And finally in our week-long advertising campaign, if you’ve missed anything, if you would like to order one of my books but also want to order some other items at the same time, you can use our Amazon store.
Just click to the page and there you will see all of my books and novels, a list of those by Anne Zouroudi, other books about Greece, or set in Greece, maps and guides, holiday reading, all kinds of photography stuff and loads of other ideas for gifts. Every item bought via our store benefits us by a tiny-weeny per cent and every little helps!
Or, why not check out some of Niel’s photos at his new Photobox gallery where you can order prints and mugs and other things. Click here to explore (still in its early stages). http://www.photoboxgallery.com/4073451
And today’s advertisement is not for a book, it’s for Neil’s 2015 Symi calendar.
These are now only available from our shop front at Lulu.com, as they say on the TV adverts, ‘You can’t buy them in the shops,’ and that’s quite true, you can’t. If you are a calendar user, or know someone who is, then this is what you want on your wall, or theirs, throughout next year. We use one, we have it in our kitchen where it is ‘kitchen proof,’ not exactly ‘wipe clean’ but it’s survived a steamy environment for this year so far. There are 12 images of Symi, each one, usually, taken during the month it represents.
2015 Symi calendar
So, rather than describe the thing to you I’ll just supply the link and then you can head to Lulu and order copies; there is an online preview to flick through if you want to see all the images. The process is easy, you may need to register but that’s quick and simple, and the payment method is very secure. We’ve been using them for years and have had no hassles.
Welcome to Thursday and today’s featured book is ‘The Judas Inheritance.’ Regular readers of the Symi Dream blog will already know something about this book, but there us some background to it that you may not be aware of. It started with a look in the desk drawer for inspiration…
Looking around to see what I had available here that could be used in a story I opened my desk drawer and saw a coin. My grandfather found this coin when he was in Palestine during the Second World War, where he was Naval Chaplain with responsibility for parts of North Africa and the Middle East. The coin dates from around 2,000 years ago and shows the Athenian Owl and a head in prolife. It could be from as early as 400 B.C.
Joe the smiling man
Ancient coin, Palestine, Greek coins traveling there and back, silver pieces… Connections were made and, as often happens, a great big ‘What if?’ presented itself. What if the 30 pieces of silver used by Judas to betray Christ found their way along trade routes to Symi, bringing with them a curse of betrayal?
And that’s how the story started.
Harry watches the shoot
As anyone who has read my ‘Jason and the Sargonauts’ will know, I am rather fond of using local ‘clues’, tying them into a story to bring an air of possibility to the proceedings. Here there were several clues ready and waiting: Symi has been occupied by the Romans, Venetians, the Knights of St John, the Ottomans, Italians, Germans, British and finally Greeks. All, apart from Greece, have risen to fail. Why? What if each downturn in fortune happened at the same time these cursed coins were found, greedily used and brought to life again? When would the last time have been? Around 1912 when the Italian occupation, over fishing of sponges, World Wars and increases in taxes led to a mass migration from the island dropping the population from an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 to just a few hundred.
Rhiannon makes up leading man Kurtis Stacey
Just around the corner from my house is a square with a kafeneion opened in 1909, when the island was at the height of its prosperity and just before the great decline. What if the owner was able to build that new kafeneion because he had come into the possession of the cursed coins?
Miss DJ the 2nd assistant director, props mistress, goat handler, runner, best boy, dolly grip and lord high everything else
There is also an up to date tie-in which I felt was needed and poignant. In recent years, due to the economic downturn in the country, the suicide rate in Greece has increased. There has a curse on the country; the curse of bad government you might say. What if that curse was actually the curse of the Judas coins? I wondered, how would 30 pieces of cursed silver affect everyday folk? And the simple answer was suicide, the way they had affected Judas. This suggested to me that the coins were cursed even before Judas came into possession of them. (On this score, see the end of the book for a final twist that didn’t make it to the film.)
Ian and Harry, the ‘father and son’ who are also in the book!
I could go on, but I know you have other things to do. As I write, the film version of ‘The Judas Inheritance’, titled by me as ‘The Judas Curse’ is still in post-production. From what I have seen of the rough edit it looks great. As happens in films, other people were involved in the project and a lot of the book story was changed to the extent that what I feel are the main elements of the story are missing – the modern day tie in, the clues, the history of the island, the progress of the curse and even, to a certain extent, the coins! But that’s how things go and I am sure – I hope – we will all see something in film form based on my novel at some point in the future.
“Brilliant storyline. It hooked me from the first page and I didn’t put it down until I finished and then only reluctantly. It had everything the more traditional thriller should; mystery, intrigue, heart stopping moments, even the odd tear at the sadness of it all.” Amazon review
I was writing ‘Jason and the Sargonauts’ before I moved to Symi and it is a story that had a long writing process, but was finally finished on Symi, up at the old house at Ag Triada.
