my parents sent me two books which were to change my life. The first was an historical novel set in Ancient Greece: The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault. The second was a translation of Homer's Iliad. Although written 3,000 years ago, it sounded so modern that I vowed to study Greek, to see if they really did speak like that! At university I enrolled for my first Greek class, and never looked back.

Later, I studied at Cambridge and ended up staying in England. I married, had a son, taught Latin at primary school. Although I loved teaching, the desire to write grew stronger and stronger. Gradually, I began to get up early and write for an hour every day. I read books on writing and listened to cassettes. I became more and more certain that I would be a writer. But what would I write about?

My younger sister claims not to remember it, but it was her idea. 'Why don't you write a story for kids,' she said, 'set in Pompeii during Ancient Roman times?' Brilliant! Why hadn't I thought of it? The ideas came thick and fast. My main character would be a girl. She wouldn't live in Pompeii (although she would witness the eruption of Vesuvius). She'd live in Ostia and her father would be a sea captain, so she could travel all over. She'd solve mysteries like my favourite childhood heroine, the fictional detective Nancy Drew. Of course, in ancient Roman times, most girls were married with children by the age of 16, so I'd have to make my girl detective a lot younger: nine or ten. And I'd have to give her some special friends to help her.

Sitting under my tree in Ostia on that beautiful spring day, listening to the breeze sigh in the pine trees and thinking about my editor's prophetic wish, I knew it was the beginning of a wonderful adventure. Not just for Flavia, but for me!

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'Discovering Flavia' or 'A Day in Ostia Antica' (first published as 'About Caroline Lawrence' BIT magazine Spring 2002)

'Discovering Flavia'
or
'A Day in Ostia Antica'

(first published as 'About Caroline Lawrence' BIT magazine Spring 2002)