Love and War is on sale for .99 cents from now until March 15th! Don’t miss this opportunity to catch up before Venus Rising is released.
Daughters of Zeus
FAQ: Can Persephone be read as a standalone novel?
Can Persephone be read as a standalone novel?
I get it. Sometimes the last thing you want to do is get tangled in a long series. Persephone is the first of a series of trilogies set in the Daughters of Zeus universe. There are multiple stopping and starting points within the series provided you don’t mind skipping the last page. There will be unanswered questions, but for the most part, of all the books, Persephone contains the most self-contained plot.
Mythology Monday: Ascalaphus
Time passed in a blur of color and light. People laughed and danced around us, the spinning arcs of the skirts making me dizzy.
“I can’t dance another step.” I giggled, clinging to Hades so I wouldn’t trip and fall.
“Let’s get some air.” Hades led me out of the ballroom. The party was scattered all across the Underworld, but we found privacy in the grove of trees. The trees stretched into the sky, their branches arching and spilling over, sheltering us from view of any of the other souls wandering the Underworld.
“You’re trying to stop me from making a scene.” I stepped away from him into the center of the clearing. I spun around, holding my arms out. “Whoa.” I stopped mid-spin, waiting for the clearing to do the same.
“You should probably eat something.” Hades caught my hand. “Think of something, anything at all.”
I imagined pomegranate seeds and a plastic baggy full of them appeared in my free hand. I put six seeds in my mouth. An owl hooted in the distance.
Hades laughed. “You’re going to need more than that. What’s your favorite type of bread?”
“I’m a goddess. Do I have to worry about hangovers?”
“Your metabolism will change when you come into your powers. As far as alcohol is concerned, right now you’re a human.” He suppressed a grin. “Ambrosia gets even gods drunk, so you’re in trouble.”
~@~
I had a lot of fun peppering my books with Easter eggs for people as obsessed with Greek mythology as I am. The owl hooting in the distance in the scene above was a reference to the god Ascalaphus.
Ascalaphus (not to be confused with the Argonaut by the same name) was a minor deity/spirit that kept the orchard in the Underworld. He saw Persephone eat the fateful pomegranate seeds and informed Hades and Zeus. Because of those seeds, she was forced to return to the Underworld every year.
Demeter did not take that news well. But she couldn’t lash out at Zeus or Hades to the degree that she’d like to, so she shot the messenger. She buried Ascalaphus under a rock, but that pesky demigod Hercules freed him. Since keeping him trapped didn’t seem to be working, she turned him into a screech owl. Ever since, screech owls have been associated with the Underworld. Spotting one is a bad omen.
There is a version of the myth that credits Persephone with his transformation, which while out of character at the time, wouldn’t be for long as she became known as The Iron Queen.
FAQ Friday: Age Range
Q: What age range is your series intended for?
A: I hate this question because my perspective is so skewed. I have a seven year old. The younger end of YA seems so close that I’m always kind of hedging because I can’t imagine her reading stuff like my books in a few years.
On the other hand, as a teen, I was reading adult novels, so I also don’t want to underestimate YA readers. So I’m going to give you the official answer and the content break down. Be warned, my content break down probably makes my books sound a thousand times worse than they are in terms of content, because I am a prude. But hopefully this is a somewhat helpful guide. Readers please comment your thoughts below.
The Persephone trilogy is young adult, so I’d consider it appropriate from ages fourteen and up, though I personally feel that age should be pushed back a bit with each book. However what content you think is appropriate for what age is going to vary with each person.
The Aphrodite trilogy is considered new adult, so basically the older spectrum of YA (maybe 17 and up?) Again, that’s going to depend on the maturity level of the reader.
It would probably be more helpful to break it down by content.
Content:
Persephone is considered a clean read. There’s no cursing, no sexual situations, rape is alluded to (but considering I’m retelling the myth of Persephone that shouldn’t be a surprise) and there is mild violence.
