Or: Make Love and not War

By Heidi Trautmann

The subtitle ‘Make Love and not War’ I added when I heard the sad news about the coup in Turkey and the butchery Erdogan’s supporters  carried through on young soldiers who knew nothing of what they were actually doing except carrying out orders. I could not continue writing. Thus, my comments on the new book are receiving a serious introduction about Love and Hate, Death and Life, all so very close to each other and all so eternal since the existence of the human beings. The publishing - and presentation of the book on July 15, 2016 -  a graphic novel, actually the first erotic comic book, could not have been done at a more appropriate time. Make Love not War!

Our friend Christiane Sternberg who is the publisher of  ‘Aphroditeschatten’ (meaning in the shadow of Aphrodite);  a German blog under the roof of www.CIPS.COM.CY , is a freelance journalist and lives in Cyprus, Aphrodite’s island full of contradictions;

Christiane seems to be very attracted to the goddess of love and on the basis of some intensive research on the legends surrounding her, in cooperation with Eva Selwood, she developed the idea of creating a novel, a graphic novel with the help of the artist David Selwood, also living in Cyprus, the final act of graphic layout was done by Marcos Gittis. The text was there but now it had to be split up into small scene scripts and texts for speech bubbles. The creating of hundreds of A4 well done drawings took David over two years. He said he used water colour pencils and you can see that he has some practice in this kind of work. Christiane told me how amazed she was to see what you can tell with one drawing. Where a whole page was necessary for her to describe a scene, a single drawing includes all of it without having to lose a single word. You can read the artist’s CV – also other information  -  under the following link for English readers: http://aphroditenakedtruth.cips.com.cy/

And here the link for German readers: http://aphroditenacktewahrheit.cips.com.cy

The story, permissive and lacking respect, is placed in the year 217 in Pafos, at the annual event of the Aphrodisia days when people came flocking into town, others descending from sailing boats and the streets were black with worshippers of the goddess; all had come to honour her and to obey her rules of love. All whorehouses had opened their doors and the temple and its priestesses were expecting the masses, however, the story also includes one true love story.

No need to beat about the bush, the ceremonies held in those ancient times were very open in every sense; the gods and goddesses were indulging and sharing and cultivating their passions and desires allowing their worshippers to do likewise. Just think of all those stories around Zeus, the tricks he used to seduce women he took a fancy in; immorality reigned in Olympos the seat of the gods and goddesses, were they not just a reflection of the desires of people living down below on earth?

The Aphrodisia days lasted for several days, young girls were initiated and older ones were just enjoying themselves. It made people too tired to think of war.

Christiane said to me, people of today are too prudish or, let us be honest, hypocritical ... it is done just the same, though behind shutters, all that what you see in this graphic novel, however, today we don’t have any similar Aphrodisia days.

The book of 160 pages is published as two separate versions in English and German

ISBN No. 978-9963-2163-6-9

Obtainable at Amazon: Aphorodite, German Version : die Nackte Wahrheit at Euro 16.50
https://www.amazon.de/Aphrodite-Wahrheit-Erotische-Geheimnisse-antiken/dp/9963216366/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468831710&sr=8-1&keywords=Aphrodite+die+nackte+Wahrheit

English version : Aphrodite  – The naked truth at GBP 13.80

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Aphrodite-Erotic-Mysteries-Ancient-Cyprus/dp/9963216358/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468831641&sr=8-1&keywords=Aphrodite+the+naked+truth

Or you contact  by email: shop@cips.com.cy