Book 2: Spartans at the Gates___Book 3: Sword of Apollo
I am so honored that the biggest publisher in Greece–Psichogios–is publishing my books in that country. They do an amazing job packaging these novels, from the layout to the covers. This cover is no exception. I love it! In English it reads “To Xiphos Apollona.” The xiphos was the name for the short, leaf-bladed sword and was first mentioned in literature in the tales of Homer. Sword of Apollo hits bookstores on the 12th of May in Greece.
(My trilogy and novella published by Psichogios)
My novel Sword of Apollo comes out December 8th from Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, thus completing my series The Warrior Trilogy. I started it twelve years ago at a coffee shop in Cambridge, MA, and I’ve written chapters all over the world, from the San Juan Islands of Washington State, to Vermont, to the actual ruins in Greece where the tale takes place. It’s been a long and amazing trip and I can’t wait to start on the second series (The Exiles Trilogy) someday. But I’ve been on a writing hiatus for about eighteen months, and here’s why.
About a week after I finished the final chapter of Sword of Apollo, I was hired by Microsoft to work on a secret project. That clandestine effort was for Microsoft’s proprietary mixed reality gear the HoloLens. So what does HoloLens do exactly? Quite simply it’s a visor that augments or adds to one’s reality by putting holograms in your real world space. You can see glimpses of a HoloLens project (recently made available to the public) that I participated in via this article from Tech Insider.
So what do the ancient Greeks have to do with holograms? Well, the word itself (coined by a Hungarian-born scientist nearly 70 years ago) is of Greek origin. It literally means a “whole something” namely a facsimile of life. When the Greeks wanted to create a replication of reality, they crafted marble and bronze statues in the likenesses of humans, animals, monsters and gods. But when they wanted to make stories come to life they would gather in a spot called “the seeing place” and watch the ancient world’s equivalent of a 3D movie.
I’m talking about plays. That’s right: the theatre. The word theatre literally means “a place for watching.” Here the Greeks would conjure epic tales of gods and mortals, as well as comedies and tragedies. They even had special effects. A lost work by the playwright Euripides called for a mechanical flying horse ridden by a god to swoop over the audience and rescue the young heroes trapped at the top of a high tower. The term deus ex machina (another Greek term) means “the god in the machine,” and these god-contraptions were created with complex wooden machinery, gears and cranes. The Greeks were pushing the limits of their technology to expand the human mind through visual means.
Just like modern-day augmented and mixed reality devices.
I’m pretty sure that the ancient Greeks would have loved holograms. Imagine the stories that they would have been able to tell. Someday I would love to make a hologram recreating the main setting for my tale: the city of Plataea. That place lies in ruins now and is inhabited by nothing more than grazing cows and tortoises. But I’ve walked around the entire circuit of the citadel’s walls, following the crumbling remnants of the 2,500-year-old foundations of the bastions and guard towers; and I’ve stumbled across marble columns, basins and sarcophagi hidden by the tall grass.
Imagine being able to read my book, and then, through the magic of augmented reality, conjuring up a recreated model of the citadel as it appeared in its heyday. The possibilities for enhanced narratives are endless.
Visit Amazon.com’s The Warrior Trilogy page and start the series with Book 1: Sons of Zeus. (Holograms not included.)
Love Death and Hate Your Foe free novella
Sword of Apollo, the final book in my Warrior Trilogy, hits the stores in hardcover on December 8th (from Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press). It’s the epic story of a young Olympic hopeful who is desperately trying to save his wife, family and city-state from genocidal invaders. It’s set in the 5th century BCE, on the eve of the great Peloponnesian War: the 30-year-long conflict waged between Athens and Sparta.
Check out the trilogy page on Amazon. If you love TV shows like Vikings, The Last Kingdom, or even Game of Thrones, you’ll be a fan of my series. For all of you hardcore readers out there, I’m giving away the prequel novella. Enjoy! Love Death and Hate Your Foe free novella
About the novella:
“Love death and hate your foe” is a saying coined by a Spartan warrior/poet named Tyrtaeus who lived in the 7th century B.C. It perfectly encapsulates the ethos of the ancient Greek warriors. The idea of dishonor was much more horrible to them than the notion of dying. And thus they were taught to hate the enemy more than they loved their own lives. Only then could they protect their homes and city-states and win honor.
