Facets of Fate, A Sea of Sorrow, a Sale, and an Update

Exciting times this summer/fall -- FACETS OF FATE, my Fate of the Gods collection is finally out in the world in ebook AND paperback, and my next Amalia Carosella release, A SEA OF SORROW, a retelling of The Odyssey in six parts by the H-Team, is coming October 17th!

A SEA OF SORROW is ready for pre-orders pretty much everywhere online (Amazon, B&N, Kobo, and iBooks!) as well as for adding on Goodreads if that is more your speed -- and I hope you'll klikk klikk whatever link means you'll remember to grab your copy upon release! It'll be available in print AND ebook -- and you can even pre-order it in print on amazon, so if that is your preference, by all means, go forth!

(I'm staring at the lined up book covers in the footer of this blogpost while I write this and dang! 14 titles. How did that happen? I don't even know how to wrap my head around it. It just doesn't seem real.)

I've also got a sale this month for you! HELEN OF SPARTA and DAUGHTER OF A THOUSAND YEARS are just 1.99 each on kindle for the month of September, so make sure to take advantage if you haven't!

Anyway, I wanted to just give you an update on authors!me for those of you not subscribed to the newsletter -- which really, I promise, if you want the most up to date info on new releases and sales, that is the place to be!

I know you're all waiting for Orc 3, and I'm working on an Orc Saga short story to hopefully get out to you this winter (again, a newsletter advantage, because it'll be free for subscribers, and that's the easiest way for me to deliver it to you all directly!) And then I'll be diving in to the real meat and potatoes that I know you're all eager to read, hopefully with the enthusiasm and gusto that the conclusion of this series (and you as readers) deserves!

Again, I'm so grateful for your patience and understanding as I recovered from the epic burn out of 3 years of non-stop contract deadlines for twelve releases and no real downtime to rest my creative brain. (I think the one month I actually was supposed to have off I ended up overseeing a household construction project -- which is not at all restful, I promise you.) But it's been a rough year for more reasons than just the burn out (curse you, back-issues!), and I can't tell you how much I needed the time.

Orc 3 is likely going to be one of the last self-pub titles you see from me for a little while, for a number of reasons both personal and professional. (One of which includes a fabulous car accident just before my trip to HNS Portland which totaled our car and necessitated an unexpected investment in a new one. I cannot make this stuff up, friends. Five o'clock in the morning, rammed in the rear end by a cabbie who was literally asleep at the wheel. Going at least 35 mph, no less. And of course we missed our flight. Because naturally. Like I said -- it's been a difficult year.) But that doesn't mean I won't be writing! I'm just going to not kill myself doing it for a little while longer and focus on the traditional side of things for a bit!

So I think that's about everything for the moment. Make sure you hit up the sales, or pre-order, or add on goodreads, and finally, do subscribe to The Amaliad so you don't miss out on future fun, excitement, sales, releases, and/or sneak peeks!

And have a Baldur-cat, too, before you go :)

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Amazon | Barnes&Noble 

Amazon | Barnes&Noble

Musing on: Penelope's Suitors

Who *are* these men?

Slaughter of the Suitors via Wiki Commons (public domain)

We know some of their names, of course, and even who their fathers are. We know that they seem to have some pretty poor manners, and as guests and suitors they have overstayed their welcome to an extreme degree (though it seems Penelope is in part to blame for not sending them away, herself, perhaps, too.) But. Who are they in the greater scheme of Ithaca's kingdom and community, post Trojan War?

Presumably, Odysseus took a majority of able-bodied men with him to Troy to fight. We know these suitors are the sons of now-old men, noble houses of Ithaca who were part of Odysseus's assembly. The sons of men who are now too old and weak to rule them -- much like Laertes is too old and weak with grief and sorrow to guard Penelope and Telemachus from the suitors, or even to engage in Ithaca's assembly to any degree. Had they been younger men, the fathers of these suitors would have left 20 years earlier with Odysseus to fight, right? And if the suitors had been older men themselves, they also would have left, for the most part, 20 years ago to fight with Odysseus.

So are these Suitors second or third or fourth sons (of second wives, perhaps)? Not quite so young as Telemachus, clearly, who was an infant when Odysseus left, but old enough to see their brothers sail off in his company, and just a shade too young to follow? Old enough to grieve for their brothers who never returned home? Are they acting out, taking back what they lost in some way, by pillaging Odysseus's stores in his absense and courting his wife?

During Telemachus's assembly in book two, Mentor says:

"Think: not one of the people whom he ruled
remembers Odysseus now, that godlike man,
and kindly as a father to his children!" (Fagles, p 100)

Is he accusing the Suitors themselves of not knowing or remembering Odysseus, suggesting that perhaps they were too young to have really engaged with him in any meaningful way? Accusing the old men of the Assembly of forgetting the kindness of their king, or betraying the kindness that Odysseus showed them by not standing against the abuses of the suitors?

It seems likely that reinforcements came to support the Greeks (generic national identity used loosely, here), so why didn't these suitors travel to Troy to fight at some later point in the war? Or had they not yet quite come of age, even then? Say they were only 5 or 6, and hadn't quite reached manhood before Troy was sacked? But that would make them only 26 to Penelope's mid thirties, at the youngest, assuming she was in her early/mid-teens when she married Odysseus and bore him Telemachus, now nearing 20.

