Effrosyni Moschoudi's Blog, page 45
March 19, 2015
Time wasters online and how to avoid them
This is a short excerpt. Click on the title above to read the whole post on EffrosyniWrites!
March 16, 2015
Interview with women’s fiction author, Sharon Black
This is a short excerpt. Click on the title above to read the whole post on EffrosyniWrites!
March 13, 2015
Book review: Deadly Secrets by Angel Sefer
This is a short excerpt. Click on the title above to read the whole post on EffrosyniWrites!
March 10, 2015
Lucky Leprechaun Reader Appreciation Celebration
It’s party time on Facebook!
My writer’s group, eNovel Authors at Work, is organising an online event in order to show its appreciation to readers. There will be nothing to buy, but plenty of excellent prizes to win, including a Kindle, Amazon giftcards and lots of books!
The event will be held on Facebook from Wednesday 11 to Friday 13, from�� 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. EDT
Choosy Bookworm, an awesome promotional site for authors, has posted the announcement for the event in full detail. You can read all about it here.
Also, here is the direct link to the Facebook page for the event.
It’ll be a blast, so mark your calendars!
March 9, 2015
New Release: Search for the Golden Serpent by Luciana Cavallaro
Today, I’m thrilled to present a new book by Australian author Luciana Cavallaro. Readers of this blog may remember my raving 5-star review of her gem, Accursed Women, a compilation of short stories based on Greek myths. This author has a tremendous passion for Greek mythology. Search For the Golden Serpent is a well-written fantasy adventure set in a series of ancient civilizations that will enthuse fans of the genre. I’ve had the privilege to beta read this book and loved it, one of the reasons being that it was in many ways similar to my debut novel, The Necklace of Goddess Athena, as it involves time travel and Greek Olympian Gods!
Without further ado, I give you the presentation of the book that launches on March 27th.
A new Hero is in Town!
Meet Evan Chronis, a talented architect from Perth, Australia with a chronic sleeping problem. His dreams are so vivid they feel real. Did he actually go for a swim while he slept? They begin to affect his work and health. He seeks medical help to find out what���s happening to him.
In Search for the Golden Serpent (eBook published March 27) Evan meets Zeus, the King of the Gods. Zeus tells him in order to get back home he must journey through forgotten worlds, lost in antiquity.
Here���s more:
It���s not where he appears, it���s when.
What if you���re born during another time, grew up in the 21st century and then were thrust back into the past? Confused? So is architect, Evan Chronis.
Evan, drawn by screams, ventures out to his backyard and sees blood trickling down the limestone stairs. He steps off the veranda and finds himself in the days of great and marvelous power, a time when the gods ruled the universe.
To return to the 21st century life he longs for, he must risk his life in search of powerful, treasured relics older than the Holy Grail. But what he finds might be more than he expected.
Will Evan find the relics and return home or will he remain forever stuck in a world so different from his own?
Pre-Order your copy from:
Historical fiction fantasist Luciana Cavallaro, and a secondary teacher, meanders from contemporary life to the realms of mythology. Luciana has always been interested in Mythology and Ancient History but her passion wasn���t realised until seeing the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. From then on, her inspiration to write Historical Fantasy was borne.
She is the author of 5 ebooks and 1 paperback and has spent many lessons promoting literature and the merits of ancient history. Subscribe to her free short story at http://www.luccav.com.
You can connect with her via:
Take advantage of the pre-order promotion! Search for the Golden Serpent will be half price until the day of launch. You don���t want to miss out!
Interview with romantic comedy author, Rosie Dean
This is a short excerpt. Click on the title above to read the whole post on EffrosyniWrites!
March 4, 2015
Book Review: Nanostrike by Pete Barber
This is a short excerpt. Click on the title above to read the whole post on EffrosyniWrites!
March 1, 2015
Interview with Jenny Harper, author of the Heartlands Series
This is a short excerpt. Click on the title above to read the whole post on EffrosyniWrites!
February 28, 2015
ENTER TO WIN AWESOME BOOKS BY eNOVEL AUTHORS
Today, I have an awesome rafflectopter for you guys. Five hand-picked eNovel authors, including yours truly, have teamed up to offer readers the chance to win a copy of their books. Some are kindle books (available worldwide) and others are paperbacks (available in the US only). I feel quite privileged to be a part of this as the fellow authors who’re participating alongside me are all excellent writers; this is a great opportunity for you to get your hands on some awesome reading material!
Make sure to enter from today (Saturday) till Monday latest!
Novels by #eNovAaW Bestselling authors up for Grabs!
Awesome Book Giveaway!
Giveaway begins February 28!
Finding Home��by Jackie Weger��(Paperback, US Only)
$10 Paypal Cash or Amazon Gift Card��from Jackie Weger
��
A Dead Red Oleander��by RP Dahlke��(Paperback, US Only)
A Dead Red Heart��by��RP Dahlke��(Paperback, US Only)
��
Born to Magic��by David Wind��(eCopy)
Queen of Knights��by��David Wind��(eCopy)
��
Winds of Betrayal: Books 1 & 2��by Jerri Hines��(eCopy)
Kiss of��Deceit��by Jerri Hines��(eCopy)
��
The Necklace of Goddess Athena��by��Effrosyni Moschoudi��(eCopy)
The Lady of the Pier: The Ebb��by��Effrosyni Moschoudi��(eCopy)
Click the link below to enter!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
February 25, 2015
Why is Lord Elgin an abomination to the Greeks?
