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Friday, 27 February 2015 16:05
New Novel “Sunsets in Oia”
A dazzling remote island, delectable food, soulful music, steamy romance and life-changing experiences – this sounds like the making of a remarkable vacation retreat. And it can all be enjoyed within the pages of Sunsets in Oia. Now, readers everywhere can escape their everyday lives and travel along with exciting characters as they explore a real-to-life location.
The debut novel by Canadian writer Sheila Busteed, “Sunsets in Oia” follows Selene Doherty, whose excitement from the successful tour with her band is cut short when she learns that her parents were killed in the Athens riots. After the funeral, she escapes to her bequeathed summer home on the island of Santorini to recover from the tragedy. She is haunted. The loss of her family leaves her with a feeling of disconnectedness that is unshakable.
But a chance reunion with a man from her past brings new romance – and hope. Drawing strength as he helps her get in touch with her roots, Selene begins the journey to redefine her life.
“Sunsets in Oia” offers a snapshot of a summer, blending vibrant characters, enduring culture, vivid scenery and impactful themes – plus a bit of erotica – that will leave readers cheering, “Opa!”
“Sunsets in Oia” is for sale through the FriesenPress Bookstore and will soon be available from other fine retailers, including Chapters Indigo, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, Google, iTunes, Kindle, Kobo and Nook, among others.
Author Sheila Busteed, 28, is a freelance writer, teacher, journalist, photographer and designer who possesses a deep connection to music. Originally from Tecumseh, Ontario, Busteed is an avid traveler, and the creation of “Sunsets in Oia” took her back to the island of Santorini for a writing retreat. After nearly a decade in Canada’s capital, Busteed moved to South Korea to begin a new career as an English teacher. She spends much of her spare time writing, traveling and learning about her newly adopted home.
By Anastasios Papapostolou
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Thursday, 18 June 2015 07:00
100 Days Of Solitude - Daphne Kapsali
How far do you need to go to find yourself?
What do you have to give up?
Daphne didn't go very far. After too many years of living as a writer who didn't write, she gave up her life in London to spend 100 days of solitude on the remote Greek island of Sifnos, off season, and find out, once and for all, who she really was. Her challenge: to write every day.
One hundred days and one hundred entries later, her question had been answered in more ways than she could have imagined, and the things she'd given up never mattered in the first place. This book is her story, as personal as it is universal, of the most obvious and most fundamental quest of all: to be happy; to do what you love.
Part memoir, part fiction, part philosophy and part travel writing, 100 days of solitude is a collection of one hundred stories, all of them connected and each one self-contained.
To find out more about this book, please visit Daphne's site at: Daphne Kapsali
Available on Amazon
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Tuesday, 28 July 2015 07:00
Φύγαμε για ελληνικά! Off We Go To Learn Greek!
Φύγαμε για ελληνικά! is intended for adult learners of Modern Greek as a foreign/second language who are at an intermediate level.
As the title implies, you are invited to join us on a voyage of discovery which offers you the opportunity to practise your Greek reading and listening comprehension skills and to enrich your vocabulary.
This book can be used either in the classroom or for self-study. It covers a wide range of everyday life topics and it also provides information on various social and cultural aspects of life in Greece.
The main body of the book consists of 12 increasingly difficult thematic units. Each unit is divided into two parts.The first part includes a text or a dialogue written in simple, contemporary language followed by a reading comprehension and a vocabulary exercise. Two more exercises aim to further expand and consolidate your knowledge.The second part aims to help you to practise and improve your aural comprehension skills by listening to a dialogue or an oral text based on the theme of the unit followed by three listening comprehension exercises.To read more, please visit: fygamegiaellinika
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Wednesday, 30 September 2015 07:00
The Necklace Of Goddess Athena
In Athens, The Gods Still Dwell Among The Mortals.
Phevos and his sister Daphne are time travelers from ancient Greece. Unaware of the reason their father has sent them to modern-day Athens, they settle down in this new world with the assistance of the two orphaned siblings. Soon, the four youngsters stumble upon vital information that can help them find their missing parents. When they discover a secret cave in the Acropolis foothills, a precious finding causes them to become involved in a conflict between two Gods, one if which becomes their protector and the other, their worst nemesis. Who will prevail when the rival Gods meet again and will the moral bystanders survive to tell the tale?