Odysseus mustered 12 ships when he initially sailed to Troy with the army, according to Homer's Catalogue of Ships, and in the Odyssey, Odysseus claims to have begun his journey from Troy with a dozen ships, still. twenty to thirty oars per ship would mean a minimum of 240 to 360 men -- none of which returned home, save Odysseus himself. Could resentment for the loss of so many have fueled the blind eye that these old men turned to their youngest/younger sons who lived? Or simply the desire to spoil them, because they had not been lost when so many others had been?

Honestly, I'm kind of shocked that upon his return Odysseus is allowed to keep his crown, after losing so many men -- hero-kings have been thrown out of power for less, after all -- but perhaps it is the slaughter of the suitors that secures his power in the end. The old men, after all, clearly don't have the strength to stand against him when they cannot stand against their own sons. And with the suitors' deaths, an entire generation of Ithacans, ultimately, is wiped out -- leaving Odysseus with no one to challenge him at all.

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Amazon | Barnes&Noble

Notes from the (Writing/Revision) Cave

I'm over half-way through drafting my first BRAND NEW BOOK of the year -- Historical Fiction set in the Bronze Age and it may or may not involve both Odysseus and Polypoetes, among others -- which made the revisions I was doing on TAMER OF HORSES (Hippodamia and Pirithous's book!) a lot easier to handle, since they're both in the same world. And you'd think that this being my THIRD manuscript set in Bronze Age Greece, I'd have the research part out of the way.

The Abduction of Hippodamia
(photo by me or possibly el husband.)

You'd be wrong, because every book has different research requirements and elements that maybe the previous one two three didn't. But you'd think that. Heck, sometimes even I think it. And then something like this happens and I am reminded of my place in the order of the universe.

Last month I got mightily derailed (many hours spent squinting at tiny text) in my revisions for TAMER by the researching of burial and funerary rites of Mycenaean Greece* since I realized hadn't dealt with mass numbers of dead before previously, and I should probably check my assumptions. Needless to say, they were totally wrong. So now I have to decide if I want to follow Homer (because my books are fundamentally related to and leading up to the Trojan War and the myths surrounding it, and if I follow Homer, I stay consistent), or if I want to stick to the archaeological record, at Homer's expense.

If this book were a stand alone one off (it's kind of a companion/prequel) then it would be a non-issue. I could go historical all the way. But because it isn't... the decision is maybe not so straightforward. Either way, though, I need to know what the archaeological record tells us about burials and funerary rites, and I need to be purposeful in either choosing to uphold that element, or sticking with Homer, instead. Purposeful changes, properly noted, explained, and/or justified in an author's note are far more forgivable than accidental-I-didn't-realize-my-assumptions-were-totally-wrong inclusions!

And before this particular revision-derailing-event? Aegean Bronze Age Medicine. Which. *I* was pretty surprised/impressed by, personally. There were definitely worse times to be alive.

*which contrary to what Homer would have you believe, do NOT involve cremation -- but I'll be posting more about that with some links to interesting articles on the topic over at blog.amaliacarosella.com in the nearish future (mid-April)! Posting has picked up over yonder. Because HELEN OF SPARTA!!!! 

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Available April 1, 2015 
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Long before she ran away with Paris to Troy, Helen of Sparta was haunted by nightmares of a burning city under siege. These dreams foretold impending war—a war that only Helen has the power to avert. To do so, she must defy her family and betray her betrothed by fleeing the palace in the dead of night. In need of protection, she finds shelter and comfort in the arms of Theseus, son of Poseidon. With Theseus at her side, she believes she can escape her destiny. But at every turn, new dangers—violence, betrayal, extortion, threat of war—thwart Helen’s plans and bar her path. Still, she refuses to bend to the will of the gods.

A new take on an ancient myth, Helen of Sparta is the story of one woman determined to decide her own fate.

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Buy Now:
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On the Subject of Citrus

(crossposted a long time ago in a galaxy far far away...)

Citrus had not yet made its way to Greece during the Greek Bronze Age. No lemons and limes for cooking, no oranges, no grapefruits on the table, much to my dismay. Sweet Oranges took their (sweet) time making an appearance in general, really, and in northern Europe they suffered from a lack of availability and cultivation as late as the 15th century AD. But though these fruits weren't yet being cultivated in the west during the bronze age, they were absolutely being cultivated elsewhere.

In the Far East of Asia, there are mentions of citrus fruits as far back as 2400 BC in China (and this website by Mark Rieger originally put together for his horticulture class at UGA has everything you'd ever want to know about citrus today, if it's a bit sparse on the days of yore). And if there's one thing we know about the Greek Bronze Age, it's that they weren't shy about trade, nor were heroes like Theseus and Pirithous likely to be afraid of exploring new oceans, seas, or rivers.

In Homer's Odyssey, in fact, there's a reference to Odysseus wearing a material which is believed to be silk:

"And I noted the tunic about his body, all shining as is the sheen upon the skin of a dried onion, so soft it was; and it glistened like the sun" (19.233).

This attestation to another commodity of the Far East which had not spread widely allows the savvy writer a little bit of leeway when it comes to bringing Homeric myths into the historical world. While it's clear these kinds of luxuries were absolutely not available to even the common king or queen, it isn't outside of the realm of possibility for a hero to have collected such spoils, or even to have gone out of his way to present them as incredibly valuable gifts for a special occasion.

And if there's one thing we know about the Heroes of Greek Myth, Homeric and otherwise, it's how much they loved raiding, rustling, and sacking everyone from their neighbors, to the richest cities and kings they could find.

Of course, we already knew that Bronze Age kings likely also fulfilled roles as priests, or religious leaders -- but we shouldn't forget that kings like Pirithous or Theseus? They were most definitely Pirates, too.