Meet the Team of In Saecula Saeculorum: Jonathan Drake

My novel In Saecula Saeculorum tells the story of four high school students trained to be sent back in time to Ancient Rome to save the modern world. It combines Espionage/Action/Adventure with a touch of Latin language dialogue for authenticity. 

The team that tries to save our world consists of the following characters. The cartoon avatars of these characters are based on descriptions of them found in the novel.

Jonathan Drake

Jonathan is going through a rough patch. His parents died three years ago. He's been living with an uncle who's so careful not to replace Jonathan's father, that Jonathan feels quite alone. 

And now, as graduation nears, he has to see the other kids' parents at all the events and it reminds him of what he's lost.

I lost both my parents earlier than most people do. And so I feel Jonathan's pain of being an orphan. 

But Jonathan's also about to be thrust into a dangerous mission. And I know what it means to try and set aside my grief to face the challenges of the moment.

Read the book to find out how Jonathan copes and forms a new life on the other side of sorrow.


Click on the pictures to meet the rest of the team:

Will Stanhope

Layla Ramzy

Carmen Mattila

Meet the Team of In Saecula Saeculorum: Carmen Mattila

My novel In Saecula Saeculorum tells the story of four high school students trained to be sent back in time to Ancient Rome to save the modern world. It combines Espionage/Action/Adventure with a touch of Latin language dialogue for authenticity. 

The team that tries to save our world consists of the following characters. The cartoon avatars of these characters are based on descriptions of them found in the novel.

Carmen Mattila

Carmen is quite a contradiction. She's a girlie-girl while simultaneously being the best hand-to-hand fighter at the Academy. She's the best at sword fighting and horse-back riding as well. 

And because of those skills, she will be tasked with fighting and killing the team's enemies when they arrive back in time. 

And her tender heart will not be ready for the trauma of taking another human life.

I worked at the National Security Agency as an Arabic linguist for four years following 9/11. And I served in Iraq for three months in 2004. Did I ever fire a gun in anger? No, thank God. But I worked in a world wherein my actions meant life and death for others. And anyone with a conscience will feel it burdened in the midst of all that.

And so I know what Carmen experiences. Read the book to learn the despair into which she falls and how she finds the grace to move on.

Click on the pictures to meet the rest of the team:

Will Stanhope

Layla Ramzy

Jonathan Drake

Meet the Team of In Saecula Saeculorum: Layla Ramzy

My novel In Saecula Saeculorum tells the story of four high school students trained to be sent back in time to Ancient Rome to save the modern world. It combines Espionage/Action/Adventure with a touch of Latin language dialogue for authenticity. 

The team that tries to save our world consists of the following characters. The cartoon avatars of these characters are based on descriptions of them found in the novel.

Layla Ramzy

Layla is a linguistic wizard. She was a native speaker of Spanish and Arabic before she came to the Academy. Now she's also fluent in Latin, Classical Greek, and every Romance language there is.

But she's insecure. She loves Will but would never dare tell him. She's been driven by her mother to be the best there ever was, but she's stressed beyond her limits.

I love languages and I'm good at learning them. So Layla channels my linguistic talents. I endowed her with something I wish I could have had--a second language as a child. And I envy her the fact that she came to Classical Studies already speaking a Romance language. 

And who among us has not loved from afar and yet kept our heart secret? Read the book to find out if Layla can ever speak her love for Will.


Click on the pictures to meet the rest of the team:

Will Stanhope

Carmen Mattila

Jonathan Drake

Meet the Team of In Saecula Saeculorum: Will Stanhope

Travel back in time to Ancient Rome. In Saecula Saeculorum. Sword fights. Chases on horseback. Adventure. Love. Loss. Latin.

My novel In Saecula Saeculorum tells the story of four high school students trained to be sent back in time to Ancient Rome to save the modern world. It combines Espionage/Action/Adventure with a touch of Latin language dialogue for authenticity. 

The team that tries to save our world consists of the following characters. The cartoon avatars of these characters are based on descriptions of them found in the novel.

Will Stanhope

Will Stanhope

Will is the only Brit on the otherwise all American team. He's a member of the British nobility and a science whiz. Will is also utterly, madly, and unrequitedly in love with Layla.

My overall goal in crafting this novel was to create a team of kids who were from wildly different backgrounds, but would be forced to gel around their common mission. So we needed a Brit on the team (it's a joint MI-6/NSA project, afterall).

Will channels me in several ways. First, Will is the only openly professing Christian on the team. He's an Anglican; I'm Eastern Orthodox. But the novel by no means preaches at you. It's an Espionage/Time Travel/Adventure, not a catechism. Even so, Will's faith creates a plot tension when he faces moral dilemmas in the course of the adventure.

While I was at the NSA, I was occasionally put into a leadership role. And with the stakes so high (force protection of our men in the field, for example), I loathed such responsibility. Will is put in charge of the mission and he at times buckles under the burden because he, and I, are human and feel pain and loss if we can't bring everyone home safely. The other team members will need him to somehow hold it together if they are to survive. Read the book to learn how he does.


Click on the pictures to meet the rest of the team:

Layla Ramzy

Carmen Mattila

Jonathan Drake

The Bibliotheca Ulpia

I adore the Emperor Trajan. Counted among the "Five Good Emperors," he succeeded in pressing Rome's boundaries to what are acknowledged as their furthest extent.

When I was in Iraq in 2004, I thought about the fact that I was in several places that I know Emperor Trajan also stood during his final campaign before he died in AD 117.

But what makes me adore him all the more is that when he wanted to make a lasting monument to his greatness, granted he made a massive column celebrating his victory over Dacia. But he placed that column in the courtyard of two facing buildings--a library--the Bibliotheca Ulpia.

At its height, the Bibliotheca Ulpia was a rival in size and scope with the more famous library in Alexandria. Like the library in Alexandria, we don't know exactly when it ceased to be a functional deposit of human knowledge.

But the fact that Emperor Trajan wanted a library as his legacy speaks volumes about the man. 

In my novel In Saecula Saeculorum, a group of four high school students are sent back in time on a mission to retrieve information the future world hopes may reside in the Bibliotheca Ulpia. Without this information, the world will come to an end in the year 2013. The students will have to grapple with the reality that an ancient library was not a place where you get a card and check things out. It was, instead, a place where you had exactly one chance to convince the guardians that you were a scholar worthy of entrance. And if they don't pull this off, the world will end. That's quite a lot of pressure for a couple of eighteen-year-olds!