My love and abiding interest of things revolving around Ancient Rome are absolutely no secret to anyone who knows me even to a slight degree.  I’m that kind of person who took a long bus ride while in Rome just so I could get to a point on the Via Appia, the highway that connected Rome to points south in Italy, so I could stand on it, walk on it for a short bit, and imagine the history I had experienced, on top of all of the other ancient ruins I had already explored.  I’ve been reading space opera since the earliest days of my genre reading, devouring the likes of DUNE and Cherryh’s Chanur novels through today’s space opera writers ranging from Alastair Reynolds to Rhonda Mason. This “peanut butter and chocolate” of my interests comes together in WOLF’S EMPIRE:  GLADIATOR, the first novel in collaboration between Claudia Christian (who many readers may recognize as being a star of Babylon 5) and Morgan Grant Buchanan. As I mentioned in last week’s interview, both have collaborated before, notably on Ms. Christian’s memoir, but this marks a significant change in their literary ambitions.

I had the wonderful opportunity to read a review copy of WOLF’S EMPIRE: GLADIATOR, and to put questions to the authors, Claudia Christian and Morgan Grant Buchanan, about their collaboration. Given the premise of the novel, mixing space opera with the Roman Empire, and my fandom for Ms. Christian going back to the days of Babylon-5, I was delighted to have a chance to do both.