Strange Lands

         Today we’re back to block printing, and I’ve got a little collection of landscapes that bring some artistic license to the view.

        First is a cityscape by Luigi Spacal that positively revels in geometry.  There are suggestions of windows and possibly girders or overhead rails, but for the most part this could be a purely abstract collection of patterns - but then there’s a bicycle right there on the street (if that’s the street), in front of the eyeglasses of an optometrist’s shop (if that’s an optometrists’s shop).  I find the whole thing delightfully quirky and surprisingly cheerful.

        The second piece by Betty Sieler is, by contrast, serene and peaceful: a forest on a misty day.  The interesting thing about this one is that it’s amazing how clearly it represents tree trunks, because when you look closely it’s really just seemingly rough and random vertical lines.  The two colors of grey make it even more of a mushy mess, and yet simultaneously give it even more realistic depth.  This kind of art often seems like magic to me, when rough and simple carving cohere into a perfect evocation of a precise scene.

        The final piece, by Madeleine Flaschner, is even more abstract.  In fact, perhaps it isn’t even meant to be a landscape at all.  It’s simply title “Composition,” so it could actually be purely abstract.  And yet my pattern-seeking eyes see a landscape here: sky at the top, high cliffs in the distance, perhaps water in the foreground, maybe some trees or plants at the sides…  It’s something of a sampler of different patterns and textures, and whatever it is, it’s dramatic!

        Three very different styles, three very different landscapes, and yet each of these three artists manages to evoke a scene that is simultaneously suggestive of the world and imaginative in strange and magical ways.  Which is your favorite?

[Pictures: City in the Night, woodcut by Luigi Spacal, 19702 (Image from 1stDibs);

Woodlands, linocut by Betty Sieler, 1962 (Image from Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art);

Composition, woodcut by Madeleine Flaschner, late 20th century (Image from 1stDibs).]

National Poetry Month

         April is National Poetry Month, but since April is also A to Z Blog Challenge month, that always takes precedence on this blog.  This year, however, I was especially active with National Poetry Month and I wanted to share a recap of some of that poetry goodness, even if belated.

        First of all, I had a number of duties as Poet Laureate of my town.

        1.  On April 13 I attended the opening celebration of a fresh new Poetry Walk at a local church.  They had solicited spring-themed haiku from members of their congregation, and they asked me to contribute some, as well.  They then made special lawn-sign flip-charts with the poems, and placed them throughout their small Memorial Garden, making a lovely, interactive way to engage with spring poetry among the flowers and emerging leaves.  (One of my poems that they used was my dandelion haiku.)

        2. On April 16 I led a Poetry-Writing Workshop at the Needham library.  We started with a few creativity warm-up exercises, and then went through three prompts, spending about 15 minutes on each, and sharing our efforts at the end of each.  The attendees were enthusiastic, willing to try whatever I threw at them, and came up with some excellent poetry.  (They especially impressed me with their tricubes!  That was a form I definitely struggled with, but some of them were able to use the form to advantage in really clever and effective ways.)

        3. On April 28 I gave a presentation for Great Poetry Reading Day for the town’s Council on Aging.  My assignment was to talk about myself and the role of Poet Laureate, and to read a few Great Poems.  I put my presentation together by interspersing the poems throughout the talk as illustrations of certain points in my explanation of the Poet Laureate role and how I got there.  This went over very well, and I ended by having the audience throw out their own favorite poems, which I then looked up and read aloud for them.  (To pull this post back a little more toward the fantasy theme of this blog, I’ll note that the poems I shared included the “Jabberwocky” and “The Listeners.”)

        All three of these sessions were pretty well-attended by the proverbial choir, so the preaching was very enjoyable!  But of course part of my job is to enlarge that choir and get poetry in front of more people who don’t necessarily already consider themselves poetry-lovers.  An activity that hopefully took a step in that direction actually took place outside of Poetry Month, on the first weekend of May.  During the annual Open Studios, I got 10 artists (including myself) to host Poetry Stations, in which they gave out copies of poems to everyone who visited them.  For the Poetry Stations I had selected 10 poems that were inspired by works of art, with a range of poets from Shelley to Yolen to myself, and a range of art from ancient to renaissance to modern.  I’m still trying to collect feedback on how much engagement that project got, but it included visitors who were very excited and were planning to collect all the poems, but also plenty of people who didn’t evince any interest at all!

