Press Release
As House of the Muses began in 2007 in the opening scene of a heartbroken Spartan woman struggling desperately to write down her tale in a little yurt on the plains of Scythia, it returns full circle once again to Scythia where we find Dika–now known forever after as Pleistodika–throwing down her quill and scrolls to tell her tale now through her tortured memories from the brink of madness.
She has failed in her mission to retell the tale of Sappho, and in the course of this series she has tried to recreate her destroyed writings, but she has run out of time.
“When I began this story all those years ago, I had no idea where it would take me,” Pam Harrison, the creator of the series, relates, “But I knew it was a story that needed to be told. I knew from the writings of Sappho and Alkaios that it wouldn’t end well, but it’s an essential part of history that needs to be brought forth. The shameful amount of fragments of these works is a testament to the fact that censorship robs us of so much of our history. This series about Lesbians has not turned out to be what some might have hoped, but by the end of 2011 it will be done and hopefully those who want to know the real story of Sappho of Lesbos will have something solid to read.”
The series attempts to place the bulk of Sappho’s poems into their actual context in the timeline of the story being presented. At the end of House of the Muses #7, Atthis, a long-time friend and purported love interest of Sappho’s, has broken ties with the school and her lover Anaktoria and pledged her allegiance to Gorgo, and Mika has proven to have sided with them as well. “There is a scrap of a fragment by an historian (when I locate my copy of Lyra Graeca, I’ll edit and add it for precise reference) that states, ‘For her part in these events, she shall be named Pleistodika.’ This name means ‘Ultimate Justice’. Now, if you
Pam Harrison is the 2008 Recipient of the Prism Comics Queer Press Grant, and creator of House of the Muses as well as her new sci-fi series, A Deviant Mind. If you’re new to the House of the Muses series, you can catch up on the story at this site. House of the Muses is also available in print format or ebook at Amazon.com worldwide, IndyPlanet.com and Wowio. Plans are underway to make the rest of the series available at Amazon.com in paperback later this year.
