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Frankly, as the VP of the Egyptian Study Society here in Denver, CO, we are continuously bombarded with "ancient alien" questions regarding the building of the pyramids, etc. I heartily agree with the above sentiments regarding our own capacities for technological, architectural, and medical...

This book was so good that I read it and reread it again. That said, I can easily understand why some do not like it. That is why there are so many books in a bookstore and so many authors. SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I cannot agree, however, on Azathoth's wide-swinging...

Dear Timba: I see that you are from Minnesota. I spent my first years as an assistant professor up at the University of Minnesota, Duluth during the mid-1980's. What an experience that was for a Chicago native!

I read somewhere in this blog an issue about chapter titles. Could you not use chapter titles that contained chronological information?

In my corner of the world, historical science fiction, I can employ ancient words and syntax to conversations, in this case, ancient Egyptian. While the sentences do not come out like Yoda said them, non-modern vocabulary can be used to great effect. On the other hand, I did create one word...

I do not know if this will help, but in addition to a prologue to light the fire of the reader's interest so to speak, I prefaced it with an editorial note of several pages. Why? Because I wanted to set the tone of what the series origin was before the gasoline was ignited. Just a thought...

Bowler1 beat me to the punch! DUNE...

Truly I struggled with this very issue as I am a Virgo cum ancient historian. I had chapter titles with subheadings! What I finally settled upon was more detail within the first paragraph to orient the reader as to where and when, or even sometimes somewhen, they were in the book. This got my...

It clearly "worked" for Tom Clancy, the master of detailed asides. Yes, it is a skill, but craft your pieces in such a way that they flow and avoid as much as you can abrupt transitions. Your readers will thank you!

Have any of you out there in the Ethernet completed the Strain Series by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan?

I must be a rebellious Yank, because I too went this route with my trilogy after literally years of stonewalling on the part of the mainstream publishing industry. What I have found to date was that I sold about 60% as ebooks and the remainder as paperbacks. Again, Smashwords is first...

The mainstream publishing world is a shark tank. Get used to it and move on. Have faith in your work. Share it with friends and famly. Listen to their reactions. Act on those reactions. Clean up your act grammatically. Find a good editor that you can work with easily. Whether you like it...

My experiences with the mainstream publishing world were so dismal that it stalled my eventual publications by some ten years. Throwing a ms. "over the transom" is a simply a ridiculous exercise of self-abuse. Finding an agent even worse. Much less that "agent" being successful with landing a...

Truly this paltry list is discouraging...

Well, given the paucity of recollections regarding "historical science fiction" and "ancient Egypt," my trilogy should do quite well.

I can readily appreciate all the enthusiasm about the Gates of Fire. It is an imaginatively told narrative of perhaps the most tragic event in Greek history. As a professional archaeologist and ancient historian, now retired, I can say that Gates of Fire and 300 will bedevil future lecturers as...

So much on Rome? No surprise. Writers devour resources and there are plenty on Rome: archaeological and literary. Besides, european readers have the luxury of Roman remains all around them.

Re: Fictional history is best. And that’s the truth I must agree that the best way to appreciate history is to spicy it up. In the realm of ancient history, this can be deftly done IF the writer is up-to-date on the historical and archaeological records. Then, wherever there is a gap, it can be...

What are your memorable books that take place within an ancient Egyptian context?