Guest Post and Giveaway Thirteen Nights (Divine Temptation #1) by Sabrina Garie

Published: December 6th, 2013

Description:

Book one in the Divine Temptation series.

Annie’s always been different. An empathic Amazon, she hides her emotional anomaly beneath legendary fighting skills. Not wanting to pass on her genetic disorder, she’s always avoided the Thirteen Nights Ritual—the Greek pantheon warriors’ annual breeding rite. Months from thirty, she’s duty-bound to participate. When she meets Tai, who inflames her body and nurtures the gentleness she’s had to keep secret, thirteen nights of pleasure don’t seem nearly enough.

As a half human, Tai has survived by being smarter and more lethal than his brethren. While the male warriors accept him for his achievements, the Amazons never give him a second look. Until Annie, whose smile is warm and real and whose body shudders with desire—for him. Determined to have her, he hacks into the Thirteen Nights database and rearranges the pairings to make Annie his partner.

But Tai’s actions are forbidden, subject to death. To stay together, they must take on the Greek pantheon.

GUEST POST

Amazons: Myth or History

We need the Amazons. Whether myth or history, these women warriors stand as important symbols of female freedom and power—our ability to fight, to earn our own income and keep it, to control our sexuality, to govern among many others. Growing up, I had always believed the Amazons were the place where non-traditional women landed and could live as their true self. 

Because I need Amazons to exist, I’ll argue that they are part of history. Women warriors exist throughout history across many cultures. It is not a big jump to believe that at some point, a group banded together and created a life for women who wanted or needed to live outside societally constrained gender roles. 

However, what details we know about the Amazons are probably more myth than history. 

Let’s look at a couple of example I had to work through when writing Thirteen Nights. 

Where do little Amazons come from? 

Women living only among other women in ancient times did leave the sticky challenge of procreation—the conception of little Amazons. 

Greek texts note two man methods. In the first, the Amazons enslaved some of the males who lost to them in battle and then mated with them once or twice a year. The second is an annual visit to their neighbors—the all-male Gargarean warriors—to do the deed. Amazons kept the female children. Male babies were either given back, killed or left to the wilderness, or so the range of stories go. One myth suggested the Amazons and Gargareans would spend thirteen nights together, as that was believed to give the greatest chance of conception. (Now you know where my story title comes from.) 

The Myth of Antiope and Theseus 

Very myths or histories of individual Amazons exist. The exception is the myth of Antiope and Theseus. It’s a short sad story, as myths usually are. Theseus, King of Athens aided his companion Hercules in his labor to steal the girdle of Hippolyta, the Amazon Queen. During the quest, Theseus kidnapped the Amazon princess, Antiope, who fell in love with him, betrayed the Amazons to become his wife and bore him a child. During a rescue attempt by her sister, Antiope was accidently killed. Or Theseus may have killed her, as he goes on to marry Phaedra after he kills the Minotaur. Greek literature gives us much to ponder and many different ways to draw the story. 

Antiope got her own myth because she is the only Amazon recorded in Greek lore to have taken a husband, which was just the kind of story I could not resist. Thirteen NIghts is an updated version of Antiope and Theseus. Needless to say, no one is killed in Thirteen Nights and Annie and Tai get their happy ending. But they have to shatter the rules to do it, Tai has to talk Annie into it and of course the Amazon Elders try to prevent it. 

So, what do you think? Are Amazons real or do we just need them to be?

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About the author:

Sabrina Garie is on a journey to create the most kick-ass heroine romance fiction has ever known and the hero who can take her. A believer that big, audacious goals spice up life, she relies on coffee, red wine and laughter to make those goals (and her characters) come alive.

When not at the computer, she wrangles vegetables and extra helpings of homework into her fashion-loving progeny, kowtows to a fat cat and reads, a lot.

Since it is more fun to travel in packs, come along for the ride. 

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