by Kate Quinn
I’d like to take this opportunity to thank my colleagues on The H Team for being so awesome and supportive through this process, with a special shout-out for Kate Quinn, who took on the Herculean task of editing this book. More than that, she’s our overseer, the one that thinks of everything, the one that can throw you a brilliant line when you’re struggling with a turn of phrase, the one that encourages you when you’re going through the “my story is awful” phase, the one makes that awful story so much better with a word of advice and a nudge in the right direction. While it’s true to say that all of us played our part in writing A Song of War, there would be no Songs without Kate. She’s an absolute legend.
I need also to shout out to Maria Janecek for test-reading Agamemnon’s story and giving me some great pointers. Cheers, Maria—you’re a superstar.
And finally, thank you to my wife, Sally, and my daughter, Sam. Sally, for putting up with me for so long, and Sam, for not yet being at the age where she sees me as an embarrassing dad (that day fast approaches, I fear).
And thanks so much to you for reading A Song of War.
— Russ Whitfield
The Bow by Libbie Hawker
Although I’ve written many books set in the ancient world (as I write this author’s note, I’m at work on my ninth, tenth, and eleventh novels—a trilogy—with bronze-age settings) this is the first time I’ve written about ancient Greece or Troy. Ancient Greece is fascinating, of course, and full of the kind of rich, exciting history that makes for great fiction. But I’ve always been so drawn to Egypt and the Levant that I simply never got around to Greece.
I wasn’t originally on the Song of War team. I was a late addition, brought into the project when another author had to bow out due to a scheduling conflict. (I think I’ve become the industry go-to when you need somebody to write ancient historical fiction really fast.) My lack of familiarity with the setting, and with the history behind the Iliad and the Odyssey, made me a little hesitant to accept. After all, I’d be working alongside authors who are well-known for their work set in classical antiquity. I would definitely be the odd man out. But I do love a challenge, and once I learned that I’d be writing the part of the story where both Paris and Achilles are killed, I was excited to begin. I love a good death scene.
The other authors’ deep familiarity with the source material and with ancient Greece in general left me feeling a bit intimidated from the start. I had only a cursory knowledge of Homer’s works—thank God for Cliffs Notes, or I never would have finished my portion of the story on time. The intimidation factor only increased after I read Christian Cameron’s story. It was touching and subtle and haunting... and because the events in my story took place just days after Christian’s, I had to be very familiar with what he’d written and play off the choices he’d made. I confess I had a deer-in-headlights moment after reading his piece for the first time. All I could think was, “That’s a tough act to follow.”
Eventually, though, I got out of my own way and got to work. I soon realized that I really enjoyed both of the point-of-view characters I’d picked to carry my story. Immersing myself in their struggles helped me skate past my own concerns and do the best work I could, even if I wasn’t very familiar with the setting.
As a group, we kicked around several ideas about Achilles’ final scenes—how they might play out, what we wanted to accomplish with his character. We determined that we could work with Penthesilea, the Amazon warrior-queen whom Achilles kills and then falls in love with immediately afterward, or we could exclude her altogether.
I chose to keep the Amazon in the story, as her death provided a useful way for the reader to witness Achilles’ final unraveling—his rejection of the hyper-masculine, heroic image that was thrust upon him by the expectations of others and the embrace of his emotional (and now broken) self.
Philoctetes was a pure pleasure to write. He struck a chord with me, more than most of my characters do. His older age gave me the chance to explore the cynicism and matter-of-factness that comes from close involvement with a long, drawn-out war. My husband is a veteran of the Iraq War, and some of his feelings about military life and conflict helped me shape Philoctetes’ response to the Trojan War. Additionally, Philoctetes’ unrequited love for Achilles made him exactly the type of hopelessly tragic personality I always enjoy exploring.
