Just a few pictures for laughs that got shared, like a lot. Zeus’ attitude:
The sleeping mummy, with which we can all relate:
And the kitty on the recliner (anaklintro):
And one from Twitter
Viral Posts from Our Facebook Page for No Good Reason
Category: The Now
I’m Thankful For All of You
This holiday is US-only, but why not use it as an excuse to send out a warm and fuzzy message?
I’m very grateful to be living in a time where I can get such immediate feedback and meaningful connection with readers. I’m certain I wouldn’t be doing this if it were any other time. The tools we have with modern technology were considered science fiction just a few decades ago.
You have shown massive support from all over the world, from countries I only hope to visit one day, and from people that I wouldn’t have connected with if it weren’t for our mutual love of story.
I promise to carry on creating things that I love and that you find interesting.
George Saoulidis
Attica is on Fire ?
The area around Athens has been on fire since last night, and the death toll keeps rising. It’s quite bad.
We’ve tried to help out a bit with donating pharmaceuticals that are needed (we own a pharmacy.)
We’ll be sending all proceeds from our sales this month to local disaster relief efforts.
Thank you.
Pay Tribute to Our Corporate Overlords With the Prime Day Deals
Prime day is here, and we all have to buy something.
Find Prime Day Deals on Amazon.com
Find Prime Day Deals on Amazon.co.uk
What can you get, you may ask?
You can get a smart lightbulb that will refuse to turn on unless you have paid your subscription!
You can start the smart home of your dreams, the stepping stone to a horrible existence where you scream at the unresponsive devices that have gotten you locked outside (hopefully) or worse, inside your home with no way out!
You can get a cute little wiretap for your home that speaks! It can also provide evidence to court in case it is needed to prove that you did, in fact, abuse your wife before she murdered you with the steak knife you got as a wedding gift!
You can get a smart babycam with unplugged exploits so that paedophiles can watch your cuddly little baby!
You can get a smart TV that watches you back while you sleep on the couch, tracks your viewing habits and reports them all in neat little packages back to ad agencies!
This is one we actually suggest you get, the Audible deal:
Seriously, that’s the only offer that’s actually good enough to get immediately. And perhaps a Kindle so you can read our stories in comfort (We got a Kindle Fire 10):
That’s all. Go buy something. Not the Kindle Unlimited deal, we don’t offer our titles in that (it requires exclusivity.)
Here’s What Data We Collect About You, and What We Do Not
Long story short, Europe has a new law regarding personal data. You can read about its long-term impact on this Wired article.
But in simple terms, it means two things:
- We have to explain what we do with the data we collect.
- And we have to give people the right to be forgotten.
Now, we walk a fine line here. We’re constantly in a catch-22. On one hand, we do use all these products from the large corporations, like the Amazon platform, gmail delivery, Google Analytics. They are tools that open up immense possibilities and can make a small business rival larger ones.
But on the other hand, they do not respect your privacy. And we know that. Now, under the GDPR, these same corporations like Facebook and Google need to abide by these laws for their European customers.
You may not be located in the EU, but it doesn’t matter. These are laws and rights that should be enforced globally, and we plan to adhere to them.
So, here it is:
- With the email data we collect, we simply use them to provide you best with our new products on the shop that you use. For example, if you’re a Kobo shopper, you’ll get an extra email telling you about some sale going on that might interest you. The mailing service does track opens and clicks per email. That’s all. We don’t have your name, we don’t have your buying habits, we don’t even know if you went through with buying the thing.
- The mailing service we use is called Mailerlite. It’s located in the EU so all GDPR laws are followed by them as well. The service tracks opens, locations, click activity of every email subscriber. Your right-to-be-forgotten is valued and you can use it directly with them.
- With the customer data on our shop, we simply use them to complete the transaction, which is delivering you the digital files of the products you purchased.
For now the purchase asks for too much personal information, we will soon limit that to the bare essentials.Our Checkout process now asks for just the email and username. - The right-to-be-forgotten can be used at any time, you can simply email us at mythographystudios@gmail.com and request to be purged from all databases.
- We do not use DRM so your habits cannot be tracked by us or the corporations that we are partnered with.
- This website uses cookies that can see whether you’re a repeat visitor or not.
- This website uses Google Analytics that can anonymously track a lot of data about you, even things like screen resolution and operating system. There’s no real way to turn this off and we just use the service to see from which country people come from. (Update April 2018. GA has complied to GDPR and has offered a tool with which we can delete all stored data about a user.)
- The outgoing affiliate links to stores such as Amazon contain a 7-day tracking cookie that does track your buying habits and gives all your customer information to Amazon. We have no access to that data. You can avoid that by browsing on the store by yourself through a search of your own and locating the product.
- The payment gateway Paypal does not send your personal data or credit card details to us when you complete a purchase through the store. That said, they do track everything you do themselves and you should contact them if you want to know more.
- The Facebook Oauth login is there for ease of use. It connects a user and allows him/her to login with us. The connection doesn’t transfer personal details to us from your Facebook profile. But Facebook tracks all such activity, so again, take it up with them.
That’s all up to the point of writing this post, we’ll update it with others as they come up.
I Give You Permission To Have a Black Achilles In Your Story
Here’s something that should put your mind at ease:
I, George Saoulidis, give you permission to have a black/asian/latinx/whatever Achilles in your story. I also retroactively give you permission to have any possible combination of skin colour/sexuality/hero name from the Greek epics.
How the fuck can I possibly give permission for something like that, you might ask?
Exactly.
That’s my point. The same way that it’s nobody’s business to give you permission to do something like this, nobody can stop you from doing it either.