The Necklace Of Goddess Athena is written by Effrosyni Moschoudi. She was born and raised in Athens, Greece. As a child, she often sat alone in her granny's garden, scribbling rhymes about flowers, butterflies and ants. Through adolescence, she wrote dark poetry that suited her melancholic, romantic nature. She's passionate about books and movies and simply could not live without them. She lives in a quaint seaside town near Athens with her husband Andy and a naughty cat Felix.
Her debut novel, The Necklace of Goddess Athena, is a #1 Amazon bestseller. Her romance, The Ebb (book 1 in The Lady of the Pier trilogy), is an ABNA Q-Finalist.
Effrosyni is a proud member of the writer's groups; eNovel, Authors at Work, ASMSG and The Fantasy & SciFi Network.
Find out more about Effrosyni on her website here.
You can find out more about The Necklace of Goddess Athena on Amazon here.
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Friday, 08 January 2016 07:00
The Birth Of Democracy In Graphic Novel Form
Low voter turnout, the growing popularity of the far-right, tax hike upon tax hike, widespread disappointment among the citizenry: This is democracy under pressure, in the country where it was born. The publication of “Democracy,” a new graphic novel featuring a broken amphora on its cover, could not have come at a more critical time, launched in the US in mid-September, just days before Greeks headed to the polls for the third time in under a year.
The book describes the establishment of democracy in ancient Greece and was created by the illustrators behind the sensational “Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth” (written by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou): Alecos Papadatos and Annie DiDonna.
The main hero is Leander, who, having witnessed the atrocities of the tyrannical regimes, tries to boost his comrades’ morale as they prepare for the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC by telling them about the birth of democracy as he experienced it.
“Oddly enough, none of the pop culture media have dealt with this story. Either because it is somewhat complex or because the applause is always stolen by the achievements of the 5th and 4th centuries BC. So telling it was worthwhile. It is of course about a dark period, the late 6th century BC – there is some confusion in the historical sources, but where research failed to shed light, we used our imaginations,” said Papadatos.
The plot was developed with writer Abraham Kawa and the book was first published in English by Bloomsbury, and recently translated into Greek by Politeia. “We decided to go this route so that it could compete in the foreign market first,” explained Papadatos.
“Abraham has the rare gift of having one foot firmly in analysis and the other in composition. He is very cultured and is crazy about comics and cinema,” said Papadatos. “He also has that annoying habit of knowing exactly what happens in which volume and on what page of Neil Gaiman’s ‘Sandman’ or how many plot twists there are in every issue of ‘Batman.’ He took the story of ‘Democracy’ and took it a whole new level.”
“Democracy” has received rave reviews in the international media. Science and sci-fi blog io9 has hailed it as one of the best graphic novels of 2015.
To read more, please visit: ekathimerini
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Wednesday, 27 January 2016 07:00
The Many Faces Of Hellenic Culture By Billy Cotsis
The new book by Sydney / London writer Billy Cotsis: The Many Faces Of Hellenic Culture is a collection of tales from the author's own experiences of magical locations from across the globe that even the history books have forgotten. They're 'magical' because what the people of these Helenic communities have achieved seems to defy belief: Hellenic culture surviving against the backdrop of a dwindling Diaspora and the abscence of government assistance; and the Hellenic language enduring despite native speakers being a rarity in many of these regions.
This book covers stories gathered by Billy Cotsis in a range of Hellenic communities located in Albania and Ukraine and almost 'everywhere' in between!
You can find out more about the author through his website here.
Available on Amazon in print and Kindle version.
Available on Amazon in print and Kindle version.
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Monday, 15 August 2016 10:09
Trip To Greece By Melina Mallos
Trip to Greece is a colourful workbook with an interesting narrative in English, and Greek keywords to practise and learn. Each page offers multiple fun opportunities for your child to hear, speak, read and write Greek (activities vary on the child’s age and language ability).
As technology continues to connect the World, the skill of speaking a second language becomes more relevant and advantageous to our younger generations.
An Australian children’s’ educator and author has just created a unique tool for children in the Diaspora, bringing some fun and travel to the process of learning a second language.
Relocation to different countries for various reasons has also become very common, and these days, many people immigrate to countries with cultures and languages very different to where they were born and raised.
Children’s’ Multicultural Educator and Consultant, Melina Mallos, recognises the importance of promoting intercultural understanding among children, as well as promoting a firm connection with and appreciation of their own original cultural heritage.
Ms. Mallos, who was born and raised in Greece until the age of 6, is a high profile blogger and commentator on the subject of childhood intercultural understanding and appreciation for a number of years. She published her first bilingual children’s picture book in 2015, titled 'Catch that Cat!'
