As an author, I'm always interested in meeting other authors. It's amazing to see the process of others and has been a definite learning experience. It has also been incredibly encouraging, even inspiring, to be surrounded by others who love words as much as I do.  I have friends who write, Phoena for example, who is a writing machine. I'm so incredibly inspired by her eternal optimism about writing!!  Over the last few years, Twitter has also been enormously helpful in connecting with other authors; I've met some of the most amazing people via Twitter!

Two of those amazing people, Michele Bekemeyer and Jennifer Hudock, have just this week published their novels! I'm so thrilled for the both of them and if I said I'm not inspired by their successes, I'd be lying.

Michele Bekemeyer's novel, At Journey's End, is the second novel in her "Scandal's of the Heart" series. Both At Journey's End, and her first novel Trapping a Duchess, are beautifully written regency romance! I've had the opportunity to read both novels, and I cannot wait for the next to be released, I'm dying to know what she has in store!! I highly recommend both novels, which are available in both print and e-book through Republica Press, Michele's website, or from Amazon.com.

At Journey's End synopsis, from Michele's website:

Alexandra Wolter is beautiful, intelligent, wealthy…and ruined. She’s spent the last two years abroad, making peace with her fate while searching for happiness on distant shores. When an unexpected revelation changes her plans for the future, she finds the man who stole her innocence at the helm of her self-discovery. Returning to England may mark the end of her travels, but her journey has only just beginning.

Charles Devon has spent years regretting the way he treated Alexandra. When fate gives him a second chance, he is all too willing to take it. But Alexandra isn’t the timid girl she was before she left. Altering her perceptions is hard enough, but when danger threatens, he is faced with the most difficult task of his life: Saving her.

The first novel in the series, Trapping a Duchess, is also available in print, e-book, and podcast via Podiobooks.

Jennifer Hudock's novel, Goblin Market, is a wonderful dark fantasy inspired by Christina Rossetti's poem by the same name.  In 2009, Jennifer began podcasting Goblin Market, and has this week released her debut novel as an e-book on both Smashwords and Amazon.  I cannot wait to get my paws on it for my Kindle -- I've had the chance to hear it via podcast and I loved it!!  Jennifer has also written and released several short story collections, with another on the way, so check out her Amazon page when you head that way to get Goblin Market, she's truly talented!

Goblin Market synopsis, from Jennifer's website:

Meredith Drexler has been the sole caretaker for her young sister Christina ever since their father went away. Sacrificing her life and her freedom to ensure Christina has a better life, Merry’s only escape from the monotony of every day life is her daydreams. When Christina arrives home late one evening speaking in delirious riddles, Meredith discovers her sister has been poisoned by Goblin fruit obtained in the Goblin Market.

She must travel to the heart of the Goblin Kingdom to retrieve the antidote to save her sister’s life, but at a price no sister should ever have to pay. Along the way, Meredith falls in love with the forest god who names himself her consort, and discovers a strange truth about her past and her identity.

Currently, Jennifer is working on the sequel, Jack in the Green, and like Michele's next book, I simply cannot wait to find out what Jennifer has in store!

So, now that you know, go get them!  They're both talented ladies, with great novels, and you'll enjoy them, I promise!!

As I prepare to write my Master's Thesis, I've begun to question literature in a new way.  I have my BA in English, and I read a heck of a lot to get there, but this is a whole new experience for me.  I've started to understand literature in the sense and scope of time, rather than just the intellectual understanding that classics are such because they're old.   This, of course, has me thinking about the value of classical literature to modern audiences.  More specifically, do classical tragedies, allegories, parodies and the like have any substantial meaning to modern audiences?

In other words, do they translate? And, if they do, then how?  If not, then how will our literature affect or translate to future generations?

Personally, I think something is lost, there's no way we can truly put ourselves in the shoes of those who first saw the work.  We can understand their societies from am intellectual distance, but there's no way we can experience them.  In that vein, though, modern readers and scholars are able to extract from classical works their larger meanings and themes and apply them to modern society in creative ways.  We understand their themes and purposes, but we do so in a way that's unique and different from audiences contemporaneous with the work.  We get something completely different form it, on a personal and social level, than did the first audiences.  Yet, in this way, we are able to understand literature in a way that it's first audiences could not, we can understand the work's affect on the ages, something contemporary audiences could never have foreseen or understood.

Through classics, modern readers are able to touch a time in history they couldn't otherwise know.  The lengths of our imaginations are extended to the written word and we are able to vicariously live through the works of Euripides or Jane Austen.   Classical literature is a sort of time machine through which we are able to live the lives of Helen of Troy, Beowulf, and Don Quixote.  There's a magic in that that I hope will extend from our modern authors to future generations in a meaningful way.

So let me ask you, what do you think of classical literature?  Does it have value to modern audiences?