What inspired you to start writing?
That’s a question. I tried to set my writing aside for a while at the turn of the millennium, but that didn’t last very long. I soon started writing short stories, some of which you can find in my collection, Haints, which I give to subscribers to my newsletter at ThaddeusThomas.com. I was published in magazines like Fantasy Magazine and Abyss & Apex, but I wasn't happy with my long-form fiction. Then, the more I strayed into the realms of fiction that really, deeply interested me, the harder it was to find a professional home. At the end of the decade, I had a book about to be edited with a small publisher, and I pulled it. It didn't yet represent who I wanted to be as a writer. For a second time, I walked away.
I walked away from publishing, but I kept writing because I can’t help it. The stories I love don’t inspire me to live those stories, they inspire me to write my own.
Then six years ago, I was toying with the idea of writing about the Christian disciple, Doubting Thomas, and I had written a scene that felt real in place and time. I had my character. All I needed was a story, and in response to that, I asked a really weird question. What if Doubting Thomas was a first-century detective? That not only kindled my interest in the story, in sparked the desire to see this through to publication. I followed Detective, 26 AD with Steampunk Cleopatra, and then decided to publish it first. By the time this blog goes to post, both will be available.
My inspiration to return to the world of publishing is I feel I’ve come into my own enough to tell the stories I want to tell in the way I want to tell them, and I have very philosophical / psychological ideas about how that’s done. In another month, my third release will be a craft book that details those concepts, A Fiction Writer’s Guide to Deeper Stories. Catch the book release soon enough, and you can get it for free.
What was the hardest part about writing this book?
I worked on Detective, 26 AD for three years and this one for two. I've since developed a better understanding of how to write what I want to write in a much shorter space of time, and that was necessary. The time involved was the hardest part. A good chunk of that is devoted to research, and my historical fantasies will always be research-heavy, but I learned to reduce the number of wrong turns and wasted words.
Does one of the main characters hold a special place in your heart? If so, why?
The main character is Amani, Cleopatra’s childhood companion, and the viewpoint character is Philostratos, their tutor. These characters break my heart. Steampunk Cleopatra is a stand-alone. To tell the story it wants to tell and mean what it wants to mean, this book can never have a sequel. That hurts, because I love these characters, but anything more can only be something less.
There are so many historical “villains” who fade in and out of view, but none of them are the focus here. This is Amani, Cleopatra, and Philostratos. They love each other and hurt each other, champion and oppress. The book follows the women from age six to twenty-one and picks up again five years after Cleopatra’s death, as Philostratos looks back, trying to understand. I think it has a great deal to say about people and power, about the desire to do the good thing and failing.
If your book was to be made into a movie, who are the celebrities that would star in it?
Angelina Jolie wanted to make a Cleopatra movie, and now it looks like we might get one with Gal Gadot, instead. With Jolie's movie left in limbo for a decade, hopefully, we won't be left waiting for Gadot.
Neither casting is right for a historical Cleopatra, however. They capture the Roman propaganda that claimed she grabbed power with her beauty and sexuality. Cleopatra was no great beauty. Sorry. Instead, she was an incredibly intelligent woman who works on medicine were collected in the library of Alexandria. She spoke a wide array of languages and was the first Ptolemaic Pharaoh to speak Egyptian. If they ever turned Steampunk Cleopatra into a movie, they’d be welcome to case it as they chose, but they’d be doomed to get it wrong.
For Amani, even though I imagined a wider face, I wouldn’t be mad at Letitia Wright.
What do you hope your readers take away from this book?
You know, I would love to hear what readers take away at the end of Steampunk Cleopatra. What do I hope for? History is a lie and not only the official history, which is manipulated by those who wish to control us. The people we wish to remember become constructs of our memories, twisted, reduced, and changed. Most of the time, that's okay. It's enough. We each belong to one another, parents, children, and spouses, clinging to whatever memory we can. However, some are not ours to construct. The interpretation of their memory belongs to another, and our efforts will forever fall short.
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Thaddeus Thomas
Thaddeus Thomas lives on the Mississippi River with his wife and three cats. Steampunk Cleopatra is his first novel, but he has a short story collection available at his website, ThaddeusThomas.com. There he also runs a book club where readers can receive indie book reviews and recommendation. His second book—Detective, 26 AD—releases July 9th and follows Doubting Thomas as he is conscripted to be an investigator for Pontius Pilate.
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