Labors of an Epic Punk

Please welcome Mark and Sheri Dursin, who are presenting their YA fantasy & myth retelling Labors of an Epic Punk. This novel is published by Twin Wizards Press.

The virtual Name Before the Masses tour will run every Wednesdag (starting on May 2nd) and will run for 16 weeks. During this tour, Mark and Sheri Dursin will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Please use the following link to place your comment: http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f2655

While I had the chance, I asked Mark and Sheri what their interest in ancient history is? This is their answer:

In truth, we don’t really have much of an interest in ancient history. We had no intentions of writing historical fiction—which hopefully was obvious to our readers. Otherwise, people would see all of our anachronisms and say, “These two are idiots! Don’t they know the actual Homer couldn’t interact with Telemachus, who is a character? And don’t they realize there were no high schools in ancient Greece?” (Incidentally... yes, we are aware.) 

No, we’ve always been more interested in story than history. We both have always been fascinated with mythology and the ways ancient people used stories to make sense of their world. Those ancients had stories for everything—for why a peacock’s tail has “eyes” (you see, they originally belonged to Argus, the hundred-eyed guard of Hera) to how evil came into the world. (Thanks a lot, serpent!)

We can learn so much about ancient civilizations from their stories, but we can also use these stories to illuminate aspects of our own culture. On the one hand, many of the conflicts found in myths—having to do with justice, fate, hierarchy, loyalty—are things we’re still grappling with today. On the other hand, we’ve also come so far—not just in terms of science (“Hold on: so spiders DIDN’T evolve from a woman who lost a weaving contest to Athena?”) but also in terms of our values. 

Let’s take the concept of heroism, which is central not only to LABORS OF AN EPIC PUNK but also to Homer’s Odyssey. So, in Homer’s poem, Odysseus is prideful, commits adultery with two different women, and ends up slaughtering all of his wife’s suitors. (He even orders the execution of the suitors’ girlfriends.) And this is the hero? This is the guy we’re supposed to be rooting for?

We wanted to challenge that notion of heroism—this idea that to be a hero, you have to slay beasts or undertake labors. Instead, our five main characters reveal their heroism through their commitment to one another, through their everyday acts of kindness and of love. In many ways, that kind of heroism is just as anachronistic as anything else in the book.  The “real” Homer—whoever that is—would not call our characters “heroes.” But we do. 


Ultimately, we used mythology as a vehicle, as a way to tell a modern story about heroism, and friendship, and the trials of adolescence. (Plus, the ancient setting allowed us to work in allusions to creatures like the hydra or the Nemean lion, which is always a plus!) 

Blurb

Mac is an epic punk. No wonder: after his dad went off to fight in the Trojan War and never came back, Mac spent his childhood evading his mom's scumbag suitors—all one-hundred-and-eight of them. Of course, he turned out this way—a moody, friendless sixteen-year-old who blows off work, alienates everyone at school, and pulls pranks. But when he trains a flock of birds to defecate on the headmaster, Mac (short for Telemachus) goes too far. The administrators give him an ultimatum: prove that he's truly the son of Odysseus by doing something heroic—or get out. A school story that just so happens to take place 3,000 years ago, Labors of an Epiisc Punk is a tale of friendship and transformation, regret and redemption, and a reminder to us all that even heroes need to survive adolescence.

Excerpt

No one on the field that morning had any idea that all Hades was about to break loose.

Well, one person did.

The stands were over-crammed with students, all chirping away about their summer travels, each one trying to out-fabulous the other. But Mac wasn’t talking to any of them. (No surprise there.)  Instead, he just stared at the empty stage in fist-clenching anticipation. For the entire morning, the entire summer, the entire two years he’d wasted at this gods-forsaken school, he’d been waiting for this moment. His moment of glory, of genius. The moment when he’d finally and irretrievably cross The Line— that hard-to-define boundary between tolerable and intolerable.
Between a week of detention and expulsion. All he needed was for Headmaster Gurgus to blow on that shell.

Just when he thought he couldn’t wait any longer without throwing up, Mac heard the band play the opening notes to “Yielding Never,” Pieridian Academy’s absurdly overblown fight song. The Opening Ceremonies were officially underway. From his seat high up in the stands, Mac watched intently as the members of the so-called Grand Procession marched onto Garthymedes Field: the entire faculty and staff, wearing shiny red gowns and smiles full of phony reverence; followed by the honored students, also in ritualistic red, condescendingly waving at the crowd; followed by a grotesque, nine-headed Hydra. 

Lastly, waddling ten paces behind the Hydra, in all his roly-poly, four-hundred pound glory, was Headmaster Gurgus.

Author bio

For many years Mark, a high school English teacher, and Sheri, a freelance writer and blogger, wrote independently. No matter the writing project—newspaper articles, retreat talks, college recommendation letters, fan-fiction, blog posts on spirituality or 80s pop songs—they tended to work alone. Separate rooms, separate computers. But raising their twin sons helped them discover an important truth: All Good Things Come in Twos.