Chat with the authors!

[Heidi]

Got any questions or comments about Mark of the Gladiator for me and Violetta Vane? Drop us a comment here! :)

[Violetta]

Hi Yvette!

I talk about some of my background with Latin and Roman history here in this post on our blog tour. We didn't start from scratch since I have some academic and popular history books on the period. But we also did a lot of research. We used The Perseus Project heavily—it's an electronic database of classics source material—ancient maps, Wikipedia for basic stuff, and lots of image searching. At one point, we had to figure out how the Circus Maximus was oriented so we'd know where the shadow of the temple would fall, which involved checking archaeological diagrams and the Google Maps satellite image of the present-day ruins.

Short answer: about one week of intense research and note-taking before writing. Lots of intense researching and fact-checking during. Then a last round of historical editing in the last stage that all the Warriors of Rome books got.

Thank you so much for commenting :-)

[Heidi]

Well thanks Yvette! Glad to hear the history (and the writing) lived up to your standards. :) Always good to hear that it's satisfied someone who's an enthusiast about the topic.

[Eed99]

I thought the book was great.

Do you think you might try writing in this period again? I readily confess to enjoying books from this period-and would love to see other books even if they are different characters. But there isn't much m/m set in the Roman period.

[Heidi]

Thanks Eed99! We don't currently have any plans to revisit Rome, and it's not on our writing schedule, but never say never! Violetta and I both love the period as well so it's definitely not out of the question.

I'm surprised by how little M/M set in Rome there is, honestly! I wonder why.

[Eed99]

I don't know why either-given that I think it is a historical period where m/m could be successfully portrayed within the historical context.

[Heidi]

I agree! The fluid sexuality of the time period was really interesting for us to explore. It's too bad more people don't get into it!