“I dreamed of blood long before I ever saw it.”
From the palaces of Rome to the windswept shores of Crete and finally, to a land torn by prophecy and rebellion, Claudia Procula is no ordinary Roman woman. Plagued by visions she cannot explain and shadowed by a destiny she cannot escape, Claudia walks a path few would choose and even fewer survive.
All she wants is to live a quiet life with Lucius Pontius Pilate, the only man who sees her as more than a pawn in Rome’s games. But when duty calls him to govern the restless province of Judea, Claudia is thrust into the heart of a storm… political, spiritual, and deeply personal.
There, in a land burning with unrest, she encounters a mysterious Jewish teacher said to be the Messiah. His eyes seem to see through her soul. And her dreams… grow darker still.
As betrayal brews and blood spills, Claudia faces a chilling truth: her visions are not madness, but warning.
History knows her husband for the decision he made.
This is the story of the woman who tried to stop him.
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The Story Behind the Story
Something keeps pulling me back to this novel, this time and place, these characters, and this setting. The first time the idea struck me, like so many others, I sat in a showing of The Passion of the Christ. Amid the violence, one thing struck me; that this was the first truly sympathetic version of Pontius Pilate that I had ever seen. In so many epics, he is either turned into a gay-coded governor, or made into a villain, or not shown much at all, as an afterthought. But in Mel Gibson’s story, he wrestled with his conscience and argued with his wife over whether to free Jesus.
That stuck with me, made me curious. I went on a deep dive and learned as much as I could about him (which wasn’t much!). Then I wrote a novel and published it. People liked it, until I got one bad review from someone who said it was “pretentious, like the author thinks she’s smarter than her reader.” Ouch. In those days, I had a lot more trouble not wanting to fix whatever anyone pointed out to me, so I took my novel back into the drafting stage and made it easier to read, less “high literature.” This is the result.
Ironically, I am now rewriting it for a third time, but my new draft has taken a new direction, enough that it will be released as a separate novel. I thought about un-listing this one, but I am going to leave it up. You may want to read it, to compare it to the new one coming out later this fall (2025). If nothing else, it is a testament to how I have grown and changed and matured as a writer, and how far I have come, but also tells the world that yes, I have always loved Claudia and Pilate. And that will never change.
