From the wall of the Temple of Horus at Edfu. It is one of very few contemporary images of Cleopatra VII’s sigil left for us to see. Note the Feather of Ma’at, second from right. It was the symbol of the goddess Ma’at, and of truth and justice in ancient Egypt. It is worn as…
[from “No Place Like Home,” a short story written for Star Colonies] WE PUT DOWN at the equator because it was the warmest latitude on the planet. Also the flattest. “And the most boring,” Grady said, hunched over the viewport. “And the safest,” I said, trying to peer over his shoulder. “Well, it’s no place…
Read more We needed somewhere to go, a suburbial planet, a bedroom community for six billion.
So there I was, descending down into Egyptian tombs and crypts built three or four thousand years before, doing research for the Eye of Isis novels. The craftsmanship of the tomb paintings and temple carvings is such that it does not require much sleight of mind to imagine yourself back in that day. Although, sometimes?…
[an Alaska short story, written for The Mysterious North] THEIR OVERCOATS STEAMED in the red-hot glow of the tiny stove, the steam rising to form ice on the ceiling of the cramped canvas tent. After a day’s slogging up and down the pass, they were each man and woman among them soaked to the skin,…
This photo was taken from the Old Cataract Hotel in Aswan during my visit to Egypt in December 2019. And it was the direct inspiration for this snippet from Theft of an Idol: The banks of the canal slipped past. Two boys in a rickety rowboat paddled out to catch hold of the rail and hitch…
[a short story inspired by my father, written for Two of the Deadliest] …landing strips in Bush Alaska weren’t that hard to come by, and he found one mere minutes after he started looking, a pale scar on a leveled-off foothill at the mouth of a canyon carved out by a rushing, unruly creek. There…
I wrote the first Eye of Isis novel, Death of an Eye, before I went to Egypt. When it came time to write the second in the series (Disappearance of a Scribe) I knew I had to have a better sense of the Red Land and the Black Land than I could get on YouTube,…
[from “The Perfect Gift,” written for Wolfsbane and Mistletoe, an anthology featuring werewolves at Christmas.] The Alaska state troopers in Anchorage worked out of a five-story rectangular building with a dull gray exterior and an interior cut into matching gray cubicles. Littered surfaces of metal desks were lit by fluorescent tubes, every third or fourth…
Read more “Maybe I just have a sixth sense for big good-looking doofuses.”
[from “Missing, Presumed…” a Liam Campbell short story] ELI SYLVESTER HORRELL, fisher , husband, father, went overboard halfway between Dutch Harbor and the Pribilof Islands. Weather conditions that day in January included fifteen-knot winds and twelve-foot swells. The crew of the JERI A. had seen Horrell go in. In spite of an intensive search by…
[from “On the Evidence,” a Liam Campbell short story] THE PHONE RANG right next to Liam’s ear. He snatched it up before it could ring again. “It’s supposed to be my day off.” “Yes, sir,” Corporal Prince replied amiably, ignoring the snarl in her superior officer’s voice. Next to him, Wy muttered and burrowed beneath…
