The Boy is Back - and he's not alone!

He’s now “in Two Heads”, and part of a trilogy. But Themistokles' story of involvement in the Olympics of 432 BCE and how he got there is the same. Back in 2012, I believed his and Suzanne's novel was a one-off, but they had other ideas! As time went on, Themistokles kept ‘telling’ me bits of his later life. At first, I just wrote them down as separate incidents. Then Suzanne began to do the same, and gradually I had another novel. Then a third. So I may not have been posting here for a while, but I have been ‘listening’ and writing, rewriting, researching and, until last March, travelling.

Then, around this time last year, by chance I saw a tweet from Caroline Lawrence (@CarolineLawrenc, millions-selling author of children’s books set in Ancient Rome, and Athens) about The Boy with Two Heads. It said, “Ooh! Another #timeslip to #Athens novel for kids! Written by @JuliaMNewsome in 2012, this one has lots about the Olympic Games. I’m loving it so far!” And there was a picture of my book. I was thrilled! (Although The Boy was not written for kids under 12, nor is only about Athens.)

from the Amazon web site

Caroline’s tweet gave me a boost. Even though her books are for a different age category, she is a world-wide best-selling writer (carolinelawrence.com). So her interest and kind encouragement had me thinking seriously about naming the new stories, polishing them up and perhaps publishing them. Because, once upon a time, before the internet, I was a professional editor and publisher of textbooks. Surely, with the help of The Boy’s original publisher, Trifolium Books UK, I could learn how to do it myself with the new technology? It could be my COVID survival project! 

Birkby Books
design: Connie Jensen

Thus, The Boy in Two Heads, and his two accompanying volumes, The Girl in Two Minds and Precarious Connections, are coming out, one by one, under my new imprint, Birkby Books. At present, with Kate of Trifolium, we are working on visually linked covers, but The Boy’s revised text was ready early, so I brought him out in his old jacket to coincide with this year’s anomalous Olympics. The three books will make up The Connection Trilogy.

The Two Heads by Fliss Watts

Themistokles and Suzanne have kept me company and been fascinating (though somewhat demanding) friends during this deeply disturbing time, for which I’m very grateful. Now they even have portraits ready to be incorporated into the new covers, thanks to Fliss Watts (instagram: @flisswatts, https://flisswtts1Wordpress.com).

If you are new to this blog and didn’t read the 2012 edition of The Boy, this is what some readers said:

"A very clever concept for time travel ... lots about the Olympic Games. I'm loving it ...!" Caroline Lawrence (see above).

"This book transported me effortlessly back to ancient Greece, vividly evoking its exotic sights, sounds and even smells. And it seems that young people's issues have hardly changed in 2,400 years!" Marion Clarke, fiction editor.

"A wonderful story which brings the ancient Olympics to vibrant life." Philippa Harrison, former Managing Director of Macmillan and Little, Brown UK.

"... extremely well written, highly believable and engaging ... the aspects of every day life in Ancient Greece are so cleverly and easily portrayed here." Fiona Robson on Goodreads.

"This was a very engaging read. Lovers of the grecian era will find it interesting and the blog is a good twist." Prudence on Amazon. (not this blog, the one in the book!)

" ... a story on different levels, from different points of view. It brings ancient Greece to life, ... excellent ... well-researched ... well-written story." Sally Katherine Bracher on Amazon.

" ... enthralling read, I did not want to put the book down." Bill on Amazon Kindle.

The Girl in Two Minds will be out later this summer, and next year, the third book, at present titled Precarious Connections (unless I change my mind again, which I have done every day for months!). 

If you are on Twitter or Instagram or any of the other wide-reaching platforms, please post a link to this blog, or better still, read the book and post a review! You will be mystified, amused, excited and enthralled. (At least, I was while I was writing it!) 

Thanks for reading! 

Please leave a comment or a review if you can.

The Boy in Two Heads ISBNs: 

paperback 9781838413606

ebook 9781838413613

@JuliaMNewsome on Twitter

'J M Newsome, author' on FaceBook

The appearance of this post is different on smart phones and tablets, but all the content seems to be there! 

All photographs © Julia M Newsome unless otherwise credited

Moveable feasts - ancient and modern

Derwent Water and snowy Skiddaw

A further week of revisions began on March 11th, and then I was quite ill for a couple of weeks. I feel a bit like Suzanne in The Boy with Two Heads who, by Easter, was coming out of her coma and asking whether the hospital was real. I wasn't as ill as Suzanne, but I am suddenly aware that it is both April Fools' Day and Easter Monday today. (It is also extremely cold, in spite of wall to wall sunshine in Cumbria - minus three degrees Centigrade at night!) So an immovable feast and a moveable feast fall on the same day.

I am gently amused by the fact that in 2013 I am not the only one still confused over why our Easter is when it is. In the UK and most of the western Christian world it was yesterday. But in Christian Orthodox countries like Russia and Greece it will be on May 5th. It seems that we still haven't been able to agree on this point in spite of more than 2,500 years' deliberation as to when the lengthening of the days and the hope of new beginnings should be marked each year.

