Available to order on Amazon, from your local bookstore, or directly from the publisher McFarland, please consider my first to-be-published work, Myth-Building in Modern Media: The Rise of the Mytharc in Imagined Worlds.
Here’s the official blurb:
Mythology for centuries has served as humanity’s window into understanding its distant past. In our modern world, storytelling creates its own myths and legends, in media ranging from the world of television and cinema to literature and comic books, that help us make sense of the world we live in today. What is the “Mytharc,” how did it arise, and how does it inform modern long-form storytelling? How does the classical hero’s journey intersect with modern myth and narrative? And where might the storytelling of tomorrow take readers and viewers as we imagine our future? From The X-Files to H.P. Lovecraft, from Lost to the Marvel cinematic universe and many worlds beyond, this study explores our modern storytelling mythology and where it may lead us.
And for the unofficial blurb… Myth-Building began life in late 2017 as, originally, a text named after the earlier incarnation of this blog, Cultural Conversation, and has ebbed and flowed in terms of structure, style and content between early 2018 when it was officially commissioned and early 2019 when the manuscript finally headed off to the United States, and took a few extra tiny turns during editing since then. It remains, however, the book I set out to write – an exploration of fictional mythology inside the TV series and movies I love, and while I hope to move on to greater pastures, I will always remain very proud of this work.
You can order the book handily from the following places (and likely your own national derivation of Amazon will stock it too):
It is an academic text, and as such is beyond the traditional price range of more populist books, so if funds don’t stretch, it’s worth considering asking your local library to purchase and stock it, and then you can borrow for free while also supporting your local library. It’s a win win!
If you do consider it, my deepest thanks.
A. J. Black - Writer/Podcaster 