This is the novel I’ve wanted to write for years, about Marco Polo’s granddaughter traveling the Silk Road west. Some of you may remember Paula working on it in The Singing of the Dead. I figured I might as well use it somewhere while I waited for a publisher to realize what they were missing.

Nope, I don’t have a publisher for it yet. Publishers are such weenies that they’re afraid of reinventing the Stabenow wheel, but don’t be too hard on them. It’s a bottom-line business and they know they can make a profit selling my crime fiction and my thrillers. They don’t know they can if they publish my historical novel.

But I am going to write this book one day, so I thought I’d take a leaf from Diana Gabaldon’s book — she began by posting chunks of Outlander on line and readers encouraged her to leave a life of science and become an author, and yay for us all — and post the first few chapters here for your reading enjoyment and see if it inspired any enthusiasm in people who read my books. Which enthusiasm I hope will push me into writing more, and which enthusiasm I would of course pass on to my publisher.