Kathleen Conn: amazing editor

In my continuing series of people holding bits and pieces of Pericles Commission, I bring you the talented young editor Kathleen Conn, who holds the entire book, hot off off the bindery.


Thanks Kathleen, it can't be easy to deal with a complete newbie.  You've been fantastic for a debut author!

A review from Robin Agnew of Aunt Agatha's

Aunt Agatha's is a specialist mystery bookstore in Ann Arbor. If you slide your eyes slightly to the right, to the events list, you'll see I'm appearing at Aunt Agatha's on the 26th October at 7pm. Anyone who can make it would be welcome!

Aunt Agatha's is run by the incredibly friendly and helpful Robin Agnew and her husband Jamie. Robin blogs at Hey, There's A Dead Guy In The Living Room, which I recommend for anyone who likes mysteries. She's also very much into ice skating, and since my wife Helen and I do ice dance (and Helen makes ice skating costumes), I think I know what we'll be talking about.

Robin's written a lovely review of The Pericles Commission, which I was overjoyed to read, considering it comes from someone who's read and sold thousands of mysteries!



Anneke and Bill: beta readers extraordinaire

So as we get close to The Pericles Commission finally going on sale, this is the end of a long, long journey not only for me, but for everyone who's helped me.

These two shifty-looking characters lurking in a dark corner have held the secret of who killed Ephialtes since 2007. That's when they first read the manuscript and gave me advice and asked the tough questions that had to be answered.

Anneke Klein is Dutch. English is her second language, which doesn't stop her from being the most amazing beta reader. I tell her she should be doing manuscript assessment for a living, she's that good. Anneke asks all the tough plot, theme and character questions that I really wish no one had noticed. To this day I have not published or sold a word of fiction that she did not see first. Which means yes, she's already been through The Ionia Sanction and she asked all the tough questions that made me rewrite parts. She also has one astonishing talent: if Anneke likes a story, it sells; if she doesn't like it, it doesn't sell. I've never known her to be wrong, and I have unsold short stories lying about to prove it. These days Anneke runs the flash fiction site Rammenas. Her own first fiction publication will be a short story in an upcoming anthology.

Bill Kirton is a master of craft. His critiques are always so depressingly right, and so crystal clear that you'd almost think he taught writing as a profession. Which, actually, he did. Bill taught creative writing and French literature at Aberdeen University. He's also been an actor, a playwright, and a BBC scriptwriter. His novels are The Figurehead (an historical mystery!), The Darkness, Material Evidence and Rough Justice. The last three are police procedurals starring DCI Jack Carston. (I was dead sure I had Material Evidence solved. I was wrong.)

Thanks guys. It wouldn't be a book without you.

When Historical “Facts” Aren’t So Factual

Vicky Alvear Shecter is far too modest. Vicky's a regular commenter on this blog, but I'm sure lots of people don't realize she's the author of two fantastic biographies. Alexander the Great Rocks the World and, only recently, Cleopatra Rules! The Amazing Life of the Original Teen Queen. Her first young adult novel, Cleopatra's Moon, is out in summer 2011. When it comes to ancient history she knows what she's talking about. Vicky's a docent at the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Antiquities at Emory University in Atlanta. So I imposed on her to do a guest post, and here it is.


Speaking to high school kids at a Junior Classical League conference last year, I offered a word association game. When I got to “Cleopatra,” I got:

“Queen”
“Egypt”
“Slut”
“Whore”

“Wow,” I remember thinking. “They went from queenly to unseemly in a matter of seconds!” The spirit of Augustus Caesar must have danced a little jig of victory because 2,000 years after his propaganda war against the queen, we are still maligning her with insults related to her ultimately unknowable (and irrelevant) sex life.

What’s worse, little has changed since Augustus worked up Romans into a frenzy of outrage, fear and loathing for a powerful woman.

“Tell me,” I asked the teens. “What’s the first word you use to disparage a girl you don’t like or that you find threatening.”

“Slut,” they admitted a bit sheepishly. “Whore.”

Augustus’ model for taking a strong woman down, it seems, went deeper than we could even imagine. We are still acting it out today.

And yet, when it comes to Cleopatra, the facts don’t jibe. Most modern scholars now believe that the queen had only two relationships her whole life—both with Roman leaders with whom she politically aligned for the preservation of her crown and kingdom: Julius Caesar and Marc Antony.

All agree that Augustus masterminded a smear campaign against the queen of Egypt so thorough, we still automatically accept it today. We picture her as a seductress instead of as a brilliant politician who kept her kingdom from being eaten alive by Rome for twenty years. We imagine her as a femme fatale instead of the devoted mother of four children. That’s right., four.

In writing Cleopatra Rules! The Amazing Life of the Original Teen Queen—I’ve learned two important lessons:

1) Don’t automatically accept ancient “facts” as facts, and

2) Do not, under any circumstances, ask teens to play a word association game!