Hello fans!
Well, I have some exciting news this week! My novel, The Symbiot Awakening, will be absolutely FREE to download from the 14th to the 16th of January on Amazon Kindle! If you love superhero adventure and furiously paced action set off against a background of strong characters then this book is for you!

"The Symbiot Awakening is a furiously paced, action-packed novel for lovers of wild adventure and strong characters!
When Angela Wright is attacked by Verity Hart, the sister she thought long since dead, she is accidentally infected by the Meteor Bug and becomes a Valkyrie Phenotype Symbiot, gaining incredible powers as a result! However, she is immediately tipped headfirst into a world full of danger, a world only just realising the terrifying power of Symbiots, and soon Angela finds herself in a desperate struggle to save not only all that which is dear to her but the whole country from the rapacious clutches of her sister and the Sharapov family. Confused and barely in control of her powers, her only help comes in the form of the feared vigilante Philippe Hunter, the man whose life was destroyed by Verity years ago and who now harbours a deep and lasting hatred towards her..."
http://www.amazon.com/The-Symbiot-Awa...

So with that taken care of, I shall move onto other business!

My Greek Odyssey!
So this week I managed to finish my Scythian mercenaries! You may remember I promised lots of juicy pics so here they are!





As my army is 460 B.C., I don't get to use many auxiliaries. Hence I don't think I'm going to be using any Thracian peltasts (not usual on the battlefield in this period though perhaps they were used on occassion). However, archers go way back. Herodotos mentions the Athenian-rented Scythian refusing to fight or going over to the Persians at the battle of Marathon in 490 B.C. and Cretan archers were are known to have been used by the Greeks at the great naval battle of Salamis in 480 B.C. Indeed, those were the two sources of archers. What Cretan archer look like is a mystery. Xenophon makes a fuzzy allusion to some shields but he may not be talking about the archers! Some give them the recuved bow but Connolly thinks they had a rather straighter bow, though I'm not quite sure what he bases this assertion on. This being the case, I wasn't happy to go with Cretan archers on offer and went for the more reliable Scythians. How accurate these models are I don't know as it is not my area of expertise but Warlord Games says they are of a easter tribe of Scythians, from around Uzbekistan. This makes me wonder if they would ever have come to be emplyed by the Greeks but then again they did fight for the Persians in Greece and as a Nomadic people there really was nothing stopping them. Some Scythians even ended up as slaves and the Athenians used them as a sort of police force. The major difference between the Scythian and his Cretan counterpart weapons wise are the arrow heads. The Cretans used larger heads while the Scythians used tiny heads, giving the former the ability to do the greater damage but the latter the edge in terms of range. The Scythian recurved composite bow is a thing of beauty and genius! Unstrung it forms a C shape, but it is bent back on itself and held with the string so that it is already under tension before being drawn. The power stems not just from wood either but cleverly has sinew along the outside of the bow, which gives power as it stretches, while horn is along the inside, which stores energy like a spring as it is compresed. So when the bow is drawn the two materials work together to give great power to the shot. As can be seen from the models, the quiver/bowcase by the Scythians' sides allow a large capacity of arrows to be stored. If Herodotos can be relied on (he can be a bit shakey though his intentions seem to be good) the Sythians were a thoroughly disgusting people, turning the scalps of their enemies into napkins and cloaks, drinking wine from the skulls and using their arm skin to make really white bowcases. Nice. :<# !

Awesome stuff/news!

I have great news for symphonic metal fans! Leaves' Eyes, my fav band, have announced that they are working on a new album, Symphonies of the Night, to be released sometime this year. Woo!










My reading.
O.K. I haven't had a whole bunch of time for reading this week but I have got two new books which am very excited about. In Search of the Greeks and The Ancient Olympic Games both look excellent books and I look forward to talking about them more fully when I have read them!