Sometimes starting a new novel can be difficult, not least because the sheer scale of the work involved can be daunting.  Do I really want to commit so much of my time to such an arduous project? Fortunately, it isn’t all hard work, and the pluses always out-way the negatives.  One such example is going away to do the groundwork for a historical novel.  I recently took a holiday to Northern Spain to research the sequel to my novel Roman Mask.  Spain might seem a surprising destination for those who are familiar with Roman Mask, as so much of that story is set in the forests of Germany, and I’m guessing many readers would expect any sequel to also be entwined into that dark mist-shrouded and menacing landscape.  However, without giving too much away, my story involves the brother of Julius Arminius, and takes my main character Cassius to a completely different land and will show how the disaster in the Teutoburg forest had far reaching effects throughout the Roman world. Spain was always an incredibly …