There isn’t anything in the source material to indicate that Philoctetes may have been homosexual. But our group decided to paint Paris as a real sleaze, the kind of guy whose face just seems to invite a thorough punching. So I wanted to give Paris’ death a lot of weight. I wanted to make payback feel just and deeply satisfying when it came. That meant I needed to give Philoctetes a particularly compelling reason to strike Paris down—something more emotional than “You’ve got the magic bow of Heracles, so go shoot that Trojan, buddy.”
Once I hit on the idea of giving Philoctetes a passionate love for Achilles, I could envision a suitably satisfying death scene for Paris. There was one tidbit of mythology I could use to support a one-sided love affair, too: Achilles sold a captive into slavery on the island of Lemnos, and Lemnos was where Philoctetes was stranded for many years, after suffering a snake bite that wouldn’t fully heal. I simply tinkered with the timeline a little and had Achilles visit Lemnos near the beginning of the war instead of near its end.
I welcomed the opportunity to write a central, even heroic, figure who didn’t fit the pattern of heroism we’ve all grown to accept. Gay men are seldom allowed to be heroes in fiction. They are rarely depicted in a serious light, rarely allowed to play important parts in story or in history. All too often they are cast in supporting roles, as the best friends of heterosexual heroines—or as comic relief, where stereotypical affectations are played for a laugh. I was happy to write a character who didn’t pander to many contemporary readers’ notions of what a gay man “should” be like. Philoctetes is a rough, no-nonsense fighter with long experience of war. He’s not squeamish about life’s unpleasantries. He is lauded for his considerable skill with the bow, and both his personality and his sexuality are respected by all the other characters save for Paris. No one whispered behind their hands, “But, you know, he likes other men.” He was simply himself, a man with many more facets than his sexuality alone.
I don’t often write from male points of view. There’s a large market for women’s historical fiction featuring female characters and focused on issues that typically resonate more with women than men. The majority of my fiction is intended for that market, so naturally the majority of my lead characters are women. But I very much enjoyed the chance to flex my writer’s muscles a little and ride around inside the head of a character who is so different from me. After having such a great time with Philoctetes, I fully intend to write more male leads in the future.
All in all, working with these excellent authors on A Song of War has been a great experience—one I hope to repeat someday—allowing me to challenge myself as a writer and to learn from some of the best in the field of ancient historical fiction. Will I write more fiction set in ancient Greece? Maybe. We’ll see if Egypt releases its hold on me long enough to try it.
— Libbie Hawker
The Horse by Vicky Alvear Shecter
My first choice was not to write as Odysseus. I mean, come on—who in their right mind would willingly take on such a bold, iconic, and beloved figure of mythic history? The hubris! But as we all negotiated and worked out our parts, somehow it ended with me on the shore, smiling uneasily at this charming trickster, and asking him for help to tell his version of things.
I’ve always loved the wily one. As a docent at the Carlos Museum of Antiquities, I stop at any artifact that “might” relate to Odysseus and hold forth about his antics, so maybe it was meant to be. To school children, I talk about Odysseus as a symbol of the Greek ethos moving from celebration of “brawn” (physical prowess as embodied by Achilles) to a respect for “brains” (Odysseus) and use of intelligence to get out of
tight spots.
Imagine my surprise to learn that some ancient thinkers reviled Odysseus for exactly this. One even called him “the worst’ of those who fought at Troy,” in opposition to Socrates, who called Odysseus a “wondrous man.” (From Villain to Hero). Why would anyone think badly of Odysseus, I wondered, when he was the hero of the Odyssey?
But then I remembered human nature: changes in ethos are often painful for those living through them. The ancient conservative class, I imagined, probably worried a great deal about a dilution of manly honor and pride if one were to put Odysseus on the same platform as Achilles. Good old-fashioned warrior strength was the pinnacle of heroism, not someone who talked to himself, sometimes ran from armed conflict when necessary, and used trickery to save himself and his men.
