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In April of 2007, Elaine Viet’s writing career was about to take off. She had over a dozen books in print from the Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper series, the Dead-end job series, and the Francesca Vierling series. Her Murder with Reservations, a Dead-End Job Mystery, was about to come out in hardback, her second hardback book. And Elaine was on her way to the Malice Domestic Conference where she was Toastmaster. She’d been attending Malice for years and was really looking forward to it.

I started my search for more information about the man who dedicated a statue to his wife in Tarraco around the year 214, by focusing on his job title: Sevir Augustal. The Seviratus Augustalis was an urban institution of semi-official nature which was mainly held by wealthy freedmen in the first to the third century. Their functions were a cross between magistrate and priest for the cult of the Roman Emperor. There is not much documentation on what the Sevirs actually did.

I recently discovered a new magazine where I can read Thriller short stories! It's called ThrillRide magazine. 

Do you like?

Traveling to challenging locales: the Caribbean Islands, Angola, the hell of commuting in Atlanta, Oxford, Africa, N'Orleans, Hollywood, and the streets of Seattle like you've never seen them?

Dwelling in strange times: Ancient China, the birth of Christianity, decaying Babylon, the Wild West (but not in the West), WWII, last week, and the day after tomorrow?

What do we want to know about the people in the past? We want to know what we want to know about everyone: how did you fall in love? What was the story of your love?

Sometimes the people from the past leave us clues.

The First Two Pages: “Volcano” By Alison McMahan

The Last Straw by Michael Niemann is the  sixth book in the series about the Belgian fraud investigator for the U.N. who wrestles with some of the most difficult political issues of our time.