The Greek epics do not belong to me, you, or any other Greek in the world. They belong to everybody. So much so that the words “public domain” are too puny to describe them. They’re infused into our culture, shaped the very pathways in our brains. They have inspired endless creators for literal millennia (pause and let that sink in for a moment.)
So, do you want to take a popular myth and make it your own? Are you inspired by Odysseus or Achilles or Zeus and want to see yourself in their shoes, and you also happen to not be white and male? Do you want to cosplay as them, write about them, make films and games and VR experiences about them? Do you want to create and have found inspiration in the most influential and badass mythology of all time?
By all means, go for it.
That won’t mean that I’ll like your story. It won’t mean I’ll spend money on your story. If it objectively sucks, I’ll happily tear you a new one. Or worse, I’ll just ignore it. But if the story is good, if your vision is great, if your interpretation is modern and touches the souls of those around you, then go for it.
Nobody’s stopping you. Not me. Certainly not Homer.
Mythographers we Love: String Demons
What if Lady Gaga attended a Greek country fair? What if a Greek folk song steps into the realm of heavy metal?
You’d get String Demons, and their new album Rise of Strings.
Konstantinos and Lydia Boudounis are doing their own thing and remixing from all over the soundscape.
You can get their album from all major services, iTunes, Apple Music, Spotify, Google Play, Deezer, Tidal:
I especially like their “Pirates” music piece. It’s not on the album but you can listen to it on Youtube:
100 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books to Read in a Lifetime
Amazon has a list of the year’s best books. What we care about is the Sci-fi list, so here it is:
Click to see the list on Amazon
I’ve already bought Oathbringer and Artemis.
Of the rest, Persepolis Rising is definitely on my list. David Wong’s “What the Hell Did I Just Read” is also on there, I loved the last book.
Ann Leckie has no chance of ever getting my time, ever again.
The Book of Dust is getting passed around all the time in my social media echo chamber, so I’ll give it a shot.
What else should I add to my TBR pile?
Glitch Santa
They’re Coming to Town
You better watch out for airstrikes. You better not cry, when your buddy dies. You better not pout, when your house gets levelled. I’m telling you, they’re here and they don’t like you.
At all.
They’re making a list of captives, and they’re crosschecking them with our handy little check-ins and DNA databases.
They’re gonna find out who’s been naughty in their lives and who’s nice and stupid to a fault.
They’re coming to town.
They see you when you’re sleeping at night. They know when you’re awake in terror. They know if you’ve been bad or good, so no matter what you do it makes no difference at all.
You better watch out for airstrikes. Cause they like them a lot. You better not cry, when your family dies, cause you’re next on the red dot.
A Course Correction as the Year 2017 Comes to an End
This is a short update on our future. Things have changed in the publishing world, and we’ve grown a lot these past couple of years.
We’re reviewing what we’ve done and what we haven’t done. We needed to, cause there’s now 5000 of you.
ZOMG, what?
Yup. Five. Thousand. Mythographers. How awesome is that?
In short:
- The serialized format that was popular 2 years ago is gone now. So we’re revamping some series into the classic trilogy format. Namely, Maniai Case Files and Heartbreaker. Expect those to be fattened up, you’ll get an email when that happens. If you delete the file from your ereader and redownload you’ll get the new version.
- We’re focusing on print editions. People seem to still like paper books, go figure! We’ve started making these available to you, first title to become available will be The Impossible Quest of Hailing a Taxi on Christmas Eve, very soon. Like this week, soon.
- Upcoming titles and draft chapters are up on Patreon. If you want the polished stuff, do nothing and shop on Amazon or the other retailers from us. But if you want to be in all the crazy, read draft chapters, give feedback and get heard, get on Patreon and open the bags of Aeolus.
- Audiobooks are here to stay. We love audiobooks, and some of you like them too. We’ll keep bringing titles in audio, with some of the novels slotted for production early 2018.
- You seem to really like the omnibus, Myth Gods Tech. It was an afterthought for us but it seems to be quite popular. Maybe it’s the big letters or something. We’ll update it soon with our new content and keep it DLC enabled, meaning that you can redownload it and it will contain the updated version. If you bought it, there’s no added cost, ever.
- We’re consolidating our social media channels. The most active accounts are on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. If you’re on there, follow us so you get all the new stuff and the offers. If you want to hang out, we also have a chat room on Discord (Unmoderated, probably NSFW.)
- We’ve started new partnerships with excellent artists in various fields. Narrators, illustrators (check out Antune Sketch.)
- We messed up the Mystery Loot Chest but it was funny and you seemed to like it, so we’re keeping it. It was a 2 a.m. brain fart that worked out nicely. We’re giving a hint on the Loot Chest page on what to expect inside. It will always be an unpublished short story, taking place somewhere near our other stories. For now it’s the same first chest, but we’ll let you know when it updates.
- We’re ditching Kindle Unlimited, or Kindle Select. We know some people really like Amazon’s Unlimited offer, but it requires exclusivity and we just can’t do that. The world is big, bigger than just the US. We tried it out, it didn’t fit our goals and now we’re rolling everything out of it. For non KU members this changes nothing. For KU members, well, we can’t do anything unless the exclusivity clause is lifted. Boo hoo. Send your woes to Amazon in email format.
- We’ve launched official torrents. “You what? Really?” Yes, really. Read the page if you want to find out why we’re doing that.
What to expect in 2018?
Expect more Nanodaemons, more Muses and the zany new series Cyberpink. Expect some titles to be tightened up and published into trilogies. Now that we’ve gotten excellent feedback from you, we can focus our efforts in stories that you like.
Make sure you’re in the Certified Mythographers so don’t miss an email.
