My big news is that I am now represented by Richard Curtis Associates. His experience and expertise are legendary. Pretty much best news ever. We work very well together–have gone through a cycle of edits and carried on a number of very fruitful conversations, critiques and discussions of what future my books ought to have and what we both love about history and good fiction.
Here are some posts I enjoyed around the web this week:
If you enjoy books set in Rome or simply creative and refreshing new takes on old historical tales (in this case Crassus and his maybe not so greedy ways), here’s an interview you will enjoy with Andrew Levkoff. Andrew is a member of my local critique group, so we’ve been in the trenches together. He has the right stuff. His books form a trilogy called The Bow of Heaven and are: The Other Alexander, A Mixture of Madness and Blood of Eagles. Click here for Historical Fiction Ebooks “Interview with Andrew Levkoff”
Work in the mines of ancient Greece (and Rome) always carried the distinct sense of the worst fate for a slave. A recent discovery and exploration of the elaborate and extensive mining shafts and tunnels around the Mycenaean Acropolis of Thorikos, Greece makes this far more vivid. Some of the shafts are 30 centimeters. The heat is extreme. The oxygen iffy at best. The rock extremely hard to cut into and requiring extraordinary effort of the miners and yet in this absurdly deadly environment. Makes the writerly mind spin with possibilities. Also the dating revises pretty much everything—3200 BCE. The mine stayed active through the classical period, but no one thought early Bronze Age for mining this sophisticated in Greece. We know the metalworking expertise (and related mining) started earlier in Turkey than Greece, and this comes as a surprise. Dating based on tools and pottery. I’m happy to be breathing fresh air, enjoying the sunshine on my shoulders in temperate weather and not pounding rock! Click here for “An Exceptional Discovery at Thornikos, Greece”
On Sharon Kay Penman’s website, an interview with Priscilla Royal about her latest medieval mystery, Land of Shadows. I can’t wait to read this one. Priscilla is one of my favorites. Click here for Sharon Kay Penman’s website “Interview with Priscilla Royal”
Those brightly colored Egyptian temple walls—the way they’d really have looked—is being recreated at the Met’s Temple of Dendur with light and lots of research. The Sackler at Harvard did a similar exhibit on the color in Greek temples a while back. I’m glad our image of the ancient past is being brightened up. Click here for Metropolitan Museum’s “Color the Temple”