I read Homer’s Iliad one summer when I was about 14 years old.  It wasn’t required reading.  I was just curious.  Not long after that I watched a PBS show, In Search of the Trojan War.  I was hooked.  I wanted to be Heinrich Schliemann and find proof of the stories of the ancient past.

Instead of studying the Greek and Latin and archaeology that inspired me, I went to college to study more “practical” things like political science and Russian (!?!).  Not my best move.  I later went back to college for a degree in Computer Science.  It wasn’t my love but at least it was actually practical.

For the last few years I’ve spent more and more of my free time exploring history again.  I am a generalist and interested in many different time periods, though my interests are much more in European and Near Eastern history rather than pre-Columbian Americas or East Asia.  I am in the process of writing an historical novel set in 2nd Century AD Alexandria.  In November (NaNoWriMo) I will draft a children’s novel on the life of Homer.  I have a very bright nine year old son who has read the Percy Jackson books and D’Aulaire’s Greek Myths and wants more about ancient Greece.  I hope to oblige him.

This blog will be a record of my research and a way to reach out to any other “history nerds” that might be out there.

– Michelle Brass