Iris, the Goddess of Rainbows is about to have a bad day at the office... of Olympian proportions! It's not easy being a goddess. Just ask Iris. When the adorably cheerful and enthusiastic Goddess of Rainbows goes to "head office" on Mount Olympus to ask for a promotion she learns instead that Olympus is down-sizing! Even worse... Rainbows have been declared non-essential so now both Iris's job and her very existence are next up on the chopping block! Her only chance for survival? Fight hard to earn the one job on Olympus that nobody wants... personal assistant to the most dangerous god of all time... Zeus himself. Unfortunately for Iris, the first item on Zeus's agenda could be the death of her... literally. Zeus wants Iris to arrange for him to have a successful "love connection" with Valkyrie, a visiting Nordic Goddess... OR ELSE! But then Zeus's jealous wife Hera, the Queen of the Gods orders Iris to ruin Zeus's fun... OR ELSE! And most of the other gods just seem determined to be as unhelpful as divinely possible. So what's a poor goddess to do? Find out as this hilariously fun and light-hearted novel chases after Iris's efforts to stay one step ahead of all the thunderbolts... and dunderheads... that Mount Olympus can throw at her. “Thunderbolts and Dunderheads A Myth-sterically Funny Novel" by Todd McGinnis is adapted from and is the novelization of the award-winning, farcical stage comedy “Thunderbolts And Dunderheads” by Todd McGinnis My dearest wish is that this novel finds you healthy and happy, and that it entertains you and gives you smiles and laughs and enjoyment (perhaps even a welcome distraction from more serious matters). You're not going to believe this but please, hear me out... Improbable as it seems, the core idea for a ridiculous comedy set among the gods of Mount Olympus came directly from... my own personal experience. No I've never actually been a god of any kind (not even in my own dreams). But it's still true. I'll explain... In my 20s and 30s my many efforts to finance my varied artistic impulses with something like a steady, grown-up job with a reliable income resulted in me being down-sized over and over as one "solid" industry or job after another evaporated before my eyes, putting me back to square one. (Do not pass Go, do not collect $200) As a card-carrying member of Generation Down-size, I eventually realized that I stood the same or better odds of surviving by pursuing my creative pursuits (acting, writing, graphic design, etc.) as a self-employed professional in control of my own fate, than I did with any "normal" job I could get. So I gave up on normal and reliable and just got on with my pursuits. Things started looking up quite quickly. Jump ahead a bit and I'm running my own theatre production company and looking for the next original comedy I was going to write and produce. I knew I wanted to do something set among the gods of Mount Olympus. I've always loved stories of mythology and folklore but there's a special place in my heart for the Greek Gods. They are so deliciously complex... and fascinating. And they are just so... human. For whatever reason it struck me one day (for probably the 100th time) that the Romans had inherited and given new names to many of the gods first worshipped by the Greeks. Many. But not necessarily to all of them. Well... what about the ones who didn't make the cut? What about the poor, workaday gods and goddesses who at some point were deemed irrelevant? Or made redundant? (something I could relate to very directly) I had my idea I was going to explore what down-sizing meant at the original "head office" of Mount Olympus. My protagonist would be Iris, the Goddess of Rainbows, for a lot of reasons but chief among them the fact that most people today have no idea there even was a Goddess of Rainbows. So I wrote a farce called "Thunderbolts and Dunderheads". My own production company staged two productions of it (others have staged it since) and I remember each of our productions with great fondness because I got to see some of the most talented and brilliantly hilarious actors I know bring the whole thing to life and make audiences laugh. Jump forward again to this year... I was revisiting this play and it occurred to me that it might make a very fun, light-hearted, silly and enjoyable little novel. So I wrote it. And though I stayed very faithful to the text of the play, I found it to be an all new and thoroughly enjoyable experience retelling the story for a different medium. In the process, I laughed a lot, which cheered me up immensely. And because the year was 2020, I thought a lot of other people might be just as in need of laughing a lot and being cheered up as I was. So I've sent this novel out into the world to do just that. And I'll finish as I started... My dearest wish is that this novel finds you healthy and happy, and that it entertains you and gives you smiles and laughs and enjoyment (perha