Today we're excited to spotlight A Curse Of Gold by Annie Sullivan.

 Read on for more about Annie and their book, an guest post, plus an giveaway! 

Meet Annie Sullivan!

Annie Sullivan is a Young Adult author from Indianapolis, Indiana. Her work has been featured in Curly Red Stories and Punchnels.

She received her Master’s degree in Creative Writing from Butler University. She loves fairytales, everything Jane Austen, and traveling. Her wanderlust has taken her to every continent, where she’s walked on the Great Wall of China, found four-leaf clovers in Ireland, waddled with penguins in Antarctica, and cage dived with great white sharks in South Africa.

 Website * Facebook * Twitter * Instagram

Meet A Curse Of Gold!

Curses and queens. Pirates and kings. Gods and magic. The final saga of a cursed queen, a vengeful Greek god, and a dazzling kingdom in the balance.

After barely surviving thieving, bloodthirsty pirates and a harrowing quest at sea to retrieve her stolen treasure, Kora finds readjusting to palace life just as deadly. Kora’s people openly turn against her, threatening to overthrow her as heir to the throne—a cursed queen who has angered Dionysus. When Dionysus puts out a challenge to kill the girl with the golden touch and burn down her kingdom, it’s not just her future on the throne in danger. Kora’s life and entire kingdom are now on contract.

As bold and brave as ever, Kora sets out to find Dionysus, the very person who is trying to kill her, on the mysterious disappearing island of Jipper. Kora has no other choice. If she wants to save her kingdom and have any chance at reversing her father’s curse, she will have to enter into a deadly game with Dionysus, the greatest trickster the world, or the underworld, has ever seen.

Amazon * B & N * Indiebound

~ Guest Post ~

The New Greek Mythology

By Annie Sullivan

Growing up watching the 1963 version of Jason and the Argonauts opened up the world of Greek mythology to me. But its daring adventure, love story, and special effects—which were remarkable for their time—were later replaced with the 2000’s version of the same story. And that’s what it felt like. The usual story. Different special effects. It wasn’t a new tale. It was simply a remake.

But from Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series to Meg Cabot’s Abandon series, Greek mythology is getting a makeover these days—and these aren’t the same old stories you’re used to. From a modern-day Persephone to a whole new generation of demigods, children’s authors are leading the way when it comes to breathing new life into the static stories and characters that typically make up Greek mythology.

After reading those revamped stories growing up, it inspired me to see how far I could push Greek mythology in my own stories. So when I started writing my debut novel A Touch of Gold, which is a retelling of the Greek myth of King Midas, my goal was to take the expected story and give it a new, unexpected twist.

First, I shifted the perspective the story is told from so that main character is not King Midas himself, but rather his cursed teenage daughter, Princess Kora, who has magical gold powers leftover from when she was turned to gold as a child. But I didn’t want to just depict the same story from a new character, I wanted to take readers into a world of Greek mythology where you think you know the characters and creatures, but you don’t.

I started by reading all the versions of the original myth that I could. Then, I did research into all the relevant gods, goddesses, demigods, and creatures—because before you can break the rules, you have to know what they are. I focused in on the role of the Greek god Dionysius, the one who gave King Midas the ability to turn anything he touched to gold. While versions of the myth differed on the reason Dionysius gifted King Midas his power, most sources agreed with Dionysius being into drinking and debauchery. However, there were some sources that cited Dionysius as the god of chaos. And so, for my version of the story, it wasn’t a far leap to then make him a bit more of a trickster, an immortal who preys upon the weak by promising them amazing things—always with an unforeseen catch attached—in order to entertain himself while spreading chaos in the world.

From there, I wanted to change up other familiar elements. For example, on Kora’s quest to retrieve her father’s stolen gold, she goes up against siren-like creatures called the Temptresses of Triton, who are women that Triton, son of Poseidon, fell in love with and supposedly turned into watery women when he didn’t want anyone else to have them. So while they function much like normal sirens, they hate men for an entirely unique reason—namely because Triton treated them so terribly.  

And while I loved playing with those elements and adding some other magical surprises to the story, it’s in A Touch of Gold’s upcoming sequel, A Curse of Gold (HarperCollins/Blink, September 2020), where I really take Greek mythology to new levels. As Kora seeks out Dionysius in an attempt to end the curse, it allowed me to introduce readers to new landscapes, like the dangerous island where the great trickster god lives and that’s full of revamped versions of Greek creatures and on to locales full of gorgons, just like Medusa was. Now, in typical Greek mythology, Medusa is the only gorgon, and yet, I came up with a unique way that gorgons grow, spread, and populate an area—which all comes from how Medusa’s story ends originally. Not to mention these gorgons have another special ability—one that combines elements from a few Greek myths to create an entirely new version of the mythology. All the elements were there; I just rearranged and adjusted them.

By doing that, I keep readers guessing. They think they’re about to meet a character or creature they already know, but by adding in a new personality trait, a different motivation, a more in-depth history, or a little bit of magic, I can take the mythology of years ago into a new age. And hopefully someone else will fall in love with Greek mythology and be inspired to go back and read the original myths. Because the way to make the old interesting again is to simply make it new now, which is why it’s so important for writers today to keep exploring and playing with mythologies in order to excite readers and spread a love of different mythologies across the world.

A Curse Of Gold

By: Annie Sullivan

Publisher: HarperCollins/Blink

Release Date: September 22nd, 2020

*GIVEAWAY DETAILS*

One winner will receive a copy of A Curse of Gold (Annie Sullivan) ~ (US Only)

*Click the Rafflecopter link below to enter the giveaway*   

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