My name is Ian Anderson. I started reading mythology at the ripe age of…well I was very young. I can remember my very first book of Greek Myths given by a tutor that my parents hired to help me with my English. Many of you may have heard of it: D'aulaires book of Greek Myths. All the pictures and different colors fascinated me. It was showing people doing things that I had never seen before, and for some reason that spoke to sense of being.
As interesting as it was however, it was still just a book. Even before PlayStation, X-Box, I-phone, or even the internet, books still had to compete for children's attention against things like television, Atari, and hand held electronic games that did nothing but beep at you and moved dots across a screen. Of course, by screen I mean a dark glass panel that would have an army of monochrome lights ready to light up at any given moment.
I think the real turning point for me was an episode of the "Superfriends". For those of you who do not know what that was, it was a watered down kid safe version of the justice league. The vague recollection of the episode was that somehow they ended up on this island where they had to face off against monsters from Greek Mythology. Superman had to face the Minotaur, Wonder Woman went up against Medusa, Batman and Robin had to solve the riddle of the sphinx, and Aquaman had to retrieve the Golden Fleece from an invisible man. How talking to fish gets you out of that one, I will never know.
After that episode, I wanted my tutor to show me the stories that involved these stories. I also bugged my parents to take me to see the original Clash of the Titans. I will admit that it was a bit scary for me at the time and I did spend a fair portion of the movie with my eyes covered, but remember I was a small child at that point. From that point, I was hooked. I never looked back, I never regretted it, and it keeps getting better the more I dedicate myself to it.
As I got older, I began to branch out discovering that there was more to mythology than what the Greeks contributed. I first learned about Norse Mythology the same way most people these days are, the comic book Thor. I first read the books not realizing that there were tales as old as the Greek Myths that dealt with, Thor, Odin, Loki, and Baldur to name a few. To this day Greek Mythology is still my favorite, but the Norse traditions are a close second.
Eventually I started to learn the stories from Egyptian, Hindu, Aztec, and Japanese Mythologies. Lately I have delved into Irish/Celtic Mythology, and even read a bit about Voodoo. They have a few things in common, many gods that have different influences on our world and very human like personalities, emphasis on heroism, and an underlying warning against arrogance, nature, and death.
Fast forward to present day. Now I am a published author of a series called Modern Disciples. I have already published the first three volumes in the series. The story centers around six children of gods, each from a different pantheon. These children called disciples are the god's eyes, ears, and hands on earth as they protect humanity from the titans and their creatures called spawn. A small sample of the spawn include, maenads, satyrs, dark fairies, Nemean beasts, giants, even vampires and werewolves are thrown into the mix, although slightly.
In future, I plan to write more in depth of the characters from the story, where I get my ideas from, the myths behind the Modern Disciples, and I will do some reviews of books that I have read having to do with mythology and other topics that interest me. I may even write some supplement stories that add to the series. I am always open to ideas though so if there are any topics you would like me to discuss feel free to leave them in the comments below.
Ian Anderson
No comments:
Post a Comment