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...

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...

Colossus – The Historical Note

This is something I weighed including in the first Colossus novel. I think it will appear in the third, outside of the text. It's an historical note to set the scene for the whole arc of the series. I wrote it at the urging of my agent, who saw it as necessary...

THE FOUR EMPERORS – Prologue

Prologue Roma, Italia 13 October, 64 AD   Made of Cyclopean stones, the Tullianum was a prison without bars. There was nothing to prevent the prisoner from walking out into the open air, yet Symeon did not escape. It was a perverse honor to be held there, where...

A Different Kind Of Gift

Yesterday I offered up THE MASTER OF VERONA for free on Kindle, and was astonished by the eager enthusiasm of Kindle readers, who snapped up 5,579 copies. Thank you all. The notion of that many new readers – more in a day than I could have dreamed – is...