“We are fortunate to speak English here in Australia, a universal language, and therefore a lot of doors around the world automatically open for us. However, fluency in a second language will open up a whole new world of possibilities to your child. And there are reported health, social and intellectual benefits as well,” she said.
Ms. Mallos assures parents that there are multiple benefits for the child, aside from the obvious advantages of expansive life experiences, such as sharper brain functions, including listening, memory recall, better problem solving, improved critical thinking, greater cognitive flexibility, verbal and spatial abilities.
To purchase 'Trip To Greece,' please visit: Melina Mallos
About The Author
Ms. Mallos is a passionate writer, researcher and teacher with over 15 years’ experience working as a child educator in art museums in Australia. Ms. Mallos is also a frequent presenter at conferences, schools, libraries and community events. Her work has been featured in international journals, television and on the radio. In 2010, she was awarded a prestigious Queensland-Smithsonian Fellowship to research early learning programs in Washington D.C.
To purchase 'Trip To Greece,' please visit: Melina Mallos
About The Author
Ms. Mallos is a passionate writer, researcher and teacher with over 15 years’ experience working as a child educator in art museums in Australia. Ms. Mallos is also a frequent presenter at conferences, schools, libraries and community events. Her work has been featured in international journals, television and on the radio. In 2010, she was awarded a prestigious Queensland-Smithsonian Fellowship to research early learning programs in Washington D.C.
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Monday, 20 March 2017 10:55
Seeing And Believing By Gillian Bouras
‘What happened next? What happened to the boys?'
Once upon a lifetime, twenty-five years ago or more, I wrote a book called A Foreign Wife. In it I recorded my experiences during my first five years in the Peloponnesian village to which I had unexpectedly migrated in 1980.’
Life in the Peloponnese continues to delight and challenge Gillian Bouras. Seeing and Believing resumes the narrative as her sons create their own families and time delivers a fresh crop of joys and heartaches, to which she tries to adjust.
Acutely responsive to what she calls ‘the conspiracy of beauty in Greece,’ she celebrates the natural world in prose that indicates a lifelong engagement with words. Global events send her to historians for enlightenment, while tragedy closer to home —fire, unexpected death— prompts reflection on the solace of contrasting creeds. In between she observes the human comedy with dry humour.
Gillian Bouras was born in Melbourne in 1945. She worked as a teacher in Australia before moving to Greece with her husband and children in 1980. Her first books were about this experience. She lives in the Peloponnese, Greece, as well as maintaining ties with Australia. Her journalism has been published in six countries.
For more information, please visit: Gillian Bouras.
Please click HERE to purchase a copy.
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Thursday, 01 June 2017 07:00
Walking In Athens With Constantine Cavafy
Renowned Greek poet Constantine Cavafy was born in Alexandria, Egypt, on 29 April, 1863. A cosmopolitan by birth, Cavafy travelled for the first time to Greece in the summer of 1901, accompanied by his brother Alexandros. His stay in Athens constitutes the topic of a new book entitled Walking in Athens with Constantine Cavafy.
Wandering through Athens with Cavafy is a fascinating experience. Readers will have the chance to discover that, despite the fact that it’s been over a century ago and with dramatic changes have taken place in the capital, the city centre has preserved the broad outline of its physiognomy. The urban grid, shaped like a large symmetrical triangle and dating from the time of King Otto (mid 19th century), is still the city’s most obvious trait, while the large public buildings that remain attractions adorning the city would have also been seen by Cavafy at the time.
“Cavafy travelled for the first time in Greece in the summer of 1901 during a period of leave from his job. The poet was 38 years old and was accompanied by his brother Alexandros. Travelling to Athens with Cavafy is a fascinating experience.”
To purchase ‘Walking in Athens with Constantine Cavafy,’ please visit: ETP Books
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Tuesday, 20 June 2017 07:00
'A Kilo Of String' By Rob Johnson
‘After living in Greece for thirteen years, writer and reluctant olive farmer Rob Johnson has got used to most of the things that he and his partner Penny found so bizarre at the beginning. Most, but not all.
A Kilo of String is the story-so-far of this not-particularly-plucky couple’s often bewildering experiences among the descendants of Sophocles, Plato and Nana Mouskouri with occasional digressions into total irrelevances.
This is a book which is almost guaranteed not to change your life, but what it will do is answer many of the fundamental questions about life in Greece.’
Please click HERE for more information and to purchase the book!
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