Stephanie Dray

Excerpt from Lily of the Nile: A Novel of Cleopatra’s Daughter #SixSunday

Stephanie Dray — Sun, 06 May 2012 10:00:02 +0000

I’ve decided to experiment with participating in some weekly excerpt fun with other authors as part of Six Sentence Sunday. I hope my readers will enjoy it. This snippet begins the story of Cleopatra Selene whose famous mother is believed to have killed herself with the bite of an asp.

Something coiled dangerously within the basket I carried, but I’d been told not to open the lid nor to ask what lurked beneath its woven reeds. The basket smelled of comforting cedar and lush figs, but it was embroidered with emblems of Anubis—the jackal-headed Guide of the Dead.

Anubis was a kind god, so I should have taken solace, but seeing him only magnified my sense of dread. Since we’d lost the war, Alexandria was quiet and filled with ill omens.

I had once been the safest child in Egypt, but the world held terrors everywhere for me now. The twisting motion in the basket convinced me that I held treachery in my arms.

Lily of the Nile: A Novel of Cleopatra’s Daughter (Berkley Books, January 2011) is available now. If you’d like to read a free historical fiction story about the life of her ancestress, Queen Arsinoe II of Egypt, please join my newsletter and download the free YA anthology, Eternal Spring, here!

Ancient Zoos of the Pharaohs

Stephanie Dray — Mon, 09 Apr 2012 15:36:07 +0000

Guest Post by Veronica Scott, author of the Paranormal Romance Priestess of the Nile

It’s a hot, sunny, lazy afternoon in Ancient Egypt. Having finished his duties for the day, Pharaoh wants to relax with his beautiful wife and young son, but the boy is restless, bored with his toys and his attendants. The child’s fussing disturbs the inner courtyards of the palace. The Chief Scribe bows and reminds Pharoah and the Queen that the palace has an extensive collection of wild animals in the zoo and perhaps the young prince would be amused to go see the lions and elephants. Pleased, Pharoah decides to make a family activity of the viewing and peace soon reigns….

When I’m doing research I often find fascinating bits I can’t quite use in the current book but maybe I’ll be able to place in a future effort. Pharaoh’s zoo is a plot element I hope to work into a future Tale of the Nile. Set in a paranormal, alternate version of 1500BC Egypt, my stories have a relatively young Pharoah, Nat-re-Akhte. I can imagine him taking his small son to their own private zoo for amusement, just as parents do nowadays. I certainly took my daughters to the zoo enough times!

Various archaeological expeditions to the ancient Egyptian capital of Hierakonpolis found evidence of an ongoing, exotic menagerie dating back to around 3500 B.C. Altogether the researchers have found the remains of over one hundred animals, including dogs, hippos (including a baby),hartebeest, elephants, baboons and various wildcats. The animal burials are in the city’s elite cemetery, where rulers and their family members were interred. The expedition’s results indicate the city’s powerful rulers kept the animals in captivity, almost as in a zoo. For example, a 10-year-old male elephant had eaten twigs from acacia trees as well as wild and cultivated plants from varied environments, suggesting it was being fed by humans.

Queen Hatshepsut was known to have kept baboons and other animals imported from the land of Punt (somewhere in the Horn of Africa) during expeditions and trade exchanges. In her time, around 1508 BC, the royal zoo most likely included rhinos, giraffes, leopards, monkeys and more familiar species like cattle and hounds. In his Upper Egyptian menagerie two hundred years or so later, Pharoah Akhenaten (husband of the famous and beautiful Nefertiti) kept lions in domed buildings, antelopes in pens and cattle in an enclosure made of sticks and branches. There was also a pond, which it seems logical to assume featured fish and water birds.

Nothing is ever simple and straightforward in Ancient Egypt, however; it is believed that the Pharaohs not only kept these fascinating animals for the enjoyment of looking at them but also as a symbol of power. By owning and controlling these large, exotic creatures, Pharaoh could lay claim to having assumed their strength and powers for himself.

And possibly amuse one small, fussy boy on a lazy afternoon!

Veronica Scott grew up in a house with a library full of books as its heart, and when she ran out of things to read, she started writing her own stories. Married young to her high school sweetheart then widowed, Veronica has two grown daughters, one young grandson and cats. Her novel Priestess of the Nile, which tells the tale of forbidden love between Sobek the Crocodile God and the beautiful priestess Merys, can be found at Carina, Amazon or Barnes & Noble and is available as an ebook or an audio book.

Sex, Lies & History: A Literary Threesome

Stephanie Dray — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 17:03:50 +0000

Attention friends and fans in the Chesapeake Bay Area: Mark your calendars! Kate Quinn (Mistress of Rome, Daughters of Rome, & Empress of the Seven Hills), Sophie Perinot (The Sister Queens) & I (Stephanie Dray — Lily of the Nile & Song of the Nile) are doing a triple-threat author appearance this month!

We’ll be talking about the ways in which secrets and sexuality have evolved and been viewed throughout history.

Our books pack a royal wallop (collectively we’ve covered Cleopatra’s daughter; the daughter of a Roman Senator; a Roman Empress, and a pair of 13th century queens) and we are pretty lively company. So come out and support us at the Barnes & Noble in Reston, VA on April 21st (between 1-3 pm).

Rome Fans: You’ll want to read Kate Quinn’s Empress of The Seven Hills

Stephanie Dray — Tue, 03 Apr 2012 17:22:17 +0000

Ok, so how thrilled am I that Kate Quinn’s EMPRESS OF THE SEVEN HILLS is finally out! I pre-ordered it and it can’t get here fast enough for me:

From the national bestselling author of Daughters of Rome and Mistress of Rome comes a tale of love, power, and intrigue spanning the wilds of the Empire to the seven hills of Rome.

