Karen Essex: I've just finished the screenplay for Kleopatra, and also recently adapted Anne Rice's novel The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned for James Cameron. That also takes place largely in ancient Egypt. I've also just sold a pilot to Fox TV and I am writing that script. I'm in the process of deciding what my next book will be.
Bernard Cornwell: A follow up to Vagabond, and it doesn't have a title yet, but it's set in Gascony in 1347-8 which suggests that the Black Death is about to say hello.
Tayari Jones: I am currently working on a new novel, Rites and Passages. This is a contemporary novel set in my hometown, Atlanta.
Kevin Baker: I am now researching the third novel in "The City of Fire" series for HarperCollins. It is called Strivers' Row, and will be set in Harlem during World War II. It will, of course, focus on the African-American experience in New York, at another critical time in our history, when Harlem was coming down, and black disillusionment and alienation from mainstream America was reaching crisis levels.
Thus, we'll have Jewish, Irish, African American; Jewish, Catholic, Protestant; great events, great real-life figures, dreams, crimes, loves, and hates. Just a little job to cut out for myself!
Margaret George: A novel of the life of Helen of Troy, told from (naturally) her point of view. (Someone once said that my novels about Henry VIII and Cleopatra were in the first person because their egos were too big to allow anyone else to tell their story, and certainly Helen, as the most beautiful woman in the world and the daughter of Zeus, has no less of an ego!)
Matthew Kneale: Something about an invented Soviet satellite state. A kind of stepping stone, perhaps, between the Victorians and the modern age.
Glen David Gold: New novel. Also historical.
Megan Chance: I'm currently working on a book set in 19th century New York City. It's about the beginnings of psychotherapy, particularly as it concerned women, and the epidemic of hysteria among upper-class women towards the end of the 19th century. I'm fascinated by the cages in which women found themselves during the Gilded Age. This story is the exploration of one woman's experience.
