Of all the things I thought I’d have to learn in becoming a professional writer…learning to design flyers wasn’t one of them. I’m going to be celebrating my launch party at Constellation Bookstore here in Maryland and I have created this flyer for the event. You’re welcome to come! I will give away chocolate

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Prologue

Ares climbed over the rubble of his burned-out armory, his mood black as the soot-covered remains. So much waste, he thought, kicking aside scorched artillery crates. All harmless shrapnel now. So many mortars and shells reduced to ash…so many bullets warped from the heat, deprived of their savage destiny on the battlefield. Magnificent guns destroyed without ever finding their way into the hands of even one ferocious warrior. It was a travesty. And the broad-shouldered god decided that someone should have to pay.

“Who did this?” he roared, discovering one of his vultures hovered over a dead body. At his approach, she left off tearing at the corpse’s gory innards and flapped her wings. With a rush of wind that spiraled the dust and autumn leaves around her, she rose into the form of a willowy redhead and licked the blood from her scarlet lips.

“The guards say it was a woman who blew up the armory,” his vulture explained, shoving the gutted corpse onto its back. His belt was unfastened, his pants unzipped, as if he’d died while taking a piss. “This one caught her and decided to have a little fun…”

“It doesn’t look as if he had a chance to enjoy himself.” Ares noted the dead man’s face, stiffened in shock, as if he couldn’t fathom what had happened to him. But Ares knew what had happened. Kyra had happened.

His daughter was lethal with a blade and knew how to defend herself. She was also a rebellious child with a knack for finding new and unique ways to annoy him. “What about the file on the hydra?”

His redheaded minion twitched. “It’s gone. Kyra must have taken it.”

Ares liked the look of fear in his vulture’s expression and was hungry to take out his frustrations on her. There could be pleasure in it—for him, at least. He reached for that fiery hair, yanking his vulture’s head to the side so that her throat was exposed. “And where is my daughter now?”

“I—I don’t know,” the vulture stammered. “They shot her, but she escaped.”

Bullets wouldn’t stop Kyra. As a nymph of the underworld, she crossed the thresholds of life and death at will. What’s more, she was immortal. He’d seen to that. There wasn’t a wound she could suffer that wouldn’t heal. She could appear to mortals in her own guise, or fade into the mists like an apparition. The fact that she’d let his guards see her meant that she’d wanted him to know she was responsible for this.

The unmitigated gall of the thing! For Kyra to destroy his weapons was almost too much to bear. And to add to that insult, she’d taken the file on the newest hydra—a man that Ares intended to add to his monstrous menagerie. Admittedly, the war god admired Kyra’s audacity. After all these years, most of the forgotten ancient immortals slunk away like beaten dogs to live mundane modern lives, but his daughter was still certain she was fated to do something glorious. And he couldn’t fault her for it, even if it drove her to test him like this.

Ares was an indulgent patriarch, after all. Unlike his own wine-soaked lecher of a father—Ares encouraged the fierce nature of his descendants. He’d even made war with them at his side. Oh, how mortals had trembled when Ares rode into battle with his twin sons, Phobos and Deimos, at the reigns of his chariot! How the mortals had screamed in terror when he unleashed his monsters. Fire-breathing horses, hydras, chimeras and minotaurs…Oh, how he missed those days.

He intended to relive them with Kyra at his side. If only she’d accept her true destiny. Instead, she was in open rebellion against him. Did she think he could be stopped by blowing up his munitions? If so, she was wrong. Lesser gods might fade away, but the forces of war remained eternal. No one sacrificed at Zeus’ temples anymore. The science of spindly weathermen had reduced the once fearsome sky god into an old man who spent his days in a taverna complaining about the loss of Greek culture to the European Union. Exhaustion, science and some of the newer gods of peace and goodwill had crowded the old gods off the world’s stage. Even crafty Hecate had been relegated to a fortune-telling gypsy!

But Ares was different. It had been a long time since anyone had seen him as the Greek god of bloodlust, glowering from beneath his plumed helmet, but men still worshipped him, whether they knew it or not, because war was different, too.

The new gods didn’t glorify it, and science only made it more deadly; it bankrupted the victors as well as the vanquished. War was a senselessness mankind could not explain. Warriors no longer called for Ares by name, but they still made bloody sacrifices. And whereas Zeus once ruled the gods of Olympus, Ares meant to rule now.

So how was he to deal with Kyra’s rebellion? Perhaps it was a phase that would pass. After all, his daughter was born to viciousness. Kyra claimed to abhor war, but the wreck she’d made of his armory only proved that she was bred for destruction.

The sooner he forced her to accept it, the better.

Note: I have not personally screened these excerpts. Please heed the ratings and be aware that the links may contain material that is not typical of my site.

This article from The Onion has me howling with laughter. Because I’ve authored a love story about a gorgon for HQN, I’m incredibly tickled by this and grateful to my friend and fellow writer Tom Doyle for pointing it out. A few months ago, The Onion also did a skit about the Minotaur, so I think somebody over there may have a classical mythology fetish!

If you need a laugh, I advise that you read the whole article, but just this opening salvo cracked me up:

Well, another wasted evening, another potential “Mr. Right” walking out of my life. I guess I should be used to it by now, because it’s just so typical: Men will talk all day about how much they value ambition and intelligence in a partner, but when they finally meet a successful, educated gorgon, all of a sudden they head for the hills.

Needless to say, a smart and sophisticated companion isn’t what these men are actually looking for. No, what they really want is some easily impressed mortal who’ll laugh at all their jokes. Someone who won’t challenge their minds or disagree with their opinions. Someone who lacks a visage so terrifying it turns all beholders into solid stone.

I suppose I could giggle, bat my eyes, and absent-mindedly twirl a fanged, hissing serpent around my fingers—but that’s not who I am.