More to Midas

In the other story, Pan the nymph with wooden pipes and the god Apollo competed to see who was the better musician because apparently the gods had nothing better to do. Most people liked Apollo’s lyre playing best, because in addition to his archery skills, he was also the god of music.

But Midas picked Pan as the winner, and Apollo concluded he must have an ass’s ears (burn?) and so Midas’s ears transformed into a donkey’s ears.

As if this myth weren’t strange enough, Midas wore headgear to cover his ears and swore his barber to secrecy. The barber needed to spill the tea, so he dug a hole near a river and whispered the secret. The reeds that grew by the river then started whispering the secret and telling everyone that Midas had donkey ears.

From gold to donkey ears. The moral of both stories is a warning about what happens when mortals get involved with the gods. Another acceptable moral is that Greek myths are weird.

Shocking Curses

So the starting concept for Strikes Twice was a cursed man shocks everything he touches. Kind of like the Midas Touch where everything Midas touched turned to gold.

That’s the basic premise, but I write romance novels, so it also needed a romance aspect and it turns into something like this:

If a dangerous electrical curse were attached to man you found nearly impossibly to resist, how long would you remember to keep your hands to yourself?

Unlike Midas’s other myth, everyone in Strikes Twice keeps their regular ears. The main character Marty has enough trouble trying to lift Az’s curse without getting zapped as their growing attraction makes distance difficult. 

Strikes Twice features enemies to lovers, an understandably grumpy shifter, an optimistic wizard, action, steamy scenes, cruel curses, and love triumphing against all odds. This the second novel in the Elementally Yours Series, and each book features different characters and can be read as a standalone.