Okay, today we start with my most recent novel to be shelved. I’ve been calling it HEIR OF THE ROMANS, which is really only to avoid calling it THE FOURTH CRUSADE, a title that no one would pick up.
Here’s how I came to this story. My new agent, Dan Conaway at Writer’s House, wanted me to look for a huge, stand-alone novel. He asked if there was a place or an event I was interested in. I gave him a list of options, to see which one floated his boat. While I was waiting, I got drawn into a story that had always resided at the corners of my imagination – Venice’s role in the Fourth Crusade. The Fourth Crusade is amusing to me, in a horrible way, because it’s the crusade that utterly failed to fight the foes of Christianity. Instead, it was waged entirely against other Christians. First they sacked a Christian city, then they laid waste to Constantinople – twice. It was the first time in 900 years that the city had fallen, and it was this act more than anything else that allowed the Ottomans to conquer the city two centuries later. In every way that matters, the Byzantine Empire never recovered.
At the center of the Crusade was the Doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo. In his early 90s, almos entirely blind, he was the first on the beaches, hacking and buffetting the Byzantines and shaming his followers through his bravery. And shaming Venice by his greed.
It was his second visit to Constantinople. So I thought I would start my novel of the Fourth Crusade by relating his first visit, and thus set up the novel in the Prologue. I wrote it, smiled upon it, sent it to Dan. While I was waiting for him to read it, I started researching another idea I’d snet along. By the time he’d read this, I was on to something else, a story we both agreed was fascinating and full of promise.
Of all the stories in my drawer, though, this is the one I’m most likely to come back to.
Tomorrow: The first part of the Prologue.