Niko Lang's diagram from Wikipedia

In the ancient Hellenic world, by 500 or so BC, some astronomers had already understood that the Earth was a sphere. They believed, however, that the sun, moon, planets and stars revolved around it. This is called the geocentric (Earth centred) system as opposed to the heliocentric (sun centred) system that we now know to be the case. They made careful observations and fairly accurate predictions of the sun’s equinoxes and solstices, as well as the normal phases of the moon and planets, and even some eclipses (“Herodotus, … who lived in the 5th century BC, cited that Thales (ca. 624-547 BCE), the Greek philosopher, predicted the solar eclipse of 28 May 585 BCE …”).

In Ancient Athens, as in most city states, the timing of religious festivals varied from year to year (see my page called Measuring time in Ancient Athens), and were arranged to take into account these differing movements of the sun and moon.

Stonehenge, June 21st 2005 (Wikipedia)

But even then, the equinoxes and solstices provided an incontrovertible structure upon which to hang the more moveable feasts.*

Strangely, we can be more fickle today.

In present-day western Christian churches (Anglican, Catholic, Methodist, and many others), Easter is set according to a formula based on the Gregorian calendar, as the Time and Date website states:

“In 325CE, the Council of Nicaea established that Easter would be held on the first Sunday after the first full moon occurring on or after the vernal equinox. From that point forward, the Easter date depended on the ecclesiastical approximation of March 21 for the vernal equinox. Easter is delayed by one week if the full moon is on a Sunday.”

This year the full moon after the equinox was on Wednesday, March 27th. The first Sunday after that was yesterday, March 31st, Easter Sunday in 'the west'. 

However, Greek and most other Orthodox Christian Churches use the older and less accurate Julian calendar to set the date of Easter (though not always, confusingly, of Christmas). The Julian Calendar decrees that the vernal equinox falls 13 days later than it really does, on April 3^rd. Through some calculation I am unable to verify, this results in Greek Orthodox Easter falling on May 5^th this year, 2013.

So a large part of our modern Christian world manages to be less accurate in the timing of a moveable feast that depends upon an equinox, than those pagan and 'unsophisticated' Ancients...

* In case, like me, you are not 100% clear about such things, the equinoxes are the days when the sun is above the horizon for 12 hours resulting in day and night having equal length (usually March 21st and September 21st). The solstices are the days that are either the longest (June 21st) or the shortest (December 21st) in the year. In the Southern Hemisphere the solstices are the other way round.

It all began 3 years ago today

Three years ago today, Suzanne Short (a Year 10 student from Cumbria) started out on a strange and wonderful adventure. You can read her story in my time-slip novel, The Boy with Two Heads. Her best friend is Bernadette, known as Bernie. This is an extract from Bernie's blog:

From Bernie’s Blog. Feb 15th 2010, Monday 

School trip to Greece, Day 4 

Athens. Hotel Artemis.

THIS HAS BEEN THE WORST DAY OF MY LIFE!!!!!!!! 

Where do I start? 

Poor poor Suzanne. Will she be OK? Why did this happen? And in a country where I don’t understand anything! 

So… Concentrate! Start at the beginning … 

This morning we all got our backpacks together with packed lunches from the hotel, and water bottles, and questionnaires, and all the usual tourist stuff. And Suzanne seemed a bit quiet. Yesterday she was leaping around and like ‘We’re gonna see where it all began.’ Meaning the Olympics, of course. She’s obviously still obsessed, even though she gave up the idea of competing because of bloody Ian. 

But today she was really quiet. Then she told me that Ian had dumped her. Up at the top of the Stadium! By text! Right in the place she’d been so excited to see. ‘Where it all began’. 

And now, maybe where it all ends.
OMG!
Pause for tears. Oh help … 

Right. Trying to get it together now. 

We were all crossing the road along the open end of the stadium. We’d all got across except Suzanne. She missed the light so she could take a last photo. I was just teasing Gina about there being no cake in the packed lunch, when I heard a screaming noise from an engine and a load of shouting. I turned round and saw that Suzanne was lying on the tarmac near the pedestrian crossing. The traffic was stopped dead. A motorbike was on its side in the middle of the road and Mr Green had his arm round a man’s neck. ...

Panathenaic Stadium pedestrian crossing

And this is where Suzanne's story began, on the pedestrian crossing by the Panatheniac Stadium in Athens. (As you can see, crazy motorcyclists are not a common occurrence.)

Stalked by the Shades of Ancient Athens?

You can't see them. I can't see them. But with a little imagination, I could feel the Shades of the Ancients on this visit to Athens ...

I dropped by the New Acropolis Museum, and there they were, in their ancient houses under the glass floor at the entrance. (The restaurant is wonderful - check it out on the website!)