My section involved the stealing of the Palladion. Imagine my surprise to reread in the Iliad that golden Diomedes—second only to Achilles in bravery and glory—got all the credit for the theft. From there, it became easy to work out the dynamic: Diomedes represented, like Achilles, the pinnacle of male greatness—fearlessness, pride, great strength, manly beauty, and a preoccupation with honor. Odysseus represented the new ethos: think things through carefully and believe that there is no shame in outwitting your opponent and using trickery as long as you get the job done.
I also played with Odysseus’ legendary love for his wife and family in the development of his most famous trick to end the seemingly endless war.
As always, I am extremely grateful to be included in this project. I deeply admire the works of every one of the authors in this collection. I’m especially grateful to Kate Quinn, who herded us into completion, and for her wise counsel in the development of Odysseus’ narrative. The brilliant Kate, as her fans already well know, is a miracle worker.
— Vicky Alvear Shecter
The Fall by SJA Turney
I write Roman novels. I mean, I vary here and there and explore new eras, but my heart and soul are anchored in the Roman world. So when we discussed, at the conclusion of A Year of Ravens, the possibility of tackling the Trojan War, it was a natural choice for me to grab the tale of Aeneas. After all, Aeneas is the bridge between Troy and Rome. In Homeric myth, he is a prince of Troy and a noble hero, if something of a peripheral character with little in the way of excitement. But Virgil, in seeking to build on the idea of this last hero of Troy being the progenitor of the Roman world, all to please his emperor, Augustus, created a new tale of this man: the Aeneid. And with minimal overlap, the Aeneid begins with two chapters on the war and the fall of Troy. Bingo. I had my main source.
It was only after leaping up and down, knocking over my Lego Imperial Shuttle in the process, and shouting, “Ooh, ooh... me, me, me... I want Aeneas. Please... AENEAS!” that I then realized I had kind of accidentally landed myself with the climactic and all-important fall of Troy. You know, the iconic “Greeks pouring out of the wooden horse” and all that. Moreover, being the last of the seven tales, I set myself the task of tying in any scenes or characters that might fit from other stories, in order to improve the connectivity and flow of the whole. Cassandra, Odysseus, and Diomedes, the young boy with the horse toy, the priest—it’s all dragged in on purpose.
Aeneas is, at least in my portrayal, a very different character to the others in the book, both Greek and Trojan. This is deliberate in most ways but probably also partially a symptom of having drawn his tale from the works of a different ancient writer to the others. They have their Homer. I have my Virgil. And having spoken in depth with my friend Gordon Doherty, who is currently researching the Hittite world, and then with Christian Cameron, Kate Quinn, and the other fab folks in this collaboration, it became important to me to portray Troy as something very different. It could not be the Greek-style world that is the natural product of Homer, for Troy was a subject of the Hittite empire, for all its semi-autonomy. It owed fealty to Hattusa and nothing at all to the powers in Achaea, so I sought to find a reason why the other Trojans would refer to Zeus and Athena and Hera, and so on, when that should not be natural in their world. The answer came simply: the Hittite world is now in thorough decline, and with their fading, Greek culture is on the rise in its influence. Thus I had Troy as an old Hittite-style city now succumbing to Greek trends, even while they fight those same trendsetters, and had Aeneas constantly lamenting the Greek-ifying of his world and clinging to ancient names.
This allowed me to make Aeneas old-fashioned, holier-than-thou, anachronistic, and saddened by the inevitable progress of his world into a Greek future. It also gave me a reason for Aeneas to accept that he has a future—a destiny to save the old world—and to try for it rather than simply go down fighting. The strange dichotomies produced by the worlds warring in his soul almost tear him apart and, I think, make him three dimensional rather than A.N.Other Trojan hero.
My basis for Troy is a composite of several reconstructions while my basis for the temple atop the citadel, which does not conform to Greek standards, is the Syro-Hittite temple of Ain Dara in Syria, which owes more to Egyptian culture than to Greek. My arms, armor, and clothing are torn from various references, but most notably the work of Peter Connolly.
