Andrew Levkoff's Blog

Thrilled to hear Paolo Baciagalupi tomorrow night at ASU. He'll tell us why Phoenix will be a waterless wasteland 100 yrs from now. Maybe. Well, that's my prognosis, anyway. If you love speculative fiction, The Windup Girl is one of the best I've read in the last…oh, twenty years. His new book, The Water Knife, is about water wars in the American Southwest. A real page-turner, or finger-swiper, depending on your preference.

The caustic, sharp-witted Greek slave Alexandros, the narrator of Andrew Levkoff’s Roman historical fiction trilogy “The Bow of Heaven,” is certain by the time he reaches the ripe old age of 49 that he knows the key to a happy life – obscurity:


...For the last thirty years, he’s been the slave and agent of the famous Roman plutocrat and triumvir Marcus Crassus, trusted by his famously wealthy master on many missions large and small, as Levkoff has chronicled in the first two books in the series, The Other Alexander (2011) and A Mixture of Madness (2012). Wealth and notoriety have come to Alexandros almost by osmosis, and although he might desire a happy, contemplative life (Levkoff leaves open the possibility that he’s every bit as hungry for fame as his master), it’s further out of reach with each successive volume.


...Having been caught by Crassus trying to conduct a covert negotiation to head off the war Crassus is fomenting in the Roman East, Alexandros is crucified on the banks of the Euphrates by his former master and left to die.


...Alexandros comes off his cross more dead than alive, rescued at the last minute by two renegades from the huge Parthian army then massing in Syria in anticipation of a Roman invasion. One of those renegades, a champion archer named Melyaket, strikes Alexandros as “brushed by something extraordinary” (“and generally speaking, whenever that happens in this life, no good can come of it"), and it’s Melyaket who at first spirits Alexandros deeper into the interior of Parthia, away from the eight Roman legions of Crassus – and also away from Livia, a medicus with the legions, Alexandros’ wife and the mother of his baby son Felix. Alexandros, who otherwise characterizes himself as “a steadfast advocate of the power of the inertia of circumstance,” wants to tempt his own incredible good luck surviving Roman crucifixion by returning to the power of Rome in search of his beloved – a course of action at first made impossible by the fact that Melyaket is himself being hunted, by a smooth-talking one-eyed Parthian general named Scolotes.


From these elements Levkoff fashions a smart and gripping narrative as Alexandros’s travels in Parthia teach him a great deal about Rome’s inveterate enemy, the polyglot kingdom Marcus Crassus, inflamed with ambition, hopes to conquer, undaunted by that kingdom’s size, or wealth, or rumored ferocity in battle. ... That this glory is beyond the reach of a man commanding seven Roman legions never occurs to Crassus (“There is no nation of Parthia,” one character says, voicing a common sentiment; “there are only ten thousand villages who pay taxes to [Parthian King] Orodes.

...Crassus, so spurred by a hunger for military glory that he undertakes his Parthian adventure without the approval of the Senate back in Rome, will lead his eight legions and thousands of auxiliary forces in a grueling march across rebellious territory and open deserts in order to strike at the ranks of the Parthian king, ignoring both local offers of a shorter route and warnings that the Parthians have developed a fighting force called cataphracts: heavily-armored men on heavily-armored horses – essentially, medieval mounted knights ten centuries early.


...Young Publius Crassus’s head was cut off during the battle and mounted on a spear for his father to see, and Crassus the elder was killed in a melee that resulted when tense truce negotiations broke down.

...This complicated dynamic is the heart of the “Bow of Heaven” trilogy, in which the wit and self-assurance of Alexandros is shaped in response to Levkoff’s best fictional creation, a Marcus Crassus far more nuanced and believably human than the flinty, greedy caricature readers have been hissing in Plutarch for two thousand years. Levkoff’s Crassus is a memorably three-dimensional man, “a good man and a great man” who’s nonetheless deeply flawed, caring for Alexandros and yet sometimes murderously angered by him (it was Crassus who’d ordered him crucified, but it was also Crassus who’d orchestrated his rescue). ... “For more than thirty years,” he realizes, “I had sat panting at his feet, begging for scraps of affection and recognition, and when I was thrown a morsel and got a pat on the head, how the sun would shine!”


