October 15, 2025

No Kings!

         “No Kings” should be the one thing every single person in the United States agrees on, regardless of political affiliation.  After all, that’s kind of our thing; we’ve been rejecting the unchecked power of kings for the past two hundred and fifty years.  So in honor of this perfectly straightforward and non-controversial sentiment, people all across the nation will be gathering for rallies this weekend, to celebrate the USA’s king-free state.  I mention this today because printmaking actually played an important role in the American Revolution and its lead-up.  Remember “Join or Die” and Paul Revere’s version of the “Boston Massacre”?  But when I was looking around for block prints on the subject to share, I found something much more fabulous.
        In 1861, after Japan had been forcibly “opened” to the west, author Kanagaki Robun wrote Osanaetoki Bankokubanashi (Children’s Illustrated International Tales) which is a history of America, illustrated with wonderful wood block prints by Utagawa Yoshitora.  In this version of the
American War for Independence, the idea of a “republic” without a king was something our author struggled to get his head - and his language - around, but he didn’t let that cramp his style.  Let’s start with George Washington, who famously refused to be made king, or even to be president for a third term, knowing that a too-powerful “charismatic” leader wasn’t in the best interests of the nation and its people - just sayin’.  The first image above shows Washington shooting an arrow from his place beside the Goddess of America.  Nothing too crazy there, on an allegorical level.  The second image, however, is fantastic in every way as
Washington punches a tiger.  I regret that I can’t read Japanese because I really wish I knew a little more about what was going on here!  (Thanks to Japanese historian Nick Kapur for the information I do have.)
        Next we have John Adams stabbing a giant snake in a spread that merits breaking out the red ink.  Apparently there’s a whole subplot in which Adams is out for a picnic with his elderly mother when - surprise!- along comes another giant serpent and devours her!  Adams asks for assistance from a mountain fairy (shown in the next image), who summons a giant eagle to help Adams slay the monster…  I don’t remember learning that part in US history!
        In a slightly less fantastical image, Adams directs Benjamin Franklin where to fire his hand-held cannon.  There are also a number of other illustrations that include monsters, and I really wish I could read what’s going on in them.  I mean, what’s going on aboard this ship?!?
        These wood block prints are mostly black and white, with just a few featuring red and blue ink.  That means they’re relatively low-budget efforts, but nevertheless the actual carving is very detailed and full of verve.  I enjoyed them enormously, and I hope you do, too!
        I myself will not be at a No Kings rally because instead I’ll be at Roslindale Open Studios this weekend (details here: come see me if you’re in the area!)  But I will have a couple of little items to signal my solidarity with Washington, Adams, Franklin, (a mountain fairy?), and all the others who have worked so hard through two and a half centuries to keep the democratic experiment alive and moving forward - staying strong against the attacks of metaphorical tigers, serpents, and other monsters.



[Pictures: Six wood block prints by Utagawa Yoshitora from Osanaetoki Bankokubanashi by Kanagaki Robun, 1861 (Images from Waseda University).]

