Melissa Ivanco-Murray

Link to my full dissertation, Amazons, Shieldmaidens, and Daring Polianitsy : Slavic Warrior Women in Medieval Literature and Folklore : https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/r207tq787 Time for Slavic Warrior Women, installment number 12! Today we’ll be talking about the Maidens’ War, a fascinating and bloody part of Czech legendary history. Incidentally, the story has been turned into a manga (which, alas, I cannot find in English translation, only French) but is

Link to my full dissertation, Amazons, Shieldmaidens, and Daring Polianitsy : Slavic Warrior Women in Medieval Literature and Folklore : https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/r207tq787 Time for Slavic Warrior Women, part 11! Today we’ll discuss one of my favorite figures from medieval literature, who really deserves more attention than she gets outside the Czech spheres: Libuše. Enjoy! Libuše pointing the way to Přemysl The origin myth of the Czech people establ

I posted on my Instagram a few weeks ago (wow, has it been that long??) about how I am debating making a new pen name. I decided in those intervening weeks that I am definitely making a new pen name. My reasoning behind this decision is manifold, but I haven’t actually executed it yet for another set of reasons. I thought I’d share both sets here, beginning with why I haven’t made the changeover yet. However, before I get into my reasoning, I wanted to address an ongoing conv

We’re still settling into our new house in Ohio, and I’m not nearly as far along with my unpacking as I’d hoped. We’re getting the floors redone (some gnarly old carpets need to be ripped up), so I can’t even move most of my furniture into its final resting place yet...which doesn’t help matters. Thus, about 75% of my belongings are still boxed up in the basement or garage. But hey, at least we have a garage now so that I actually have a place to keep these things for the tim

Link to my full dissertation, Amazons, Shieldmaidens, and Daring Polianitsy : Slavic Warrior Women in Medieval Literature and Folklore : https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/r207tq787 Time for Slavic Warrior women, part 10! Today we’ll discuss an introduction to the Viking Age as described in medieval Scandinavian & Slavic literature. A quick note: this is a longer section, but I felt there was more information that might be relevant to next discussions (also it’s

Alright, I’m WAY behind on blog posts (sorry) and quite frankly barely have time to knock out my reading round up. I know, I know; if I have time to read, I should have time to type up a quick breakdown...but those two activities come from wildly different energy reserves, and the writing well is running a bit low. I poured what little time I had into knocking out my billionth edit of The Night Chemist, received some devastating agent feedback (which I am taking with a grain

Link to full dissertation, Amazons, Shieldmaidens, and Daring Polianitsy : Slavic Warrior Women in Medieval Literature and Folklore : https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/r207tq787 Time for Slavic Warrior women, part 9! Today we’ll discuss Amage, a lesser known Sarmatian queen. Sarmatians (not at all historically accurate) Another historical Scythian queen is Amage, who ruled over the Sarmatians during the third or second century BCE . Although she appears in f

First off, sorry I missed my last two scheduled posts. Alas, moving has proven a much more complicated process than anticipated. Between fighting with the moving company to get my stuff in the first place—they missed TWO scheduled deliveries, claiming their “truck was broken” (they only have one??) without giving me any notice; I had to call multiple times to find out WHY my stuff wasn’t there yet—and then, once they finally brought my stuff, they dropped my upright piano on

Link to full dissertation, Amazons, Shieldmaidens, and Daring Polianitsy : Slavic Warrior Women in Medieval Literature and Folklore : https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/r207tq787 Time for Slavic Warrior women, part 8! Today we’ll discuss Tomyris, the queen of the Massagetae (one of the nomadic steppe tribes that fell under the Scythian umbrella). One of these days—whenever I finish writing the current series I’ve got going on—I’d love to turn her biography into

First, the blurb: Born with a scarlet mote in her left eye, Phédre nó Delaunay is sold into indentured servitude as a child. When her bond is purchased by an enigmatic nobleman, she is trained in history, theology, politics, foreign languages, the arts of pleasure. And above all, the ability to observe, remember, and analyze. Exquisite courtesan, talented spy...and unlikely heroine. But when Phédre stumbles upon a plot that threatens her homeland, Terre d'Ange, she has no cho

