The final book in The Chrysomelia Stories will be released on June 1st. Today I am spotlighting the series. Amazon US and Barnes & Noble are having a sale on the first book in the series, Persephone's Orchard, for just 99 cents! I also have a giveaway for you to enter, with US prizes and one Int prize.
Title: Persephone's Orchard
Author: Molly Ringle
Series: The Chrysomelia Stories #1
Genre: YA Fantasy/Mythology
Published: June 28th 2013
The Greek gods never actually existed. Did they? Sophie Darrow finds she was wrong about that assumption when she's pulled into the spirit realm, complete with an Underworld, on her first day at college. Adrian, the mysterious young man who brought her there, simply wants her to taste a pomegranate.
Soon, though she returns to her regular life, her mind begins exploding with dreams and memories of ancient times; of a love between two Greeks named Persephone and Hades. But lethal danger has always surrounded the immortals, and now that she's tainted with the Underworld's magic, that danger is drawing closer to Sophie.
Soon, though she returns to her regular life, her mind begins exploding with dreams and memories of ancient times; of a love between two Greeks named Persephone and Hades. But lethal danger has always surrounded the immortals, and now that she's tainted with the Underworld's magic, that danger is drawing closer to Sophie.
Title: Underworld's Daughter
Author: Molly Ringle
Series: The Chrysomelia Stories #2
Genre: YA Fantasy/Mythology
Published: June 27th 2014
New immortals are being created for the first time in thousands of years thanks to the tree of immortality discovered by Persephone and Hades. But Sophie Darrow is not one of them. Nikolaos, the trickster, has given the last ripe immortality fruit to two others, the reincarnations of the gods Dionysos and Hekate: Tabitha and Zoe, currently Sophie's and Adrian's best friends.
While the disappointed Sophie struggles to remember Hekate and Dionysos from ancient Greece, she must still face her daily life as a mortal university freshman. Tabitha and Zoe have their own struggles as they come to terms with being newly immortal and their own haunting dreams of past lives and loves. The evil committed by Thanatos invades all of them in heartbreaking memories, and worse still, Sophie and her friends know their enemies are determined to kill again. And even the gods can't save everyone.
While the disappointed Sophie struggles to remember Hekate and Dionysos from ancient Greece, she must still face her daily life as a mortal university freshman. Tabitha and Zoe have their own struggles as they come to terms with being newly immortal and their own haunting dreams of past lives and loves. The evil committed by Thanatos invades all of them in heartbreaking memories, and worse still, Sophie and her friends know their enemies are determined to kill again. And even the gods can't save everyone.
Title: Immortal's Spring
Author: Molly Ringle
Series: The Chrysomelia Stories #3
Genre: YA Fantasy/Mythology
Expected Publication: June 1st 2016
Sophie Darrow said yes once to a young man offering a realm of Greek gods and immortality. Now her home has been shattered, and her friends and family pulled along with her as they run from an evil cult and take shelter in the gloomy Underworld. But remembering the life of the original immortals long ago--Persephone, Hades, Hekate, Hermes, and more--may be their key to victory, as well as happiness.
In ancient times too, the murderous cult Thanatos attacked and destroyed nearly all the Greek immortals who sought to bring good to humankind. But those immortals planted seeds in both their realm and ours to ensure their season would someday bloom again. And spring is finally coming.
In ancient times too, the murderous cult Thanatos attacked and destroyed nearly all the Greek immortals who sought to bring good to humankind. But those immortals planted seeds in both their realm and ours to ensure their season would someday bloom again. And spring is finally coming.
Here is a Q&A supplied by Central Avenue Publishing
Q: This novel seems like a detour from your contemporary fiction. Why did you choose to switch genres?
A: True, I've written YA (or NA, more specifically), and I've written paranormal, but I hadn't written a book that was both yet. Even in The Ghost Downstairs, the ghosts are real but are still part of an otherwise ordinary world. So certainly this is much farther into the fantasy realm than my usual. Basically I wrote it because I've loved Greek mythology since I was a kid, and the myth of Persephone and Hades in particular seemed tailor-made for a paranormal romance.
Q: How did you get the idea for the story?
A: This story has been in my head a long, long time. I wrote my first draft of it about 17 years ago. That version was called Letters From Hades, and it's the one that really captivated my family and friends. They still asked me about it even as I wrote other books and got them published. So when I saw the popularity of paranormal romance emerge in the publishing world, including several Persephone/Hades and other Greek-myth stories, I thought I might as well fix up my version and add it to the heap. I gave the novel a complete rewrite, and ended up loving the whole exercise far more than I expected to.
Q: How do you think your background in anthropology and linguistics helped shape this and other works you’ve done?
A: I'm that annoying person who points out, "They wouldn't even be able to understand each other!" in movies involving time travel. So I do make myself consider issues like dialect or language differences. For Persephone's Orchard, that included quandaries like: what do the souls speak in the Underworld? How can they all understand each other? I also tried to find out more about Kiwi dialect and slang, since Adrian is from New Zealand. But I bet I still got some of his usage wrong, and I feel bad about that. For my UKrelated novels, I had British friends read through them and fix things, but I don't actually know any Kiwis to run my manuscripts by. As for anthropology, I did look up information about the Mediterranean in Minoan days so I could sprinkle in some details that might feel realistic. Whether they really are realistic, I cannot be sure--classical archaeology is not my specialty, but it is really cool stuff.