October 10, 2025

New Classic of Mountains and Seas

         I need to start this post with the old Classic of Mountains and Seas.  Shanhai jing is a Chinese text from the early Han dynasty (about 200-1 BCE), although the earliest versions may have been started as long ago as the fourth century BCE.  It takes the form of a geography book describing the strange creatures that can be found in areas spreading across more than 500 mountains and 300 waterways.  As such it functions much like a medieval European bestiary: the creatures are described primarily in their use or danger to humans, with many magical properties and a lot of ancient Chinese mythology.  As such, I’ve referred to it many times in my posts about fabulous creatures, including quite a few of them listed in Y is for Yonder.
        With that background, let me introduce New Classic of Mountains and Seas, which is a project by artist Qiu Anxiong (China, b. 1972).  Apparently Qiu has worked on this idea in multiple media over many years, including an ink animation film, as well as paintings and wood block prints.  The concept in all of them is to describe modern technologies as if they were mythical creatures.  I encountered some of his wood block prints, made to mimic the
look of early printed editions of the original
Classic of Mountains and Seas, at the Philadelphia Art Museum and was quite taken with them.  Just like the texts which they mimic, these pieces come with a description of a creature along with the illustration.  The first one above says, “To the west of the great wasteland there is a kind of bird with four wings and a tail.  A single toe grows on each of its four feet that are connected to one another.  It makes a loud sound like thunder.  It is called ‘Xuanbei.’”  That name means “swirling bird” and it represents a whirlybird helicopter.
        Ten years after the set of twelve wood block prints (which was about 12 years after his first animated films on the same theme) Qiu continued to explore the idea with paintings.  Here’s a fun one with text that says “It moves at the speed of electricity,  It storms off like a rolling thunder;  It travels thousands of miles in the wind;  Unfettered between heaven and earth.  New Classic of Mountains and Seas; Ha Lei.”  The name of the creature, “Ha Lei,” is a phonetic approximation of “Harley.”
        Qiu’s 2008 portfolio had a particular emphasis on weapons, and some of them are quite poignant.  The “Bitu” bird, for example, is described “On the American continent there is a kind of giant bird with no head.  Its wings are long and large, suitable for flying high above
the clouds.  It does not rest anywhere but its nest.  Rarely can people see it.  It lays eggs in the sky, which strike thunders when hitting the ground and turn everything they touch into ashes.  It is called ‘Bitu’.”  This is the B-2 bomber.  Like all the best fantasy, Qiu prompts us to look again at our own world with fresh eyes and hearts.
        On the other hand, I also like the pieces that are simply whimsical.  Here is the “Kang Pu Si Shou” (computer) from the 2008 series.  And among the more recent paintings I particularly like the Moon Walker, and this tiny bee helicopter, “Ke Feng,” whose name I don’t know how to interpret.  It’s a lovely image, though.
        I love the whole concept of these works because they bring their meaning in two directions.  On the one hand, they use an ancient format to shed light on our modern world, and at the same time they shed light back on the ancient world by reminding us that those people, too, were trying to make sense of their world.  It’s also an excellent reminder that descriptions that sound crazy and fantastical to us often make a lot more sense when we realize what people were actually trying to describe.  If you like how this twists your brain, you may enjoy my game of Guess That Medieval Beast.  
You can play at

     Episode 1                    Episode 6

     Episode 2                    Episode 7

     Episode 3                    Episode 8

     Episode 4                    Episode 9

     Episode 5


[Pictures: Xuan Bei (Whirlybird), woodcut by Qiu Anxiong from New Classic of Mountains and Seas, 2008 (Image from MoMA);

Ha Lei (Harley), ink and color on paper by Qiu from New Classic of Mountains and Seas, 2018 (photo by AEGN at Philadelphia Art Museum, on loan from collection of Beningson and Arons);

Bi Tu (B-2), woodcut by Qiu from New Classic of Mountains and Seas, 2008 (Image from MoMA);

Kang Pu Si Shou (Computer), woodcut by Qiu from New Classic of Mountains and Seas, 2008 (Image from MoMA);

Moon Walker, ink and color on paper by Qiu from New Classic of Mountains and Seas, 2019 (Image from Artsy);

Ke Feng, ink and color on paper by Qiu from New Classic of Mountains and Seas, 2019 (Image from Artsy).]

October 6, 2025

Charles L. Marshall, Sr.

