“You’re sure we’ve got them all?” Lucilla asked, perched on the edge of her father’s seat in the Imperial box, gazing down at the colosseum floor.
The sandy stage for the glory of chariot races and the fierce athleticism of wrestling matches, had been transformed into a gruesome display. A wooden platform loomed, its sole purpose to hold the headsman’s block and a ghastly urn designed to catch the severed remains.
“All the ones he and the rest of the men we pic...
2023-04-25 23:40:07 +0000 UTC
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As soon as the council of war had ended, training had begun in earnest. By week’s end, the legions had been divided into the northern and southern armies, each with a unique focus. The southern force focused on the new formations, doing unusual drills for marching and quickly aligning in smaller, three-man rows at the sound of a trumpet call. They learned odd commands like kneeling in ranks, which made a little sense once the Consul had them train with arcuballista, which apparently would b...
2023-04-23 18:44:48 +0000 UTC
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Devnum
“The princess came back from Factorium today,” Medb said as she readied their room for the evening.
“I don’t believe the Romans, or I guess Britannians, call the Emperor's daughter a princess,” Cormac said, watching her work.
He was still surprised at how quickly he’d found appreciation for his new wife. Any thoughts of her being too muscular or mannish had left his head after their first night together. Now, watching her work, he could al...
2023-04-20 18:13:32 +0000 UTC
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Over the last few months, I've been working on trying to improve my writing and working with a new editor (as opposed to just proofreaders and beta-readers), since I've always felt was sometimes both a little too long winded and not good at being descriptive enough. Since I didn't want to slow down the chapters everyone has been getting, I didn't worry about that and kept barreling through chapters, but now that Elegy is about to be started and The Depths of Neptune is about to finish, ...
2023-04-20 05:01:04 +0000 UTC
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Devnum
“Did any of you actually see this happen, or is it just gossip?” Decius asked, causing the other men to look back and forth at each other.
“No. We agreed that it was best if we only had one man in the crowd, just in case Ramirus was watching the crowd or they detained everyone for questioning afterward, but the story we’re hearing has been very consistent. He flew clear across the courtyard. It’s unclear if he had wings or was simply gliding like ...
2023-04-18 16:40:09 +0000 UTC
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Insula Manavia
Velius wiped the ocean spray off his face and looked at Bomilcar, who stood slightly ahead of him, staring off the front of the galley, resisting the urge to frown. They’d gone back and forth for weeks, but in the end, Velius had to give in. Every trial run they did showed the same thing. They needed to be in the first wave. There were just too many variables and during the first few waves, their position was going to be precarious. He’d tried to conv...
2023-04-16 07:49:24 +0000 UTC
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Devnum
“This is a terrible idea,” Ky said for the thirtieth time.
“Mmm-hmmm,” Lucilla mumbled quietly.
Surrounded by a half dozen people on the raised platform, a crowd of citizens spread out in front of her, she couldn’t exactly reply, which gave Ky the chance to make his feelings known without her shutting him down.
They’d argued for two days, which was how long it took her to put her insane plan into action. He’d argued against it, Ram...
2023-04-13 13:54:28 +0000 UTC
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Devnum
“We can’t get to the gunpowder,” one of the men said.
Decius frowned. Caesius’s messages had been getting more and more frantic, demanding they get him samples of the explosive powder they’d been hearing about and instructions on how to make it. They had yet to get a man inside Hortensius’s factories, but they’d gotten into the social circles of the workers, at least enough to hear the men gossip and talk about their day.
The problem was...
2023-04-11 17:30:35 +0000 UTC
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Devnum Docks
“Join the Praetorians, they said,” Mettius Volusa Carantus griped, as water poured off his helmet. “See the Empire, they said. The only part of the Empire I’ve seen is this stinking city. You can’t farm in the fields in weather like this, meaning I could have stayed inside where it was warm and dry. Well, at least dry.”
“If you’d stayed working for Servius Gratius, you would have been complaining about that. At least we don’t have to...
2023-04-10 03:06:43 +0000 UTC
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Factorium
“I’m looking at this thing, and I’ve gone over every part you had me make, but I’m still not sure what this is actually going to do or how it’s going to completely change the way we work,” Hortensius said, looking at the plans Ky handed him. “Some of it makes sense, but I’m not sure how this is going to generate the kind of force your instructions and documents indicate.”
“Like I said, there is a lot of theory here that’s going to b...
