I am currently working on a novel about Elizabeth I in the latter part of her reign. Recently historians have been calling it almost a second reign, very different from the first reign, a sort of film noir version of the earlier one, with a whole new cast of characters and a fin de siecle feeling to it. I am enjoying exploring this idea, which has barely been hinted at in other books and movies. Those tend to focus on the Essex episode, but only as a romance and not as a symptom of something deeper.

And, of course, much of what we think of as "The Elizabethan Age" really did not get underway until near the end of her reign: the theatre, the colonies in the New World, and the brilliant writers---Shakespeare, Marlowe, Donne, Spenser, and Jonson. It certainly is a time that deserves its own special treatment.

I am also thinking of possible other children's book subjects, such as Cleopatra and the asp, or the Indian effigy mounds in Wisconsin.