About Author

Elyse DeBarre

Elyse DeBarre
BIOGRAPHY

Historical Espionage Mystery Novels Available in Vancouver Public Library Online—Search Elyse DeBarre or visit: https://libbyapp.com/search/vpl/search/query-Elyse%20DeBarre/page-1/10442486

Featured & Notable Titles:

The Tower of Malatha (King of the Jews Book 1)

The Spy of Delphi (Priests and Magi Book 1)

Rise of the Magi (Priests and Magi Book 2, Preorder)

I'm an Australian (and Canadian, half-English) author currently based in Italy, exploring the grandeur and intrigue of ancient Rome through storytelling. Journey Through the Roman Gate... with RomaAquila to a world of mysteries, espionage, and drama in ancient Rome and other ancient cultures. As a classical archaeologist and Doctor of Medicine candidate, I craft ancient historical espionage mystery novels mainly set in ancient Rome, alongside another cloak-and-dagger series spanning Greece, Persia, Babylon, and Egypt.

My work also includes scholarly nonfiction and an extensively researched treatise on ancient Roman true crime. I'm also beginning an extensive travel memoir series under my other penname, Elyssa Vagabunda.

Alongside my historical works, I am honoured to present a collection celebrating my beloved late famiiy member, Iola Ballard’s poetry and wisdom, preserving her legacy through timeless teachings.

Having traveled to 65 countries and lived on four continents, I blend global perspectives with my passion for hiking, dancing, and music.

*Join my Facebook group, functioning as my newsletter, for exclusive updates, discussions, and behind-the-scenes content!*

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Elyse DeBarre's Books

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Popular Publish Date Series

Elyse DeBarre's Series in Order

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  • King of the Jews

    1 The Tower of Malatha: A Novel of Ancient Rome - Published on Nov, 20242 Destiny's Tide: From Exile to Empire - Published on Dec, 2025

  • Priests and Magi

    1 The Oracle of Delphi: That Which is Hidden -- PREQUEL CHAPTER (Priests and Magi) - Published on Jan, 19702 The Spy of Delphi: That Which is Hidden - Published on Jan, 19703 Rise of the Magi - Published on Jan, 1970

  • Chronicles of Livius: Espionage in the Roman Republic

    1 The Etruscan Princess: The Covert Crown -- A Novel of the Early Roman Republic - Published on Oct, 20272 In the Shadow of the Tiber: A Tale of Intrigue in Ancient Rome - Published on Apr, 2028

  • The Vagabunda: Journeys Without Borders

    1 Silk Road Nights (The Vagabunda: Journeys Without Borders Book 1) - Published on Apr, 2025

  • Roma Invicta: Echoes of Ancient Rome

    1 Agrippa I: A Comprehensive Archaeological Study of the Last King of Roman Judaea and a True Crime Inquiry - Published on Jan, 19702 The Malhata Fortress on the Roman-Judaean Negev Frontier: Associated with a Roman Road, the Frankincense Trail, and a Princely Fugitive (The Herods: A Reappraisal of a Misunderstood Dynasty) - Published on Jan, 19703 Women Physicians of Ancient Rome - Published on Sep, 20234 The Structure and Phases of the Castra Praetoria in Rome - Published on Dec, 20235 Gaius Caligula’s Reign, Personality and Friendship with M. Julius Agrippa I - Published on Dec, 20236 Roman Military Medicine from an Archaeological and Historical Perspective - Published on Dec, 20237 Roman Medicine and Military: Topics in Healing and Power - Published on Apr, 2025

  • Cardie and Me and Other Stories by the Tasmanian Traveller

    1 Cardie and Me: An Epic Poem About Growing up in Tasmania with my Dog (Cardie and Me and Other Poetry by the Tasmanian Traveller) - Published on May, 20252 Things My Mother Told Me: Wise Old Tasmanian Family Sayings (Cardie and Me and Other Poetry by the Tasmanian Traveller) - Published on May, 20253 The Heart of Tasmania: Tales and Wisdom Across Generations (Cardie and Me and Other Poetry by the Tasmanian Traveller) - Published on May, 2025

