Gianna Kostas is on the cusp of a fairy-tale life. Sure, she’s just lost her job, but she’s about to marry one of New York’s most eligible bachelors. On her way to taste wedding cakes, though, things go sideways. Shocking news sends Gia off on a wild journey halfway around the world in pursuit of her ailing–and nearly estranged–father.

In Athens, she learns Dr. Kostas, a classics professor, is determined to retrace Odysseus’s famous voyage. This is a journey her father is in no condition to take alone, so Gia faces a tough decision. When an unexpected job offer helps seal the deal and quash the guilt Gia feels from her disapproving groom-to-be, the journey is on. But as Gia adventures–and eats–her way around the Mediterranean, she discovers that confronting epic storms and ripped surfer dudes might be the easy part.

Along the way, as she uncovers family secrets, finds heartbreak, and learns more about a certain archaeologist with a mysterious past of his own, Gia discovers that fairy-tale endings might be messy and complicated, but they can happen anywhere.

In less than two minutes, I’m out of my own clothes and wearing a little black strapless number that’s about a half size too tight.

Sikka points to my left hand. “Take that off,” she orders. “He no spoil your fun tonight.”

“Should I give it back?” I ask her, suddenly.

She looks scandalized. “Never! He dump you—you keep ring! But wear on your chain now, for be safe.”

I slide the ring onto my necklace, where it nestles into my slightly-more-voluminous-than-usual cleavage. And then I try—and fail—to not touch the indentation on the bare third finger of my left hand.

Sikka takes my mind off the ring by handing me a pair of shoes with at least five inch heels.

“Are you crazy?” I stare down at the shoes. “I can’t walk in those.”

“I don’t know . . .” I begin, but she rolls her eyes at me and plunges her own feet into a pair of thigh-high leather boots.

“Is only for dance.” She takes me by the hand, which is a good thing since I can’t walk in these crazy shoes without support, and we totter back out onto the street.

Luckily, the nightclub is only a block away. It’s totally jammed with mostly inebriated, writhing bodies.

An extremely sweaty man dances over to us as we walk in the door. He’s wearing a pink dress shirt, unbuttoned almost to the waist, and stands about two inches shorter than Sikka in her high-heeled boots. He does a little shimmy in front of her, and she laughs uproariously and throws herself into his arms, latching her lips onto his.

“Gia, this is my Ivo,” she says as they break apart. “Ivo, Gia’s heart is broke. We need drinks, okay?”

Ivo gives me a broad, gap-toothed smile and shimmies off into the crowd.

“Only one drink.” I shout at Sikka, who is already pulling me onto the dance floor.

“Sure, sure.”

The music shifts, and it’s Daft Punk, and suddenly? I’m dancing. I mean, only a monster doesn’t dance to Daft Punk.

When Ivo brings me a pink drink, I down it in two swallows and immediately feel better. After all, between the jet lag and the crying I’m probably a little dehydrated, so this lemonadey concoction is likely just what I need. Ivo grabs Sikka by the hips, and since she’s still holding my hands, the three of us dance together, which seems to make him extremely happy. Then Sikka straddles her legs around one of his knees and starts grinding on him, which is my cue to back away. In under a second, they are swallowed by the crowd.

I find myself standing beside the bar with one of Sikka’s ridiculous, not-quite-stolen shoes in my hand, which has come off in all the dancing. And as it turns out, I am just fuzzy enough to not be able to sort out the buckle.

Defeated, I drop the shoe on the floor, balance on the other one, and order a drink for the road. Sikka was right. I do feel better.

I also feel someone slide in beside me at the bar.

“I think you’ve possibly lost your shoe,” he says and holds it up.

This is no Greek boy.

He’s got a British accent for one. Tall, with dark eyes and darker hair, a little curly. Persian origin, maybe, or possibly South Asian. In any case, he has soft, olive skin, which is also tanned—in fact, I can see where his nose is peeling, just a little.

“Yours?” he repeats. He’s got a half-finished glass of beer in his other hand.

“Sort of.” I take the shoe back from him. “I mean, it’s—ah—mostly borrowed, to tell you the truth. I was just having a little trouble getting it back on.”

The bartender slides my drink over at this moment. It is, I now realize, pink lemonade mixed with something akin to jet fuel. I knock it back in one.

My tall, hot, shoe-returning friend raises his eyebrows and smiles. “Thirsty?”

Um. Yes. Very, very thirsty.

But of course, I don’t say this. Instead, I lift one shoulder casually. “Just a bit dehydrated actually. Jet lag.”

“Ah. That explains the shoe.” He smiles and is about to turn away when I grab his arm.

I hear myself say, “Can I buy you a drink?” and then—worse—I actually do.

Things might get just a little—ah—crazy after that.

From AN ACCIDENTAL ODYSSEY published by arrangement with Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2021 by kc dyer.

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When I first started writing EIGHTY DAYS TO ELSEWHERE, I knew there was going to be research involved. What I didn’t know was that research would take me all the way around the world on the biggest adventure of my life. I’d written a draft of the story before I set out, but my experiences were so astonishing that most of them made it into the story, in one form or another.

