Sea Shanties of the Ancients

When I was at school, we learned of Ri-Pa-Pe – the rhythmic chant of Athenian oarsmen pulling a trireme’s 180 oars. Contrary to what you might think, triremes were manned not by slaves but by some 200 free men from all social strata. Indeed, for a...

About the Recent Fire

Many of you have contacted me to ask about the recent fires. As you may have heard, we had two big forest fires raging not 30-40 minutes from our house. One from the North (Kalamos) and one from the East (Mati-Rafina). Different ones, too. I spent most of that evening...

Cylon of Athens: The Real-life Teo Altman

One of my favorite Pearseus characters is Teo Altman; the power-hungry despot who lies and kills his way to the top. As most of my characters, he is based on a real-life person from ancient Greek history. Cylon of Athens is associated with the first reliably dated...

Full Moon in Athens

It was a full moon the other day, and Electra and I ventured downtown – something we rarely do. In fact, we hadn’t been downtown in a couple of months. So, I’m not sure what I expected to see, to be honest. Judging by the media horror stories,...

The Tumulus of the Marathon Warriors

If you’ve read any of my interviews, you may remember that the concept behind my epic fantasy series, Pearseus came to me after reading Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, followed by Jim Lacey’s The First Clash and Herodotus’ Cyrus the Great and Rise of...

The Real Women of Pearseus

People ran around her, shouting and screaming.  Sol could not move under the weight of the guard and raised her head to seek her brother.  As she did, a second arrow passed so close to her eye that its feathers scratched her eyebrow.  Blood flowed from the wound,...

August Full Moon in Athens

I hope you’ll excuse me for disappearing for the past few days. My holidays have started, and until the 25th I will not be spending all my waking hours in front of two monitors. Instead, I’ll go to the beach, visit friends, throw BBQs and enjoy life...