Category: Uncategorized
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Yvan Eht Nioj: Naval Warfare in the World of The God’s Wife
Where can you find pleasure, search the world for treasure/ Learn science, technology? – The Village People I’ve talked about a lot of the historical background surrounding The God’s Wife; from geography, to politics, to clothing. But I really haven’t addressed the military elephant in the room. So I thought this week we’d start with…
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Obligatory Black Friday Sales Post
Because some of us are stuck with Imperator Caesar Divi filius Augustus as a muse and not a financial patron. I promise next week I’ll get back into informative entries (I’m thinking Roman-Ptolemaic naval warfare, then good, old-fashioned land warfare). But I would be remiss going into the biggest shopping weekend of the year if…
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The Ending That Became a Beginning
So, as a start this week, I want to address the handful of Word Press readers who’ve stumbled on this blog from the greater internet. Hi, folks, I do see you, and I’m humbled that anyone would be interested in listening to me blather on about ancient history by choice, unlike, say, my husband, who…
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The Rule of Threes Redux: A Crash Course in the Roman Civil Wars, Part 2
All right, last week we looked at the start of the Roman Civil War, in the 40s BC. The conclusion of this first phase of the war you’re already somewhat familiar with if you’ve read The God’s Wife, or have a passing knowledge of its setting. But as a brief recap: Pompey loses his head…
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The Rule of Threes: A Crash Course on the Roman Civil Wars, Part One
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: democracy just doesn’t work. – Kent Brockman While I was trying to decide what to entertain you all with this week, I was thinking back on one of my first my entries about Octavius and the First Settlement, and I realized that perhaps I should have…
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Breath of the Gods: Demons in the World of The God’s Wife
He’s got demons? Cool! – The Great Gonzo, Muppet Treasure Island We’ve talked a little about the gods here, so this week I figured we’d take a look at another supernatural group that exists in The God’s Wife: demons. Specifically, two different cultural approaches to these semi-divine entities – through the eyes of the Egyptians,…
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Modern Myth-Making: The Creation of the Sha
As promised in the last entry, this week we’re going to do a little more storytelling. But instead of a retelling of an old Egyptian myth, I’m going to share with you an entirely new myth I wrote as part of the larger God’s Wife narrative, namely, my interpretation of the origins of Set’s fantastical…
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The Lion Queen: The Creation of Sekhmet (and Hathor)
As I try to wade through my final (no seriously, this one is the last one, I swear) edit of Daughter of Eagles, some of you might be wondering why this part of the writing process seems to take so much longer than, you know, the actual writing. Some of it is simply the battle…
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Sacred Sorcery: Magic in Egyptian Life (and Death)
…The sky encloses the stars, magic encloses its settlements, and my mouth encloses the magic which is in it… – The Book of Going Forth by Day, spell 31 The past couple of weeks I’ve devoted to the physical world, which I know can be a little dry, so I thought this entry I’d devote…
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Forces of Nature and History: The City in the Ancient World
Damned Alexandria, land suited to treachery – Sextus Propertius Writing has many challenges, but properly conveying a sense of setting has its unique problems, particularly when the place is so different, as it often is in a historical novel. This issue is compounded when the places you’re writing about are in various states of decay or…
Sarah Holz 