         Charles Leroy Marshall, Sr (USA, 1905-1992) hailed from Kansas.  Today I’ve got a cache of small linoleum block prints all made within a few years around 1929-1933.  I have actually shared one of Marshall’s pieces before at my post “Let There Be Light,” but that was hardly a representative example.  Today I’ve got a pleasing collection of scenes, all with a focus on architecture.
        I’m starting with a greeting card from 1931, partly because it might be my favorite, and partly to mention this orange ink.  Marshall seems to have printed many if not most of his pieces in both black versions and orange versions.  I have no idea whether he just really liked orange, or whether he got a great deal on orange ink cheap, or what.  It’s an unusual choice and I generally prefer the black versions, but I did want to include one in orange just to show you.  As for the subject, I’m a sucker for little, magical-looking towns in scenic locations.
        Next is the City Hall of Albany, NY, which I like for its spare composition and its gorgeous bare-branched trees.  I love the balance of having very little detail, but it’s exactly enough to express the scene.  I admire this style in part because I’m not very good at it.  In my own work I have no confidence about deciding what to include and what to leave out.
        The construction scene is certainly busier.  It reminds me of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel, which was published not too much later than this piece, in 1939.
        The next two pieces have, by contrast, more of a look of loneliness or solitude.  Lighthouses often tend to be isolated, and I like the way Marshall’s sky emphasizes the lands-end openness of the location.  The border of dark sky at the top also balances the dark land low in the picture.  The lighthouse is not the kind that’s usually considered picturesque, but its framework makes an interesting geometric pattern in silhouette against that spacious sky.
        Finally, here’s a “Construction Camp” that also emphasizes a wide sky, but this sky seems heavy.  Perhaps it’s just the grey paper, but it gives me almost a gothic vibe of hunkering down beneath a windswept drizzle.  I’d expect a construction camp to be busy, but this one looks deserted - perhaps everyone’s elsewhere, hard at work.  I also like the choices of cutting strokes that make up the hillside below the buildings, and the power line that ties them all together.
        All of these pieces are quite small, generally in the neighborhood of 3x4 or 4x5, and I like how much they express with their relatively simple lines and shapes.  Since they’re all from such a brief period in the artist’s life I now want to see whether I can find out what Marshall did later.
        And what are your feelings about orange ink?


[Pictures: Untitled holiday card, linocut by Charles Leroy Marshall Sr., 1931;

Albany City Hall, linocut by Marshall, ca. 1932;

Untitled (construction), linocut by Marshall, ca. 1932;

Light House at Marblehead, linocut by Marshall, 1929;

Construction Camp, linocut by Marshall, ca. 1933 (All images from Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art).]

October 1, 2025

Okapis and Nightingales

         I’m very excited to announce that two of my poems were published this month.  I’ll send you to the publications to read the poems, and today’s post is the background behind each of them.
        First, my poem “Okapis” appeared in 4LPH4NUM3R1C, episode 3, “Florid Fauna.”  The call was specifically for poems that are all about how they sound read aloud, and you can hear my poem as well as reading it here.  I was particularly excited to have this poem find a good home because it’s admittedly a bit of an oddity.  I wrote the first version back in 1996 as an exercise in playing with the sound of language.  I think I chose okapis as my subject primarily because I liked the sound of the word.  This is all about the alliteration and assonance, rhythm and repetition, and of course the use of luscious and lovely words like “languorous,” and “saunter.”  But yes, it’s also
a love poem to the mysterious and beautiful okapis, which have lots of wonderful traits including their gorgeously striped haunches and their indigo tongues.
        In 1998 I sketched okapi legs at the Harvard Museum of Natural History while I was on an assignment to collect things that attracted me, and for many years I had okapis on my list of things I’d like to make into a block print.  In 2024 I finally got around to it.  Meanwhile I had reworked my okapi poem, but there weren’t a lot of places to send it that seemed like a good fit.  It’s not deep, or emotional, or political, or even, despite the last line, philosophical!  But it pleases me, I’m so glad it pleased the editors of 4LPH4NUM3R1C, and I hope it pleases you.
        The second poem, “Jorinde Remembers,” was published in the September 29th issue of Strange Horizons.  In celebration of the magazine’s 25th anniversary they chose pieces with themes of memory and time for this issue, which you can read here.  I wrote this poem in April as part of my National Poetry Month poem-a-day practice.  It’s about “Jorinde and Joringel,” one of the lesser known (or perhaps medium-known) fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm.  For this I was not reimagining or changing any of the details of the story; rather I was imagining how it would really feel to live such an experience of being transformed into a nightingale.  If you’re not familiar with this fairy tale and want to read it, you can find it here.  For me much of the appeal of the fairy tale is the strange, melancholy atmosphere, and I wanted to keep that in my own poem.  I’m really proud that my poem found a place in such a wonderful magazine.
        As for the illustration, it’s a collage of two other block prints: the owl in the forest comes from my block print “Midnight,” and the castle comes from “Castle on a Bay.”  I collaged the two together to illustrate the lines “Until suddenly the castle walls loomed from the weird shadows / And the owl came circling three times with its nightfall wings.”  (The owl is the wicked witch in the fairy tale, but I pictured it as a creature of spiritual beauty in my original piece.  To be fair, the castle was subject to the same treatment: in the fairy tale it’s a cursed place, while my original block print depicts a place I have a great deal of affection for!  You can also read more about the block prints Midnight and Castle on a Bay in past blog posts.)  I created an illustration for this poem because it’s one that will be included in my upcoming book Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns.
        The Kickstarter campaign for Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns is over, but late pledges are now a thing on Kickstarter, so if you’re curious you should go check it out.  You can still get all the special pledge rewards if you want.


