I've been sitting on this for the last week or so.  Now I can talk about it, because this announcement appeared in the most recent Publisher's Weekly:

Stephanie Thornton's THE SECRET HISTORY, in which a theater tart-turned-Constantinople's premier courtesan must decide what's more important: pleasing the emperor who claims to love her or keeping the son he can never know about, to Ellen Edwards of NAL, at auction, in a three-book deal, for publication beginning in 2013, by Marlene Stringer of the Stringer Literary Agency (World English).

Notice the three book deal and the at auction.  This is publisher-speak for, "These books are really, really good."

If the author's name looks familiar, it's because they're talking about Our Stephanie.

Stephanie first appeared on this blog in September 2009 (I went back and checked) and she's been a regular reader and commenter ever since.  In all that time, and well before, she's been working on her own novels, and now she's earned the reward for unremitting faith in herself, and quality writing.

All three are historicals.  The first is Byzantine.  Those of you who know Stephanie will have no trouble working out that another is Egyptian.

Yay!