For #SlashedandMashed Release Week, I’m sharing some book extras. Today I thought I’d post an excerpt from the lead story in the collection “Theseus and the Minotaur.”
I wrote “Theseus and the Minotaur” almost two years ago when I was prepping to start a Patreon page and wanted to front-load some of the work providing content. I love Greek mythology, so a natural place for me to start was re-imagining some classic myths and giving them a queer spin.
I wouldn’t be surprised if most people haven’t heard of Nerites. He didn’t make it into Edith Hamilton’s seminal work on Greek mythology, and though he earned a Wikipedia entry, it’s pretty sparse. According to the Theoi Project, a comprehensive glossary of mythological figures, his story comes from the Greek historian Aelian (c. 2 A.D.) who wrote about how a spiral shell of exceptional beauty came to be called a nerite. He claimed the story was well-known among sailors.
Hey folks! Continuing with my retold myth project for 2018, I’m posting my next recently completed story: “Telemachus and His Mother’s Suitors.”
I remember reading The Odyssey in high school and being much more enchanted and engrossed than I had been with its partner required text The Iliad. I liked The Iliad for its style and language, the interplay between gods and mortals, and some bits of drama (the Achilles vs. Agammemnon storyline stayed with me the most). But you’ve got to admit: the battle scene passages of “he smote him, and he smote him…” go on and on and are mind-numbing. For me, they kind of took away from the more interesting dynamics between the characters.
Dudes and dudettes, you’ve probably seen that I shared a (long) short story here over the past two weeks. You can of course read it for free, and here are some neato, helpful linkies just for you:
This week I’m posting the second installment in my retold story: “Theseus and the Minotaur.” If you missed Part One, you can read it here.
In this section, Ariadne enters as a full-fledged supporting character. She may be the most intriguing figure in the myth in that, unlike the famous romances of Paris and Helen, and Perseus and Andromeda, the nature of her relationship with the hero Theseus is curiously unclear. Did she help Theseus because she loved him? Why did she not continue with him to Athens? Did they part ways by mutual agreement or by some accident. The accounts of that part of her story are strangely unclear, and good fodder for the imagination.
