Guest Post – YA Fantasy Author Coreena McBurnie

Ladies and gentlemen allow me to introduce a fellow YA fantasy author Coreena McBurnie. Her YA fantasy, which pulls from Greek mythology, looks to be a fascinating read. Take a look:

Prophesy, Book 1, Antigone: The True Story by Coreena McBurnie

Synopsis:
A hidden prophecy. A chosen princess who speaks with snakes. A family duty.
Sixteen year old Princess Antigone, daughter of the infamous ancient Greek King Oedipus, wants to lead a normal life and fulfill her duty to the gods, her city, and her family, but fate has other plans. The Olympian gods bless her, the snakes talk to her, her parents want her to marry a foreign prince, her embroidery looks like burial shrouds for dogs, and she has fallen in love with the wrong boy.
When the mysterious and devastating prophecies surrounding her family are revealed, Antigone must choose where her allegiance lies: With the gods who have betrayed her family but who she is obliged to serve? With her plague ridden city? With her family which lay in ruins? Or even with herself?
In Prophecy, Book One of the Antigone: The True Story series, Antigone steps out of the shadows of the past to tell her own story, a story where truth of history is stranger than the fiction of myth.

The Oracle at Delphi:

The Oracle at Delphi figures prominently in Prophecy — it is the Oracle that gives the prophecies that give the book its name. In ancient Greek times, the Oracle was a temple to Phoebus Apollo, the god of prophecy. It was said that Apollo killed Python and threw her into an abyss, thereby becoming the god of prophecy himself.

The priestess of the temple, the Pythia, would sit on a tripod over this abyss, inhale the fumes, then go into a trance. Once there, she would channel the words of Apollo, which were usually quite cryptic. These words would then be translated by a priest and told to the suppliant. It was said that no major decisions were made at the time without consulting the oracle, which gave the priests of the temple a huge amount of power because they could word the prophecies to favour certain outcomes.

These prophecies are found in ancient Greek myth as well, often as a way for the gods to test humans, as they do in the Oedipus myth. Oedipus went to Delphi to find out his fate and was told that he would kill his father and marry his mother. He tried to avoid his fate by never going home again, not knowing that he was adopted. Instead of returning home to Corinth, he went to Thebes, where he was born. He ended up succumbing to his fate while trying to avoid it, something justified by the gods as hubris or pride in trying to outsmart the gods. The gods justify that if Oedipus hadn’t tried to outsmart them that he would have been fine.
Connect with Coreena at:

Website ~ Facebook ~ Twitter ~ Goodreads ~ Amazon

Prophecy is available in both print and ebook on Amazon.

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About Coreena McBurnie:

I write mythological fiction — my passion for ancient cultures, mythology, and history started many years ago and, after studying Classics in university and earning my Master’s degree, I am channeling this love into my writing. Prophecy, book 1 in Antigone: The True Story series, is my first published book. I do most of my writing in Novembers during Nanowrimo and spend the rest of the year editing and reading. I live in BC, Canada with my husband, three kids, and our cat.