Amazon Moon

by James A. Haught

In Ancient Greece, extreme male supremacy kept women subjugated as housebound servants lacking education or rights. Many were slaves or concubines. Yet, in a strange contrast, Greek male artisans portrayed bold, free, fighting females - the Amazons - in hundreds of paintings, writings and sculptures.

In this novel, Amazons were spirited women who fled from servitude. To reach the hidden band of female warriors, they followed a network of secret safe houses similar to the Underground Railroad of America's slavery days.

Only the strongest runaways became Amazon fighters under the War Queen. Smaller, gentler fugitives performed village domestic work under the Home Queen. Yet all shared freedom unknown to other Greek women of their day.

The Amazons lived as rebels, and kept some wounded male captives as slave-concubines of their own. Their story is told by a captured scribe who recorded their stormy lives of danger and passion, before Greek legions brought doom. The Amazons existed only briefly, but they blazed with wild spirit.

Genres: Historical, Mythology, Historical Fiction

192 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2007

About the author

James A. Haught was born in 1932 in a small West Virginia farm town that had no electricity or paved streets. He graduated from a rural high school with 13 students in the senior class. He came to Charleston, worked as a delivery boy, then became a teen-age apprentice printer at the Charleston Daily Mail in 1951. Developing a yen to be a reporter, Jim volunteered to work without pay in the Daily Mail newsroom on his days off, to learn the trade. This arrangement continued several months, until The Charleston Gazette offered a full-time news job in 1953. He has been at the Gazette ever since – except for a few months in 1959 when he was press aide to Sen. Robert Byrd. During his half-century in newspaper life, Haught has been police reporter, religion columnist, feature writer and night city editor – then he was investigative reporter for 13 years, and his work led to several corruption convictions. In 1983 he was named associate editor, and in 1992 he became editor. He writes nearly 400 Gazette editorials a year, plus occasional personal columns and news articles. Haught has won 19 national news writing awards, and is author of eight books and 60 national magazine articles. Thirty of his columns have been distributed by national syndicates. He also is a senior editor of Free Inquiry magazine. He is listed in Who’s Who in America, and Contemporary Authors. He has four children, 12 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Personally, he enjoys hiking with Kanawha Trail Club, participating in a philosophy group at Edgewood Summit, and taking grandchildren swimming off his old sailboat at Lake Chaweva, where he lives.

Currently the editor of the CHARLESTON GAZETTE in West Virginia, Mr. Haught has spent more than 50 years as an investigative journalist, columnist, and author. A self-proclaimed skeptic and agnostic, Haught writes and lectures frequently on religious topics, particularly injustices and atrocities committed in the name of religion, and the scientific debunking of supernatural claims.

He is the author of five books, including HOLY HORRORS: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF RELIGIOUS MURDER AND MADNESS; HOLY HATRED: RELIGIOUS CONFLICTS OF THE '90s; and 2000 YEARS OF DISBELIEF, a paean to freethinkers, atheists, and religious doubters. Haught also serves as a senior editor at FREE INQUIRY magazine, published by the Council for Secular Humanism.

More: http://infidels.org/library/modern/ja...

http://uuhumanistsymposium.com/author...

Reviews

[Trina Talma · Rating 1 out of 5]

When an author starts off his novel with a grindingly dull description of ancient Greek warriors attacking an Amazon camp, pings off into the boring love life of a modern-day couple, then indulges in a history lesson/back story disguised as the college thesis of one member of the couple, the reader may safely assume that the author has nothing to say, and will continue to let him say it without the encumbrance of her eyes on the pages.

[Harold · Rating 5 out of 5]

Food For Thought

Excellent, wonderful, exciting, well written story. While reading, I had to keep reminding myself that it's novel and not fact. I guess I wanted it to be true.

[Merissa (Archaeolibrarian) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book starts off with a young couple in love, working together on ancient history and excavations in Greece. Upon a "ground-breaking" discovery(sorry about the pun!), you are transported back to the world of the Amazons. You will read the author's version of what life was like, both for the Amazons and the "normal" Greek woman.

It is an amazing story, written with care and consideration as to what conditions may have been like. It fascinated me and I am very pleased to have read this. Will be keeping an eye out for more from this author.