My novella Love Death and Hate Your Foe takes place 50 years before my series: the Warrior Trilogy. In my books, one of the heroes is an old man named Menesarkus. He’s a famous warrior, general and Olympic champion. He’s also a farmer who will stop at nothing to protect his family and city-state from invasion by the “Barbarian” Persians.
In this tale we get to see Menesarkus as a young man facing death against the seemingly overwhelming might of the Persian invaders. It’s set at the Battle of Plataea: one of the greatest battles in the history of the world, on a day that forever changed the course of western history, and gave rise to the Golden Age of Greece.
Download the free PDF here. Love Death and Hate Your Foe free novella
I finished writing my series The Warrior Trilogy in May. The final book is called Sword of Apollo, and it comes out in June of 2015. I was on Amazon today and noticed that my publisher had put the cover on the site (they hadn’t even sent me a JPEG to look at). That’s one of the weird things about being an author. You do some Internet surfing and lo and behold–you find your new book’s cover! I think all three books look cool together. It will be interesting to see how the foreign publishers do the covers (Brazil and Italy). Greek translations have been done for the first two books and here are those covers. I’m incredibly proud of this series, and especially proud that it’s published in the language of the place where it is set.
The Warrior Trilogy is around 360 thousand words. But the story of Nikias, Kolax, Chusor and the people of Plataea is not yet completed. Even though my publisher, Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press, hasn’t picked up the second series, I’m going to start writing it. The first book is called Rage of the Minotaur and it’s the first book in The Exile Series: the epic tale that follows Nikias and his companions after the fall of Plataea.
Coming soon I’ll be putting out a free ebook novella called Love Death & Hate Your Foe. It’s the story of young Menesarkus (Nikias’s grandfather) during the final battle of the Second Persian Invasion–a battle that was fought in the fields of Plataea and changed the course of western history. Here’s the cover for that one. It was designed by my friend Isaac Colgan. He created this amazing image that conjures a Persian and Greek warrior curling into existence from the smoke of a torch fire.
I just got the advance reader copies (ARCs) of the sequel to Sons of Zeus and they look great. The book is called Spartans at the Gates and it starts up a day after the first book ends, with my hero Nikias heading off on a desperate mission to Athens from his home–the independent city-state of Plataea.
One of the hardest things to get for a book before it is published is a blurb from another writer, especially for a new series like this one. Historical fiction authors are notorious for not helping each other out. Why? Because the historical fiction market is the hardest to break into of any genre, and I suppose authors who finally make it are stingy about offering a leg up to somebody who hasn’t slogged through the mud and blood first.
But not Angus Donald. He’s the author of the Outlaw Chronicles–a rousing series about Robin Hood set during the 12th century. Angus gave me a blurb for Spartans at the Gates that is just incredible. I’ve never met Angus, so it’s inspiring to get this kind of response from a stranger, especially a writer of his ilk. He compared me to the great Mary Renault. The first historical fiction book that I ever read (The Persian Boy) was written by Renault. Here’s Angus’s blurb for Spartans at the Gates that will grace the dust jacket of the hardcover that comes out June 24th.
Right now I’m working on finishing up book 3 of my trilogy: Sword of Apollo. I have to turn in the first draft on May 1st. While the second book in the series takes place mostly in Athens (check out my Tumblr photos of my trip there last summer), Sword of Apollo heads to the seas with Nikias and his friends aboard a trireme (triple-decked warship). Spartans at the Gates hits the few bookstores that are left (but mostly Amazon) on June 24th. Sword of Apollo will arrive a year later in the summer of 2015.
Come back soon for a link to a goodreads giveaway for Spartans at the Gates ARCs that will go live this week (for US residents only). And check out my interview with American Athenaeum Magazine where I talk about the Warrior Trilogy, Tolkien and what influenced me to become a writer.
EXCERPT FROM American Athenaeum interview.
Your most recent published novel, Sons of Zeus, tackles the ancient world of Greece, and follows a young Greek warrior, Nikias, who “dreams of glory in the Olympic games as he trains for the pankration—the no-holds-barred ultimate fighting of the era.” His training is cut short when the city is attacked, in a type of “Pearl Harbor” way, which sends Nikias and his neighbors to war. The book is quite an accomplishment in how it recreates the past in such a lively and innovative way, one that contemporary readers can easily connect, with. How long did it take to write the book? What type of research did you do for the novel?
