Hello, readers, and welcome! I’m very happy to announce a question & answer session with Ms. Draven as she promotes her newest novel, Dark Sins & Desert Sands. This means you, her readers, can ask her anything!

If you have any questions for Stephanie, please e-mail us. Please do not forget to adjust the e-mail so it will send — there is a spam deterrent in it! Ms. Draven will do her best to answer all of them, but if there is an overwhelming number we may have to pick and choose the best ones.

Today I’m happy to continue my blog series, Military Lives, Real Love Stories. My guest is Lauren Gueret, a Navy wife and aspiring author.

Me: First, tell me a little bit about yourself and your writing.

Lauren: My mother had a son who died in 1998 and my father wrote and published a novella (Twenty Minutes in Eternity) about the experience. I was only 8 at the time, but I was so proud of my father doing that and wanted to do the same. I have been writing faithfully since I was twelve, trying to follow in my father’s footsteps. I focus primarily in the paranormal romance genre, my favorite authors being Christine Feehan, Keri Arthur, and Kresley Cole, among numerous others. I am, however, currently putting a compilation together of military short-stories inspired by my own situations, friends’, and injured war veterans’ at the VA hospital here in Hampton Roads.

Me: How long have you been married and how did you meet your husband?

Lauren: My husband, Jonathan, and I will be married for a year as of March 20. We actually met online while I was at UVA, through a dating site called True. I had a profile as a past-time away from school work. I was not looking for anybody, just to have fun looking at the guys who tried to contact me. My husband-to-be contacted me, and I thought, “What the heck” and wrote him back. We became friends, though I didn’t want a relationship because I was interested in another guy. Despite everything, Jonathan would not stop pursuing me, and helped me through a very traumatic experience. We obviously ended up together after that. =)

Me: The old adage is that opposites attract, but in my novels, my heroes and heroines are usually drawn together because they find that they share some common experience of loss. For example, in my forthcoming novel POISONED KISSES, my hero and heroine both lost their mothers to mental illness. What pain or loss or maybe even joyful past experiences did you and your husband have in common?

Lauren: As cliche as it sounds, we were both drawn to each other by loneliness. I had had several horrible relationships, some abusive, and I needed a lot of healing from the experiences. I needed a man who was willing to be patient and help me through what I was dealing with. My husband needed a woman to do just that for. His father worked out of state all throughout his adolescent years so he was without a manly figure in his life. Because of that, he had always been dubbed, ‘the nice, safe guy’ and he needed to affirm his role as a nurturing man. Cliche, like I said. haha

Me: Did you know that your husband would be going into the military when you married him? If so, did you think it would be as difficult as it has been?

Lauren: He was already in the Navy, and it didn’t bother me. He was away in AZ for school for the first 10 weeks of our relationship. I spent 2 weeks with him for Christmas break, and then I went back to school and he went back to work. We lived 3 hours apart, so we saw each other twice a month for a day and a half at a time. I didn’t think it would be difficult since I was already used to hardly seeing him, and so far, it hasn’t really been.

Me: You’ve said that you gave birth while your husband was still in Iraq…how did you cope?

Lauren: I realized early on that I had to get myself on a routine so that I wouldn’t become depressed. I went to the gym every single day in the morning, and afterward, I would go to the library and check out 10-12 books. I read all day, every day. Jonathan called me every few days, and emailed often, so that helped. His not being present was not too difficult. What saddened me was that he was not able to feel the baby kick or be present for doctor appointments. During my labor and delivery, the hospital allowed me to set up a webcam, so he watched the whole 12 hour process from Iraq. It was nice at least seeing and hearing him, but it was very sad when I was holding Andrew and Jonathan wasn’t there to do the same.

Me: Many military spouses have told me that their loved one returned from war and sometimes seemed like a different person, or several different people, which is why I adapted the chimera myth to explore the issue of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome in my novella, WILD, TETHERED, BOUND. Do you or your husband have any experience with PTSD and if so, does this resonate with you?

