Once upon a time I stopped writing this blog in order to put my energy into a novel. I’ve spent several months shopping it around to agents and publishers, so we’ll see what happens there.
For the longest time I didn’t want to talk about my book. It was strange, like I was embarrassed about my work. Or maybe afraid that people would laugh at it. Can you say “fear of criticism?”
But after telling the story to several people in person, I can’t believe I don’t have something about it on my blog. Silly Rebecca!
The novel, Reincarnating Pandora, weaves the mythological narrative of Pandora into my present-day memoir. It’s written in the third person, mostly because I felt I lived outside my body, watching myself, for most of my life.
Rebecca, a 27-year-old workaholic, wakes up one day to find herself divorced and virtually friendless. What’s worse is she’s been roped into a plot by the gods, so now she knows she’s crazy too.
Zeus and Athena reincarnate an increasingly frustrated Pandora through centuries on Earth, struggling to get the plot of her reality TV show correct. Rebecca has become Pandora’s latest vessel.
The gods’ entertainment threatens to implode when Loki, a minor god, stumbles upon Pandora during the New England witch-hunts. Loki sees her as the ticket out of his boring, dead-end job in mischief.
He jumps into the life of an irresistible, struggling actor trying to seduce his high-school sweetheart Rebecca. Pandora and Rebecca must work together to break the cycle of failure, for the gods, humanity and themselves.
Pandora by Jules Joseph Lefebvre
When my fifth grade teacher read the myth of Pandora to our class, I became incensed. Of course, the story of Adam and Eve was spoon fed to me as a toddler, so I didn’t quite get the sexism behind that, but it rang out loud and clear in this story.
This was long before I’d heard or understood the word feminism. It just seemed ridiculous to blame all the world’s problems on one person — one woman. So I rewrote the myth. As an 11-year old.
When I got older, something happened, and I scoured my world to find that piece of paper. I even tried to get in touch with my fifth grade teacher on the off-chance that he still had it. No dice.
So I figured I’m a bit more grown up, know a little more about life and I happen to be a writer, so I rewrote the myth again. And out of that came this novel.
I’m thrilled to be writing for Sunny Sanguinity again and I don’t intend to take a sabbatical like that for my next book, but I think it was a good exercise for my first. And hopefully, when you read it, you will too.
My mom read this book to me when I was very young. In fact, she instilled in me a great love of reading. Because of this, her attempts to get me to go to sleep at a decent hour were no match for the flashlight and good book I had under my bed. I was accused of not being a morning person–how much of a morning person could I be when I was up until 4am reading? Thanks Mom, for giving me the gift of reading. (I wouldn’t be a writer without it.)