Even in the shadow of this three-volume centerpiece relationship, Levkoff works to bring his secondary characters to life – and he has quips to spare even for minor characters like Dario Musclena, the chief medicus of Crassus’s army, who’s described: “Haughty blue eyes, grey curls, aquiline nose; he might as well have been a statue.

...And yet by the time we meet him in the pages of Blood of Eagles, he’s a seasoned wielder of power himself, as short-tempered and thoroughly disillusioned as Crassus himself, with one key difference: he’s experienced first-hand the vicious turns Fortune can take, and it’s given him a respect for disaster Crassus doesn’t share. The passages in which Levkoff shows the intelligent, calculating calm with which Crassus marches to his doom are wrenchingly ironic, and Levkoff repays the rich man’s hubris by adding a sadistic but very believable twist to the legend that once the Parthians had killed Crassus, they poured molten gold down his throat in order to mock his legendary greed. The first “Bow of Heaven” book, The Other Alexander, is very much composed in a key of humor, but by the events of Blood of Eagles, the tone has come to tragedy at last.

If advertising is a means of persuasion, the offering below worked. It persuaded me never, even if I could afford it, to buy from this insensitive caterer to the 1%.

Due to the requirements put upon me by Amazon and BookBub, I have had to revise the free offering of The Other Alexander to December 8 - 10.


The release of Blood of Eagles is still scheduled for December 6. Thanks for your understanding.

Ten years in the making! A virtual cast of thousands! Peter Jackson, Ridley Scott in deathmatch for rights!


At long last, The Bow of Heaven trilogy will be off the bucket list with the release of Blood of Eagles. I admit, it took a bit out of me. Here is a picture of what I looked like when I began writing this 1,400 page saga in 2004:


And this is what I look like now:


Sometimes, I even look like this, especially in the morning (ask Steph):


Pre-orders are now being accepted here for a December 6 release.


More good news. The first book in the trilogy, The Other Alexander, will be available for free beginning November 26 until Blood of Eagles goes on sale.


So, you're probably thinking, that's it for Alexandros and company. Andy's had it up to here with togas and swords and bows and arrows. ... Having said that, a prequel entitled Melyaket, a Tale of Ancient Parthia, is planned for release either in 2016 or 2017, depending on how quickly I record the audiobook for A Mixture of Madness.


...It's true, I'm going to give it a shot. The first audiobook is doing quite well, so I thought I'd try my hand at this voice acting thingy. It could be fun, although the only place that is even remotely soundproof in our house is our clothes closet. Claustrophobia, here I come.

The Historical Novel Society is making me blush again. The Other Alexander was shortlisted for the 2014 HNS Indie Award. You can find my comments about the novel on the link below.


Sometimes not winning feels just like winning. And remember folks, book three of the The Bow of Heaven trilogy will be out by the end of the year. The working title is Blood of Eagles. Thank you all for your patience.


HNS Indie Award Shortlisted Author : Andrew Levkoff

And we used to think the San Andreas fault was California's biggest problem. Taking a look at this map, published by Reuters, we might want to think about renaming the American Southwest. How about Arrakis? Now where did I put my stillsuit?

James Patterson, best-selling millionaire author, is worried about the fate of book stores. He recently donated $1,000,000 to small book stores to help stave off their demise. A noble gesture, but technology and the market, in my opinion, will render it meaningless. Ebooks sales are rising steadily, and while I love the heft and smell and feel of a three-dimensional book in my hands, I know the writing is not just on the wall—it's on the Kindle, iPad, etc.