[Pictures: Okapis, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2024 (image from NydamPrints.com);

Illustration for “Jorinde Remembers,” from rubber block prints by AEGNydam (Castle on a Bay at NydamPrints.com).]


September 26, 2025

Words of the Month - Keeping Count

        Our basic cardinal numbers are all based on Old English roots, which is not surprising.  After all, it’s the most basic words that tend to stick around in languages, rather than being subject to borrowings.  However, there are still a few interesting snippets to share about our words for numbers.
        One - Have you ever wondered about the odd pronunciation of one?  Why does it begin with a w sound instead of rhyming with alone, which indeed derives from “all one” (c. 1300)?  Other words that retain the original pronunciation in their “one” root include only and atone.  I can’t tell you why the w sound was added, but it seems to have begun as a dialect shift around the 14th century in southwest and west England.  It’s hard to trace its spread, since obviously the spelling came uncoupled with the pronunciation at some point.
        Two - While one has a w sound that’s not seen in the spelling, two has a w in the spelling but not heard in the pronunciation!  It used to be pronounced, as heard in twain, which is derived from the Old English masculine form of the number, while two derives from the feminine and neuter form.
        Eleven - This word derives from roots meaning “one left.”  Instead of forming 11 from “1 + 10” as many languages do, we’ve got something like “1 left = 11 - 10.”  This is quite unusual and in the whole world it appears only in Germanic languages and in Lithuanian, which uses it for all the teens.
        Twelve - Formed like eleven, this means “two left,” and also sounds that original w pronunciation of two.  But why does English, unlike Lithuanian, stop this system after twelve?  Probably because Old English originally had many elements of a duodecimal system, based on twelves instead of tens (as in inches to the foot, for example).  Old English had words that would have come down to us as eleventy (110) and twelfty (120) if we’d continued that system, but these words were already fading before Middle English.
        Dozen - This word for twelve, or specifically “a collection of 12 items or units” comes from Latin by way of Old French.  The Latin roots break down to “2 [+] 10” which is a more normal way to build in a decimal system.  Plus the -en ending is a French addition that indicates “exactly.”  Which means that, etymologically speaking, there’s something oxymoronic about a “baker’s dozen” being something other than “exactly 10 plus 2.”
        Thirteen - Here English gets into a more standard method of naming numbers.  (By the way, that shift of the placement of the r also happened in third.)  As for the -teen ending, that comes from the root for ten, but specifically indicates “ten more than.”  (Interestingly, the word teen, meaning “a person aged 13-19,” dates to 1818, although it was not in common use before the 20th century.  That means it came before the word teenager, which isn’t attested until 1922.)
        Twenty - This derives from two (and there’s that w again) and -ty, which means “a group of ten.”
        Score - Another later Old English word for 20, this comes from Old Norse meaning “notch, incision.”  This derives from the use of tally-marks for counting twenties.  Counting by twenties, as opposed to tens or twelves, is more common in Celtic cultures, so the speakers of Old English presumably adopted this concept from Celtic languages.  Our modern verb score, “to incise,” comes from this same root (but not until about 1400), as do all our various modern meanings of score such as “keeping track of the points in a game,” “a reckoning,” and even “printed piece of music,” from the sense of drawing all those lines.
        Hundred - The simple version of 100 in Old English was simply hund.  The -red piece comes from “reckoning, count.”
        Century - From Latin meaning “group of one hundred,” century used to mean 100 of anything.  Not until around the 1650s did it come to refer specifically to years.
        Thousand - The end of this word comes from the OE hund meaning “100.”  The thou- piece meant “huge, great, swollen.”  So a thousand was originally just a really big number.  It gained its more precise meaning when it was used as the English translation for Latin mille, meaning 1,000.
        Million - A similar logic built million out of mille (1,000) plus a suffix meaning “big, great.”  English got the word in the late 14th century from Old French, which got it from Latin, but it was used pretty much only by mathematicians for a couple of centuries before entering more common speech.
        Count - Also in the late 14th century from Old French, English gained the word count, meaning “to enumerate, or to assign numerals in order.”  It could also mean “to tell a story,” which we replaced in the late 15th century with recount.  (If you put the stress on the second syllable, you tell a story.  If you want to count again, you have to stress the first syllable.)  The sense of “being of value” appeared in the mid 19th century.
        So, that’s the word on English numbers!  Do you have a favorite number?  A lucky number?  Hate math, or love it?