Lauren: Jonathan does/did not have PTSD, but it has been very difficult for me to transition back to having him around. When you’re on your own for 6 months, you have to block out emotion and sexual longings so that you can cope. I also had to take care of a newborn on my own for 6 weeks, so I kept Andrew first before everything. Now that he’s back, it’s been taking me some time to get used to having him around again. I still haven’t found that healthy medium between balancing being a mom to Andrew and a wife to Jonathan.

Me: Given your experiences as a military spouse, what advice would you give other military wives?

Lauren: Be sure that you can handle raising a family on your own. That is the best advice I can give. Whether you like it or not, the US gov’t owns your husband, and he must do what they say. He won’t be around for important holidays and for a lot of the children’s lives. I know I am capable of doing this, but a good friend of mine is now realizing what being a military wife entails, and she’s not sure she can handle it. They may be throwing a 6-year relationship and 3-year marriage away, one that has an 18-month old son. I always say it takes a different breed of woman to do what I do, and I stand by it. You have to be independent and strong-willed, or you will not get through the deployments and schools they must attend.

Me: What’s the single most annoying thing about your husband and how do you make the relationship work anyway?

Lauren: My husband is a video game enthusiast, and I HATE video games. I am a bookworm through and through. When he first came back from Iraq, he continued playing them all day every day as he did when he was single. In a military marriage, you MUST communicate. I talked with him and asked that he simply learn when it is appropriate to play video games and when he must take care of his responsibilities. He has made a great effort and only plays when he has free time.

Me: What are your most romantic memories with your husband?

Lauren: Since we haven’t really had much time together, and having a 4 month old son, we haven’t had much opportunity to be romantic. haha As terrible as that sounds. I will never forget, however, last year’s Valentine’s Day. Jonathan had strep throat worse than I can describe, yet he went out and ordered me purple roses (in honor of my favorite color) and surprised me. I hadn’t thought we were going to celebrate at all. I still have a few of those roses in the pages of my dictionary.

I want to thank Lauren for stopping by! If you or anyone you know has a real life military love story that they’d like to share, please let me know.

I’ve been interviewed by Jennifer Rodland of The Romantic Journey. Among other things, I reveal the five books that have influenced me most this year. I’m still at the “OMG, someone wants to interview me?” stage of my career, so check me out while I’m still humble!

Plus, if you comment, you could win $$. And after all the spending you did over the holidays couldn’t you use a little moolah?

Anyone who has ever been inside my front door knows that I’m obsessed with Ancient Egypt and Late Republic Rome. I spent part of my honeymoon reading Margaret George’s “The Memoirs of Cleopatra” and much of the next decade researching the fate of Cleopatra’s children for my own novel, Lily of the Nile, which will release in January, 2011.

Now, historical fiction writer Michelle Moran, the best-selling author of NEFERTITI and THE HERETIC QUEEN, brings us the fascinating story of CLEOPATRA’S DAUGHTER. I’ll be telling you more about this stunning book in a separate review, but for now I give its gracious and talented author the floor!

Question: Though we’re given tantalizing hints about Cleopatra Selene’s life, the historical record of her is on the scant side which means that any historical fiction author writing about her life has to make some important editorial choices. I was particularly impressed with the ones you made, and I’d like to start by asking you about them. We know that Selene’s brothers disappear from the historical record, but we don’t know how. What made you choose the fates for them that you did?

Conjecture. We know that Octavian leaves Egypt with three of Cleopatra’s children. When he arrived in Rome, there were most likely only two. It’s highly unlikely he would have killed the youngest child, so what could have happened to him? Probably he died onboard the ship. As for Alexander, he disappears from the record at exactly the same time as his coming of age ceremony. I don’t think that this was a coincidence, given that he was the son of Marc Antony (a man who was beloved by many Senators and much of the army) and Queen Cleopatra. We may not understand this today, but two thousand years ago, blood relationships were everything. To be a male child – an adult male child – of these two incredibly powerful rulers would have meant that the men who served your father (and your mother) might also serve you. This is a very dangerous position to be in. Could Octavian really let such a child live? We know he had his own family members banished or killed. Would he have flinched to kill the adult child of his greatest enemy once the boy came of age?