Powerful, prosperous, and expanding ever farther into the untamed world, the Roman Empire has reached its zenith under the rule of the beloved Emperor Trajan. But neither Trajan nor his reign can last forever…

Brash and headstrong, Vix is a celebrated ex-gladiator returned to Rome to make his fortune. The sinuous, elusive Sabina is a senator’s daughter who craves adventure. Sometimes lovers, sometimes enemies, Vix and Sabina are united by their devotion to Trajan. But others are already maneuvering in the shadows. Trajan’s ambitious Empress has her own plans for Sabina. And the aristocratic Hadrian-the Empress’s ruthless protégé and Vix’s mortal enemy-has ambitions he confesses to no one, ambitions rooted in a secret prophecy.

When Trajan falls, the hardened soldier, the enigmatic empress, the adventurous girl, and the scheming politician will all be caught in a deadly whirlwind of desire and death that may seal their fates, and that of the entire Roman Empire…

Buy It Now

Getting the Call: What It’s Like to Be Nominated for a RITA Award

Stephanie Dray — Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:35:31 +0000

There are a few important calls that authors hope to get in their career. The first is from an agent. I got that call from the lovely and wise Jennifer Schober of Spencerhill Associates several years ago when she read Lily of the Nile: A Novel of Cleopatra’s Daughter, told me that she loved it, and that she wanted to represent me. Like a starry-eyed little dreamer, I assumed the next call would come quickly after that. You know, the call from the publisher who loves your book and wants to buy it? But that call didn’t come for a long time. When it did, I was ecstatic, but that’s another story.

The story I want to tell today is about a different kind of call. One that–in its own way–means as much as all the others.

Now, some of you may know that I write romance novels under a pen name; I’m a member of the Romance Writers of America. And I dutifully volunteer to judge for the RITA Awards and the Golden Heart Awards that are the highest honor in the genre. What I do not do, however, is take any notice of the day on which the nominees are to be announced. I know some authors get pretty worked up about such things, but I always assume I’m not going to win anything and that if I ever do, I’d rather it were a happy surprise.

So, when I got a phone call early this morning, I ignored it. I was still getting breakfast together and I always worry that I’m going to answer a business call when I’m not in the right mind-frame or not near my desk and then I won’t sound crisp and professional. If I was dimly aware that the call was from RWA, I assumed it was about my dues being late. Right. So, the point is, I didn’t answer the phone.

I just went on blithely with my day, preparing for a call with my editor. At some point, I went through my email and saw a strangely worded note from RWA about how they wanted to converse with me. It sounded stern. Now I wondered if this might be about the recent complaints I made regarding rules of the published author’s network mailing list. Remembering that I had business calls to make later in the day, I decided not to put it off and quickly returned the call.

What happened next I don’t remember very well because my whole system got a jolt when the very nice woman on the other end of the line told me that one of my books had been nominated for a RITA award. I short circuited. Vibrating with excitement, I think I told her that I loved her! Then I asked her which book, assuming it was one of my romance novels.

She attempted to answer me, but for some reason I couldn’t seem to actually hear anything she said over the thump of my heartbeat in my ears. So I asked her if she would repeat everything from the beginning. She laughed, promised that she wasn’t punking me, then told me that Song of the Nile: A Novel of Cleopatra’s Daughter had been nominated for the Novel with Strong Romantic Elements category.

That’s when my excitement turned into something deeper and more emotional. My eyes flooded with tears because it was the last thing I expected. I’d entered other books in the RITA but not that one–my publisher did it. Of all the books I’ve written, that Song of the Nile should be the one to get me a RITA nomination was gratifying in a way I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to explain.

You see, I had a lot of confidence in my first book. I’d spent years researching it, editing it, polishing it, perfecting it. I was never afraid to show the world that book; I couldn’t wait for people to read it!

Not so for the sequel, Song of the Nile.

An author’s sophomore novel can break a career. It’s an awkward period of an author’s writing development; she’s outgrowing her old skills and replacing them with newer shaky ones. For me, the sophomore novel also represented the first time I was writing historical fiction to a deadline. What if I simply ran out of time to research? What if I got things wrong? (I did.)

I had other fears, too. It isn’t common to write historical fiction trilogies about the same woman, even if she is a queen. It’s even less common to infuse serious historical fiction with touches of magical realism, and I knew there would be a lot of goddess magic in this book. To make matters more difficult, I was injured through most of 2010, and had to write Song of the Nile on scraps of paper and in weird positions because I couldn’t sit upright at a desk.

That would be enough to put me into a blind panic about this novel, but I had bigger problems. I knew that this was going to be a very dark book that would include a shocking rape scene and Ptolemaic incest. In my heart, I knew I had very good reasons for including these things in my novel. But I also knew that the change in tone was going to disappoint and alienate some readers. Reviewers might hate it! I could very well ruin everything by telling a story about women that I didn’t have the talent to tell.

In short, this book laid me bare and left me vulnerable. It’s hard to let the world see you that way. For it to merit the praise of my peers–that rare nod of acknowledgment from the RITA awards–puts my struggle with this book into a new light. The tsunami of congratulations and warm wishes from my friends and other members of the writing community have me floating on air.

Saying it’s an honor just to be nominated is a cliche, but sometimes cliches are also true. There’s no way I’ll win the award. I’ve seen my competition. I’m not even sure I would be rooting for me! But seeing my name on the same page with them is humbling and gratifying and an experience I’ll never forget.