Visual inspiration for Poseidon & Cleito

I started keeping inspiration boards for my writing the old fashioned way: cutting out pictures from magazines and gluing them to a sheet of oak tag. That old fashioned method had some advantages. It was nice having something to put up in my office where I write, and it was fun taking the time to snip out images that I liked and to place them on the board. But the variety of pictures was limited, especially since my writing takes inspiration from ancient settings. It also could be time consuming, and I knew at some point I would run out of wall space.

So, about six months ago, I converted to Pinterest for my boards. It actually could be just as time consuming. There’s almost an infinite number and variety of images to search through, not that narrowing down that search isn’t easy, but once you get started, it can be hard to stop. Still, overall, it’s much more efficient for me and gives me tons of ancient world and fantasy material to choose from.

For my Poseidon and Cleito board, I was interested in having some images that were evocative of the characters as well as some that reflected costume, setting and mythology. I shared on my board that Maria Sharapova was a modern day inspiration for Cleito, both physically and in terms of her relentless, impassive persona. That may not be fair to Maria. She’s probably a sweetheart off of the tennis court and would never consider murdering her family for wealth and power.