Your Gal here Sully is a former librarian, consumer and writer of science fiction romance along with horror and fantasy. My sci-fi influences come in many forms, including books, television, movies, and video games: Mass Effect 2, The Expanse, Babylon 5, Dr. Who (original series), Farscape, Stellaris, and many films, along with a (very) general interest in astronomy and other sciences. In the sci-fi romance realm, Ruby Dixon, Honey Phillips, Callista Skye, and R. Lee Smith have been some of my favorites, among many other authors too many to list.
My goal is to write sci-fi romance books that are full of love and steam, but also full of exciting action, humor, and some genuine touches of science fiction. I want readers to imagine themselves in the place of the FMC, a stranger in a strange land, loved and loved well by an alien warrior.
I live in the American West with my husband and dog.
About Ardent Warriors Unchained series
Serendipity! I was listening to works about the Roman Empire before and during the time I was writing the first book, when I decided to feature a gladiator. “The Annals” by Tacitus, “The 12 Caesars” by Suetonius, and “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” by Edward Gibbon, the latter of which I have yet to finish (Gibbon was extremely racist and misogynist, and repetitive to boot). Wikipedia was also heavily consulted. I had already come up with Smaragdine as an alien species, and they fit perfectly in the role of the Retiarius gladiators who bore trident and nets, and were paired with more heavily-armed men.
If you look closely at this painting, you can see the heavy fighter with his foot on the neck of a man who doesn’t seem to have any armor, and there’s a trident and net lying on the ground.
Pollice Verso by Jean-Leon Gerome, 1872
Slavery was unfortunately rampant in classical Greece and Rome. Common ways of becoming a slave included being captured in war, punished for desertion from a military post, kidnapping by pirates and raiders, or selling oneself into slavery to avoid poverty. Or simply being born to a mother who was a slave. The slave population was used for everything from farm labor to highly skilled professions. Gladiators were often slaves, albeit dangerous ones who could fight.
Being rather cynical, I would imagine that not all intelligent aliens follow the ideals of democracy and egalitarianism. The same motives that impel humans to enslave each other would be present among some intelligent aliens. Hopefully no one is too triggered by a work of fiction, but it is based on real human history. Slavery is a terrible thing, which is why in the course of this series, my heroes and heroines will be working to overturn the system.
CONTACT ME
Email: author@galenasullivan.com
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