Shakespeare’s Othello – A Prayer Before Dying
I am often asked what's my favorite Shakespeare play. It's like asking me to pick my favorite ice cream. Sure, there are favs, but it's ice cream - the worst I've had is terrific. Having performed about two-thirds of the canon, any list of mine would have Much Ado and...
Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet: Comedy Subverted, Tragedy Reinvented
“For never was a story of more woe than this of Juliet and her Romeo.” William Shakespeare’s The Tragedie Of Romeo And Juliet reinvented theatrical Tragedy by taking standard Comedic elements and subverting them, with unhappy outcomes. This makes Romeo & Juliet...
Shakespeare’s Macbeth – Reimagining “Tomorrow, and Tomorrow…”
Shakespeare's Macbeth explores the darkest recesses of the human psyche, delving into themes of ambition, power, guilt, and the consequences of one's actions. Macbeth’s arc culminates in the "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" soliloquy in Act 5, Scene 5, a poignant...
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Now in Print – Her Majesty’s Will!
For the first time in print - HER MAJESTY'S WILL! Buy it today at Amazon.com. Click here! Before he was famous, he was a fugitive. Before he wrote of humanity, he lived it. Before he was the Bard of Avon, he was a spy. A very poor spy. England, 1586....
Presenting COLOSSUS: THE FOUR EMPERORS
Now Available! The second novel of the Colossus, a series exploring the fall of Jerusalem, the building of the Colosseum, and the rise of Christianity. This novel deals with the last days of the Emperor Nero and the tumultuous year that followed, known ever after as...
Colossus: Map of Rome
Here's the map of the area around the Forum Romanum in Rome, around 66-69 AD. It covers many of the places mentioned in the course of the novel. For this map, we took an existing one in the public domain and overhauled it completely. The Fish Market and the...
Cover Art for THE FOUR EMPERORS
Cover art is a tricky business. It can make or break a book. And it's always dangerous for authors to have too much say in their covers. But, as with other Sordelet Ink books, I get final say. It was bad from the start. I walked into this art design thinking I...
Vatican, Vatican’t – Blessed and Cursed
Given the news of the Pope's retirement, this feels like the perfect time to share this story. You see, I have the dubious distinction of having been both thrown out of the Vatican, and also blessed by the Pope. Though not on the same day. The Vatican Incident (a...
A Community Loss
Last night the Historical Fiction community lost a great voice in Margaret Frazer. The author of two dozen historical mysteries, she was writing and promoting right up to the end. I only knew her as Margaret, her pen name, not as Gail, in life, so I'll...
Negative Space, or What Will Won’t Do
It’s dangerous, playing the expectations game. You rewrite Romeo & Juliet, you’d best bring something new to the table. You write about the fall of Jerusalem, there had better be something surprising and uplifting in that awful story. And if you write a novel...
Verona – Travel and History
Walk In the Footsteps of Dante There are two terrific options when it comes to reliving history. You can either read about certain eras or actually walk in the footsteps of history's greatest figures. Thanks to David Blixt's thrilling historical...
Truth, Motive, & Tone
A huge component to what writers of Historical Fiction do is write about real people. That’s a huge component of what the readers are looking for – not just the clothes and habits of a distant time, but the flesh-and-blood beings who wore those clothes and had those...
