On the difference between historical fiction with mythological elements and historical fantasy—and why the distinction matters I. A Question of Ontology This is the governing principle of my fiction, and it took me some years to articulate it: I do not write the ancient or Renaissance world as we understand it. I write it as […]
I Did Not Invent the Gods Read More »
I can offer no other explanation: I close my eyes and travel. The ancient Mediterranean worlds of the tales I write lie some 9,600 kilometers from my writing desk in Rio de Janeiro, and yet, in the solitude of the working hours—the cell phone on mute, the tropical city going about its business beyond the
Rio de Janeiro and the Bronze Age: Writing Ancient Worlds from a Modern City Read More »
Do you miss stories that feel alive, where the world breathes, where every word has been chosen by a human hand that hesitated, reconsidered, and chose again? Have you grown weary of fiction that tells instead of shows, of worlds that feel thin and formulaic, assembled rather than imagined? In an era when AI-generated content
Support Human Authors: Four Tales by Edmond Thornfield, Available Now Read More »
Of all the gods of the Greek pantheon, Artemis is the one most commonly misread. Popular imagination has settled on her as a figure of cold severity, the virgin huntress, remote and punishing, more comfortable among animals than among people, quick to anger and slow to forgive. There is evidence for this reading in the
Who Is Artemis in Atalanta of the Wild? Read More »
People sometimes ask me why I write the way I do. The question usually comes wrapped in a polite puzzlement, as if the asker suspects a rational explanation must exist but cannot quite locate it. Occasionally it comes less politely: “People don’t talk like that.” True enough. They didn’t talk like that even then, not
The Art of the Archaic: How I Choose Words and Expressions Read More »
Novelist Edmond Thornfield explains why literary travel is essential to writing historical fiction, from Knossos and Mycenae to Florence and Cortona. There is a question I am sometimes asked, usually by readers who have noticed something in the novels that feels too precise to be invented. How did you know what the road from Knossos
Literary Travel as Research: Why I Must Go There Read More »
If you have ever read a novel set in the ancient world and found yourself wondering how much of it is true—how the author knew what a Mycenaean palace smelled like, or how a Minoan priestess dressed, or what Linear B actually says—then you have already crossed the threshold from reader into something more. You
Five Works of Classical Scholarship Every Historical Fiction Reader Should Know Read More »
The objects in the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion are not merely remnants of Minoan civilization; they are among the most important surviving works of Bronze Age art anywhere in the world. What each taught me about the Minoan world Even before I knew that one day I would write a novel set in the
The Archaeological Museum of Heraklion: Thirteen Objects That Changed My Writing Read More »
Edmond Thornfield’s novel, Asterios and the Labyrinth (Mythos of Knossos), is a reimagined, action-packed mythological and historical story, set in ancient Krete (Crete) during the period of the Bronze Age Minoan civilization. When King Minos dies, his son Asterios succeeds him as the ruler of the Kingdom of Labrys. Prince Phaistos of Archanes is commander-in-chief
Asterios and the Labyrinth | Reviewed by Saifunnissa Hassam for Readers’ Favorite Read More »
There are journeys one spends a lifetime preparing for without knowing it. Mine to Archaia Neméa began, as so many things do, in childhood—with a book. I was perhaps seven years of age when my beloved Madrinha Ionyr placed in my hands a children’s volume of the Twelve Labours of Hēraklēs on my birthday. I
Following in the Footsteps of Hēraklēs to Archaia Neméa Read More »
