Trevor Bloom
My father was in the army and I grew up on army bases in the UK, Germany and the Far East. I adored historical fiction and read avidly, especially Rudyard Kipling, Henry Treece, Rosemary Sutcliffe, Alfred Duggan and my mother’s Jean Plaidy books. I also devoured books on military history and developed a keen interest in archaeology. I can still remember the thrill of reading about Vespasian’s siege of Maiden Castle in 43 AD and how archaeologists had discovered the skeleton of a British tribal defender with a Roman ballista bolt lodged in his spine.
At university I studied law but loathed it and knew I could never become a lawyer. I started writing an historical novel about the Saxon adventus while I tried to work out what I wanted to do with my life. One day I saw an ad for a trainee copywriter. I applied, got the job, put the manuscript away in a drawer and forgot about it. I loved the buzz of advertising and life as a copywriter proved excellent experience for a writing career.
I subsequently became a marketing consultant working on projects for companies like Coca Cola, British Telecom, Gillette and Marks & Spencer. This was followed by a stint in financial services. Meanwhile I had married Emma and settled down. I ran my own business for a while and worked as a volunteer for Save the Children. In 2004 I took a Masters in International Politics, writing my thesis on the post-war US occupation of Japan.
It was about this time that I began to write again: mostly children’s stories, thrillers and short stories. I decided that what I really wanted to do was write about the Roman era, particularly the end of empire. A glutton for punishment, I took another Masters, this time in Creative Writing, and a year later my first novel, The Half-Slave, was accepted for publication by Hookline Books.
Some of my current favourite writers are Cormac McCarthy, Iain Banks, William Boyd, Tobias Wolff, Raymond Carver, Annie Proulx, Anita Shreve, Anne Tyler, Nick Hornby and Jay McInerney. Historical fiction writers I enjoy include Bernard Cornwell, Alan Furst, Conn Iggulden, Philippa Gregory, Hilary Mantel, Tracy Chevalier and Ken Follett. On the non-fiction side are Tom Holland, Peter Heather, Lucien Musset, Bryan Ward-Perkins, Max Hastings, Anthony Bevor among many others. As you can see my tastes vary!