Due to a complicated combination of food poisoning, mis-scheduled doctor's appointments, and exhaustion, I stayed home from work today. Last night I ended up falling asleep around six, getting up around ten, and going back to bed around eleven, where I slept through the rest of the night and had dreams I was shopping in a bookstore owned by Abbie Hoffman. Who, for the record, is looking pretty good for being seventy five years old and dead. He gave me a comic book, it was a whole "the mysterious bookseller knows what you need without asking" thing.

I spent most of the morning sitting around doing nothing much. I'm letting Dead Isle settle a little before I do anything else with it, and using the month between when I finished it and when my deadline was to write pornography about ancient Romans. Which, if you're going to write porn, Romans make it pretty easy to write.

I've learned through hard trial and mortifying error that I can't force a story -- either I get caught up in it or I don't, and if I don't, even if I finish it, it's generally no good. I heard Octavia Butler speak one time about writing and she talked about "dead stories"; she kept forcing her story Blood Child until she killed it and had to start completely over. It's a little like that, and honestly I figured I'd try to force this story for a few days and then give up.

But I got caught up in it, and in the research, because the Imperial Era of Rome is fascinating. Horrible in many respects, but fascinating all the same. And I forgot what an interesting web of relationships were formed around Julius Caesar and his Senate in the wake of Pompey's defeat in the civil war. There's an especially delicious situation where Brutus and Cassius are close friends and also brothers-in-law; Cassius married Junia Tertia, who (depending on which rumours you believe) is either Brutus's half-sister by their mother Servilia's second marriage or his full sister, them both being the product of Servilia's long-standing affair with Caesar. This mostly becomes delicious if you are, like me, writing a story where Brutus and Cassius are lovers, meaning Brutus and Junia are for all intents and purposes sharing the same man.

Seriously. For any kind of sex, from nobly romantic to super-kinky, and sometimes both at once, you really can't beat the Romans.

Well, you can, but they'd only enjoy it.