Sometimes another writer writes a book you wish you'd written and it comes out a year after the book you're glad you wrote.
Let me explain.
June 1st was the 1-year anniversary of my last novel, Kingdom of the Wicked's (successful) publication. Normally, this is the sort of thing authors enjoy, especially given most books have the shelf life of yogurt and finish up remaindered inside a year. Something about the popular response has been troubling me, though, and I've finally been able to put my finger on it. This is thanks to reading Steven D. Smith's Pagans & Christians in the City: Culture Wars from the Tiber to the Potomac.
Kingdom of the Wicked is a work of speculative fiction. It takes place in a Roman Empire that's undergone an industrial revolution. My initial academic training was in classics (I became a lawyer later to pay the bills), so I'm well aware pagan Rome had different cultural values from those now present in the modern, industrialized West.
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