Reading (pardon the pun) between the lines, Patterson also fears for the future of those monolithic publishers who are getting elbowed out of the selection process of what the public should be reading. Who are these nefarious nudgers? Why, it is the great unwashed public itself. Heaven forbid they be allowed to decide what they want to read!


The heart of the target of Patterson's campaign is Amazon, also a bookstore, but one that happens to champion ebooks and new, even self-published authors. It is no longer necessary to beg for an agent or sift through a pile of publishers' rejection letters while waiting and hoping to get published. Anyone can upload their oeuvre and if people like you and me like it, it may just become a best-seller.


Rather than go through Patterson's argument point by point, I'd like to introduce you to J. A. Konrath, another best-selling author who also happens to be a champion of self-publishing and has been almost since its inception. Here's a link to his post regarding Patterson; if you listened to the NPR interview and felt that James was sprouting a halo and wings, I urge you to consider the flip side of this discussion. Here it is: http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2014/02...

When I was a boy of no more than twelve, my mother, knowing how I loved to spend every free moment of the Long Island winter evenings on top of our flat-roofed garage staring up at the heavens with my Edmund Scientific telescope, gave me a gift. This was in the days when the night sky sixteen miles from Manhattan was still dark enough to permit a few stars to take a bow when the moon wasn't hogging the stage.


Mom had me bundled up so thoroughly I could barely move to adjust the instrument, let alone climb the backyard stairs that led to the roof—I looked like a golem with a baseball bat. I remember, too, that my coat had these flat, metal snaps that locked together in what I imagined might be similar technology to that used by Dr. ... My cap had those ears that pulled down from the inside in what was the height of young men's haberdashery chic for 1961. I was enough of a nerd to incorporate the coat into my daily flights of science fiction fantasy as space cadet uniform, radiation shield or upper body strength super-enhancer, but even I knew that hat had "dork" written all over it.


I don't remember how she found it, but one day when I got home from school and tossed my dinosaur repulsion barrier (coat) on my bed, its large, circular communicator (yellow bus pass) glowing brightly, I realized I had thrown it on top of something she had left on the bedspread for me.


It was a book, but unlike previous works that opened the world of science and discovery to me, like Paul de Kruif's Microbe Hunters and All About Dinosaurs by Roy Chapman Andrews, this one looked like an airplane chock for a Douglas DC-3 (I've included a picture for you young 'uns).


This cinder block, written in 1939 by Hungarian Zsolt de Harsanyi, translated into English by Paul Tabor, was a biography of Galileo Galilei called The Star-Gazer, and although it was twice as thick as any book I had read up until then, I consumed its pages as if they were made of Hershey bars.


The Italian Renaissance astronomer became my hero, and this book helped propel me into a lifelong love of reading.


Now, fast forward 50-odd years or so to a strange package arriving in the mail last week. ... Congress' Office of Technology Assessment and served as a consultant to the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research.


And here he was, having found me through the miracle of the interweb, mailing me his own 1981 work on the ethics of bioengineering. ... Harsanyi was one of the first to wrestle with the "can we/should we" questions of genetic engineering. I had posted a comment about his grandfather's work someplace like Goodreads, and Dr. Harsanyi had used (I imagine) his NSA contacts to find out where I lived.

...I hate to get sappy (no I don't, not really), but I imagine Galileo would find it as astonishing and wondrous as I that two strangers could reach across the planet and find each other in this marvelous way. I wish my mother was still around so I could tell her this story.

Amazon has a new Countdown Promotion for self-pubbed authors like moi. Sunday at 8:00AM, the price of A Mixture of Madness drops from $3.99 to 99 cents. Tuesday it goes up a buck to $1.99, Thursday to $2.99, and finally the following Sunday the price returns to $3.99, or what my critics call "highway robbery."


Since you have naturally bought it already, please tell your friends so they can get it (ridiculously) cheap starting this Sunday. www.amazon.com/dp/B00AI4GX90