2023-04-06 04:42:35 +0000 UTC
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Coast, Southern Britain
The galleys cut across the water, slamming into the beach hard, driving up onto the sand. As soon as the boats stopped, men in heavy armor began piling over the sides in twos and fours, quickly crowding the entire beach with hundreds of men.
Another group of legionaries sat across from them, crouching and covering their heads, as centurions walked up and down the line, telling this group of men or that group they were dead.
A spectato...
2023-04-03 14:39:11 +0000 UTC
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Emain Macha, Ériu
“How could you let her live,” Conchobar bellowed, looking from his elevated throne at Llassar.
“Because having her killed would have meant generations of her people trying to undermine the rule of you and your son. The Empire can’t afford to keep legions here indefinitely, and we need as many of your men as possible to join us in taking the fight to the Carthaginians. That only works if we’ve successfully pacified this island, which ag...
2023-03-31 02:01:56 +0000 UTC
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Imperial Senate, Devnum
“They’re pirates,” Rotri, one of the Caledonian senators said, his face red, his finger jutting out at the five newly arrived Ulaid senators.
“Us?” Fiacha Sil Fingin, one of the new Ulaid senators said, standing up angrily. “Your people boarded one of our peaceful fishing boats, killed the crew, and sailed the boat back to Caledonia.”
“Only after they fired an arrow, missing one of our fishermen by less than a hand spa...
2023-03-28 00:29:57 +0000 UTC
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As he had every day, the Consul left the command tent after the three men finished going over more options and headed out to tour of the legion camps below, leaving the details of their decisions to Velius and Bomilcar.
Velius admired the Consul’s dedication to the men. He’d known many commanders over the years who preferred to sit with their finery, giving orders from afar while turning their noses up to the men who had to carry out those orders. Those men, Velius could never respe...
2023-03-24 16:44:25 +0000 UTC
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I've gotten a bunch of messages asking me about the next Country Roads book, so I thought I'd do a quick update. It's going to be called Elegy and I just hit the mid point of the story in the outline, and hooo-boy, is it a dozy. I can't wait to get to actually writing it so you guys can read it.
I'd hoped to have the next chapter in The Depths of Neptune ready for you, but I've reworked one of the subplots and it required a rewrite of a scene in this chapter to get the piece...
2023-03-24 06:01:36 +0000 UTC
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Legion Camp, North of Glevum
He had to hand it to Velius, Ky thought as he stepped out of his tent and looked west, the man could pick locations. Ky looked over the cliffs towards the blue ocean and the sails below. Although he was several hundred feet back with men and tents between him and the edge, the command tents had helpfully been placed on a high point, allowing them to look over the men and equipment to see the ocean beyond.
Having spent most of his life ...
2023-03-21 02:28:42 +0000 UTC
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Devnum
“The line must follow a two-degree slope, Lucilla,” Sophus said.
Sophus had explained to her multiple times that it didn’t feel emotions or have feelings like she did, but she could almost hear the exasperation in its voice as she set the page on top of the twelve other rejects and pulled a new one.
“I’m sorry, this is very difficult,” she said, equally annoyed.
“I understand. It is imperative, however, that these diag...
2023-03-17 16:14:02 +0000 UTC
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The story still has a long way to go before it's finished, but I got way ahead of myself, and have the cover very early this time.
2023-03-14 22:56:40 +0000 UTC
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“Hortensius tells me the vats and buildings to contain them should be done in a week’s time,” Sorantius said. “As you expected, the first run of the vats was not as water-tight as you wanted, although the leaks seemed minimal to me.”
“Only because you are thinking of water, which when it leaks simply corrodes the metal and leaves a puddle on the floor. Some of these mixtures will melt skin or create vapor clouds that will take all of the oxygen from a man,” Ky said, pointi...
2023-03-14 02:48:56 +0000 UTC
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Devnum Docks
Valdar looked up at the hulking ship and marveled. Part of him wondered how anything so ponderous could ever make it in the choppy waters of the western ocean, which was part of the area he’d have to begin protecting. The seas to the west weren’t anything like the channel between the islands and the continent or the calmer waters of the Bay of Serpents, what the Romans liked to call Mare Suebicum. He’d found it difficult to keep his smaller, sleeker v...
