It was a gorgeous day to visit the nation’s capital, even with an inch of snow on the ground. Then again, any day that I get to visit the Library of Congress and use my shiny library card is a good day. My visit today was a mission to find a map of the Roman empire during the Augustan Age for the inside of Song of the Nile, my second historical novel, which will be released from Berkley Books late in 2011. In this book, Cleopatra Selene travels much of the Mediterranean as a client queen and I’d like to give readers a visual sense of her world.

As it turns, locating a public domain map that displays Mauretania, Numidia, Africa Nova, Rome, Gades, the Isle of Samos, Athens, Eleusus, Cappadocia, Parthia, Egypt and Meroe as they existed in Selene’s day is turning out to be a tricky affair. That’s why I turned to the lovely Colleen Cahill who works in the Library of Congress and has taken a special interest in speculative fiction. Colleen found some maps for me and invited me to come down and have a look.

This morning I made the drive into DC, parked at Union Station. Before I could grab a cab, I was accosted by the friendy ladies at the Godiva store who forced a free piece of delicious chocolate upon me, so I took a little coffee break while admiring the scenery. (If you haven’t seen the holiday decorations at Union Station, you’re missing something!)

After I blissed out on white lights and holiday cheer, I went to the Library of Congress and the map room–which is Geek Heaven. Imagine being surrounded by enormous globes throughout the ages and people whose entire job it is to know stuff. Colleen was in a meeting, so I settled in front of the maps she’d pulled for me and held my breath. Some of them were so old that my hands actually shook a little bit when I touched them.

The good news is that the maps were spectacular–some of them were even in Latin. The bad news is that none of them would have worked for the book. One of them was so detailed that if we shrank it down to trade paperback size, it wouldn’t be readable. The others weren’t quite right–either because they depicted the empire after Selene’s death or before she became queen.

Fortunately, one of the experts there pointed me in a new direction; I may be able to find a free blank map of the region and put my own labels on things. Unfortunately, as a visual artist…I make a great writer. But hey, I’m open to new adventures, so we’ll see how this pans out.

Mosaic of Minerva in the Library of Congress

Some people sniffle at sappy old movies. Other people get weepy at weddings or on their child’s first day of school. Me? I apparently cry in the Library of Congress, but this is to get ahead of my story…

First of all, let me say that I had expected today to be a good day, so I was entirely unprepared for what would follow. Mr. Dray had taken the day off from work and he chauffeured me to what I must confess is still one of my favorite cities in the world, Washington DC.

I was scheduled to do a reading of Lily of the Nile with a group of fellow speculative fiction writers in order to support Strange Horizons Magazine. The sky was bright and shiny. The weather was pleasant. We arrived at the right place at the right time in the Madison Building without hassle.

I met up with old Clarion classmates Tom Doyle and Jonathan Laden (whose lovely wife, Michele was also there). I was also quite touched when a high school friend of mine, Mark Sarney took time away from his lunch hour to listen to the readings.

Then came the readings themselves, which were fantastic, if I do say so myself. I enjoyed them all, but it’s probably my fascination with mythical re-tellings that made me fall in love with Nan Fry’s wolf story and Anne Lane Sheldon’s Rumplestiltskin rendition.

After the readings, I had the chance to talk with David J. Williams with whom I appear to have many things in common. It isn’t every day that you meet someone else who is willing to actually own a copy of Oliver Stone’s Alexander. (If you like smart, intense, geo-political science fiction, check out his Autumn Rain trilogy from Bantam Spectra.) I also had a delightful lunch with authors Craig Gidney and R. R. Angell and a bunch of other wonderful folks I won’t name only because I know what you really want to read about is the crying.

Okay, so I’ll get to it. After lunch, the Recommending Officer for Science Fiction & Fantasy at the Library of Congress, Colleen R. Cahill, gave us a tour. Not just any tour…but a super special tour, in which we navigated secret underground passages, and slipped past signs that said ‘Official Access Only.’

Now, the Library of Congress is nifty on a purely conceptual level. A gathering of knowledge for posterity; you have to love it. But the concept doesn’t do the place justice. When we walked into the Jefferson Building, I was giddy. Come on, who doesn’t love gilded ceilings and elevators with elaborately carved wooden walls and shiny brass bars? Bronze statuary gives me thrills. I may have a fetish for marble niches and mosaics. I marveled at the way thousands of visitors have worn the stairs uneven and I grinned like an imbecile at the wavy vellum of the Gutenberg Bible.

New delights awaited me around every pillar. I stumbled along on the tour in a state of book-loving delirium until it happened. I looked up to find myself in a round room–an enormous circle of old books under plexiglass. I shivered even before Colleen uttered the words, “And these were Thomas Jefferson’s books. The original collection that he sold to Library of Congress.”

Right about then is when I lost it. Heart thumping. Sweaty palms. Lower lip atremble. I blinked back startled tears as I realized I was completely surrounded by … pure awesome. I have no idea what anybody else said. I think there were plenty of wows. I was a snuffling, emotional fool! Yes, I had a little melt-down right there in public; though I took pains to cover it up!

Those who know me well probably could have predicted this. I have an embarrassing habit of tearing up whenever faced with anything having to do with my historical passions. In the past, I’ve gone weepy in the presence of ancient Egyptian artifacts, and again when allowed to actually touch the desk of Thomas Jefferson at the State Department. There was also the time that I saw pictures of ruins in Algeria and realized I was looking at the very spot that Cleopatra Selene had walked.

I’m not sure what moves me so much about such things, but it might have to do with my desire to understand the past so as to fully participate in the present. For example, people who know me well also know that I love election day. I’m the girl who wakes up early on election day and buys donuts for everybody in line. (And yes, I wear the sticker! Don’t judge me.)

This year, Maryland has early voting. That means that not only did I get to press-my-nose-against-the-plexiglass of Thomas Jefferson’s books, but I also got to vote! On the way home from DC, we went to the community center, did our civic duty, and had a great dinner at a Korean restaurant.

So, I was wrong about today being a good day. Today was a great day! Mini-meltdown and all.