Peggy Arthur

By Peggy Arthur

Greetings!

One cannot separate man from myth or myth from man. Each feeds the other, like a two-headed snake endlessly consuming itself. Mythology has always lived at the edges of our lives, shaping how we understand good and evil, right and wrong, light and shadow. It’s not just ancient tales carved into stone or whispered around fires; it’s in us.

I’ve always been fascinated by the study of mythology. To me, myths aren’t simply stories of gods and monsters—they are mirrors of human struggle, power, and resilience. It created a hunger in me; I craved something more. I wanted to see us. Our faces, our rhythms, our bloodlines woven into the mythic fabric. I wanted a story in which we were the heroes and heroines, not just footnotes or shadows in someone else’s legend.

That desire gave birth to The Pretender’s Game.

Before I ever put pen to page, I spent months studying Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey—his timeless map of transformation, descent, and return. I became captivated by how mythic structure reveals the patterns of human growth, how every trial and triumph echoes across time. But the deeper I studied, the more I realized something was missing. The character I had been shaping for years, Hemi, did not quite fit the path of the Hero. Her story was not about conquest or return; it was about descent, loss, surrender, and spiritual awakening. That’s when I discovered the Heroine’s Journey. It is a path that honors the cycles of separation and return to the self; the healing of the split between the inner and outer worlds.

It was a revelation. I understood then that The Pretender’s Game was meant to follow not the Hero’s path, but the Heroine’s. It is a myth born of reclamation. It is a merging of ancestral wisdom and contemporary struggle, of rhythm and ritual, of remembering what was buried so that it might rise again.

The Pretender’s Game is not just a story; it’s a mythology reborn. A place where ancestral echoes speak, where rhythm is more than music, and where survival is not only about strength but also about spirit. My characters wrestle with grief, legacy, betrayal, and destiny, but at its heart, the story is about reclaiming the mythic space that has too often been denied to us.

Because myths are not just about the past. They are blueprints for the future. And in The Pretender’s Game, I invite you into a world where we stand at the center of legend, where our voices are the song, and where our survival writes the myth itself.

Our next blog post will introduce you to our heroine, Hemi. The circle is opening. Will you step in?

✨ Step into the circle—read an excerpt from The Pretender’s Game The Pretender’s Game Excerpt.

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