Question: It seems to me that a student of history could view Octavian as a cruel and ruthless dictator. Conversely, a student of history could think of him as the benevolent Augustus who saved Rome. I tend to think of him as a little bit of both. How did writing Selene’s life story influence your view of the first Roman emperor?

From Selene’s perspective, Octavian would have been the enemy. He was responsible for the loss of her kingdom, the loss of her parents, and the loss of one (if not more) of her brothers. In reality, however, Octavian was an extremely complicated man. The best biography on him that I have read is by Anthony Everitt called Augustus: The Life of Rome’s First Emperor. Here was a leader who could be both tender and cruel, forgiving and merciless. He killed his enemies swiftly and probably without remorse. Those he valued, however, he rewarded with kingships and his deepest friendship and trust.

Question: Roman writers–often misogynistic in the extreme–have passed down to us a pretty despicable picture of Octavian’s wife, Livia. I’m often conscious of the prejudices that must have shaped her reputation, but find that she makes for too wickedly delicious an archetype to resist. How did writing Selene’s story influence your perspective on Livia and why did you choose to portray her the way you did?

Before writing about any historical character – even minor ones – I try to read as many biographies on them as time will allow. It is certainly true that many Roman writers were misogynistic. In this case, however, there may be some truth to Livia’s bad reputation, particularly where her relationship with her sister-in-law, Octavia, was concerned.

The tension between the two women stemmed from the fact that they had such different personalities. Whereas Octavian’s sister, Octavia, was compassionate, Livia seems to have been rather mercurial. And whereas Octavia was deeply interested in the arts – theatre, poetry, sculpture – Livia only pursued these things to keep her husband interested.

Livia was interested in one thing really: Livia. She probably would have viewed the twins as threats to the stability of her husband’s reign. As the children of Marc Antony and Cleopatra, Selene and Alexander could easily have found a large following of disaffected people who would have loved to see Alexander ruling Rome in Octavian’s stead. But because the twins were so young, Octavian was loathe to have them murdered the way he had their older male siblings killed. In the novel, Livia’s animosity toward them came from the knowledge that someday, they could challenge her own son for the right to rule over Rome.

Question: Another important editorial choice you made was in the portrayal of Cleopatra’s death. Recent Cleopatra scholars, including Michel Chauveau have argued that Cleopatra would not have had the means, the motive, nor even the courage to kill herself. Can you tell us about the choice you made for Cleopatra’s death in your book, and why you chose it?

This is a rather large debate among Egyptian and Roman scholars. What happened when Octavian arrived in Rome? We know there was a meeting with Cleopatra. And we know that soon after, Cleopatra was dead. Was it murder? Suicide? Enforced suicide (effectively – murder). No one knows if she had the time or the means because there are no eyewitness accounts. The only thing that’s certain is that when Octavian entered Rome she was alive, and by the time he left she was dead.

If I had to make a choice between the three, I would say it was enforced suicide. Governing Rome with Cleopatra still alive would have been impossible. She was the mother to Julius Caesar’s child and the mother to three of Marc Antony’s children. She was a queen – a powerful and respected one, despite Octavian’s smear campaign – and if she had remained alive she would always have been a rallying point for rebellion. Octavian knew this. He was a man who had no qualms with dispatching his rivals and he did so regularly, even if those rivals were family members. My guess is that he gave her a choice. To die with dignity (which at the time was suicide), or to die by someone’s hand.

Question: Your book ends well before Selene’s journey back to Africa. Can you tell us why you stopped at her betrothal to Juba?

Certainly! I wanted to keep the door open for a sequel (which is unlikely…but just in case).

Question: I just want to finish by saying how remarkably well-researched your book is, and I found myself longing for a bibliography. Is there a place you direct readers who want to learn more about Cleopatra Selene?

Yes! I have a short bibliography on my website at: http://www.michellemoran.com/cleo_QA.htm