2023-03-10 18:18:25 +0000 UTC
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Over the next week men poured into the capital, more than had migrated even during the original alliance with the Caledonians. Some were previous citizens of the Ulaid or other kingdoms that had fought against the Carthaginians, but most were former subjects of the kingdoms who had joined the Carthaginians instead. Men who’d fought against their new overlords and decided they’d rather be faceless strangers in Rome’s part of the Empire rather than a growing second-class citizenship in th...
2023-03-07 23:07:10 +0000 UTC
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Devnum
Ky looked down the long table, surrounded by all of the military commanders currently on Britannia, as well as Talogren, who had decided to remain for several weeks following the treaty signing, Ramirus, and even Hortensius. It had been more than a month since the defeat of Carthaginian forces in Ériu and the Carthaginian fleet, but this was the first time Ky had been able to summon all of the scattered forces back together to plan their next moves.
Velius...
2023-03-04 15:43:03 +0000 UTC
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Emain Macha, Ériu
Llassar sat on the horse he’d borrowed from the king’s stables and watched the king's son ride in tight circles around a course laid out in the fields just outside of town. When he’d finally broken through Conchobar’s distrust and summoned the Roman, now Britannian, legions to deal with the Carthaginians and their local allies, they’d brought a range of new inventions with them to amaze and dazzle the Ulaid. Although they were more organized...
2023-03-01 18:28:15 +0000 UTC
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The week following Christmas was a whirlwind as we got ready to leave for New York on Friday. It seemed like everyone I knew, or was at least friends with, was going. Besides me and the band, Hanna, Kat, Sydney and her mother, Mom, and Mrs. Phillips, were all going as my personal entourage, which was a weird thing to say but wasn’t far from the truth. Rowan called to tell me he was meeting us there, and Mr. French was tagging along with him. The only person in my life not coming along was C...
2023-02-26 15:30:01 +0000 UTC
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Monday I had just gotten back from school when Kat made her triumphant return with Hanna and her mother in tow, carrying more bags than I remember them leaving with.
“How’d it go?” I asked, helping by taking some of their bags from them.
“Great,” Kat said. “Five gold and three silver.”
“You should have seen her. She was amazing!” Hanna said.
“It really was something,” Hanna’s mother added. “She was so much faster than a lot of the girls.”
2023-02-26 14:00:06 +0000 UTC
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I let Vinney check on the guys on the ground and stepped back, partially ’cause they might try something again, and partially because when the sheriff arrived, I didn’t think I should be anywhere near them.
The guy who I knocked out in the beginning woke up a few minutes after Vinney came back outside, but then he proceeded to puke his guts out. I wasn’t sure, but I thought I’d heard somewhere that it was the sign of a concussion. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem like he was go...
2023-02-26 03:00:01 +0000 UTC
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My schedule for the next several weeks became packed, as we put in as many practices as we could between my school schedule and performances at the Blue Ridge. I even canceled most of my training with Chef, although he insisted I still come by at least three days a week, to keep my conditioning up. I agreed, although they’d be after the dinner shift on weekdays, after band practice, which meant getting home late.
On top of that, I also had midterms, which Kat had me studying hard for....
2023-02-25 15:10:48 +0000 UTC
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My night with Sydney had been mind-blowing. It had also been funny, awkward, confusing, and a whole host of other adjectives, but they all came together into something I’d never forget. We’d fumbled a lot, but in the end, we both just wanted to make the other happy. I think maybe that was why we were both so happy when I finally left, it wasn’t just that the physical act had been enjoyable, which it had been, but one thing was for sure, our relationship had gotten a lot closer. I didn...
2023-02-24 15:45:40 +0000 UTC
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While it was great spending all of Thanksgiving with Hanna, her mother, and Kat, it was also kind of a bummer. It was the first major holiday I’d spent without Mom, and I really missed her. I knew she was sitting in the trailer, eating the meal she’d made for both of us, and I knew it was probably her worst Thanksgiving ever. It took all of my willpower to not cross over the creek and join her, but I needed to stay strong. If I let her back into my life without her making any changes, she...
2023-02-24 05:35:01 +0000 UTC
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I was practically flying as I drove home from the courthouse. I was finally free. I couldn’t believe it. Even Dad’s last attempt to attack me in the courtroom didn’t throw off my good mood. In fact, it made it better. He was going to be in jail and I wouldn’t have to deal with him for a while. I did feel bad for Mom. She had no one now. I know she made her own choices that got her where she was, but I still loved her and it made me a little sad to think of her in the trailer, by herse...
2023-02-23 06:59:05 +0000 UTC
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