The Priestess and the Slave

While I seem to have been exhausted lately in the wake of submitting the thesis and getting over a dose of winter "flu", Jenny has been plugging on (despite her own winter bug) with completing her short historical novel, The Priestess and the Slave, to be published later this year by Hadley Rille Books. This project is moving quickly now - I've seen a first mock-up of the cover, just this morning.

It's a very strong piece of writing: vivid, gritty, and emotionally moving. Set in Classical Greece in the 5th century BC, it conveys the extraordinary history of the time through the eyes of two narrators - a Delphic priestess deeply embroiled in the political turmoil earlier in the century, and a young slavewoman, some decades later, living through the terrible plague in Athens and the seemingly endless war against the invincible hoplites of Sparta. It's a tale of honour and dishonour, of love, pain, madness, and endurance.

That's all I'll say - no spoilers from me - but I hope I've whetted some appetites. I expect the book will attract big-name support: people are going to be damn impressed when they read it. It should lead to larger-scale projects in the future, but one step at a time.