Sons of Zeus took me ten years to write. A lot of people wonder how a Tolkien-freak like me could have written this book. What’s interesting is that Tolkien inspired me to start reading the ancient Greeks. I read in one of his letters that his introduction to the classics was Homer. So I went from reading The Lord of the Rings to The Iliad and The Odyssey. In college we had these core classes. Mine was Great Books. In that class we read every extant play from Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus. I fell in love with the Greeks after that. So about ten years ago I was working as a documentary film producer, and we started a project about 5th BCE Athens—the “Golden” age of Greece. During my research I came across the story of the sneak-attack on the democratic independent city-state of Plataea: a tale that I had glossed over the first time that I read Thucydides. I couldn’t believe that this epic story of courage and survival had never been the subject of a novel. The character of a young Olympic fighter-in-training who must save his city, family and beloved from genocidal invaders just came to me in a vision.
My Greek publisher, Psichogios, sent me two copies of the translated version of Sons of Zeus. They got here today and I was blown away by what I saw when I tore open the package. This edition is stunning! In Europe they don’t publish many hardcovers. They mostly print what’s called a “brochure” style: it’s a paperback, but both ends of the cover fold over just like the dust jacket of a hardback.
They also did this really cool thing with drop caps to start all of the chapters. It looks great and shows the effort by the publisher to make a really awesome book.
The Greek edition also includes the map from the US version (with place names in Greek). And the cover image of the hoplite is embossed, which makes it stand out on a shelf. I look forward to hearing what readers in Greece think about my book!
Order Sons of Zeus now:
In the US: hardback, ebook, audiobook via Amazon (in English)
The Greek translation (eBook) on iTunes (in the US)
In Greece
The Greek translation of Sons of Zeus is now available in print and ebook in Europe! I am blown away by this cover. It totally rocks. (I first got to see the cover design when I was in Athens last June visiting my Greek publisher Psichogios.) I can’t wait to get a copy of the printed book. The title in Greek is ΟΙ ΓΙΟΙ ΤΟΥ ΔΙΑ. You can read about my trip to the place that was the inspiration for my trilogy here.
The other day I got an email from the Greek translator of my novel Sons of Zeus that made me sick to my stomach. The translator, a wonderful woman named Eleni, told me (in a very polite way) that I had given the wrong name to a famous historical personage—the warrior-king who led the 300 Spartans at a place called Thermopylae (The Gates of Fire) and stalled the Persian advance into Greece.
Now anyone who knows even a little about ancient Greek history (or has seen the movie 300!) knows that this king was named Leonidas. I first learned the significance of his name when I read Steven Pressfield’s book Gates of Fire when it came out fifteen years ago. It’s a great name and I wanted to use it as a character in my book when I first started writing Sons of Zeus ten years ago. I ended up giving the name Leonidas to the brother of my hero’s love interest.
This brother, Leonidas, was a prick of a character. A total bastard. And the more I thought about him I just couldn’t see him having this cool and heroic-sounding name. So I decided to change his name to Lysander, which is kind of a jerky sounding name, at least in English. It brings to mind the word “lie.” Lysander was a scoundrel and he got a scoundrel’s name (my apologies to any Lysanders out there).
So right before I sent in the first draft of Sons of Zeus to my publisher, I changed the name of Leonidas to the less appealing Lysander. And I did this using the Find and Replace function in Microsoft Word.
Unfortunately, I had forgotten that I had used the name Leonidas in the book in a totally different context.
You see, one of the main characters, a man named Menesarkus, has a flashback to his youth when he journeyed to Sparta soon after the Persian Wars and took part in the Funeral Games of Leonidas—in honor of that aforementioned Spartan king who sacrificed his life to save Greece. Find and Replace does not have a brain. And sometimes the human using this function doesn’t either. So the reference to the Funeral Games of Leonidas got changed to the Funeral Games of Lysander throughout the book.
Holy crap.
Somehow I failed to notice this mistake. And neither did any of the people who read the first three drafts (and there were a lot of readers). The copy-editor, who thoroughly researched all the names in the book as well as historical references, missed it too. And so now, in the hardcover of my book (and on the unabridged audio recording, and all of the ebook versions) this paragraph reads:
He had been chosen to go along with a contingent of Plataean warriors, invited as honored guests of one of the royal families to participate in funeral games for Lysander, leader of the “Three Hundred” who had held off the passes of Thermopylae. . . .
