BIO
I'm not very savvy about the social part of the internet. That's why I don't have Facebook or Twitter ... or anything else. I'm nervous about the stories I've heard of trolling, and shaming, and blocking. I don't like the idea of being censored. If you don't like what I have to say, no one requires you to come here.
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On the bright side I am familiar with internet research. Ten years ago, I couldn't have written my books. They may seem like complete fluff, but I've researched personalities, events, and cultures in libraries all over the world. Libraries in Salamanca, Spain have many Latin and Greek copies of books like Galen's that you can read online. The Vatican has many original documents digitized and easily accessible. The German library system has many books available online, so do British libraries. I've barely touched the papyrus repositories which are coming online as well. Anyone can access this information.
Don't speak a foreign language? Google translate is absolutely marvelous for modern languages. Only one volume of Al Mas'udi is in English, the rest are downloadable in French ... EASILY translatable with a little cut&paste effort.
For Latin, there's no shortcuts: I have to reach back into my memory of declensions and conjugations to tortuously figure it out. My Greek is non-existent, but I now can recognize some of the important words when I scan ... like Κλεοπάτρα (Cleopatra).
If a secondary source says, "Galen says" ... I look up the reference in Galen. I have found many inaccuracies comparing interpretations to original text. Cassius Dio paraphrases Plutarch, and does a terrible job of it. There's a story, that's repeated across the web, claiming that Herodotus reports Egyptians running into burning buildings to save cats: that's not what he says at all.
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The "devil is in the details," and I work hard to make sure the details in my canvas of Ptolemaic Egypt are correct ... or at least "reasonable" when it's fiction.