  • Roman Provincial Shadows: Agrippa I, Intrigue, and Power

    1 Unveiling Agrippa I: The Political Puzzle Begins - Published on May, 20242 The Making of a King: Agrippa I's Historical Context - Published on May, 20243 Fugitive Prince: The Negev Hideout of Agrippa I (Roman Provincial Shadows: Agrippa I, Intrigue, and Power Book 3) - Published on May, 20244 Herod’s Legacy & Agrippa I’s Fate: An Archaeological Investigation - Published on May, 20245 Agrippa I: An Archaeological Biography of the Last King of Roman Judaea - Published on May, 20246 Agrippa I's Last Days (Roman Provincial Shadows: Agrippa I, Intrigue, and Power Book 6) - Published on May, 20247 Final Analysis on Agrippa I: What We've Solved, What Remains Unknown - Published on May, 2024

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    • AllAuthor AllAuthor 1 month ago
      Allauthor
    • Writing can be an emotionally draining and stressful pursuit. Any tips for aspiring writers?
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      • Elyse DeBarre Elyse DeBarre 1 month ago
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      • I don’t find writing to be draining as I enjoy it, but I’ve been writing for years for university, scholarly writing, so I’m used to it. I find historical novel writing to be so enjoyable that it's difficult to stop once I get started. I think the best tip would be to enjoy the process and get right into the characters so that you don’t feel drained but find what you are doing fulfilling, fun, and rewarding.

        To prevent yourself from becoming drained, although that doesn’t happen to me, just make sure you vary your writing with other activities, such as your regular work, studies if you study, going to the gym, meeting friends, reading, watching movies, or whatever else it is that you like to do. Taking a break from your writing isn’t a bad thing, as you can return to it refreshed with new ideas. It’s very easy to get so focused on your writing that you don’t want to think of anything else, but for me, that doesn’t drain me.
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    • AllAuthor AllAuthor 1 month ago
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    • Have you ever incorporated something that happened to you in real life into your novels?
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      • Elyse DeBarre Elyse DeBarre 1 month ago
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      • I have lived and travelled in most of the countries and regions in which my ancient historical novels take place, and I even use villages I have lived in in the novels. I have also taken many overland and sea travel routes deliberately so I could experience them and use them in my novels, but I have also incorporated many sea and land travel routes anyway since I do a great deal of land and sea travel and put them in my novels while writing them, since the characters travel in that direction. I have lived and travelled throughout Italy, and travelled throughout Greece, Turkey, Georgia, Iran, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, the Arabian Peninsula, and other adjacent regions, and across diverse parts of the Mediterranean Sea, and these are all in my novels. I base neighbouring regions on the regions in which I have lived and travelled, so I am very familiar with these situations, including situations with local wildlife, climate, cultures, interactions with people when travelling, and reactions by people to foreigners travelling through the regions (both positive and negative). I mention sandstorms and other natural events and disasters since I've experienced them myself.

        One example I can think of is making friends with wealthy Omani Bedouins and being invited for tea, seated on carpets in their tent, seeing their camels, and so on, and I created scenes like this in my novel, Rise of the Magi. I have used many interpersonal scenes, both positive and difficult ones, from my own experiences, in my novels. Also, the general feel of what it's like travelling overland on public transport through these places, and hearing diverse dialects, haggling prices. So I am doing this all the time and therefore can't recall all incidents. I am very familiar with the city of Rome, and when writing scenes taking place here, I know where the ancient areas are in which the scenes take place and can easily picture them in my mind when describing the characters' locations and movement around the city.
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      • Elyse DeBarre Elyse DeBarre 1 month ago
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      • Publishing my first book didn’t fundamentally change my writing process, but it did make me more confident in my ability to complete a novel, especially when I finished my first historical fiction work. Nonfiction was easier to complete because it followed a more structured research-driven approach which I'm already very accustomed to through years of university achieving several degrees, whereas historical fiction required deeper narrative development and character complexity. Having gone through the full publication process, I became more assured in crafting and finalising a story, which made my next work faster to complete—although I always write carefully to ensure depth and accuracy.
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      • Elyse DeBarre Elyse DeBarre 1 month ago
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      • I’d tell myself not to be overly perfectionist to the point that I took overly long to finish my first historical novel, and that I should begin writing it while doing the research rather than completing years of research first. It’s important to start writing with the idea of completing the first novel, and that it is not as overwhelming or unreachable a task as I had imagined but something easily achievable with perseverance and in a reasonable amount of time.