Daughter of Earth and Sky features light cursing (as in number, not as in words dropped), alcohol use, heavy making out (though the camera fades to black any time a scene is getting too intense), and mild violence. Nonconsensual sexual situations implied.
Iron Queen has moderate cursing, graphic descriptions of violence, sexually questionable situations (though the scenes always fades to black).
Aphrodite features moderate cursing, light violence, sexual situations (not graphic), trigger warnings for rape (not described but heavily implied), and non-consentual situations. It’s a much more mature read.
Love and War Much of the same as Aphrodite with the addition of mature topics, such as abortion.
Sneak Peek: Venus Rising
Enjoy a first look at a scene from Venus Rising. SPOILER WARNING for anyone who has not yet read Love and War.
“I can do this,” My numb fingers scrabbled to keep hold of the sheer cliff face. The Island of the DAMNED was a shaped like a tall, mutated teardrop, only a jagged curve sloped into the ocean. I’d edged my way around to lower ground. Unfortunately, the cliff still wasn’t low enough for me to climb given the rough shape I was in.
Between waves, I sputtered specifics, locking myself into the promise, forcing the words true. Now there was no choice in the matter. I had to survive.
Poseidon, I thought, drawing my palm against a rock jutting from the face of the island. The sharp edge pierced my spongy palm without resistance. Blood could pass through the weak shield surrounding the island as well as water. Mine was still divine enough to get Poseidon’s attention.
I hoped.
Shivers racked my body, hard enough to threaten my tenuous hold on the cliff face. Exposure, I added to my mental list of ways I could die. When the entire fricken island teleported across gods know how many time zones, it traded sunny, warm, placid water for a dark night, icy chill, and choppy waves.
“She moved the island.” I spat out the sentence with as much disgust as I could muster. “That stupid…” A litany of curse words followed, but not a single one of them made me feel better. Medea had probably killed herself doing this. And for what?
I squinted against the utter blackness, wishing for a moon, stars, or light of any kind.
Some part of me knew my thrashing could attract creatures living in the water, but that fear had to move aside for the more practical need to keep air in my lungs.
Lightning cracked across the sky, cruelly granting my wish for light in a blinding slash. Of course, Persephone was enraged. The meeting, ostensibly to establish peace with the demigods, had gone horribly wrong when Ares had been outed as an imposter. He’d gotten away, but I’d been dragged along when the island teleported.
So now, not only did the demigods have a weapons cache that could end every god in the Pantheon, they had two hostages. Me and the fricken Lord of the Underworld.
Maybe my cover isn’t blown. They didn’t know I was a goddess. Just that Ares was a god.
And I’d been living with him.
And that we’d arrived on the island at the exact same time.
Yeah, they’d be idiots not to at least suspect. And since gods were physically incapable of telling lies, all it would take to confirm their suspicion was a yes or no question.
Assuming I didn’t drown first.
Something slick brushed against my legs. What was that? I twisted in the water, limbs jerking in all directions like a tangled marionette, but the waves might as well have been made of midnight. Between the pitch-black night and the chaos the island’s teleportation churned, I couldn’t make out my own flesh beneath the waves. I lost my grip on the cliff-face and felt a wave of dizziness as my feet kicked into the endless depths.
Probably just a scared fish, I tried to convince myself. My fear of the ocean depths was mostly instinctive, bred into me by design to keep me from visiting Poseidon’s realm. Having his permission to be here should have quelled the fear. But in the dark of the night with gods knew what swimming around me, that old, instinctual fear no longer listened to reason. I was someplace foreign. Other. I didn’t belong here.
“Just keep moving,” I told myself through gritted teeth, kicking toward the cliff face.
A wave slammed into me, shoving me beneath the inky blackness. I pushed to the surface, gasping for air, but just as I inhaled, another wave slammed into me. Then another. Then another.
Elemental Genres
In season eleven of Writing Excuses, they dived into the definitions of elemental genres. Here’s the framework they posted. I’m included their definition because it’s better worded than mine.