        In addition to those official activities, I also had some more personal poetry activity during the month.  I was very pleased to have a poem accepted by Haiku Newton, which has printed poems for display.  (It makes me laugh, though, that it’s another spring-themed haiku.  Why does everyone always want spring-themed haiku?  Come on, people - there are other themes and there are other forms!)  For the kick-off all the poems are on display at the Newton library, but over the course of the year they’ll be placed in different areas throughout the city.

        The other thing I did was write a poem every day throughout the month of April.  I’ve never done that before and I enjoyed it very much, although some of the days were certainly more successful than others!  To be clear, only a few of them are what I would consider a finished, polished poem, and many of them will probably never be worth polishing up any further.  But the point was to do the exercise, and that was definitely a success.  Mostly I used the prompts from NaPoWriMo and Readers Digest Poem a Day, although on a few days I just followed an idea of my own.  Of the 30 poems (or, to be clear, poem drafts) about 8 were on fantasy themes, mostly fairy tales.

        I definitely want to keep up the momentum, although the first 8 days of May were so wildly busy for me that it would be more accurate to hope that I can get back the momentum before it gets too far behind me.  National Poetry Month turned out to be a good kick in the pants for my poetical activities, but I certainly don’t want poetry to be confined to just one month.

[Pictures: assorted photos of First Parish Poetry Walk,

Poetry Stations at Needham Open Studios,

Haiku Newton poetry signs, photos by AEGNydam, 2025.]

Reflections on an A to Z of Bittersweetness & Light

         Thanks for another great April A to Z, everyone!  Thanks to the A to Z organizers, and thanks to every one of you who stopped by to comment on my posts.  I enjoyed visiting quite a few of your blogs, too.  However, the last week of April was quite ridiculously busy for me — I had work hanging in 5 shows simultaneously this past weekend! — so my time to visit and comment fell off at the end.  I look forward to reading the last few letters on all my favorites in the next week.

        Some years I have a long final post into which I try to cram lots of extra goodies that didn’t fit into the alphabet, but this year all I really have to say by way of conclusion is to reiterate some of my main points from this year’s A to Z:

        • If you enjoy the work of any small-time indie artists, authors, musicians, etc., your support really makes a huge difference to us.  Word of mouth is always best, but any way you can help connect us with other people who might enjoy our work, you’re making a vital contribution to our ability to keep bringing our creations into the world.

        • The world is pretty stressful right now for a lot of very real reasons, but if you feel overwhelmed, remember that your distress is artificially exacerbated by media algorithms that amplify outrage, human negativity bias that disproportionately focusses on reasons for fear, and a culture of cynicism that portrays hope and love as naive, foolish, and unrealistic.  But you don’t have to accept that.  Bring a healthy dose of skepticism to your cynicism.  Keep your eyes open for the cooperation, love, and delight that really are everywhere.  And keep valiantly resisting those who try to tell you that hatred and lies are normal and inevitable.  Such people are terrified of the power of kindness and hope, so let those be your superpowers.

        • If you’re interested in my next book project, stay tuned for future announcements via my newsletter and this blog.  It’s going to be another collection of short stories, poems, and art, and they’ll all be inspired by, reflecting on, and reimagining stories from Greek mythology, European fairy tales, and other classic folklore.  I hope to have some big news about the project in July.

        Thanks again to everyone who made such supportive, encouraging comments about Bittersweetness & Light.  I appreciate you very much.

        Marketing Moral: Thank you!

        Proper Moral: A book doesn’t truly live until someone reads it.

[Bittersweetness & Light by Anne E.G. Nydam, 2025 (Learn more at NydamPrints.com)].

