Showcase Sunday: Michelle Moran Interview

Good morning, Blog Buds! Michelle Moran's new Historical novel, HERETIC QUEEN, is in bookstores this month. I'll be reviewing it right here next month.
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I sent Michelle a few questions and she graciously answered them.
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Kimber- Did you have HERETIC QUEEN in your head while you were still working on NEFERTITI? When did it show itself in your imagination? What journey did you take to write it? And do you consider HERETIC QUEEN a sequel to NEFERTITI?
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Michelle- In many ways, The Heretic Queen is a natural progression from my debut novel Nefertiti. The sequel picks up the plot after the brief interceding reign of Tutankhamun. The narrator is orphaned Nefertari, who suffers terribly because of her relationship to the reviled “Heretic Queen”. Despite the Heretic Queen’s death a generation prior, Nefertari is still tainted by her relationship to her aunt, Queen Nefertiti, and when young Ramesses falls in love and wishes to marry her, it is a struggle not just against an angry court, but against the wishes of a rebellious people.
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But perhaps I would never have chosen to write on Nefertari at all if I hadn’t taken a trip to Egypt and seen her magnificent tomb. At one time, visiting her tomb was practically free, but today, a trip underground to see one of the most magnificent places on earth can cost upwards of five thousand dollars (yes, you read that right). If you want to share the cost and go with a group, the cost lowers to the bargain-basement price of about three thousand. As a guide told us of the phenomenal price, I looked at my husband, and he looked at me. We had flown more than seven thousand miles, suffered the indignities of having to wear the same clothes for three days because of lost luggage… and really, what were the possibilities of our ever returning to Egypt again? There was only one choice. We paid the outrageous price, and I have never forgotten the experience.
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While breathing in some of the most expensive air in the world (I figured it was about $20 a gulp), I saw a tomb that wasn’t just fit for a queen, but a goddess. In fact, Nefertari was only one of two (possibly three) queens ever deified in her lifetime, and as I gazed at the vibrant images on her tomb – jackals and bulls, cobras and gods - I knew that this wasn’t just any woman, but a woman who had been loved fiercely when she was alive. Because I am a sucker for romances, particularly if those romances actually happened, I immediately wanted to know more about Nefertari and Ramesses the Great. So my next stop was the Hall of Mummies at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. There, resting beneath a heavy arc of glass, was the great Pharaoh himself. For a ninety-something year old man, he didn’t look too bad. His short red hair was combed back neatly and his face seemed strangely peaceful in its three thousand year repose. I tried to imagine him as he’d been when he was young – strong, athletic, frighteningly rash and incredibly romantic. Buildings and poetry remain today as testaments to Ramesses’s softer side, and in one of Ramesses’s more famous poems he calls Nefertari “the one for whom the sun shines.” His poetry to her can be found from Luxor to Abu Simbel, and it was my visit to Abu Simbel (where Ramesses built a temple for Nefertari) where I finally decided that I had to tell their story.
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Kimber- With the experience of NEFERTITI behind you, was HERETIC QUEEN easier or more difficult to write? How so?
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Michelle- Actually, the experience of writing wasn’t any different, but the publication process certainly was. There really is nothing like publishing for the first time. The expectation, the excitement of the unknown, and the wild drive that pushes an author to do anything and everything they can for their very first book doesn’t compare with the experience of publishing successive novels. Since Nefertiti was my first novel, I had no idea what to expect. What would happen on the first day of publication? Or if I made a bestsellers list? Or if I didn’t make one? Should I do signings? What about drive-by signings? Do bookmarks really work? Of course, all of these questions were answered in due time. And now, for The Heretic Queen, I know that bookmarks are useful, that if I make the bestsellers list my editor will call at an ungodly hour on her – gasp – personal phone to congratulate me, and that drive-by signings can be just as effective as signing events. There is an inner peace – at least for me – in publishing the second novel that wasn’t there for the first book when everything was uncertain and new. The nervousness is still there – will people like it? will I let down my publishing house? – but this time I know what to expect.
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Kimber- Historically, when and where is HERETIC QUEEN set in relation to NEFERTITI?
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Michelle- After Nefertiti’s death, Egypt was ruled by the Pharaohs Tutankhamun, Ay, Horemheb, and Ramesses I. However, I skipped the short reigns of these Pharaohs in order to write about Ramesses the Great. When my publishing house purchased Nefertiti, they did so in a two-book deal. Not knowing how Nefertiti would be received, or whether I have ever get another chance at writing about ancient Egypt, I chose to tell the two most compelling stories I knew: that of Nefertiti and her sister Mutnodjmet, and that of Mutnodjmet’s child Nefertari and her life with Ramesses the Great. It may sound strange that I chose to skip over a pharaoh as well known as Tutankhamun, but the truth is that he had a very short reign. After marrying his half-sister Ankhesenamun, he ruled until he was nineteen years old and then died of a broken leg (probably infection, and possibly a chariot accident). After Tut’s death, his grandfather Ay took the throne for a few short years, followed by the general Horemheb.
I certainly could have written an entire book on Horemheb’s reign, beginning with his marriage to Mutnodjmet, but I like my stories to have some glimmer of hope, some element of romance (there were plenty of romances in history!), and Mutnodjmet’s forced marriage and death in childbirth (unlike many Amarna mummies, hers has been recovered) didn’t seem very cheerful to me. So I chose to focus on her daughter, Nefertari. Of course, it’s unknown if Nefertari really was her daughter, and if not, how exactly they were related. But the historian Manetho provided me with the possibility, and so I took it and wrote what I think is a much more hopeful story. Even though Nefertari would have been the niece of the Heretic Queen Nefertiti, and therefore tainted at court, Ramesses loved her fiercely. Buildings and poetry remain today as testaments to this, and in one of Ramesses’s more famous poems he calls Nefertari “the one for whom the sun shines.” His poetry to her can be found from Luxor to Abu Simbel.
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Kimber- Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about HERETIC QUEEN?
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Michelle- Truthfully, I just want readers to feel that if a time machine were to suddenly appear and whisk them away to ancient Egypt, they wouldn’t be totally lost. They would recognize the traditions, the gods and goddesses, and know what to expect in Pharaoh Ramesses’s court. I have tried my best to make the writing accessible to a modern audience. That means not dating the dialogue, or using too many long and unwieldy Egyptian names, or overdoing it with ancient Egyptian terms. Hopefully, by doing this, readers will come away with the sense of not only having been there for a little while, but of relating to the Egyptians. Because for all of the technological, medical and philosophical changes the world has undergone in the past three thousand years, people have remained the same. They had the same desires and fears in ancient Egypt that we have today, and I hope that readers can come away with an understanding of that.
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Kimber- Tell us about your next book, CLEOPATRA’S DAUGHTER.
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Michelle- Cleopatra's Daughter will follow the incredible life of Cleopatra's surviving children with Marc Antony -- twins, named Alexander Helios and Cleopatra Selene, and a younger son named Ptolemy. All three were taken to Rome and paraded through the streets, then sent off to be raised by Octavia (the wife whom Marc Antony left for Cleopatra). Raised in one of the most fascinating courts of all time, Cleopatra's children would have met Ovid, Seneca, Vitruvius (who inspired the Vitruvian man), Agrippa (who built the Pantheon), Herod, his sister Salome, the poets Virgil, Horace, Maecenas and so many others!
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Thanks so much, Michelle!
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http://michellemoran.com