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In Greek, his name was Ptolemy XV Caesar Philopator Philometor. His throne title, in Egyptian, was Iwapanetjerentynehem Setepenptah Irmaatenra Sekhemankhamun, meaning “The heir of the saviour gods, who is the chosen of Ptah, who brings forth the order of Re, the living image of Amun” (translation from this excellent site), but he is more commonly known to history as Caesarion, the son of Cleopatra VII and Julius Caesar.

Caesarion has been in the back of my mind for a long time, but it was only in the past couple years that he entered the primordial soup of Angels of Earth, the book series I’ve been composing off and on for the better part of my writing life.

Though I’ve been steadily writing parts of the series — half of one novel here, a big chunk of another storyline there — I’d never figured out how I’d actually like to start the thing for readers. I have a significantly large cast of characters moving in and out of several thousand years of human history (past and future), and their plot strands can seem quite divergent for, well, books at a time. Add in the cross-genre problems of a Science Fantistorical (TM) that combines the anomalies and mysteries of history with Greco-Roman mythologies, Judaeo-Christian religions, theories of evolution, and cutting edge quantum physics (m-theory in particular) and, well, I just never felt certain where to start.

Until Caesarion. Now I know. I’ll begin Angels of Earth with the tentatively titled The Four Shards of Heaven. They say one-line blurbs ought to be 15 words or less, but the best I can manage for the novel is 22:

The son of Cleopatra and Julius Caesar struggles against the might of Rome to prevent the opening of a gate to Hell.

Four Shards is pretty well laid out, so I have high hopes of finishing it by the beginning of August. As I complete the first draft of each chapter I’ll go ahead and post it here: the long Prologue (”The Boy Who Would Inherit the World”) and the first two chapters of Part I (”The Scrolls of Thoth”) will be publicly available, while the rest will be safely under lock and key, password protected. So if, after the first few bits, you’re interested in reading on, you’ll need to contact me and give me a good reason to it to you.*

My final preliminary before I get cracking on the beast is to post the following family trees for Julius Caesar and Cleopatra (in which dashed lines represent adoption, and an equal sign means “made babies with but didn’t marry”). Their lives were a bit, um, complicated:

*Some example good reasons:

• “I love your work and want to read and give feedback on this novel in progress.”
• “My name is Richard Curtis, and I’m the agent you’ve always dreamed about.”
• “HAVING CONSULTED WITH MY COLLEAGUES AND BASED ON THE INFORMATION GATHERED FROM THE NIGERIAN CHAMBERS OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY, I HAVE THE PRIVILEGE TO REQUEST FOR YOUR ASSISTANCE TO TRANSFER THE SUM…”
• “Because I’m your father, Michael.”

Similar Posts

• Research on Actium
• Seeking Caesar’s Villa
• Another Review of “The Angel of Marye’s Heights”
• His Dark Materials
• Four Shards of Heaven: Chapter 1

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