Elemental genres are the things that make you read, the emotional resonance that drives a story. Not bookshelf genres, but elemental genres. The 11 elemental genres planned are wonder, idea, adventure, horror, mystery, thriller, humor, relationship, drama, issue, and ensemble. This is a framework for talking about what makes readers turn the page and have emotional responses, not a hard-and-fast set of categories or rules. Elemental genres let you mix-and-match underneath the veneer of the bookshelf categories.
It was a fantastic season. They talked a lot about what defines the different genres and how to layer them with the plot, subplot, and character arcs. I particularly enjoyed Newton’s Laws of Writing.
[1] A word count at rest tends to remain at rest, while a word count in motion tends to remain in motion. Motivation? To keep writing, write some more! To start writing, start slow, then bump your goal. Build your writing inertia by writing every day! Oh, at the end of a session, don’t stop at the end of a chapter. Write the first page of the next scene, and then pick up with that jumpstart. Dan it all! Don’t sweat the zone — fight to make the most of each chance, and make sure people understand don’t interrupt me! Think before you start writing, don’t waste time ramping up. [2] Word count equals motivation times focus. Motivate by thinking about what comes next. Focus BICHOK and clear distractions. Consider word count per hour. Try a timer (sand timers don’t beep!). Meditation might be your ticket to a clearer mind? [3] For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. When you write words, the words write you. You also are affected. Writing is its own reward. Every word you write builds your writing skill. The goal of writing stories is to become a better writer. The equal and opposite reaction to writing is that you become a better writer!
Resolutions
This weekend brings New Years Eve, which means it’s resolution time. Last year, I resolved to stop being late to everything. I failed.
This year, I’m resolving to be more politically active. I have opinions, loud ones, but I’ve never done much more than go out and vote. This year, there’s too much at risk. So I plan on writing letters, making phone calls, getting involved, and putting my money where my mouth is.
Wish me luck.
What are your resolutions? Do they happen to be to read more? Because if so, Aphrodite is on sale for .99 cents for just a few more days. Get it while you can.
Mythology Monday: Zeus
I legitimately cannot believe I haven’t written a mythology Monday on Zeus yet.
Wow, where to even start. Okay, first you’ll need some background on creation and the Titanomachy.
Zeus’s father, Cronus, was terrified that his children were going to be the death of him. So he would eat his children as soon as his wife, Rhea gave birth. Why continue to have children then? In my world, I had a hard time imagining that the gods themselves couldn’t control whether or not they became pregnant, at least when it came to hooking up with each other, so I built in a different explanation.
The gods had to pass on bits of their powers when their powers became too much for them. Zeus didn’t just have a ton of kids because he loved sleeping around (though that did factor in), he had an obscene amount of worship fueling his power. I’m sure the god king before him did as well.
But Rhea was not a fan of her husband eating her children. Rather than putting her foot down and just saying no, she put the fate of her previously eaten children in the hands of an infant. When Chaos got ready to eat Zeus, Rhea tricked him into eating a rock instead. (It is revealed in Aphrodite that Rhea was the first god to use charm).
Zeus was given to the last unicorn Amalthea the goat or possibly nymph depending on the version of the myth you ascribe to, to raise on Mt. Dikte, but there are a lot of variations on how he was kept out of Cronus’s awareness. Some versions of the myth say he was hung, suspended from a tree, neither touching the earth nor sky. His cries were covered by the warrior Curetes, banging his shield in a dance.
Upon coming of age, Zeus created a shield from Amalthea’s hide and a magical horn of plenty from her horn. He also enlisted the aid of a Titan named Metis to force Cronus to throw up his older siblings, enlisted those siblings with his far, freed the six giant-sons of Heaven from the pit of Tartaros, and enlisted the aid of the Cyclopes (who armed him with lightning-bolts) and the Hekatonkheires (Hundred-Handed) who aided him in his assault on the Titanes with volleys of thrown boulders (theoi.com). The Titans were locked into Tartarus and the Olympian siblings divided up the cosmos. Some Titans did side with the Olympians in the war, which is why they pop up in later myths, and the alliance with the monsters didn’t last long (see Gigantomachy).