To the Greeks, the name Thomas Bruce, 7th Earl of Elgin, is an abomination, the likes perhaps, of only Lucifer himself. Lord Elgin, as he is more famously known, is notorious in my country for his enormous blundering appetite that was coupled by an equally enormous lack of regard for the Parthenon treasures.
Having acquired a paper of questionable validity (i.e. a mere letter signed by a pasha as opposed to a firman signed by a sultan – the only document that could have authorized him properly within the Othoman Empire), he didn���t hesitate to remove from the Parthenon far more than anyone could have ever imagined possible. Furthermore, he caused irreversible damage to the sculptures that were taken off the friezes. By instructing the workers to remove the posterior side from these treasures (obviously, he thought only the frontal side was of any value!), he thus managed to rid his cargo of unnecessary (!) weight and to cut down on logistic costs.
Elgin shipped the Parthenon Marbles to Britain divided among many different ships, whatever he could arrange with the odd passing ship of the British Navy and each time, he was allowed a very small amount of treasures on board. However, he managed once to commission his own boat, the legendary ���Mentor���, in 1802. Thrilled to have no weight restrictions this time, Elgin greedily loaded that ship so much that it sank just off the shore on the island of Kythira. When that happened, he contacted the local British consulate, and in order to seek assistance for the retrieval of the treasures, he stated in his letter the infamous lie ������she had on board a quantity of boxes with stones of no value of themselves; but of great consequence for me to secure������
(Note: The blantant lie, is what inspired British movie maker Chistopher Miles to title his movie ���Lord Elgin and Some Stones of No Value��� in 1985).
The operation of the treasures’ retrieval from the bottom of the sea lasted for two years. Elgin was able to employ experienced divers from Kalymnos, who helped retrieve 16 boxes in total. During those two years, while the operation was underway, the Marbles remained on the beach, covered carelessly with stones, seeweed and bushes to shield them from the sunlight and to hide them from onlookers. Marble is highly affected by both humidity and saltiness, so you can imagine the damage caused to the treasures during these two years until they were finally loaded on another ship on its way to England.
But the adventure for the Marbles doesn���t end there. After a careless exhibition and storage of the treasures by Elgin himself for a few years, he finally sold them to the British government, who put them in the care of the British Museum. There, they remained stored for even more years before finally being put on display. By then, they had turned black from mold and lack of care. In order to make them presentable, the British Museum then had them scrubbed clean with iron bristles to give them a pleasant, white color, thus causing further harm.
Archeologists in Greece despise the name Elgin even more than the average Greek does, simply because they know in every detail his activities as he went around Greece. Indeed, his looting thirst has been unquenchable. As he traveled around the country, Lord Elgin looted everything he could get his hands on. The famous Lion Gate in the ancient site of Mykenae was saved from the one way journey to Britain only thanks to its huge weight. He considered it seriously of course, but thankfully, simply because it���s as massive as it is, the majestic Lion Gate still stands in its rightful place today, at the entrance of the Mykenae archeological site.
At the time of the looting, back at the Parthenon (1801-1804), the heartache of the enslaved Greeks was so great, that rumors in the form of folk myths started to spread across the country from mouth to mouth. Apparently, voices could be heard from the crates that contained the treasures, causing confusion and even panic to the workers who carried them to the port to be shipped to Britain. Many a time, locals in Athens also claimed that at night they could hear wails and cries from the top of the Acropolis where the five Caryatids in the Erechtheion Temple grieved for the loss of their sixth ‘sister’ that had been taken away.
And so, all this devastation, all this irreversible damage was caused to The Parthenon, a jewel of the world���s historical heritage, because of the greed of a single man. It���s no surprise the Greeks also invented the myth that goddess Athena cursed him, enough for his wife to cheat on him while Napoleon held him prisoner of war in France. Furthermore, he died penniless away from home, divorced, ill with syphilis and disfigured too, the tip of his nose having been removed by the doctors because of a terrible affliction. It didn���t take much for the Greeks, the masters of myth-making, to see this as divine justice for the tremendous loss they have suffered because of him.
But even the man���s son, James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin, seemed to have inherited his father���s lack of regard for historical treasures and foreign property. In 1860, he had the summer palace of the Emperor of China destroyed, burnt and looted. You can imagine the length of devastation this family caused in China too, thinking of so many treasures, equally mythical and precious, stolen or forever lost.
Whether you choose to believe that Elgin actually meant well or to see him the way the Greeks do, I hope you will enjoy this excellent video by the Greek Ministry of Culture. It illustrates graphically the Parthenon in all its glory, as well as its demise through the millennia. Delightfully enough, it also depicts a classic poem by the legendary philhellene, Lord Byron. The great romantic poet���s imagination has captured the wrath of Athena (Minerva, in Roman) further to the merciless destruction of her sacred temple.
For the benefit of poetry lovers, I���m including below a link to the whole poem, written in Athens in 1811 by the great British poet. In the links below, you can also watch an interesting BBC documentary about Lord Elgin and the Marbles.
The Curse of Minerva by Lord Byron: http://readytogoebooks.com/CM13.htm
MORE LINKS:
Movie Trailer of ���Promakhos���; a Greek, French and British production on the subject of the Parthenon Marble debate
Lord Elgin (2004) ��� a BBC documentary
Further information re the invalid documentation used by Elgin
You may also be interested in my other posts on the Parthenon Marbles:
https://effrosinimoss.wordpress.com/2013/11/19/what-are-the-parthenon-marbles-to-the-greeks/
https://effrosinimoss.wordpress.com/2014/03/05/reblogged-scotlands-role-in-an-elgin-marbles-mystery/