[Pictures: One potato and Two eggplants, potato prints by Diana Pomeroy from One Potato, 1996;

11 goose eggs, multi-block linocut by Christopher Wormell from Teeth, Tails, and Tentacles, 2004.  More about these two books at prior post 5 Counting Books.]

September 22, 2025

Giving Legends and Folklore a Kick

         Here’s my fourth and final post digging into the contents of my Work In Progress, a collection of short stories, poems, and art currently being launched by a Kickstarter campaign (already fully funded, but running for one more week).  Today’s subject is the other category of stories I’ll be including: Other.  This is the category where I’ve collected work inspired by everything from a nursery rhyme to a Shakespeare play, and Egyptian funerary lore to the Mona Lisa.
        The idea of legends and fairy tales from other parts of the world is straightforward, and there are also the traditional, well-known legends that didn’t quite fit into my other categories, such as Aesop’s fables and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon.  But “folklore” is really an extremely broad category.  According to Wikipedia, “Folklore is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people.  This includes tales, myths, legends, proverbs, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions.”  Another definition says “folklore is informally learned, unofficial knowledge about the world, ourselves, and our communities, our beliefs, our cultures, and our traditions that is expressed creatively through words, music, customs, actions, behaviors, and materials. It is also the interactive, dynamic process of creating, communicating, and performing as we share that knowledge with other people.”  For my purposes in Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns I’m not taking it quite that broadly, and I’m sticking with work that was inspired by or reimagining the sorts of folklore that are either widely known elements of my cultural background, such as the Mona Lisa, or stories that may not be widely known but are legends that have been collected and retold, such as the Green Children of Woolpit.  Here’s what I’ve got so far in this section of my book:
Scheherazade (poem)
The fable of the Sun and the North Wind (art)
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon (short story, art)
Ancient Egyptian Shabti (poem, art)
The Golem of Prague (art)
The Green Children (poem, art)
Mona Lisa (poem, art)
Oberon and Titania (short story)
The nursery rhyme Hey, Diddle Diddle (short story, art)
        I’ve also got a few other short stories that riff on traditional folklore motifs rather than specific stories: wicked witches, tricksters, and vegetable lambs and barnacle geese.
        As with the other categories, this line-up is still tentative.  I may create more short stories and poems, and I’ll certainly create more art.  I’ll also be looking at the balance of the book as a whole: how long it’s getting, whether each piece fits with the flow of the others, and so on.  This is the section that’s got the blurriest edges as far as what really fits the theme, but as with all the others, I’ve had a wonderful time using tidbits of story as my starting point, and then seeing where they take me.
        All of these stories - the myths, the fairy tales, the legends, the snippets of lore - are imagined by people grappling with the questions of life, making sense of the world, and then transmitting the ways they’ve made meaning.  When I reexamine and reimagine these same stories, I’m taking the places where past people’s answers don’t work for me, and creating stories that reflect my own sense of the world.  I’m also having fun simply spinning tales of wonder and magic.
        In fact, you could say that I’m having a ball, and the Kickstarter campaign, like Cinderella’s own enchantments, runs until the stroke of midnight (EDT) on Sept. 29.  I hope you’ll accept my invitation to the ball and check out Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns to see whether it looks like something you’d like to be part of.  I hope my stories will bring wonder to you, too.


