The Mysteries, A Novel of Ancient Eleusis

(Available February 2010)

The Mysteries is an outgrowth of my extended journey through Greece, which I documented in my non-fiction work Oedipus on a Pale Horse. Once I had completed that narrative, I continued my research into ancient Greece, and came under the influence of Herodotus' The Histories, the last few sections of which are his account of the Persian invasion of Greece in 480/79 BC. I was struck by the influence he thought the goddess Demeter had on the outcome.

When I finished Oedipus on a Pale Horse, I decided against returning to my day job as an astronautical engineer and instead moved to an old abandoned home my grandfather had built with his own hands in Carlsbad, New Mexico. A friend of mine, who is also a novelist, suggested that we each write a novel and share/critique each other's work. Since I was so caught up in Herodotus, she suggested that I write an historical novel set in that time period.

Then, out of the blue, I received an offer for an engineering contract job with an aerospace company in Philadelphia. I could make a lot of money in just a few months, and since I'd been out of work for three years, I could use it. I took a business trip to Philadelphia in April 1996. I had to stay over for a week with nothing to do, so I thought that would be a good time to outline my novel.

And that's what I did. I sat in my hotel room most of the week with an occasional excursion to the King of Prussia shopping mall. At the end of the week, I had a chapter outline and the major characters. But this was just for the first two volumes. Somewhere into the planning, I realized that I had to write a third volume, so it became a trilogy.

© 2010 David Sheppard. Site created by Artstudios.