Despite how busy I was getting ready to move to another state (ah, how I shall miss Virginia), I devoured seven books this month. Well, technically I devoured six while another was a hard DNF, but I’ll get into that shortly. Of the books I read, every single one was a 5-star read for me. That hasn’t happened in a long time, but I desperately hope it is a trend that continues. In chronological order in which I read them, a few notes about each book I read (or started to read)

Link to full dissertation, Amazons, Shieldmaidens, and Daring Polianitsy: Slavic Warrior Women in Medieval Literature and Folklore: https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/r207tq787 Time for Slavic Warrior women, part 7! Today we’ll be talking about my personal favorite Amazon, none other than Penthesilea, who fell defending the walls of Troy against the invading Greeks. Alongside Hippolyte and Antiope, Penthesilea is one of the Amazons most well-known in contempora

I hate generative AI with every fiber of my being, so let’s get that out of the way right now. Does my hatred make this analysis biased? Probably. Does it matter in the long run? Probably not, because the objective evils of gen-AI are pretty overwhelmingly obvious to anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together. Before we go further, a TW: Violence, self-harm. If either concerns you, skip the next paragraph. Environmental impacts from massive data centers aside—a

Alright, so this has been a long time in the works—with a lot of back and forth—but I suppose I should share the big news. As the title says: we’re moving to Ohio! My husband is graduating from the Virginia Maryland School of Veterinary Medicine, and he took a job at a wonderful clinic in Marietta, Ohio (which is right on the border with West Virginia along the banks of the Ohio River). It’s a gorgeous location and a historic city with a unique background—the origin of the Un

Link to full dissertation, Amazons, Shieldmaidens, and Daring Polianitsy : Slavic Warrior Women in Medieval Literature and Folklore : https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/r207tq787 Time for Slavic Warrior Women, part 6! Today we’ll talk about Antiope, an Amazon who is often confused for Hippolyte because of the overlap in their respective narratives...and overlap that, incidentally, traces all the way back to their earliest portrayals in Greek literature. Abduct

It’s almost time for MilSpouse Stuff Your Kindle Day , where a bunch of us military-affiliated authors got together and decided to make an e-book FREE for the day! This year: it’s May 8th. So consider this your heads up so you can add that date to your calendars. For the entirely of 8May26, you can stuff your kindle (or whatever else you use to read e-books) with a bunch of fiction and nonfiction alike, all written by veterans, servicemembers, and spouses! There are more of u

April was crazy busy for me. CRAZY busy. However, I refuse to go a whole dang month without reading, and I managed to squeeze in a book. That’s right, I, your voracious-reader-host, only read one book this month. I think this marks the first time since my first summer training when I arrived at West Point, during which I was literally forbidden to have any books in my room (or any down time, for that matter), that I went a month without reading at least three. Even when I was

Vasilisa Mikulishna, as drawn by yours truly in ProCreate on my iPad Because of my fun doctoral research into Slavic warrior women (in case you missed any of the series of blogs I’ve been posting), I was approached to contribute an article for an anthology about Russian radicals and folklore. While the timing isn’t optimal, between querying The Night Chemist, my husband about to graduate vet school, and us being about to move to a different state...I accepted. Because I have

So on the 29th I’ll be throwing my proverbial hat into the proverbial pitching ring by participating in the QuestPit event on social media. I deleted my Twitter account after Elon took it over (ew), which is where the pitch event originated, but it looks like you can do the whole QuestPit thing on Instagram, Bluesky, & Threads now, too. So here’s hoping someone actually bites on my pitch. Querying sucks, as many aspiring trad-pub authors before me have said and many more afte

Link to full dissertation, Amazons, Shieldmaidens, and Daring Polianitsy : Slavic Warrior Women in Medieval Literature and Folklore : https://libraetd.lib.virginia.edu/public_view/r207tq787 Time for Slavic Warrior women, part 5! Today we’ll start talking about the mythological Amazon queens whose narratives are best known, starting with—you guessed it—Hippolyte! Mosaic of Amazon fighting Greek Warrior As is often the case with heroic figures from bygone eras, several con