I visited friends in Egaleo, a municipality west of the centre. At the metro station I found the Sacred Way (Iera Odos). It ran from the great gates of the Acropolis (the Propylaea) to the religious sanctuary of Elefsis. It runs parallel to the present street of the same name. I could almost see the ghosts walking into the shadows under the station forecourt.



And as I shopped I felt I was being watched ... by myriad naked gods and heroes. (And Michaelangelo's David! I'm not sure why he was there. Perhaps the modern creator of these copies enjoys making a sculpture with no missing arms or legs.)

 
And of course, I couldn't escape Hadrian. No one can escape the Roman Emperor who was so taken with Athens that he made many modern additions, including finishing a huge temple to Zeus, building a library, reservoirs, and his new gate to the city ... He visited Athens many times from AD 124 to 130 or so. 
He's near my home in the north of England, too, with his great Wall, the most northerly extent of the Roman Empire in his time.

The one time I went looking for Shades was to see if I could find again the place I remembered where the music teacher's house is in The Boy with Two Heads:

   The city was full of builders and people and wagons, hurrying along the streets.
   The music teacher’s house was quite small, and near enough to the Akropolis to hear the rumble of the wagons and the hammering and creaking of the builders and their machinery.
   ‘The Great Gates are only half-finished,’ Frog told Themis ...

And here it is! But I was aware of no Shades, ancient or modern, just the warm sunshine and distant midday buzz of traffic. Mind you, if the mighty bronze Athena were still standing in front of the Parthenon, she would have been able to wink at me ...

I'm back in UK now and snow is forecast for Friday. But I went out looking for a different set of ghosts yesterday in Greenwich Park - more in next posting.

School in Ancient Athens

It's bad form not to add to a blog regularly. I apologise to my followers, but life these days does not follow regular patterns. However, I have not been idle ...

This past few weeks, Connie and I have been arranging school and library visits to talk about The Boy with Two Heads. 

This has made me think about what I learned from my research about schools in 432 BC in Ancient Athens, where Themis, The Boy, lives at the beginning of my story.

 by Leo von Klenze, a German neoclassicist architect in the late 19th century
(Not all the buildings in this picture were finished at the time of my story.)

For instance, I learned that our word school comes from the Ancient Greek verb, scholazo. This meant to be at leisure, to have nothing to do! Come to think of it, in modern Greek it still means to be let out of school, to break up for the holidays. Perhaps in those days, you had to have time free from farming, hunting or fighting to be able to study. 

The word used for what we would nowadays call education (of boys more than girls in Ancient Athens) seems to have been paideia, which translates literally as the state of childhood. (This is as opposed to the state of being an infant (tropheia) during which time you were merely played with, protected and fed (in modern Greek trophi means food). There were those who never wanted to leave that stage, even then ...)

So the sons of Athenian citizens spent their paideia/childhood being taught the necessary skills for a 'good citizen and soldier'. These included reading and writing, mathematics, music, poetry (stories were usually told in verse, like Homer's Iliad and Odyssey), debating, weapons practice (for hunting as well as war), and hand-to-hand fighting. Of course they also had to become, and stay, as fit as possible, like modern commandos. 

The school rooms seem to have been near or attached to a gymnasium and the classes seem to have been small. Boys were accompanied to school by a male slave who helped them carry scrolls, tablets, instruments and weapons. This slave was usually either elderly and probably quite well educated himself, or a slightly younger boy.

Vase painting of a school-room, in about 480 BC. Notice that the boy slave is drawn a lot smaller than his young master. This was an accepted way of depicting slaves.  (J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California)

In The Boy with Two Heads, Themis goes to lessons with his boy-slave, known as Frog. Themis usually has lessons with a small group of boys, and they have a trainer for physical lessons at the gymnasium. But for music he has a private teacher because he wasn't very good at music before the story began ...

  Themis was shown into a small room to wait. Frog said, ‘Your mother wants you to have a short lesson today, so I’m to stay until you’re finished. I’ll be ready any time you’ve had enough.’ He winked and left for the slaves’ room ... 

  Themis followed Melissus into the music room. There was a large window in front of which two stools were set, and a stand for tablets. 

  ‘So, take your usual stool, Themis and let’s see what you remember,’ said Melissus, trying to sound enthusiastic.  

  Themis didn’t sit. ‘That is my problem, Mr Melissus. I don’t remember anything.’  

  ‘Oh come on.’ Melissus sat on his stool. His voice was tired and had a hard edge. ‘You always have excuses for not doing your practice. But I’ve never heard that one before.’  

  ‘Perhaps I am wasting your time altogether, sir, but I really do not remember anything from my life before my injury.’ Themis saw that Melissus was speechless, so he went on. ‘I’ve looked at the tablets that my mother says are from our lessons, but I do not understand them at all ...’

The music is the thicker, darker marks above the lines of words.
From papyrus P. Yale CtYBR inv. 4510

Nor do I, but there are those who do! 

It's such a pity that no one thought to write down much about the girls of that time, or what was written down has got lost in the 2,400 years since then.