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Author Michelle Moran certainly put her case of wanderlust to good use, relying on her experiences traveling the world to pen three works of historical fiction.Author Michelle Moran certainly put her case of wanderlust to good use, relying on her experiences traveling the world to pen three works of historical fiction. In today's guest blog, she shares memories of an unforgettable vacation that inspired her latest novel, CLEOPATRA'S DAUGHTER, and sparked her obsession with this enigmatic ancient queen.


It began with a dive. Not the kind that people take into swimming pools, but the kind where you squeeze yourself into a wetsuit and wonder just how tasty your rump must appear to passing sharks now that it looks exactly like an elephant seal. My husband and I had taken a trip to Egypt, and at the suggestion of a friend, we decided to visit Alexandria and go on a dive to see the remains of Cleopatra’s underwater city. Let it be known that I had never done anything like this before, so after four days with an instructor (and countless questions: Will there be sharks? How about jellyfish? If there is an earthquake, what happens underwater?) we were ready for the real thing.

We drove to the Eastern Harbor in Alexandria. Dozens of other divers were already there, waiting to see what sort of magic lay beneath the waves. I wondered if the real thing could possibly live up to all of the guides and brochures selling this underwater city, lost for thousands of years until now. Then we did the dive, and it was every bit as magical as everyone had promised. You can see the rocks that once formed Marc Antony’s summer palace, come face to face with Cleopatra’s towering sphinx, and take your time floating above ten thousand ancient artifacts, including obelisks, statues, and countless amphorae. By the time we had surfaced, I was Cleopatra-obsessed. I wanted to know what had happened to her city once she and Marc Antony had committed suicide. Where did all of its people go? Were they allowed to remain, or were they killed by the Romans? What about her four children?

It was this last question that surprised me the most. I had always believed that all of Cleopatra’s children had been murdered. But, the Roman conqueror Octavian had actually spared the three she bore to Marc Antony: her six-year-old son, Ptolemy, and her ten-year-old twins, Alexander and Selene. As soon as I learned that Octavian had taken the three of them for his Triumph in Rome, I knew at once I had my next book. This is how all of my novels seem to begin --- with a journey, then an adventure, and finally, enormous amounts of research for what I hope is an exciting story.

-- Michelle Moran