Inspiration Or Compulsion?

My father was a jazz musician. When he wasn’t actively occupied by something else–eating dinner, mowing the lawn, reading out loud to me as a little girl–he wandered into his studio and started tinkering away on the piano or the saxophone. It was...

Happy Mother’s Day

In honor of Mother’s Day, I thought I’d do a post on great historical mothers. Only I can’t think of any great historical mothers–not because they didn’t exist, but because the idea of motherhood changes so radically from era to era. What...

Review: Spartacus Blood & Sand

Given that I just released a book about ancient Rome (buy here if you haven’t already!), I consider it my duty as an author to keep current in my field. This essentially means putting my feet up with a glass of wine to watch any movie or TV show set in ancient...

Sharpe’s Hornblower

Some historical periods are just more appealing than others when it comes to fiction, and one of the stars of history is the Napoleonic Wars. C.S. Forester, Patrick O’Brien, Bernard Cornwell, and countless others have written volumes of fictional prose about the...

In Memoriam: Robert B. Parker

I am taking a sabbatical from the discussion of historical fiction to pay homage to a giant in a very different field: Robert B. Parker, king of noir detective fiction, who died yesterday morning at his writing desk. Parker is famous enough for his output (a...