Remember the year two major studios both put out movies about an astroid hitting the earth? Remember the year every book in the B&N was about Anne Boleyn? Remember the year a certain author *cough* published a book about Cleopatra’s daughter and so did everybody else?

I’ve always assumed this kind of thing happens because there’s a sort of collective conscious at work. Creative people are influenced by their times to be fascinated by certain subjects, so maybe it’s not so strange that ideas happen in clusters.

But I’m also certain that there’s a bit of serendipitous magic at work. And when you’re a writer, it feels like destiny. Case in point? The recent historical erotica story that I’ve been writing like a maniac, night and day, for the past week.

The setting? The 1920s. The heroine? A silent film screen siren loosely based on Clara Bow. The hero? An American aviator. They fall in love while trying to make a hollywood movie about WWI fighter pilots.

I’m thirty-five thousand words into this novella. It’s almost done. I’m putting the frosting on the cake now and pulling it to a conclusion, so I decide, on a whim, to look up the popular films of 1927.

And what do I find? But Wings, the first film, and the only silent film, to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. It starred none other than Clara Bow. If that weren’t freaktastic enough, this historic film–which was believed to be lost–is going to be released in its restored version THIS MONTH!

If only I could write and publish this in time for the January 24th release of the film, I’d be a happy girl. In the meantime, I’m going to have to settle for the mystical sense of satisfaction that maybe I’m writing something I was meant to be writing.

What, might you ask, does a baby elephant have to do with my work as an author? Well, I’m so glad you asked. As you might know, I write historical fiction as Stephanie Dray. Elephants figure into some of the research I’m doing for my sequel to LILY OF THE NILE (my forthcoming book from Berkley about Cleopatra’s Daughter, Selene, to be released January 2011).

The guy pictured above is an Indian elephant, which is a smaller breed than the more well-known Ethiopian Elephant (now known as the African Elephant). There used to be a third kind.

The elephants that Hannibal took over the Alps were North African elephants, now extinct, but Cleopatra Selene’s husband Juba wrote extensively about the species and described it as having an uncanny intelligence.

Okay, so that gave me my excuse to post an adorable baby animal picture!

Isn’t that a great title? I totally want to nab it as the title of any follow-up novel I write to my forthcoming book, which we’re tentatively calling CARNAL CREATURES. It’s about a modern day sphinx and a modern day minotaur caught in a desperate struggle for survival, but enough about that…let’s talk about the sphinx in Egypt. Thanks to Michelle Moran’s tip, I found this article in the Smithsonian and it’s fascinating.

Amongst the many interesting tidbits contained in the article is this bit of evidence that the Egyptians may not have been using a slave labor force to construct their great wonders:

Near the cemetery, nine years later, Lehner discovered his Lost City. He and Hawass had been aware since the mid-1980s that there were buildings at that site. But it wasn’t until they excavated and mapped the area that they realized it was a settlement bigger than ten football fields and dating to Khafre’s reign. At its heart were four clusters of eight long mud-brick barracks. Each structure had the elements of an ordinary house—a pillared porch, sleeping platforms and a kitchen—that was enlarged to accommodate around 50 people sleeping side by side. The barracks, Lehner says, could have accommodated between 1,600 to 2,000 workers—or more, if the sleeping quarters were on two levels. The workers’ diet indicates they weren’t slaves. Lehner’s team found remains of mostly male cattle under 2 years old—in other words, prime beef. Lehner thinks ordinary Egyptians may have rotated in and out of the work crew under some sort of national service or feudal obligation to their superiors.

A massive pharaoh’s statue was discovered in the Sudan. The article reads in part:

About a week back Heritage Key published a story about the discovery of a massive, one ton, statue of Taharqa that was found deep in Sudan.

Taharqa was a pharaoh of the 25th dynasty of Egypt and came to power ca. 690 BC. The pharaohs of this dynasty were from Nubia – a territory located in modern day Sudan and southern Egypt. When Taharqa came to power, he controlled an empire stretching from Sudan to the Levant.

The Nubian pharaohs tried to incorporate Egyptian culture into their own. They built pyramids in Sudan – even though pyramid building in Egypt hadn’t been practiced in nearly 800 years.

Taharqa’s rule was a high water mark for the 25th dynasty. By the end of his reign a conflict with the Assyrians had forced him to retreat south, back into Nubia – where he died in 664 BC.

Egypt became an Assyrian vassal – eventually gaining independence during the 26th dynasty. Taharqa’s successors were never able to retake Egypt.