[Pictures: details from The Dish Ran Away with the Spoon, by AEGNydam, 2025;

Shabti, rubber block reduction print by AEGNydam, 2025 (originals at NydamPrints.com).]

September 17, 2025

Giving the Bible a Kick

      This is my third post diving into the different sections of my next collection of short stories, poetry, and art, Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, which is being funded by a Kickstarter campaign this month.  The Bible (Hebrew Bible, Old and New Testament) is full of stories that, just like classical mythology and traditional fairy tales, are woven into the very fiber of European/Western culture, and appear as references, as proverbs, as characters “everyone” knows, etc.  Yet some people don’t think these stories belong in the same category as other myths and fairy tales.  Some people believe that the Bible’s stories are true or sacred in a way that makes them off-limits to any exploration.  Other people believe that any mention of Bible stories is an invasive attempt to proselytize.  Both groups may be offended by my inclusion of the Bible as a source of inspiration — One ought not to give the Bible a kick!  However, I believe that true faith is always questioning, and that anyone trying to figure out how to be a human in this world needs to be open to wrestling with the big questions that are raised by all these stories, regardless of their source.  For me, many of the stories in the Bible lead me to imagine, reimagine, and explore just like other legends, myths, folklore, and fairy tales.  Therefore, one of the sections in Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns is dedicated to short stories, poems, and art that are inspired by, riffing on, and jumping off from the Bible.
     Here’s what I’ve got so far:
Creation (short story, art)
Eve and the Apple (poem)
Cain and Abel (short story, art)
The Plagues of Egypt (short story)
The Judgement of Solomon (series of 5 poems)
Mary (poem about the end of her life, plus art of the nativity)
        So, I’ve stated my belief that the stories of the Bible are fair game for explorations, but I certainly do acknowledge the reality that there’s more sensitivity about this than about the other categories of stories.  I’m being a little more cautious about what to include here, and my short story about the Plagues of Egypt, for example, has a very big question mark beside it.  My version portrays the Biblical events as a sort of cage match between Yahweh and Amun-Ra, and it isn’t uniformly complimentary toward either god.  Does this push too far into blasphemy?  I’m the last person in the world to want to be deliberately offensive or controversial, and yet for me as a Christian the development of the relationship between humans and the Divine is absolutely one of the most important aspects of my own faith to explore.  (Of course, there’s also the perhaps even more important question of whether or not the story is a good story!)  I still have plenty of time to decide what to do about this, and I’ll presumably get some trusted advisors to weigh in on my work to help me figure it out, but it’s undeniable that I’m making decisions about this section rather more gingerly.
        What do you think about this tangle when present-day religions intertwine with fantasy?  How worried should one be about offending people?  And are there any religious stories that make you want to reimagine the narrative?
        And of course, check out the Kickstarter campaign for Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns to get the full scoop.


