Stephanie Draven on Midnight Medusa and Other Mesmerizing Monsters

Author Stephanie Draven brings us a story of monsters and ancient myths this month in her debut Silhouette Nocturne Bite Midnight Medusa! Stephanie joins us today on the blog to tell us more about how legendary creatures inspired her sexy, emotion-packed paranormal short…

by Stephanie Draven, author of Midnight Medusa

What if the monsters of ancient myth were real…and what if you found out you were one of them?

This is the premise of my new paranormal romance series that begins with the Nocturne Bite, Midnight Medusa.

My heroine is a budding new artist and a survivor of the Bosnian War. My hero is a son of Ares–an ancient immortal who feeds upon fear itself. And when he kidnaps Renata, he helps her discover powers she never knew she had.

In telling this story, I wanted to rewrite an ancient myth for the modern age and I’ve always been a sucker for Greek mythology. Who can resist tales of krakens that emerge from the shadowy deep, mighty heroes with magic swords, and other such tales of dark glory? Even our modern fascination with vampires finds a source in Greek mythology, where female temptresses lured handsome young men to their beds, then feasted on their flesh and blood.

But what has always fascinated me is that so many of the ancient monsters were women, and that so many female monsters had a serpentine aspect. The original gorgons of ancient myth had snakes for hair, could turn men into statues, and were generally thought to be horrific. But the deeper symbolism of the story seemed like a blatant sexual metaphor to me; take, for example, the whole idea that a powerful woman could make a man rock hard with a single glance!

What if you could turn your enemies to stone? What if your fears were so strong you could shape them beneath your fingertips? And what if you met a man who could take all those fears away, leaving you wild and uninhibited? Is that monstrous, or is that what we all secretly wish for?

And just what is a monster anyway?

Every culture has them. And most every child has worried they were lurking underneath the bed. So where do they come from? And why do some of them have such a primal, sensual allure?

These were the questions I asked myself before writing my new paranormal romance series, and the answers led me to a deeply satisfying writing journey, that began with Midnight Medusa.

The real Medusa, the most famous of the gorgons, was originally a beautiful woman who (in some stories) turned into an enraged monster after having been ravished in the Temple of Athena, the Goddess of Battle.

I doubted that choice of temple could have been an accident, and it made me question whether monsters are really just flights of fancy, or if they represent our fears about mankind’s worst nature, about his most monstrous acts–especially those he commits in war.
Are monsters really alien creatures, or are they a reflection of what happens inside our very human selves?

Take werewolf stories, for example. They seem to stem from our inner call of the wild. But they also explore the fear that some day we might lose control and really hurt the ones we love.

It seems to me that most–if not all–monster stories are really about the dark emotional places men and women find themselves in times of trouble. And it’s usually in those darkest, most vulnerable places, that we find true love.

So what are your favorite monsters, and what do they represent to you?