        I’d also tell myself to write its chapters and scenes in consecutive order and let the scenes, plot, and characters develop organically while being aware of the story’s basic structure. Although some writers advise being overly structured and then writing the chapters at random, the way that works best for me is to develop the story in the order in which it takes place, which makes it easier to get into the characters as though I were acting out their parts in my mind. The story then takes over, and the characters develop lives of their own.

        I’d also tell myself to follow the writing method I used as a child, in which I was not self-conscious about my writing nor did I second-guess myself but simply wrote freely, fully aware that I was a good writer with good imagination, and received much commendation for what I had done. I am the same person now as I was then, with the same talents, if not perhaps more developed than before due to life experience.
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      • Elyse DeBarre Elyse DeBarre 1 month ago
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      • I grew up telling stories from a very young age—I'm told I created my first stories when I was two years old. Beginning when I was around four or five, my mother, also a writer, would get me to tell my stories to her, and she would write them down for me and save them, acting as my kind of ghostwriter. I enjoyed the process, and whenever I had a new story, I would tell her, "I have a new story," so she would type it for me as well. She compiled them into booklets, and we would read them to my friends when they came to visit.

        I find writing and storytelling are closely bound up with acting, and as a child, I would write plays, some of which my friends and I performed for the neighbours. As a teenager, I wrote a play with choreographed dancing for a Christmas school production, for which I also composed the soundtrack music. It was set in the early Roman Empire during the first Christmas. I plan to revamp and rearrange it soon. My mother was a writer, and my father a public speaker, so this also encouraged me to write.

        When my mother and I travelled the world from the time I was a small child, we'd keep travel journals intending to publish them. I illustrated mine with sketches, added poetry, and we collected plant samples from different countries, pressing them into labelled books. I always knew I would one day be writing for publication. I published my first article for a newspaper in Tasmania when I was ten—something concerning environmental issues—and that same year, I published a poem I had written while we were travelling through the Canadian Rockies based on my experience there. I’ve incorporated this poem into one of my historical novels, which will be published shortly.

        From childhood, I was constantly making up stories, and by early adolescence, I began creating more serious ones inspired by daily experiences or observations while living and travelling through the many countries we visited—most of these were ancient historical. When I was 17 and in my first year of university for my first bachelor's in classical archaeology, I wrote a poetic prose piece for a university class. When I took it out again recently to publish it, the idea immediately came to me for a historical novel, "The Oracle of Delphi: That Which is Hidden". While writing it, I then developed ideas to turn the story into a quadrilogy to further develop one of the characters.

        It's interesting that although I was familiar with the general history surrounding the events mentioned in this first novel—and when my mother and I were living briefly in Greece during my early teens, we explored the ruins of Delphi, including the Temple of Apollo, and I personally explored the area under the temple where the oracle would have received her visions—the poetic prose piece I wrote for university was not based on research. It came purely from my imagination, using creative license and impressions I had concerning the Apollo priests and King Kroisos of Lydia. When I recently conducted research to confirm the historical background, I discovered that the incidents I had developed creatively and the spontaneous theories and impressions I formed were substantiated by the ancient historical records of Herodotus and others, as well as ideas published by scholars in the field. I found a similar situation when I delved into the fall of Media for my series.

        As mentioned, I was creating serious stories in my mind from my early adolescence, envisioning them as movies, while the stories I created as a child were acted out in my backyard, often with my friends. However, when I was 19, I came upon a historical incident from the early Roman Empire during the Julio-Claudian era that I found so compelling when I envisioned it as a "movie" that I decided it absolutely needed to be written as a book. I then went to the Vancouver Public Library in Canada and began extensive research on the topic. I found that the ideas I developed through creative license worked as legitimate theories, supported by the ancient Jewish historians, but less so by Christian historians discussing that era's events.

        I’ve been researching the topic intermittently throughout my university studies, during which the pursuit of multiple degrees delayed my ability to finish the book earlier. Much of my travel and living abroad during this time involved spending periods in the ancient Middle East and Mediterranean to deepen my knowledge for this book. I later wrote a master’s thesis in classical archaeology based on the same research, earning full marks and much commendation for it. Before this, I had also completed several academic papers on the topic, which similarly achieved high praise and grades. My professors told me I knew the subject extremely well and was passionate about it. The research concerns some lesser-known but significant Roman historical figures and events, related from a unique perspective.

        Once I achieved my Master’s degree, I proceeded to finish the book, which became the first instalment of my Roman series. The book is titled "The Tower of Malatha: A Novel of Ancient Rome".
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