“On the Waterfront, Cleopatra style.” That’s Barbara Peters’ elevator pitch for Disappearance of a Scribe, the second Eye of Isis novel. An excerpt: Gaius Aurelius Cotta, legate of Rome to the Court of Egypt and Alexandria, cousin to Gaius Julius Caesar himself, was very much at his leisure, sprawled comfortably in the room’s most substantial…
“On the Waterfront, Cleopatra style.”–Barbara Peters on the second Eye of Isis novel. An excerpt: She was about to cross the street when a cabrio pulled in front of her, obstructing her way. She looked around with what she felt was pardonable irritation. “Excuse me, sir, but I believe pedestrians have the right of way…
Impossible to absorb too much information when you’re writing about a time two millennia before your own. I hasten to add that I haven’t read all these books cover to cover, otherwise I would never have time to write any of my own. Often the most useful items in them are their maps and indexes.…
The second Eye of Isis novel publishes on January 15, 2022. Barbara Peters of the Poisoned Pen Bookstore calls it “On the Waterfront, Cleopatra style.” Well, yes. The construction industry always was a deadly business. An excerpt: “We were in Rome, with Auletes and the queen, begging Pompey for money.” “Before my time.” “Just barely,…
So now is the time when I start chumming the waters for the new book. It’s the second novel in my Eye of Isis series, which is set in Alexandria and Egypt in the time of Cleopatra. The first book, Death of an Eye, opened in May 47 BC. Caesar and Cleopatra have returned from…
So, in Theft of an Idol (Isis3), Tetisheri discovers a body in the desert. I’m from the Arctic myself. I have a very rudimentary notion of how bodies decay (or don’t) in the cold, and no notion at all of what happens if they are left out in the Sahara. This requires some research. Google,…
Time. In crime fiction time is the essence of detection. If Whositz says “I was sleeping with my mistress when my wife was murdered” the first thing the detective on the case will do is verify that alibi. If Whositz is seen leaving his mistress’ house by the back alley in time to get home,…
This is why I can’t read reference works in e. You can highlight in e, sure, and you can search, but searching is not the same as dogearing or sticky noting, and forget about scribbling marginal notations. So I’m railing against Adrian Goldsworthy again, this time because of this passage in Caesar: Probably in late…
This is what my dining table looks like these days. I’m beginning the third novel in the Eye of Isis series, and I’ve written enough of Tetisheri’s story now to revise her calendar. Calendars are very important in series–when did she do what, where, and to whom? Writing a calendar for the Kate Shugak novels,…
Cleopatra was Macedonian Greek, a direct descendant of Ptolemy I, who plucked the plum of Alexandria and Egypt when the generals divvied up the empire after Alexander the Great’s death. Alexandria was founded by Alexander, a city on the edge of the Middle Sea (aka the Mediterranean) that had only increased in size, beauty and…
