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Leap! A Love Story: Reading from a Minoan gay romance

I've shared readings from my other novels on YouTube, so I figured I should do likewise for my latest work of fiction, Leap! A Love Story. It's my first foray into romance, and of course it has a Minoan theme. It's set in Phaistos, the second-largest Minoan city (after Knossos) in about the year 1650 BCE, a generation or two before the Thera eruption.

The main character is Adelphos, the Cattle Master of Phaistos. He's in charge of the temple's herds, including the bulls that are trained for leaping. Which puts him in regular contact with the bull leapers, one of whom catches his eye.

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Wank-Dreams of an Intergalactic Space Princess

Sigh. Disney has much to answer for.

So...there's this Princess in a galaxy far, far away.

Actually she isn't a Princess anymore. She's now High Queen: absolute hereditary monarch of seven Keltic star-systems. All her subjects love her.

(Her family, BtW, became ruling dynasty bloodlessly centuries before by unanimous acclaim when the previous dynasty...um, petered out. Welcome to Planet Kumbaya. Who are you, and what have you done with the real Kelts?)

Um...let's see. She's seven feet tall—all the Space-Kelts are tall—and drop-dead gorgeous (of course), with a tumbling cascade of butt-length red hair.

Among her many memorable accomplishments, she single-handedly piloted a space ship—without benefit of crew—through a zone previously considered un-navigable. She did this in order to avenge her parents, destroying their murderers' planet by psychic power alone.

Then....

(Is your gorge rising yet? Mine certainly was.)

Well, I'm sorry, but I can't tell you what comes next. I just couldn't force myself to read any more.

Thanks to the Red Hag—covid 19—many of us are scraping the bottom of the barrel for fresh reading material. Here's a series, written by a witch—well, a Wiccan, anyway—the premise of which is that ancient Kelts fled to outer space to escape the oppressive ways of the New Religion...sounds like it could be fun.

Oh, but it isn't. Patricia Kenneally-Morrison's Keltiad series—from what little I've been able to stomach—reads more like some perverted kind of cross between wish-fulfillment and Disney-princess masturbatory fantasy.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Thanks for the recommendations, Anthony. To this let me add Esther Forbes' classic A Mirror for Witches and pretty much anything b
  • Anthony Gresham
    Anthony Gresham says #
    For reading material I suggest: "Log Horizon" by Mamare Touno; "Magic's Pawn", "Magic's Promise", and "Magic's Price" by Mercedes

Posted by on in Paths Blogs

Continuing my series about insights I've gained via novel gnosis, that is, religious revelations I've gained via writing fiction, today I'm talking about the nature of time. I'm going to talk about both the Fireverse, the universe of Some Say Fire, the unpublished novel about Norse mythology I've based most of this series of blog posts on, but also about the Time Yarns Universe, my science fiction shared world.

Loki tells the stories of heathen mythology to P as if they happened in a particular chronological order, but in order to make that work there are several points in the story when something happens, such as Thor getting his belt and gloves, “and then it had always been that way.” The gods have the ability to change the past. The Rainbow Bridge can deposit them in any part of Midgard’s history they wish to visit, but more than that, Loki tells P that those whose home is Asgard can move through time as easily as P can walk from one room into another room. They can also return to the time they left just like going back into a room they just left. The gods are not actually time traveling when they do that like a human would be if a human moved around in time like that, because the gods are native to a dimension in which time does not flow just one way. That is, our human concept of time travel doesn’t really match up with how that actually works for them.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs

Skadi, also spelled Skadhi, is a winter goddess. Her name means injury or harm. She was a frost giantess and joined Asgard society and became a goddess after going to Asgard to wreak vengeance and being offered weregild. Weregild is a payment to compensate for a crime. Among the things she received as weregild was a husband.

My gnosis is that Skadi’s spear point is made of clear rock crystal. Skadi’s color is white or clear and her beverage flavor is peppermint.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Novel Gnosis part 27: Odin

Continuing my series about novel gnosis, that is, religious insights I gained while writing fiction, today the topic is Odin. In heathen religion, Odin is a complex god with spheres of influence ranging from wisdom and magic to war. He and his brothers sculpted the world and humanity.

Trying to separate actual gnosis about Odin from parts of the Fireverse-Odin character that were distorted by the story’s function as a healing journey for me, it’s clear that Fireverse-Odin functions psychologically as a father figure, but lore Odin has definite fatherly overtones as well, even having two nicknames that include the word father, namely Allfather and the possibly older Yulefather, which is related to his name Yule-Being (Jolnir.) So I’m confident in saying that my gnosis is that Odin is a Skyfather, even though it’s clear historically that the original Skyfather of the Germanic peoples was Tyr. In a mythopoeic tale, every father is your father, and every mountain is the obstacle you yourself must overcome. The process of writing Some Say Fire healed me of issues I needed to resolve to become a godspouse, and becoming one helped me be able to finish the story. Odin and Loki were often in my head as I was writing. Sometimes they masked as each other. They usually no longer mask as each other when they communicate with me, now that a few years have passed since I finished writing the novel.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs
Novel Gnosis part 21: Lodhur and Loki

Lodhur is a name of Loki. Sort of. Or vice versa.

In the Fireverse, Honir and Lodhur were generated out of Odin to shape Midgard from Ymir’s body, reabsorbed, generated out of Odin again to shape humanity out of driftwood, reabsorbed, and finally Odin generated them a third time, and placed Lodhur in the jotun who was born vaette-Loki but who had the potential to become a god. Then Loki and Lodhur were the same being, “and then it had always been that way.” At that point, Honir was also permanently in existence outside of Odin, but he did not have a permanent physical form, so he only manifested when Odin and Loki were together. So Lodhur is both the same being as Loki and not the same. He is an aspect of Loki and is also older than Loki.

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Posted by on in Paths Blogs

Just to set the record straight for those who may have read the Marvel version: Laufey is Loki's mother, not his father. That is Lore. What follows is my novel gnosis, that is, my insights gained via writing fiction.

Laufey lives on the Leafy Isle, which is an island in the middle of Jotunheim's major river. The island is located in a part of the river where the water is no longer really hot, but it doesn’t freeze over in the winter. Her island is full of birch trees and one of her main economic activities is to make birch oil for sale as a painkiller. Fireverse-Laufey gets into selling darker magics during Loki’s childhood to buy him forbidden books in defiance of Jotunheim’s king’s law because she intends Loki to take the throne of Jotunheim. Her older 2 sons are not sons of the king and that causes some family tension.

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