Z is for Zumil

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Bittersweetness & Light, my new collection of hope-filled, joy-inducing fantasy and sci fi short stories, poems, and art.  I’m sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, and I’ve also been sharing some of the background on why we urgently need joyful stories.)

        Here’s the part in the story “The Home for Dispossessed Familiars” where we meet Zumil.  (I’ve added just a couple of inserts for context, where needed.)

        When Trudy arrived home from school on Thursday she found Colly [a crow] standing on the table, examining the papers Great Aunt Gert had sent.  The crow shuffled the top one aside with a claw, cocking her head from side to side as she scanned across the tattered pages.

        “Oh!  You can read?” Trudy exclaimed.  “Sorry, I guess I just assumed that because Grimalkin [a cat] said he couldn’t…”

        “Grimalkin is a heavy,” Colly replied, “I’m the scholarly type.”

        “I’m a man of action,” Grimalkin muttered from where he lay sprawled across the loveseat at the other end of the room.

        Trudy dropped her bag on the table and reached to pull out the chair.  She screamed as her hand touched something that was definitely not wood – something that squeezed out from under her palm and skittered into the shadows under the table.

        “What the…?”

        Colly hopped to the edge of the table and peered down.  “Are you okay, Zumil?  Come on out.”

        “What…?” Trudy repeated weakly, wondering how her life had so suddenly gotten so bizarre.

        A sharp nose poked up from the underside of the tabletop, vanished as the creature and Trudy startled each other again, and then slowly reemerged.  It crept up over the edge to the top of the table.

        Grimalkin jumped down from the loveseat, stretched, sauntered over, and hopped up onto the chair seat.  “Zumil,” he said, indicating the creature with a nod.  This new creature was a yellow-speckled lizard, long-nosed and long-tailed like an anole, but larger than any Trudy had ever seen.

        “A familiar, I presume?” she asked.

        The lizard bobbed his head.

        “And has his witch died recently?”

        Another nod.

        “Someone should probably be looking into the mortality rate of local witches.”

        I wrote this story after realizing, to my astonishment, that I’d actually never written a short story that included familiars or similar animal companions.  This was a great surprise to me because I’d included animal companions in all of my novels, and just assumed that of course I must have written stories about them… But I hadn’t, so I went back to basics and started with your classic witches’ familiars.  But the twist is that they’re gathering at the home of a woman who is not a witch, has no desire to be a witch, and doesn’t even know what to do with them all!  And of course it ends up being another story about cooperation, compassion, and caring for each other.

        Marketing Moral: We end where we began: Buy my Book!  If this series of posts has enticed you to the point where you actually wish to have your very own copy the book, it’s available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or straight from me.

        Proper Moral: Divided we fall, which is why repressive governments work so hard to sow distrust and divide people from each other.  However, as long as we refuse to stop caring for each other, we cannot be truly defeated.  (Also, a friend in need is a friend indeed.)

        If you could have a magical familiar, what animal would you choose?

[Picture: Anole, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2024 (Image from Bittersweetness & Light, but originals are still available at NydamPrints.com).]

Y is for Yem-Thress

         (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Bittersweetness & Light, my new collection of hope-filled, joy-inducing fantasy and sci fi short stories, poems, and art.)

        Here’s an excerpt from somewhere in the middle of the short story “A Missionary to the Yem-Thress Zone of Contention.”

        The Facilitator came up behind Mary Fisher and guided her out of the Great Hall, backwards so as not to have to turn around in one direction or the other and thus seem to favor one potentate over the other.  They led her back to her room, and as soon as they were inside with the portal closed, their limbs went slack.

        “You must be trying to get me executed!” they groaned, but the UniTrans marked the tone with a “wry humor” tag.

        “I did warn you.”  She raised both arms in the waving gesture that the UniTrans suggested would indicate friendly affection.  “I’m very grateful for your help.  But now I’ve done my piece and I’ll go home and leave you, hopefully in peace.  I certainly hope you won’t suffer for listening to the message and helping me share it.”

