Author | Conflict Analyst | Presenter | Professor
Michael Livingston

The Blog

780 Gallons of Leaves

That’s what we raked up from the yard this afternoon. That’s not a typo, and it’s not a big yard. Indeed, I believe it constitutes a small to average yard in America. And much of it was raked a couple months ago. Twenty (20) 39-gallon trash bags filled to bursting. …

Jordan Induction Recalled

A recollection of the South Carolina Academy of Authors induction ceremony for James O. Rigney, Jr. (Robert Jordan) that I attended two weeks ago has been posted on “Robert Jordan’s Official Blog” over at the esteemed dragonmount.com. The touching write-up is by Wilson, Jim’s brother/cousin, whom I may have met …

Ancient Alexandria

The novel I’m writing requires at least a workable map of Alexandria during the reign of Cleopatra, a fact made especially clear in chapters such as the one I’m writing now: in it, Cleopatra’s daughter, Selene, walks from the docks of the Great Harbor to the famed Great Library itself. …

Alexandria’s Anniversary

In the midst of writing a coming chapter of Four Shards, I realized that 31 BCE, the year of Antony and Cleopatra’s defeat at the Battle of Actium and thus the practical end of the rule of the Ptolemies (if not quite their physical end), was exactly 300 years after …