Helen's Daughter

Seven years have passed since Orestes witnessed the savage murder of his father Agamemnon and fled for his life.

Now, aged twenty, he is ready to reclaim his birthright as king of Mycenae, and avenge his father’s murder—by killing his own mother, a crime that will label him a matricide. He will be shunned by all men, and hounded into madness by the demonic Erinyes, the relentless Daughters of Night. Orestes’ only hope of redemption lies in trial by sanity, an ordeal which will take him to the very edge of terror. Will he survive as a whole man, and receive ritual purification in order to claim his throne, or will he perish in the attempt?

𐀪   𐂁

As a correction to a statement I made in an earlier post, Linear B does appear to have had some diphthongs, but they are separate signs, and the script still does not represent all the sounds (such as the liquid /l/, /g/, and /h/) that the spoken language must have had.

I am slowly working on Orestes: The Outcast, the second book in the trilogy, but also trying to get the word out there about The Young Lion and Helen’s Daughter.  If you read and liked either book, please pass the word along (and let me know your thoughts, of course!).

Publishing your own book is not easy.  Writing, editing, and formatting Helen's Daughter took thirteen months, with breaks in between to work on Orestes: The Young Lion.  I now spend most of my time in historical fiction forums chatting and trying to get the word out there.  Also, playing Gardens of Time on Facebook.  *blush*  I have not done any writing since the beginning of August.  Painting and watching TV, yes.  Writing, no.  It feels very strange.

Many reviewers do not consider self-published novels, with good reason.  Last week, I submitted my novel to two sites which do consider self-published work, and on Sunday thought I had a nibble when an interested reviewer contacted me about getting a copy.  So I emailed her a .pdf, only to hear back that she was expecting a print book.  I guess she didn't see the part that said the publisher was Amazon Kindle.  I thanked her for her interest, anyway, and am now back to square one.

So if you plan to go this route, be prepared to work just as hard marketing as you did writing.  But I have certain standards about marketing myself.  I have seen many self-published authors spam forums about their releases.  Or worse, create sockpuppets to review and promote themselves.  I believe that such behavior actually turns potential readers off; it's just as important to foster goodwill with readers as it is to write a good book.  So I refuse to engage in any chicanery or spamming.  You will not see me reviewing my own work.  I am actually the worst judge of my own work, anyway.

P.S. I am looking to write more posts for my blog, but would like to hear from readers as to what topics on the Mycenaean and Minoan world they are interested in that I have not already covered.

Helen's Daughter, the novel I have researched and worked on for a year, is available on Smashwords right now, and will be available through Amazon Kindle by Monday.

When the Trojan prince Paris abducted Helen of Sparta, she left behind a nine-year-old daughter, Hermione. And when Helen's husband Menelaus set out to recover her, Hermione was sent to her relatives at Mycenae to wait out the war.

Now, years later, the Trojan War is over. The adult Hermione eagerly awaits her father's return, but remains ambivalent toward her mother, even as her world is once again turned upside-down. Can Hermione survive the trials that await, or will she become another victim of the curse that haunts her family?

It's finally here.  The first book of the Orestes trilogy is available.  Go check it out at Amazon!

I just submitted The Young Lion to my beta reader at 106,000 words.  We'll see what he thinks.  I am simply exhausted after 16 days of editing, and need a nap.

Meanwhile, have some artwork.  A Mycenaean woman standing outside in the courtyard seeing two men off.  You just know she's about to tell the man talking to her that, "My eyes are up here."  Unfortunately, I don't know who the artist is.

At last, a genealogical chart I can be satisfied with.  Note: the actual image is larger, and will show up clearer in the book.  (I hope).

Also, I should be finishing the rough draft of The Young Lion this evening.

Dreamwidth sent me some codes, if anyone needs one. 

Also, I am rapidly progressing toward the end of the first book of what will a trilogy.  I simply can't get the whole Orestes story into one novel, otherwise it will run about 300,000 words, and cost $10 on Kindle.  As it is, I am still trying to gauge whether or not readers will buy the three installments.   

The first book will be titled The Young Lion.

People may think they're already reading the story for free on Fiction Press and Fanfiction.com.  It's simply a rough draft, to gauge reader interest in the story; it is not the finished project, and it's very likely that the entire first book won't be posted online. 

Once the draft is finished, then the really grueling work begins.  I predict entire scenes might be cut, while others will be refined.  Certain characters may need work to make them more believable.  The dialogue has to be double-checked to make sure no glaring modernisms creep in.  Descriptions have to be double-checked to make certain they're not repeated; Elektra, for example, is described as a lioness several times throughout the book.

The second book is tentatively titled The Madman of Mycenae, and deals with the double murders of Clytaemnestra and Aegisthus, and the madness and purification of Orestes.

The third book is The High King, and deals with Orestes' long reign.