Julia Rachel Barrett

Monday Mythology with Julia Rachel Barrett

August 16th, 2010

Happy Monday Readers!

I want to welcome author Julia Rachel Barret to the Backseat to talk about Mythology. Books have been playing with this for some time and most of us heave flashbacks to names we remember learning about in school, but we are here to hear about how it ties in with some great naughty reads.

-TK

Persephone, the Greek goddess of spring and rebirth, was the daughter of Demeter, Mother Earth Goddess, and Zeus, king of the gods of Mount Olympus. The story of Persephone’s abduction by Hades, the God of the Underworld, is traditionally referred to as the rape of Persephone, whose other name is Kore, which means maiden. The young maiden, out innocently picking flowers, was dragged by Hades into the Underworld to be his wife and become Queen of the Dead. Without the goddess of spring to bring about the change of seasons and rebirth, the earth was covered by snow and the people went hungry.

So great was her mother’s grief at Persephone’s disappearance, and such was the suffering of mankind, that Zeus heard their cries. He sent his messenger, Hermes, to deliver Persephone from the Underworld. But the Fates had decreed that anyone who ate a single thing while in the Underworld could not be redeemed. Hades tricked Persephone into eating six pomegranate seeds. Six months out of the year, Persephone must live in the Underworld. We have winter. When she rises to our world, we have rebirth and new growth, we have spring.

The myth of Persephone is the basis of my futuristic science fiction series, Daughters of Persephone. Many centuries from now, mankind has exhausted the earth. Each generation fights over scarce resources. A secret cadre of scientists from around the globe gathers together, hoping to save mankind through eugenics. They develop a line of female warriors and leaders who come to be known as Empresses. Even then, these Empresses fail to save us from ourselves, all but one, the Empress Ya. She is the first Empress to see her way through time.

The Empress Ya travels into the future, bringing back the technology needed to build vessels that will carry her followers far from earth, to a new home in another solar system. The Empress Ya and her followers build a new colony and a new home for the human race on the planet they aptly name, Persephone, for they have come out of the darkness and into the light. From Persephone, humans spread throughout their new corner of the galaxy, led by a line of Empresses and Women of the Blood, as they come to be known – women who are the remnants of the eugenics program.

My futuristic science fiction romance, Daughters of Persephone, Book One Exile, Book Two Return, picks up the story three thousand years after the first colony, Persephone, has been established. It follows the saga of the new Empress, Aja, and her sisters, Ennat and Tem. Books three and four, Reborn and The Red Demon, chronicle the challenges that face another Empress, Issa, born three thousand years after Aja’s death, and her mentor, Aja’s sister Tem, also known as The Red Demon.