I like old things; old books, old furniture, old places, old mysteries. That's one reason I concentrated on ancient history in graduate school. There is so much we don't know about how people lived and worked and played thousands of years ago. We only get hints from what has survived. The enigmas of the ancient past fascinate me, for the people who lived then were just like us today, only they were surrounded by different ways of doing things and of thinking. In my books, I try to immerse my readers in those different ways, and forge a connection between now and then, allowing the past to live again for us.