[Pictures: Behold, It Is Good teaser, details of short story and rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2021;

Madonna and Child, linoleum block print by AEGNydam, 1987.]

September 12, 2025

Giving Fairy Tales a Kick

        Continuing my series of posts about Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, (my upcoming collection of short stories, poetry, and art) today I’m focussing on fairy tales.  Unlike the Greek and Roman mythology I wrote about in the last post, I have loved fairy tales since childhood.  I’ve been writing my own fairy tales since at least age the age of 7 (see one at my post Staples and Crayons), but it was when I was 9 years old that I really started to go crazy with fairy tales.  I read every single fairy tale book in the relatively small library I had access to in Galway, Ireland, and then the following year I continued to read all the fairy tale anthologies in the much larger and better-stocked library in my home town of Cleveland Heights, Ohio.  It’s true that fairy tales can be dark, full of violence, sexism, stereotypes, and often unsatisfactory characterization and motivations, so why do I love fairy tales while disliking classical mythology?  Well, I’ll start by stating the perhaps-obvious point that I don’t like every fairy tale, but on the whole fairy tales hold up visions of agency and initiative, justice (if not always mercy), virtue rewarded, and Happy Endings.  (Compare that with classical mythology’s inexorable fate, arbitrary and selfish gods acting with impunity, and an awful lot of ever-compounding tragedy.)
        In my voracious reading of fairy tales throughout my childhood (and to this day) I was consuming stories collected from all around the world, but for this section of my own book I’m specifically looking at the traditional European fairy tales, and here’s what I’ve got in the draft of the book so far:
The Princess and the Pea (art)
Snow White (short story, artwork just sketched)
Sleeping Beauty (2 poems, a series of 13 poems, short story, art)
Rumpelstiltskin (short story, art just sketched)
Rapunzel (poem, art)
Jack and the Beanstalk (short story)
Jorinde and Joringel (poem - forthcoming in Strange Horizons!)
Baba Yaga (art)
        The really fun thing about taking inspiration from these classic tales is that I get to catch hold of the sparks that enchant me even in the midst of story elements that may be unreasonable or objectionable.  Do you have any favorite songs that you love even though the lyrics are problematic?  You love the music, the voice, the vibe, even though logically you can’t agree with the message in the words?  There are fairy tales like that for me.  “Sleeping Beauty” has always been one of my favorites not for the plot, but for the strange and beautiful setting of the enchanted castle falling asleep behind its mysterious hedge of thorns.  The descriptions in the Grimms’ version are wonderfully evocative in their specificity.  I love the music of the tale.  So I’ve found four different sparks within the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty," and blown on them until they caught fire, and let them lead me in four different directions, all inspired by the magic of the traditional tale, but all unrelated to each other.  So much fun!
        While I’m on the topic of fairy tales, I’ll go on a bit of a tangent to note that they’re generally not taken very seriously as literature, and are often assumed to be children’s fare, which is actually quite absurd.  I have a theory that in the entire history of humankind there has been a period of only about one hundred years in which fantasy was treated as the province of children (and perhaps even worse, women!)  Tales of fantasy were told by and for adults through all the millennia of Gilgamesh and the Odyssey, Beowulf and King Arthur, the Thousand and One Nights and wicked stepmothers.  These stories were shared with children, but they were not thought childish.  Then the Enlightenment turned sensible adult (manly) thoughts toward logic and science, and Victorians invented the modern concept of childhood as a time of innocence before rationality took over, and bingo - the idea of fantasy was assigned to the realm of childhood.  We’re working our way back out of that attitude again now, and authors, critics, and readers are all starting to take speculative fiction much more seriously.  Within that very broad field, fairy tales are just one small corner, but they were probably my first introduction to fantasy and they retain an enduring resonance for me.  I hope my explorations and re-imaginings will find a resonance in you, too.
        The Kickstarter campaign to bring this book to life was fully funded in just one week, which means I can spend the rest of the campaign (it runs until Sept. 29) with all the excitement and none of the stress!  I’m enormously grateful to the fans who have believed in this project and backed it.  THANK YOU!  If you haven’t backed Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns yet, but think it might be of interest, by all means head over to Kickstarter and peruse all the details about the book and other fun rewards I’ve got planned.  I’d love to have you join the team that’s making it possible to bring this project to life.
        As for fairy tales, which are your favorites?  Do you have favorite motifs that reappear in many tales?  I’d love to hear which fairy tale sparks are most magical to you!