As in the previous collaboration, in which I was involved with many of the same writers, I owe a great deal of the finished tale to my co-authors, whose constant bouncing about of ideas set off spark after spark in my imagination, and who solved more than one problem for me. Anyone who kept abreast of the production of this book on social media will probably be aware of the “problem of the damn ships.” The nature, location, and fate—even the very existence of such a fleet—was hammered out over many weeks and finally only settled on after the first round of edits. The ship issue is the prime example of how the whole team could come together to solve a problem. A special nod here has to go to Christian Cameron for his impressive knowledge of ancient Greek naval detail. The idea of the ships actually being sunk beneath the waves, which initially dumbfounded me, came from him.
Aeneas, then, got to see the end of the tale. Amid seemingly endless death, destruction, and fire, it was important to try and end the collection on a positive note. And that is possible because, of all the survivors of the Trojan war, Aeneas is one of very few (can he be the only?) hero or heroine who actually comes out well in the end. I suppose Odysseus, too, and he deserves it because he is clearly cool as a freezer-box full of cucumbers. And that, of course, is why Odysseus and Aeneas have their closing scene. Aeneas, then, can take the very heart of Troy with his small group of companions, face terrible dangers and ordeals, but can end up on the shores of Italy with a destiny that will produce descendants who died in flames in the first H Team collaboration, and who died by the Celtic sword in the second. Nice to see these things come full circle, eh?
— SJA Turney
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
CHRISTIAN CAMERON (also Miles Cameron) is a military veteran and a lifelong reenactor and history addict. He lives in Toronto, Canada, with his wife and daughter and one cat. He writes three to five books a year, mostly about history. Christian can be found on his website at www.hippeis.com.
LIBBIE HAWKER writes historical and literary fiction featuring complex characters and rich details of time and place. She is the author of more than a dozen novels, most of which are set in the distant past. Although the majority of her books are self-published, she also partners with Lake Union Publishing on select titles. She lives in the San Juan Islands of Washington State with her husband and two naughty cats. Visit Libbie Hawker’s web site: libbiehawker.com.
GLYN ILIFFE is the author of five novels about Odysseus. He studied English and Classics at Reading University, where he developed a passion for Greek mythology. Well traveled, Glyn has visited nearly forty countries, trekked in the Himalayas, spent six weeks hitchhiking across North America, and had his collarbone broken by a bull in Pamplona. He is married with two daughters and lives in Leicestershire, England. He is currently working on the concluding book in his Adventures
of Odysseus series. Find out more at www.glyniliffe.com
KATE QUINN is the national bestselling author of the Empress of Rome saga and the Borgia Chronicles. Born in southern California, she attended Boston University, where she earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Classical Voice while writing tales of ancient Rome to escape the New England winter. All her books have been translated into multiple languages. She and her husband now live in Maryland with two black dogs named Caesar and Calpurnia, and her interests include opera, action movies, cooking, and the Boston Red Sox. For more information, visit her at www.katequinnauthor.com.
VICKY ALVEAR SHECTER is the award-winning author of historical fiction for young adults and adults. She also writes about ancient history and mythology for younger readers. Her novels include, Cleopatra’s Moon and Curses and Smoke: A Novel of Pompeii; her series for kids, Secrets of the Ancient Gods, explores Egyptian, Greek/Roman, and Norse mythology. She has served as a long-time docent at the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Antiquities at Emory University, where she loves to share her passion for ancient history with visitors and school children. She lives in Atlanta with her husband, two almost-grown children, two weird cats, and one lazy dog. Visit her at www.vickyalvearshecter.com.
STEPHANIE THORNTON has been obsessed with history’s forgotten women since she was twelve. She is the critically acclaimed author of four novels about infamous women from the ancient world: The Secret History, Daughter of the Gods, The Tiger Queens, and The Conqueror’s Wife. She is a high school history teacher by day and lives in Alaska with her husband, daughter, and two fat cats, where she spends her free time hiking, traveling, and running. Visit her website at www.stephanie-thornton.com.
