I have found that place is foundational to my writing (and living). Here will be some reflections on how place influenced my stories.

When I started the novel Moon of the Goddess, I knew where the captured princess Thalassai was from but not where her captors called home or why they took her.

Thalassai was from the ancient Greek city of Tiryns on the south shore of the Peloponnesus. This city is not as well known as others like Sparta and Corinth, but it is the place where Herakles was based when he performed his labours of repentance.

To figure out where the kidnapper came from, I picked up a used travel guide for Greece and flipping through it I found the Acheron Valley. Between the mountains and the ocean on the west coast of Greece is a fairly narrow strip of cultivated and inhabited land. The Acheron Valley is defined by a river that flows from the base of a mountain. In ancient times, it was thought to be a branch of the River Styx and was the place where Homer had Odysseus meet the shade of the prophet Tiresias. He thought there was a shrine there. I had to visit.

The modern city is called Parga, not on the map of western tourists, but full of Italians when I visited. There are two hills and some have argued that three thousand years ago the river flowed between them.  One of the hills has the city, in ancient times called Ephyra. The other is crowned by the remains of a medieval church. But beneath the church is a chamber. Some argue that it was a farmer’s storage for grain. Others that it was a shrine. On one wall, there is a crack that is exactly like the cracks in the cliffs that shelter the Acheron River.

Walking along the river shadowed by mountains and standing in that ancient place underground inspired me with possibilities. This might well have been s the shrine of an ancient earth goddess. The hill might well have housed a community of priestesses.

And the city on the other hill? I believe that at one time, they acknowledged the earth goddess without question, but the Olympians were rising. The older prince of the city wants to shift direction. That’s why Thalassai was kidnapped. My time in Parga opened me to this beautiful place and to the complications of a story set in Bronze Age Greece. You can delve into the place and time and story in Moon of the Goddess available from me and on Smashwords.