My first three novels were centered on actual historical events and figures: Vlad Dracula’s Romania, Ireland at the time of Granía O’Malley, and Tombstone when the gunfight at OK Corral occurred. Menus were easy to research and I enjoyed connecting to the world of my characters through the food they knew. But what do you do in speculative fiction when history diverges into an alternative fantasy? In Lords of Kur , Sumerian civilization never faded, but thrived and grew into a spacefaring superpower. The Sumer-Akkad empire controls mining on asteroids, moons, and planets in our solar system. Earth’s own resources have been mostly depleted, so the empire holds a monopoly over the rest of the world, which struggles to bring sanctions against it. The state religion has become a ruse in which false oracles feed insights that align with the empire’s goals. True oracles who would share the gods’ true despair over humanity are suppressed with medicated teas. The protagonist of Lords