I'll be honest: I tend to make snap decisions. Especially when it comes to books. By the

Okay, so now you know how much I enjoyed Michelle Moran's first novel, Nefertiti. I can't wait to read its sequel, The Heretic Queen. In addition to being a fabulous writer, Michelle's also a fascinating person. Don't believe me? Read on ...

Me: Hi Michelle! Welcome to Bloggin' 'bout Books. Have you always had an interest in history and her famous heroines? If so, what sparked your interest? If not, when did this interest develop?

MM: I would say that my journey into the world of history actually began with the PBS television program Reading Rainbow. I was eight years old when the program featured a children’s book about dinosaurs. On the screen, a group of school children were huddled around a dinosaur bone, dressed in khakis and safari hats. They were squatting over a gigantic femur and tenderly cleaning off the dirt with their brushes. “That’s what I want to do,” I announced, and when my mother signed me up for a children’s course in paleontology at the Natural History Museum, I knew I wanted to join a dig someday.

Twelve years later I found myself sitting in Anthropology 101, and when the professor mentioned that she was looking for volunteers who would like to join a dig in Israel, I practically trampled the other students in my haste. Visions of artifacts danced in my head. After all, it was Israel, and who knew what we might find? For the three weeks before the orientation meeting, I agonized over what I should bring. Shorts, of course, and heavy boots. But what about brushes? Were there special brushes that archaeologists used, or would the ones from Home Depot be okay? I finally settled on brushes from Home Depot, and when it came time for packing, I lovingly placed them in protective wrap and imagined all the priceless artifacts they’d soon be dusting.

When I landed in Israel, I unpacked my brushes and laced up my boots. I didn’t own a fedora, but I already felt like Josh Bernstein and I was ready to Dig Up Some Truth. As we arrived at the dig site, our team leader walked to the back of his van. I watched enthusiastically as he unloaded twenty pickaxes. When he began passing them out to the volunteers, however, I became concerned. They’ve mistaken me for someone else, I panicked, someone who’s signed up to dig ditches instead of brushing delicate femurs. “What is this?” I asked when it was my turn for a pickax. “One of your tools,” our team leader replied. “There’s a shovel as well. You’ll be digging six feet by ten.” When he saw the shock on my face, he frowned. “You knew that, didn’t you?”

For weeks we dug ditches, shoveling dirt into wheelbarrows and hauling the barrels of dirt down a hill. Over that summer I think I lost ten pounds, and I know that I gained some serious muscle. Plus, I never did get to use my brushes. Only seasoned archaeologists were allowed to do the delicate work. But when our team discovered an Egyptian scarab that proved the ancient Israelites had once traded with Egyptians, I began to wonder who had owned that scarab, and what had possessed them to undertake the long journey north from their homeland to the fledgling country of Israel.

On my flight back to America I stopped in Berlin, and with a newfound appreciation for Egyptology, I visited the museum where Nefertiti’s limestone bust was being housed. The graceful curve of Nefertiti’s neck, her arched brows, and the faintest hint of a smile were captivating to me. Who was this woman with her self-possessed gaze and stunning features? I wanted to know more about Nefertiti’s story, but when I began the research into her life, it proved incredibly difficult. She’d been a woman who’d inspired powerful emotions when she lived over three thousand years ago, and those who had despised her had attempted to erase her name from history. Yet even in the face of such ancient vengeance, some clues remained.

As a young girl Nefertiti had married a Pharaoh who was determined to erase the gods of Egypt and replace them with a sun-god he called Aten. It seemed that Nefertiti’s family allowed her to marry this impetuous king in the hopes that she would tame his wild ambitions. What happened instead, however, was that Nefertiti joined him in building his own capital of Amarna where they ruled together as god and goddess. But the alluring Nefertiti had a sister who seemed to keep her grounded, and in an image of her found in Amarna, the sister is standing off to one side, her arms down while everyone else is enthusiastically praising the royal couple. From this image, and a wealth of other evidence, I tried to recreate the epic life of an Egyptian queen whose husband was to become known as the Heretic King.

Writing the novel took years of research. I wanted to be sure that when I wrote Nefertiti I was extremely accurate, down to the color of the palace tiles and shape of the women’s beads. At the same time, however, I wanted to be careful not to weigh the story down in too much detail. There needed to be the same sense of urgency, danger, and passion as filled Nefertiti’s world.

Me: I know that you travel a lot. Do you pick up ideas for stories from every place you visit or are some (like Egypt) just more inspiring to you?

MM: I pick up ideas in every place I visit. Most of those ideas will never be used, but every country has its own wealth of history which is inspiring.

Me: What's your best (funniest, most interesting, scariest, etc.) travel story?

MM: Oh gosh. This would have to go in the scariest category. Last summer when my husband and I were in Switzerland, we were navigating via GPS and came to a fork in the highway. The GPS instructed us to go left, and since there were no signs indicating we should do otherwise, we traveled left. Unfortunately, this was a freeway off-ramp we were traveling up, and as a large garbage truck came barreling down on our tiny two-person Smart Car, we swerved and avoided becoming road kill by a terrifying few seconds. You read those stories in the paper and think, "Now who would be fool enough to blindly follow instructions from a navigator?" But I can tell you, there are times when things come together - and not for the best. Between the lack of signage, the GPS, and our unfamiliarity with the roads, we very nearly snuffed it. Score 1 for my husband's quick reflexes. Score 0 for listening to electronic devices.

Me: One thing that impresses me about your books is the rich detail. How much research do you do before (or while) you write a book?