        A buzz on the portal startled them both, making the Facilitator contract so suddenly their elaborate collar slid down over their shoulders.  “You are a wreck!” Mary said, her own tone marked with wry humor as the Facilitator relaxed to normal dimensions and rearranged their collar.  They opened the door and a being entered, wearing the livery of the Thress Emperor and bearing a round box intricately carved from some reddish substance that looked to Mary like coral.

        “For the Ambassador from the Divine Spirit,” they said.  Mary tried to read the Thress courtier’s expression, but the UniTrans marked it only “formal.”  The being opened the box and presented it to Mary.  Inside, nestled on a soft blue cushion, was an object about as large as her open hand and shaped like a rounded star.  It was made of some sort of polished stone with waving gold striations, studded with blue glass bubbles.

        “A shkreth!” the Facilitator breathed in a voice filled with awe.

        The courtier blinked graciously.

        This story pulls on a lot of threads that interest me.  It’s a Quaker story in disguise (actually based on a true story from 1658, reimagined as some kind of far-future sci fi).  It’s full of linguistic explorations, as the characters attempt to communicate difficult philosophical concepts across widely alien cultures, relying on some sort of universal translator.  It’s imagining some of the different ways the universe could be viewed by creatures with very different biology (including pentaradial symmetry).  It’s about the possibility of connection and cooperation.

        Today’s illustrations are two shkreth and a very rough sketch of what I imagine the Yem-Thress might look like.

        Marketing Moral: My marketing “morals” have all been about things you could do for me, so how about for once I offer you some free stuff?  Some of the offers are tit-for-tat:

• Sign up for my newsletter and I’ll send you a pdf sampler of some of my art and poetry concerning dragons.

• If you own or have read my book On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination, leave a review somewhere (and let me know where) and I’ll send you a pdf of a bonus page for the book that includes new creatures.

• There’s a giveaway right now on Bookfunnel where you can get lots of free ebooks, including a collection of Round Robin Stories (Volume Three), one of which I collaborated on.

        Plus a few other things are straight-up, no-strings-attached free:

• If you go to my Books and Writing page, you’ll find links to 7 of my stories and poems that are published on-line and available to read any time.  (Some of them were already linked during the alphabet, but there are also a few others that aren’t from this book.)

• Do you like coloring pages?  You can download several here.  Plus, in the same folder there's also a memory game you can print out.

        Proper Moral: Fortune favors the bold – but perhaps even more, karma favors those with integrity.

        Have you ever been able to reach across a cultural divide and make a connection with someone you expected to be very different?

[Pictures, Shkreth, rubber block prints with digital manipulation;

The Facilitator, pen on paper by AEGNydam from Bittersweetness & Light, 2025 (See NydamPrints.com).]

X is for Xyblik

         (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Bittersweetness & Light, my new collection of hope-filled, joy-inducing fantasy and sci fi short stories, poems, and art.  It’s not too late to see what my fellow A to Z bloggers are up to, by checking out the Master List.)

        Time for another excerpt from another story.  Here’s the beginning of “Love Potion.”

        Xyblik’s Cosmic Emporium stood for as long as anyone could remember at the corner of Elm Street and Hillside.  The proprietor was an Old One made of tentacles and slime, who bubbled cheerfully at all his customers and loved nothing better than a good gossip when anyone came in to buy a box of interdimensional nails or a packet of eldritch biscuits.  Abby Dimmock took this into consideration when deciding the best time to purchase a love potion.  She knew Xyblik would chat if she came when the Emporium was empty, and she was in no mood to chat with anyone about the sorry state of her love life.  On the other hand, this still seemed preferable to asking for a love potion in front of half her fellow townsfolk on a busy Saturday afternoon.

        She winced as the cracked iron bell in the doorway clanged, announcing her entrance.  So much for subtlety.  At least the sparkling and warbling of the ineffable feathersquids in the corner always made her smile.