Now believe me. I pored over the proofs of Sons of Zeus with a fine tooth comb. I nearly went blind looking for typos and mistakes. But somehow, this Leonidas/Lysander blunder kept slipping by me. My brain just glided over it every time I saw it. For a historical fiction writer like me who prides himself on being totally accurate, this mistake was devastating. It would be like a guy who fancies himself a Shakespeare scholar referring to King Lear as King Larry…or King Lysander!
Happily the Greek version will not have this mistake, thanks to the eagle eye of Eleni the translator. I don’t think that Greek readers would have forgiven me for making this epic blunder in the Greek version of my novel. The first thing that I’ll correct for the US paperback will be to restore King Leonidas to his rightful place of honor in Sons of Zeus.
Use Find and Replace at your peril, dear authors. Otherwise you might make the same stupid mistake that I did. Technology eventually makes fools of us all.
I’m just about done with the second draft of the sequel to Sons of Zeus. It’s called Spartans at the Gates and the action starts the day after Sons of Zeus ends. The story is about how the hero of the first book, the young warrior Nikias, rides off to Athens on a foolhardy quest: To try and raise an army of mercenaries to come back to his city of Plataea and help defend it from the Spartans. These terrifying invaders showed up in the Oxlands hard on the heels of the defeated Thebans. (Read Book 1 for more details!)
Needless to say things don’t go as Nikias plans. Along the way he must fight mountain marauders and urbane spies, escape from kidnappers who want to take him to Sparta and survive a bloody battle on the sea, only to come face to face with his most hated enemy: the Persian-trained assassin Eurymakus–the man responsible for the death of Nikias’s mother and many of his friends.
For Spartans at the Gates I got some great feedback and suggestions from my editor, Peter Joseph, at Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press. One of the best things about having a publisher is working with a thoroughly competent, imaginative and friendly editor like Peter. He helped turn Sons of Zeus into a better book, and he’s doing the same thing with Spartans at the Gates.
Being a great editor isn’t just about finding typos. It’s about shining a light on plot holes that the author has dug himself into, and questioning dialogue that rings false, or action that comes across as illogical. It’s also about asking the author to expand on something that they might take for granted. For example, one of the characters in Spartans at the Gates (and Sons of Zeus) is a badass assassin named Eurymakus. He uses a dagger (kept in a stone sheath) that is tainted with one of the most toxic poisons in the world. A single scrape brings nearly instant and horribly painful death. This poison is based on real poisons used in the ancient world. It would actually make your eyeballs bleed. In my original text I simply wrote:
The sheath was filled with the deadliest poison known to Persian whisperers. The slightest scratch from the tainted blade caused an excruciating and nearly instant death.
Now in his notes to my first draft, Peter suggested that I go into more description about this poison (since it plays such a crucial part in the plot). So I came up with this rewrite:
The sheath was filled with the deadliest poison known to Persian whisperers: “Dragon Blood” it was called. The slightest scratch from the tainted blade caused an excruciating and nearly instant death. Eurymakus had learned to make the concoction in Persia, mixing the powerful venom of scaled vipers along with the juices of wolf’s bane, oleander and hemlock, and then brewing this noxious potion for several months in a sheep’s bladder. He had brought the scaled vipers with him to Thebes from Persia, and he’d bred the snakes for years in the undercroft beneath his slaves’ quarters. He grew all of the poisonous plants in the courtyard of his house—his garden of death.
Now the second passage tells us so much more about the character of Eurymakus, his poisonous blade (and the threat of that blade) than the first version. It also gives us some insight into this freaky dude. He has some of the most poisonous snakes in the world (the scaled viper) in his basement. He grows deadly poisonous plants in his garden. He. Is. Scary.
Peter has also been weaning me of using too many adverbs. I suggest to all of you writers out there: Kill your adverbs. They really do a terribly horribly awfully sucky job of making your book betterly. (And I know “betterly” isn’t a real word, but it makes a wonderfully shitty adverb.)
Next week I will turn in this second draft of Spartans at the Gates, and then it will go to the line editor who will (hopefully) find every mistake that Peter and I have missed. The book will hit the shelves in hardcover in June, 2014.
Book 3 of The Warrior Trilogy, Sword of Apollo, is in the works.
To order Sons of Zeus click here.
My GeekDad.com interview with the modern geek warrior Ethan Gilsdorf, author of the gutsy, poignant and hilarious memoir Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks. We talk about my new novel Sons of Zeus, Tolkien and Dungeons & Dragons! Oh, yeah! Go to GeekDad.com.