[Images: Sleeping Beauty teaser, details of poem and rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2017;

Illustration for Jorinde Remembers, collage from two rubber block prints by AEGNydam (including the castle from Castle on a Bay, which you can see at NydamPrints.com).]

September 8, 2025

Giving Classical Mythology a Kick

         The Kickstarter campaign for my next book, Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, is 74% funded, and it would be unreasonable for anyone to expect me to be able to think about anything else right now.  I’m so grateful to the backers who jumped right in to get me off to a strong start… but now we enter the knuckle-biting stage!  Yes, I’m optimistic that we’ll make it, but I won’t stop stressing until it’s 100%.  So until then, let me share some more teasers and tidbits.
        To recap, this book will be a collection of short stories, poems, and art, all of which are inspired by, riffing on, or jumping off from traditional fairy tales, myths, and folklore.  Today I’m digging a little deeper into the classical myths that have inspired pieces in my current draft.
        Here’s the funny thing about it: unlike fairy tales, I never really liked Greek and Roman mythology.  Primarily this was because all the gods and heroes just seem so unpleasant: always wrangling and jockeying to score status points, not to mention raping and murdering with impunity, while innocent humans are always the collateral damage.  How can you respect such a petty, vindictive bunch, let alone worshipping them?  But perhaps my dislike of these classical myths is precisely why I’ve ended up exploring and reimagining a number of them.  How would the stories change if I changed the way I thought of the characters and their motives?  How can I salvage a more interesting, meaningful message by holding the stories in a different light?  In the case of Persephone, for example, I’ve written both a story and a poem, but each one looks at a completely different angle of the myth, and takes it in a completely different direction to re-imagine it with a completely different message.
        Here’s what I’ve got so far:
Pandora’s Box (short story, art)
Persephone in the Underworld (short story, poem, art)
Medusa (poem, art)
Pygmalion and Galatea (short story)
The Theban Sphinx (poem, art)
Potnia Theron “Mistress of the Animals” (art)
Siren (short story)
Cyclops (art)
        That’s just where things stand as of today.  They’ll all have art eventually; the illustration for the siren’s story is sketched but not yet transferred to rubber and carved, and I haven’t started anything yet for Pygmalion.  Then there’s the weird sci fi idea I’ve been mulling for a while now about the Trojan Horse.  Perhaps that will get written in time for inclusion in the book — or perhaps there will be something else I haven’t thought of yet at all.  Who knows?
        How do you feel about these famous myths?  Do you have favorites — or least favorites?  They’re such a foundational part of European/Western culture that whether you like them or not, they’re in the air all around us.  Even though I don’t always care for the original myths, it turns out that I’ve really enjoyed reckoning with some of them, and allowing my imagination to see where they can take me, and where I can take them.  When Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns is finally completed and out in the world, I hope that my new twists will inspire you to rethink these myths and what they can tell us.
        To check out all the details about this project, please visit the Kickstarter campaign.  And if you should feel inspired to back this project, I’d be very grateful indeed!


[Pictures: Queen of the Underworld teaser, details of story and rubber block print with watercolor by AEGNydam, 2025 (See original at NydamPrints.com);

Apotropaic, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2025 (Image from NydamPrints.com).]