MM: I begin by purchasing what feels like every book ever written on the subject I'm interested in. Sometimes that means our mail carrier will be delivering sixty books to my house in one week. It takes me several months to go through them, and when I feel like I have a pretty strong outline of my subject's life, I make a storyboard and begin to look for holes. Whatever holes I find, I try to patch with an event that wouldn't seem too far-fetched. If I run into trouble with a setting or a scene, I have friends in the archaeological world who can advise me on whether or not something I want to include is realistic.

Which means that all of the major events and characters in NEFERTITI are based on fact. Even the description of Nefertiti’s palace and the images she had painted beneath her throne are historically accurate. Archaeologists today are extremely lucky that so much of Nefertiti’s life is well preserved. But it wasn’t always this way. After Nefertiti’s reign, her enemies tried to destroy her memory by demolishing her city. The historical character of Horemheb, in particular, wanted to be sure that nothing of hers remained, so he broke her images down piece by piece and used them to fill the columns of his own buildings. Fast forward three thousand years, however, and as Horemheb’s columns began to deteriorate, all that was left were the perfectly preserved (although broken) images of Nefertiti and her life. The irony!

But although most of this novel is based in fact, some liberties were taken with personalities, names and minor historical events. For instance, no one can be certain how Mutnodjmet felt about her sister’s vision of an Egypt without the Amun Priests, but in an image of her found in Amarna she is standing off to one side, her arms down while everyone else is enthusiastically embracing the new god Aten. In a period where art attempted to portray reality for the first time, I found this significant. And while Nefertiti did have six daughters with Akhenaten, she never, so far as we know, produced twins.

Me: You write about famous women. If you could ask one question of each of your heroines - Nefertiti, Nefertari, Mutny, and Cleopatra - what would those questions be?

MM: Oh gosh.... To Nefertiti, I'd ask what inspired her to demolish Egypt's ancient religion for one of her own. To Nefertari, I would ask how she managed to become Ramesses's most beloved wife (she had tough competition!). For for Cleopatra, I'd want to know whether it was suicide by choice, or enforced suicide because Augustus was going to kill her anyway (to me, the latter is much more likely).

Me: Your new book about Cleopatra will be available in September. What about her captured your interest?

MM: The inspiration to write Cleopatra’s Daughter came during my first visit to Augustus’s villa. For two thousand years, the Roman Emperor’s home lay atop the Palatine Hill, its frescoed halls and tiled walls slowly deteriorating. At one time, its vibrantly painted dining room had hosted magnificent feasts, one of which would have been the celebration of the emperor’s triumph over Marc Antony and Cleopatra in Egypt. As the heir to Caesar, Augustus was determined to rule the western world without interference. Once known as Octavian, he changed his name to Augustus, and with the help of his general Agrippa and his architect Vitruvius, he turned a city of clay into a city of marble.

I had known all of this on that day in March when the villa was opened for the first time in more than a century. What I hadn’t known, however, was just how unbelievable that trip into the world of ancient Rome would be. After three million dollars in restoration, Italian archaeologists had been able to recreate not just the intimate library and studies Augustus had used, but the mosaiced floors he had walked on and the vividly painted ceilings he had walked beneath with Ovid, Seneca, Cicero, Horace, and even Julius Caesar himself. As we were quickly escorted through the frescoed rooms, we stopped in the ancient triclinium – the dining room which had once seen so many famous faces smiling, laughing, crying for mercy. With a little imagination, it was easy to see the tables and couches which had once adorned the chamber, and there was the undeniable feeling of standing in the presence of the ancients. It was the kind of feeling you only got in Grecian temples or Egyptian tombs.

Immediately, I wanted to know more. Exactly who had eaten in that room, staring at the yellow and ochre walls? Which women had entertained the emperor with their stories of what had been happening in Rome while he was gone? I went to my books, and what I found sent me back to the villa the next day. I told my husband to get a good look at the triclinium again, and this time, to imagine Cleopatra’s children sitting to the right of Augustus. I could almost see eleven year old Selene with her twin brother Alexander, the pair fearful as they wondered what would become of them with their parents gone and Egypt overtaken. I could imagine their reactions when they were told they would be raised in Octavia’s villa, the woman their father (Marc Antony) had left for their mother (Cleopatra). As I surveyed the dining room one last time, I knew I had to tell young Selene’s story. From her childhood in Alexandria to her queenship in Mauretania, it was a story no other historical fiction author had ever told. I would pick up where Colleen McCullough had left off in Antony and Cleopatra, and where Margaret George had left off in Memoirs of Cleopatra. Now, of all of the books I have written, it is by far my favorite, replete with one of the greatest (and shockingly true) love stories of all time.

Me: What are you working on now?

MM: Actually, I'm still editing Cleopatra's Daughter. The process ends about six months before a novel's debut, so I have about a month more of tweaking...

Me: I ask this of every author I interview, because I find the answers so fascinating: What is your writing process? Do you have a daily writing routine or do you write only when inspiration strikes? Do you outline your books or just let the ideas flow? Is there anything you HAVE to have by your side when you write?

MM: I wake up, check email for half an hour, attend to my blog for twenty minutes, spend another half hour surfing other people’s blogs, and then at about 10am I get down to business. I open a diet coke (my mother says that when I’m fifty and have no teeth I’ll know why), check my outline for the day, and begin to write. Writing sessions are punctuated by visits to my hotmail account more frequently than I’d like to admit. But I don’t stop until I get my 2000 words, even if that’s at nine o’clock at night.

Me: Thanks so much, Michelle!

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