Most of you already know I’m a sucker for mythology. I could spend hours researching the ancient myths (and often do). I’ve taken a few liberties with my mythological links in the Eternal Guardians series, but at the end of the day I try to stay as close to the original mythology as possible. Of course, for every research book that says a myth happened one way, you can find another that contradicts it. So I read a lot, weight the differences and then pull out the pieces that work for my books. So far, I’ve been happy with the results.

One thing I went around and around about when I was developing the series was the world building. It had to make sense in my mind before I wrote MARKED. The gods as celestial beings that require worship and sacrifice didn’t fly for me. At least not in today’s day and age. I couldn’t see my modern-day Argonauts (or their race of Argoleans, for that matter) worshipping these conniving gods like the ancient Greeks did. (Because, yeah, I already knew just how conniving those gods were going to be.) So I figured the gods had to come from somewhere. And there had to be a higher power from which they garnered their strength. They didn’t just poof into existence.

Of course, when you’re talking about a higher power, you’re talking religion. And I knew I didn’t want to delve too deeply into religion. But in order for the world building to work, there had to be something…some link between the gods and this higher power. The link I came up with veers off from traditional Greek mythology, but it fits my world, so to me it works.

I have this weird habit of coming up with twists and links and finding out later that those links really do exist. Ask my CP Joan Swan. It’s freaky. This link between the gods and a higher power? One of those freaky moments. You see, when I came up with that particular link, I did so based on lots of thinking, conceptualizing and trying to figure out what sounded feasible. In my world, the gods aren’t all-powerful beings. They’re fallen angels who were sent to earth for a specific purpose and turned away from the Creator. They stayed in the human realm, mated with each other, mated with humans and continue to cause all kinds of trouble. None of them are wholly good. None of them can be because they’re fallen.

Made sense. Not in Greek mythology, but in my world? Made perfect sense.

Of course, I came up with that part of my world building over two years ago. So imagine my surprise yesterday when my mother called. She was listening to a program that talked about the Sons of God and the Nephilim. For those of you who don’t know what either of these are (like me), I’ll clue you in. Both are referenced in the Bible in Genesis:

Genesis 6:1-4
When men began to increase in number on the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose. Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

The Nephilim were on the earth in those days – and also afterward – when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.

So who were the Sons of God? And what about the Nephilim?

There are several “interpretations” but the one that is of most interest to me is the following:

“Sons of God” refers to fallen angels who lived on earth and married human women. The Nephilim are giants of extra-human strength who were the offspring of these marriages.

If you’ve read my books, then you probably just had a light bulb moment. Sounds familiar, huh? I thought so too. It’s highly possible this knowledge has been floating around in my brain for years. After all, I’ve had my fair share of religious education. But consciously, I never knew about the Sons of God or the Nephilim before yesterday.

Freaky, how it all links back together, huh?

For more info about the Sons of God & the Nephilim you can go here. (It’s really interesting reading. You can also see the other interpretations.)

And on a different note…anyone have a Kindle? Amazon is offering MARKED as a free ebook download for the Kindle starting Wednesday, September 15th! It runs for the next two weeks, August 15-30. So if you don’t already have your copy of MARKED…what are you waiting for??