Encountering Empire follows an eighteen-year-old Irish leader as he journeys from Ériu to Hispania, confronting Rome’s expansion, pirates, political intrigue, and unfamiliar cultures while reflecting on a life shaped by courage, strategy, and survival. What is the most rewarding aspect of writing a series?

Building continuity across books – political, cultural, and personal. The research – and ensuring each volume deepens the world rather than repeating it. I have learned a lot in the process and taken the opportunity to experience the world of the scela by visiting the many archaeological sites that still exist.

Which historical sources were especially valuable while developing the novel?

My most influential sources include P.W. Joyce’s A Social History of Ancient Ireland; Barry Raftery’s Pagan Celtic Ireland; and work by J.P. Mallory, John Peddie, and Lionel Casson. I also draw on J.K. O’Doherty’s Derriana for regional context and perspective. Beyond these, the research base is broad – archaeology, maritime history, Roman military studies, and early Irish literature.

Did you think of the novel as an imagined oral history or archive while writing it?

Yes. The framing device with Calgach and Padar is deliberate. The narrative is shaped as remembered experience – layered accounts, disagreements, omissions, and inherited stories. It mirrors how early societies preserved history.

What do you hope readers understand differently about Rome and the Celtic world?

That Rome was not monolithic, and the Celtic world was not primitive. Both were complex, adaptive, and interconnected. Power moved through trade, obligation, hospitality, and information – not only through conquest.

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