Q: What are your top five favorite books and why?
A: There are countless books I've loved, but I'll list these five because I've re-read them several times and love what they do for me:
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë. It's one of the world's earliest, best, and most enduring examples of a heartfelt, charming first-person narrator. Plus it's a dramatic and satisfying love story.
Les Misérables, Victor Hugo. I re-read it last summer and it overtook my life once again, just as it did the first time or two I read it. I was completely submerged in France in the early 1800s for a while there. But I'll be nice and tell you that you don't have to read the unabridged. Start with an abridged version; then, if you love it, go back in for the unabridged.
A Room with a View, E.M. Forster. Light and lovely and romantic and witty, it's an antidepressant in book form. I wish I could always feel the way I feel when I'm reading A Room with a View.
The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling. Hope that's not cheating, listing a whole series. Sure, it's got plot holes, but I still find the books totally addictive and fun and moving. Great example of literature that can appeal to both kids and adults.
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien. Again, actually a series, or one really big book. But I had such a major fandom phase for this one a few years ago that I would be remiss in not listing it.
Q: And finally: If you could eat the pomegranate, would you?
A: Hah! I would pretend to say that's a difficult question too, but who am I kidding? I don't even avoid spoilers for TV shows and books. In fact, I kind of seek them out. So, yeah, I'd eat it. It'd be cool and instructive to learn about past lives. Now, if the pomegranate showed us our future, then no, I wouldn't eat it. I think people are better off not knowing the future. But knowing the past? That's probably a worthwhile experience on the whole.
A: True, I've written YA (or NA, more specifically), and I've written paranormal, but I hadn't written a book that was both yet. Even in The Ghost Downstairs, the ghosts are real but are still part of an otherwise ordinary world. So certainly this is much farther into the fantasy realm than my usual. Basically I wrote it because I've loved Greek mythology since I was a kid, and the myth of Persephone and Hades in particular seemed tailor-made for a paranormal romance.
Q: How did you get the idea for the story?
A: This story has been in my head a long, long time. I wrote my first draft of it about 17 years ago. That version was called Letters From Hades, and it's the one that really captivated my family and friends. They still asked me about it even as I wrote other books and got them published. So when I saw the popularity of paranormal romance emerge in the publishing world, including several Persephone/Hades and other Greek-myth stories, I thought I might as well fix up my version and add it to the heap. I gave the novel a complete rewrite, and ended up loving the whole exercise far more than I expected to.
Q: How do you think your background in anthropology and linguistics helped shape this and other works you’ve done?
A: I'm that annoying person who points out, "They wouldn't even be able to understand each other!" in movies involving time travel. So I do make myself consider issues like dialect or language differences. For Persephone's Orchard, that included quandaries like: what do the souls speak in the Underworld? How can they all understand each other? I also tried to find out more about Kiwi dialect and slang, since Adrian is from New Zealand. But I bet I still got some of his usage wrong, and I feel bad about that. For my UKrelated novels, I had British friends read through them and fix things, but I don't actually know any Kiwis to run my manuscripts by. As for anthropology, I did look up information about the Mediterranean in Minoan days so I could sprinkle in some details that might feel realistic. Whether they really are realistic, I cannot be sure--classical archaeology is not my specialty, but it is really cool stuff.
Q: What are your top five favorite books and why?
A: There are countless books I've loved, but I'll list these five because I've re-read them several times and love what they do for me:
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë. It's one of the world's earliest, best, and most enduring examples of a heartfelt, charming first-person narrator. Plus it's a dramatic and satisfying love story.
Les Misérables, Victor Hugo. I re-read it last summer and it overtook my life once again, just as it did the first time or two I read it. I was completely submerged in France in the early 1800s for a while there. But I'll be nice and tell you that you don't have to read the unabridged. Start with an abridged version; then, if you love it, go back in for the unabridged.
A Room with a View, E.M. Forster. Light and lovely and romantic and witty, it's an antidepressant in book form. I wish I could always feel the way I feel when I'm reading A Room with a View.
The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling. Hope that's not cheating, listing a whole series. Sure, it's got plot holes, but I still find the books totally addictive and fun and moving. Great example of literature that can appeal to both kids and adults.
The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien. Again, actually a series, or one really big book. But I had such a major fandom phase for this one a few years ago that I would be remiss in not listing it.
Q: And finally: If you could eat the pomegranate, would you?
A: Hah! I would pretend to say that's a difficult question too, but who am I kidding? I don't even avoid spoilers for TV shows and books. In fact, I kind of seek them out. So, yeah, I'd eat it. It'd be cool and instructive to learn about past lives. Now, if the pomegranate showed us our future, then no, I wouldn't eat it. I think people are better off not knowing the future. But knowing the past? That's probably a worthwhile experience on the whole.
Molly Ringle became fascinated with the colorful weirdness of the Greek myths when she was a kid, and after writing several other novels of love and the paranormal, she finally wrote the Persephone-and-Hades story that had been evolving in her head all those years.It turned into a three-book series, much to her own surprise. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and sons, and she honestly loves the rainy climate there.
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