Welcome to Mythed Connections! The three stories in this collection are the result of my own amusement with the idea of what might happen if characters from Greek mythology were running around in our modern world. It was a thought that first inspired me in 2002 when "Playing with Hubris" was first written (though it wasn't published until another couple of years later when Nexgen Pulp picked it up). The concept eventually lea me to write an entire novel on the subject entitled Zeus is Dead: A Monstrously Inconvenient Adventure, which has won numerous honors since its original publication in July 2014.
In a sense, these three stories can be considered prequels to that forthcoming novel, as I drew on aspects from each of them in writing it. Marcus from "The Atheist and the Ferryman" has a cameo. Hermes once again puts to good use his English accent and sense of mischief seen in "Snipe Hunt." But it's "Playing with Hubris" that lends the most: Apollo, always my favorite of the Greek pantheon, is a main character in Zeus is Dead. The café setting from the story has more than a few echoes in one of the early chapters in the novel. And, as for Thalia, well, just you try to keep a muse out of a book and see how well you do.
Enjoy. And never mock old men in shacks on the shore of the Acheron.
Or do.
Your choice, really.
—Michael G. Munz