Funny, true story (really true, not ‘truthy’!). I never know what a next book will be when I finish one. Lions had just come out, and I received a sheaf of international reviews from my publishers. The first three I pulled out all made reference to my ‘Byzantine plotting’ or ‘Byzantine intrigues’ or ‘Byzantine levels of character development’ … and I laughed and did a ‘note to self’ that it was time to learn more about Byzantium. Went online, ordered a dozen books, and started reading when they came. I was hooked. What elements? The interplay of artist and state. Religious tension and transition. East vs west. Urban vs. rural, the role of walls (personal and literal), of forest and field, how these have changed in meaning from place to place and time to time. The ways in which women have, historically, needed to operate to shape their worlds. The idea of permanence and transitoriness in art. The power of the historian/writer to shape later understanding of even the leaders of a given time. The way in which the deeds of the ‘great’ can feel trivial to those going about their lives, faced with their own calamities and joys. Chariot racing. Dolphins. Yeats.

Longer answer than you wanted, probably.

5) In the earlier three books there are/ is a dominant religion, but in the Mosaic your characters while protesting their belief in "Jad" are also keenly aware of the existence of other powers no matter how hard the Church would like to deny their presence. The wooden birds with the captured souls, and the wood Bison god, are they based on actual tribal beliefs and gods from the time or are you using them for the sake of the analogy? Why did it feel important to include them – historical accuracy concerning people's beliefs or to make clear the idea that other forces exist outside of what we are supposed to believe in?

The birds are an homage to Yeats, in fact. The bison figure I adapted and made use of after reading Simon Schama’s wonderful Landscape and Memory. It seemed to me that what little people (including me!) knew, or thought they knew, about Byzantine history incorporated a strong element of the mystical or spiritual (along with violence, Imperial mothers blinding sons, and so forth). Certainly the ‘pagan’ fertility rituals are drawn from readings and not invented wholesale … though, equally certainly, every author’s responsible for the use he or she makes of these things. I did want to create a tension between what we are taught, what we are told to ‘think’ and intuitive, instinctive truths - and how art can sometimes emerge from this tension, or great suffering. I took this even further in the next book, Last Light of the Sun.