I  was eleven years old and home sick with the flu when my grandfather gave me an old, tattered copy of C.S. Forster’s Mr. Midshipman Hornblower, my first real taste of historical fiction.  I went on to finish the entire series in under a month, and thus began a love of historical fiction that has lasted to this day.  I decided that these were the sort of books that I would like to one day write.

After graduating from Harvard, I worked a variety of odds jobs to support my writing habit: waiting tables, working at a talent agency, clerking for a law firm, teaching, and making wine.  I received my PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and dabbled in academia. Eventually, I gave all that up to write fiction full time. I have published three novels: Siege, Eagle, and Kingdom. I recently finished Holy War, the final book in the Saladin Trilogy, and am hard at work on my next, Bastard, which explores the childhoods of Harold Godwinson and William the Bastard, setting the stage for their great battle at Hastings in 1066.