The story was simple; it’s all here in myth: Jason goes to find the Golden Fleece and takes with him a bunch of heroes. Simple. The thing is to add in a ‘what if?’ and really get the ball rolling. What if Jason was a holiday rep in the present day (2003) and what if he worked for Sargo Holidays (Sensational And Relaxing Getaways Overseas), and what if Sargo only catered for the elderly, and what if… And so on.
Is this where The Golden Fleece is hidden?
Now then, years and years ago I was working on an idea for a story that was a bit of a cross between ‘The 39 steps’ and ‘Tales of the City’ if you can imagine such a crossbreed. It was all to do with smuggling codes and a drag queen defeating the rise of fascism in Amsterdam in 1995. Understandably, I put it away in a bottom draw for a long time. But the code idea stayed with me and, to be exact, a musical code. What if musical notes could be interpreted as letters? What could a piece of music say?
I think this place features in the book
Anyway, it all got thrown in together and came out as: a young holiday rep working on Symi has a group of odd pensioners, including his grandmother, to look after during a very difficult week. Grandmother brings an heirloom which starts the group off on a treasure hunt for the Golden Fleece. But where and what is it? The answer is found by following a piece of musical code written a hundred or more years before.
A bit of Symi history
And so we head off into a slightly camp romp (lots of theatre gags and references) as the group travel across Symi to search for The Golden Fleece. There are many hidden, and some more obvious, references to the original Myth: Castor and Pollux become Cassie and Polly, two old ‘theatricals’, for example, the grandmother’s name is an anagram of Hera, and so on. So, for fans of the original myth there’s plenty to figure out, for fans of code breaking there’s a riddle to solve, for fans of Symi there is some accurate history (the story takes place in the present, the late 19th century and during World War II, and a lot of that research came from Hugo), and there are also a few local characters popping up under different names.
Symi in May
So, if you, or someone you now, likes comedy, Greek myths, adventure stories, treasure hunts and reading, then Jason and the Sargonauts would go well wrapped up and under a Christmas tree. (As long as it was eventually opened and read.)
“This is Dan Brown meets Whitehall Farce with a bit of education about Symi’s history thrown in for good measure. Set on the Greek island of Symi, it’s a fast paced whodunnit with lots of laughs and loads of page turning moments. Yes, it was hard to put down.”
“This books deserves a large audience and stands up there with the best novels about contemporary Greece.” Amazon review
Carry on up the Kali Strata is what you might call part two of ‘Symi 85600’ as it follows on to cover the next couple of years of living on Symi, so it is actually a carry-on from ‘85600’ and hence the name. Well, it’s not rocket science is it?
Back in the days when we had the Symi Visitor newspaper to look forward to each month, I would write a column for them. These articles sometimes also appeared on the Symi Dream blog, but they were often constrained by the number of words allowed in the paper; column inches I think they call them in the biz. After the success of ‘Symi 85600’, people were asking if there was going to be another book. So, it seemed a simple process to collect the articles together, the newspaper having since finished operating, and put them in a compilation with some other pieces of writing that I wanted to get ‘out there.’ And that’s how ‘Cary On’ came about.
DonkeyHarry
We also decided to add in some of Neil’s photos for illustrations (some pictured here) and we had Gill Bennett, who used to live on Symi, design the cover. The thing was, it was still just a collection of articles and had no real through-line. ‘Symi 85600’ had taken us on a journey, the first five years living here, and so that had a kind of structure, but ‘Carry on’ didn’t.
I started thinking about the questions we often get asked here, ‘What’s it like in the winter?’ for example. (And, as I write this – last Friday – there’s a thunderstorm raging, I can’t see Nimos or even the sea through the rain, much of which is coming in under the doors and through the windows, some of which is coming in through the kitchen ceiling, the roof over Neil’s office (for the first time) and through the still not fixed bedroom window. All towels are down, the electricity keeps flickering and there’s a junction box nearby that keeps sparking. We’re expecting a full on power cut any time now and I have to get to Yialos to buy boat tickets. Yeah, like that’s gunna happen.) That’s what it’s like in the winter madam!
Sam
Another oft asked question is, ‘What is it about Symi that made you stay?’ And that’s what I thought should be the structure (loosely speaking) of ‘Carry on up the Kali Strata’, ‘What is it about Symi…?’ So, through articles, anecdotes, a couple of short stories and the photos, the answer is found in this book.
Originally published in landscape format (it can still be found at Lulu.com in this format) it was republished via Amazon a couple of years ago in portrait format, and, like my other books, is also available on Kindle. Same words, same images just a different layout.
“Thoroughly enjoyed this insight into a small Greek island life. For all of you who’re familiar with Greece in any way and love its warmth and can’t QUITE put your finger on what exactly it IS about Greece, James is here to help you answer that.” Amazon review
“This is a good laugh out loud honest account of life on a small island.” Amazon review
