#im constantly in awe of Priest and every time i re read one of their novels im like. GOD. that's where i want to BE

[brother-emperors]

I adore how you manage to tickle these very intimate emotional moments from tiny detached throw-away sentences describing historical events. You're a master at filling in the deeply human blanks of history. I hope to one day be as good as you are at extrapolating emotion and nuance and momentary life from the often very broad strokes history is written with.

a couple years ago, I got ahold of M. L. Clarke's The Noblest Roman: Marcus Brutus and his Repuptation, and the way the book closes rewired something forever in my heart

it shifted my focus from being a spectacle enjoyer to wanting to sit around these figures like machiavelli writes about doing and ask them questions and see what reply is given, which also made the political spectacle more interesting

and a huge part of it is that one of my favorite genres is romance, and erotica is fun too. its a genre that is character heavy and reliant on intimacy and I LOVE character driven narratives. my favorite kind of stuff from my other two beloved genres, horror and mystery, tend to be focused on character moments, driven by internal and external arcs (OCN's the Guest, you'll always be number one in my heart forever and ever).

even though I'm doing circus stuff with historical figures, the fiction aspect of it is HEAVILY influenced by those genres because that's a lot of what I read and also enjoy writing. I'll never be good at writing dense political fiction spanning across a huge world (the thought of attempting anything on the world building scale of ASoIaF makes my brain hurt, and Im also not interested in doing that), but my god will I pick a guy and spend months in his ribcage imagining situations and wondering what he liked to eat for breakfast.

this was!!! really nice to read!!!!! thank you so so much, anon