What I'm doing now.

I am not a full-time writer.

I have a life, which involves things other than sitting at the keyboard for eight hours a day, most people's definition of doing something more than part-time.

I'm at roughly 50k words in my current project, a historical novel set during the Peloponnesian War. For non-history majors, that's ancient Greece, a generation or so after the events at Thermopylae, the setting of the movie 300. This war is an all-out one between the Athenian alliance and the Spartan one.

The protagonist is Owl, a rather strange name for a Theban, given that the "totem animal" of Athens is the owl. But that's what the Muse served up, so I have to go with it.

The idea for the story first happened when I was reading the massive series by Donald Kagan on the Peloponnesian War. I became inspired by reading of the exploits of Brasidas, a Spartan general who was most that most unSpartanly of traits: innovation. For more details, read my book, when it comes out, or better yet, read Thucydides' History.

The story starts with a "diplomatic mission" of three hundred armed Thebans to Plataea, which is midway between Thebes and Athens. Plataea was of strategic importance and the only Boeotian city not under Thebes' control. Following the massacre of most of the three hundred (city fighting is nasty) is a siege lasting two years, after which the men of fighting age are executed and the women are sold into slavery.

Then Owl goes to Sparta, where he enlists in Brasidas' forces. But first, Owl has to be knocked overboard during the invasion of Pylos. He serves Epitas, the commander of the forces at Sphacteria (south of Pylos). Sphacteria is well-known for a Spartan defeat, the first time they surrendered in living memory. The Spartans at Thermopylae, as everyone knows, died rather than do that.

Owl escapes that event and rejoins Brasidas' army, where they go to the Chalcidice, near Thrace. There they incite rebellion among cities subservient to Athens. Eventually, the Spartan general is killed in the battle of Amphipolis, a defeat for Athens.

Owl returns to Sparta, where he joins up with Agis, whom I slander unmercifully as a petulant child. How else to explain his sudden changes of course, militarily speaking?

At some point, at Decelea, within sight of Athens, Owl leaves Agis' company for Lysander's. He goes to Asia Minor and participates in various engagements there.

Eventually, some thirty years after the war began, Athens surrenders, having been starved into submission. Their Long Walls are pulled down to the music of flute girls.

I can see a few sequels, the details of which are fuzzy at the moment, involving Owl's children and grandchildren. Might even get into Alexander the Great.