Sophia McDougall - ProfilesArchive

About Me

I am a writer. I live in England, in a pretty little town full of heroin addicts and tea-shops in equal measure. There's also a man who passes my window almost every day, singing, "I - am so - NAUGH-ty. I'm really bad and sinful. Everything I do is a sin. NAU- AUGH- AUGH- TY! I am a naughty boy." If you live in my town, you'll know him too.
I am the author of the Romanitas trilogy, set in a modern world where the Roman Empire never fell. The first two books are Romanitas and Rome Burning. Rome Burning is out in hardback.
Romanitas begins with the state funeral after a car crash kills the Imperial family's most glamourous couple, and with the escape of two London slaves.
Rome Burning is set three years after Romanitas and there's been a massacre on the Great Wall of Terranova, and the Emperor falls suddenly ill.
There's more information, and an excerpt, at www.romanitas.com
You can buy both books here.
I've also written plays and poetry. One day I will again.
I play bodhran, guitar and sing (up to a point, anyway). I am working on a musical project called Pinton Hill with my little brother Jack McDougall, who sings, plays, and makes noises in In Pursut of a Thief . We'll see how it goes.
UPDATE: The man who used to sing "I'm so naughty!" as he passed my window, no longer does so. Now he sings "It's good to panic. Panic, panic!" He also often sports a rakish hat.

My Interests

www.donowdo.com

I'd like to meet:

I edited my profile at Quacked.com , check out these Myspace Layouts!

Music:

A.F.I, Alkaline Trio, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Green Day, Muse, Patrick Wolf, Queen, R.E.M, Ryan Adams, Rammstein, The Arcade Fire, The Mountain Goats, Tracy Chapman, Tori Amos, and of course, and slightly out of alphabetical order - In Pursuit of A Thief.

Beethoven, Handel, Gorecki, Mozart, Verdi.

Television:

Supernatural... This Week... There must be something else, surely? Also an inordinate amount of rubbish - I dearly love and need to be distracted. What's the good of being writer if you haven't got a head half-full of how to sell unpleasant objects from around the home and use the money to buy a granite worktop for the kitchen?

Books:

Margaret Atwood, Charlotte Bronte, Raymond Chandler, Keats, Vladimir Nabokov, Philip Pullman, Joe Simpson, Shakespeare, P.G Wodehouse, Virginia Woolf.

I have a terrible compulsion to buy almost anything written by A.S Byatt, read it ten times, and then explain to my friends and family exactly what is wrong with it and how angry it has made me in enormous detail for their own good.

Heroes:

No. Not really. MyGen Profile Generator

My Blog

Doing a talk! Secrets of universe revealed!

Come to Tunbridge Wells library on February 22nd, 7 pm, and I will tell you anything you want to know. Probably will blather on a bit about novels. Sign 'em, too. Tunbridge Wells Library....
Posted by Sophia McDougall on Sat, 19 Jan 2008 12:10:00 PST

That passed by and so may this.

My brother is a statistics analyst at Scotland Yard working, until recently, on hate crimes. "Write a racist death-threat anywhere in London and I will read it," he used to say, proudly. But now, they...
Posted by Sophia McDougall on Mon, 17 Dec 2007 08:18:00 PST

Doodles

A little while ago this website asked me to do some "doodles" in first editions of Rome Burning. But I got rather too into it, and drew all these little pictures of the characters and a handful of sce...
Posted by Sophia McDougall on Mon, 17 Dec 2007 06:28:00 PST

No, no, no, no.

Terry Pratchett has Alzheimers.Bugger it to hell, this is so awful. To be honest, I don't have much else to say. Except that I wish I could usefully kick something. ...
Posted by Sophia McDougall on Thu, 13 Dec 2007 05:05:00 PST

Cranford. I dont understand it.

For once I am not going to post about the whiny, self-pitying process of writing or where you can go see me jabbering about the same, or about the many reasons you should bulk-buy my novels and p...
Posted by Sophia McDougall on Fri, 23 Nov 2007 02:06:00 PST

ROME BURNING LAUNCH -11th Sept, 6.30 Tunbridge Wells -- all invited!

Well, most of the story is in the title, but if you want to come to the launch of Rome Burning at Waterstones, Tunbridge Wells Kent, from 6.30-8.00 on the 11th of September, then you can. There will b...
Posted by Sophia McDougall on Sun, 02 Sep 2007 10:56:00 PST

In which the Actual Alleged Publication Date is revealed and I issue a challenge...

...I just noticed on the back of the new bound proof that it says "Coming from Orion Books on 22 August, 2007). So, barring any further disasters... there we go.After not being entirely convinced abou...
Posted by Sophia McDougall on Tue, 22 May 2007 12:15:00 PST

Copyediting

I am in copediting hell. I can't really tell you more or go into too much detail of what copyediting hell is like-- I just am in it. That's about all I can say. It is quite possible, that if you...
Posted by Sophia McDougall on Thu, 12 Apr 2007 04:32:00 PST

The Orion Author Party: Quest for Ian Rankin

The annual Orion Author Party! Sipping champagne, chatting with Michael Palin, sharing a joke with Helen Mirren... This is the sort of thing authors write about on their blogs, isn't it? I...
Posted by Sophia McDougall on Mon, 05 Mar 2007 12:39:00 PST

Meet The Author, Greenwich Waterstones, Dec. 14th.

I will be hanging around at this event, called, well, "Meet the Author," at, you may have guessed it, the Waterstones in Greenwich, and this will occur on, yes, December 14th. Which is actually pretty...
Posted by Sophia McDougall on Sat, 09 Dec 2006 02:48:00 PST