I rode boats and trains and buses and gondolas and streetcars and airplanes. I hopped on subways and taxis and streetcars from Singapore to Liverpool. From soaring over the Alps, to battling hail as big a golf balls in Milan, to climbing through a North Korean spy ship salvaged from the bottom of the ocean, every day brought not only an incredible adventure for me, but added detail to the story I was writing. I was pick-pocketed in France, toured India through a killer heatwave, rode out an earthquake in Japan, and left Hong Kong the day before protests began rocking the city. But perhaps the craziest adventure of all came in the form of an unexpected invitation to crawl backwards into a hole in the ground, and explore an endless maze of limestone caves, deep under the streets of Paris.

Before leaving home, I’d written a scene for Romy – the main character in my story – that required her to race across Paris. To help make sure I got the details right,  I managed to secure a tour of a now-defunct rail line around Paris with a man named Gilles Thomas. I knew Thomas as an historian and author. What I didn’t know was that he is the King of the Paris Underworld.

We met in Paris, near la Petite Ceinture, once a thriving rail line completely encircling Paris. But by 1934, it had been replaced by the Paris Metro, and had stopped carrying passengers. For me, though, this would be a perfect route for a panicked young traveller to take, and I was delighted to have a guided tour. After handing me a headlamp, Gilles walked me along the length of one of the disused tunnels, stepping carefully along the old tracks. As we stopped to discuss some of the amazing graffiti on the tunnel wall, a pair of lights suddenly appeared, from literally right under our feet.

And I met my first two cataphiles.

Cataphiles are the explorers of the caverns deep below the city — far beneath the sewer, the Metro, and the train lines. The mining of these limestone and plaster quarries began officially sometime in the thirteenth century, though there is evidence of work done long before that. And when the graveyards of Paris began to overflow in the eighteenth century leading a few houses to collapse into charnel pits of rotting flesh and bone, parts of these old tunnels were put to a new use. The contents of the Saints-Innocents cemetery [and a few others] were dug up and dumped into the abandoned quarries. Later, some of these bones were rearranged to make the ossuary known today as the Paris Catacombs.

The rest of the bones? Still down there — somewhere. I say ‘somewhere’ because there are more than 200 kilometers of these mining tunnels deep below Paris. Many of the tunnels are flooded, more have collapsed. It’s way too easy to get lost down there, or get into trouble in a million other ways. It’s highly dangerous, and completely illegal, and is regularly patrolled by the Parisian police.

But judging from the hole at my feet, deep inside this abandoned train tunnel, these cataphiles had found a way. And after the mud-spattered boys had hurried away, the man who literally wrote the book on this subterranean world invited me to take a closer look.

How could I say no?

Pretending I was not scared out of my mind, I took a deep breath, and backed my way down into the hole. It was cool, contrasting with the brutal heatwave Paris was enduring above ground. Inside, after a few seconds of wriggling, the tunnel opened up enough to allow us to stand almost upright. My guide was tall, but had mastered the art of loping through these darkened tunnels without braining himself on the roof. I scurried along behind, trying to keep up without tripping in the murky, knee-deep groundwater.

The tunnels were lined with graffiti as we entered, which was reassuring to the extent that it proved others had at least been down here before. In places, the street names far above us were carved into the rock, but these were centuries old, and some of the street name have changed. It was horrifyingly apparent how easy it would be to get lost.

“You’re not in Paris anymore,” said Thomas, and then had me turn off my headlamp, to get a taste of absolute darkness.

I’ve been in absolute darkness once before, inside a lava tube in Iceland. [Don’t ever let anyone tell you the life of a writer is dull!] This time, in the darkness, the only sounds were of dripping water, and the tremor of the earth caused by trains passing far above us. Since all I could think of was tunnel collapse, and my blood supply had been replaced with adrenaline, I only lasted about two seconds before I had to turn my light on again.

As we ran through the tunnels, passages opened up on either side; each twisting off into darkness, filled with crystal clear groundwater and perhaps a femur or two. 

Some impossible time later, when we spotted bobbing headlamps in the distance, my heart nearly stopped. What if they belonged to nefarious people? Who would ever find us again? While my guide, unfazed and completely at home in this environment, was ready to stop and chat with fellow cataphiles, they turned and fled. Perhaps they feared the police? Rightly so, as it turned out.

Soon a tiny pin-prick of light appeared in the distance, followed by several others. It was a group of cataflics; police and a couple of firemen for good measure, led by a tiny but tough policewoman. They were fully geared up in hard-hats and ropes, overalls and waders, and they had a few questions for us.

Luckily, I was with the King of the Underworld, and so, after a protracted discussion and quite a few headlamps beamed into my face, they moved off.

We explored a bit more, including tunnels loaded with stalactites accessible only on hands and knees, or worse – via the belly-crawl. By the time we scrabbled out of the hole an hour later, I was soaked to the skin, muddy, and with a case of post-tunnel euphoria that lasted for days.

As for the story? You’ll have to read EIGHTY DAYS TO ELSEWHERE, and let me know if I got the details right.

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