The gods created man, and Zeus went on to have many children and take an active role in almost every other myth in the mythos for Greek Mythology. As far as children went, there were some changes I made in my story. Athena’s mother is in fact Metis (remember her from a few paragraphs ago?) whom Zeus ate when he discovered she was pregnant, because he also feared his children would destroy him. In some versions of the myth, Ares was created solely by Hera when she touched a flower provided by Flora. Neither one of those was mentioned in my books because A. Ares has to have charm, the plot demands it ((which in that case means I’m just choosing a different interpretation of the myth), and B. Athena is a minor character, and none of the POV characters who ever interact with her would know the whole story of her birth. (Hades was in the Underworld, Persephone wasn’t born, and Aphrodite only knows what the gods passed on through the bloodlines, and I can totally see Hera leaving that out.) Athena plays things pretty close to the vest and is unlikely to ever bring up anything irrelevant to the conversation.
Powers wise, Zeus has lightning bolts (in mythology, these were crafted and given to him by either the cyclopses or Heph, but in my version, he’s just got control over storms because sometimes the myths threw that in). He was Lord of the skies, and in my version, he has charm. Charm is entirely made up by me in this context, but mythologically it fixes a ton of plot holes for Zeus to have mind control powers, so it fits really well.
In my story, Zeus went on to rule much as he did in mythology until the fall of Olympus, at which point he went underground and started plotting. I’ll do a master post on Zeus’s children at some point in the coming weeks. But that’s Zeus in a nutshell.
Friendly reminder! Aphrodite is on sale for .99 cents!
FAQ: Imaginary items in the Underworld
A reader asked if the items created by the soul’s imaginations disapear when the souls stop thinking about them?
Not really, though that could lead to some hilarious wardrobe malfunctions. Items in the Underworld can transform, but the transformation from something to nothing or something to something else takes thought. But once the thought is put into it, it stays static until a new thought is consciously placed.
So say I wanted to wear a red dress. I’d visualize it, creating it new. And then I could completely stop thinking about it until sometime later when I realized, hey, it’s cold. Thinking “I wish I had sleeves” wouldn’t make them appear. I’d have to touch the actual dress and put the image of the dress with sleeves into the object for it to transform.
Pitching in Brief
My favorite episode in season seven of writing excuses was an episode on YA Contemporary Fiction. The information on YA was nice,but what I really got out of that episode was the way she pitches. It’s awesome. I’d describe it, but it’s better just to listen.
Another cool thing that I was exposed to this season were The Pixar Rules of Storytelling. Check them out. There was also a fantastic episode on figuring out what comes next in the story. The best thing I got out of it was to ask does what your character need to happen next to accomplish their goal happen, and then put it in this format.
Yes, but….
No, and…
I was trying to come up with examples for this, but I found a better one on this post.
Inigo Montoya wants to kill the six-fingered man.
Through many trials, he enters the castle.
Does he find the six-fingered man?
Yes, but four guards get in the way.
Does he defeat the guards?
Yes, but the six-fingered man runs away.
Inigo gives chase! Does he catch up?
No, and the six-fingered man has barred the door.
Fezzik busts the door and Inigio runs through. Does he catch up?
Yes, but he gets a throwing knife in the gut.
Can he regain his feet and continue?
Yes, but the six-fingered man has a sword at the ready.
Can Inigo defend himself?
Yes, but he gets stabbed in each shoulder.
The six-fingered man bargains for his life. Does Inigo overcome the temptation?
Yes, and he achieves his goal.
What ever the goal is, “yes, but / no, and” is a reminder to you to not allow it to be easy. Make things worse, and the journey will be more exciting, and the payoff sweeter in the end.
Kaitlin Bevis 