        “Ah, Dear Lady Dimmock!” Xyblik greeted her brightly from the high counter of polished mahogany in front of the shelves of dusty bottles, lead-sealed urns, and other dark and mysterious items.  The air sac inside his semitransparent greenish body swelled and pulsed as he spoke, amplifying his voice to a tone suitable for Dark Proclamations.  “What service may be rendered unto you on this fateful day?”

        “I’m looking for a love potion, please,” she mumbled.

        “What’s that?  A Potion of Inexorable Love?” the Old One bellowed, making Abby profoundly grateful that she was indeed the only customer in the shop at the moment. 

        This is one of those rare stories that sprang into my head pretty much fully formed, and was super fun and easy to write.  The illustration of Xyblik is a proper rubber block print (originals still available, at the link below), while the illustration of the ineffable feathersquid was done digitally, by request of the editors of Cosmic Roots & Eldritch Shores, where the story was first published.  You can still read the entire story on their web site here.  (That version is very slightly different from what appears in my book.)  You can also read much more about the whole process of story and illustrations at my previous post How to Make a Love Potion.

        (Past Me was very clever to name a character starting with X long before Present Me was going to need it for an A to Z blog post!)

        Marketing Moral:  Attack people on public transportation with a copy of your favorite indie author’s book, so that the cover gets featured on the news.  (Okay, I don’t really advocate this, but I saw it on another author’s list and it cracked me up.  I guess the real marketing moral is to be a little creative about how to catch people’s eyes, but I confess that my creativity doesn’t seem to get very fired up about promotion, alas, when it would rather be writing and making art.)

        Proper Moral: Two wrongs don’t make a right – but two ineffable feathersquids do!

        What’s the most outrageous thing you’ve ever done to catch the eye of a love interest (or to promote a book)?

[Picture: Love Potion, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2021;

Ineffable Feathersquid, digital illustration by AEGNydam (Images from Bittersweetness & Light, but originals of Love Potion are still available at NydamPrints.com).]

W is for Window

         (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Bittersweetness & Light, my new collection of hope-filled, joy-inducing fantasy and sci fi short stories, poems, and art.  I’m sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, and I’ve also been sharing some of the background on why we do actually need joyful stories.  If you like strange creatures, magical worlds, and being reminded of the good to be found in the world, join me!)

        Today I’ll post another poem in its entirety: “The Window”

     My kitchen window now and then looks out

     Into another world.  Late afternoon,

     I rinse the lettuce, watching distant dragons

     Twine their gleaming tails in spiraling flight

     Above a golden city which no street

     I know can reach.  Sometimes at night

     That strange sky holds a different moon.

     Today a glowing scarlet bird

     Sang opals in the fragrant, dark-leafed trees

     That do not grow in my back yard.

     Small people clad in glittering beetle shells

     Were beating copper drums in revelry

     While I was scrubbing dinner’s dirty pans.

     Is there a window in that golden town

     Where some small person, copper-clad, looks out

     Onto the otherworldly mystery

     That is my un-mown dandelion lawn?

        People who attempt to sell their art and writing are constantly having to provide short bio blurbs, and this poem happens to illustrate a line I like to put in mine: Anne E.G. Nydam makes relief block prints celebrating the wonders of worlds both real and imaginary, and writes and illustrates books, stories, and poems about adventure, creativity, and finding sometimes unexpected joy.  This poem includes wonders both real and imaginary, and celebrates the joy of the ordinary as well as the fantastical.  (Yep, there’s that magic of ordinary dandelions again!)

        The illustration is another of those digital collages made out of pieces of block prints.  For example, you can recognize the distant city here.

        Marketing Moral: Did I mention reviews?  I could always use more reviews!  (Big thanks to A to Z organizer and storyteller extraordinaire Tarkabarka for a new review, and do check out this lovely long review by A-to-Z’s own Tao Talk!  Thanks, Lisa!)

        Proper Moral: Sometimes a molehill really is someone else’s mountain.  It’s all a matter of perspective.

        What’s the most unexpected or interesting thing you’ve ever glimpsed out a window?

[Pictures: Window digital collage by AEGNydam from Bittersweetness & Light, 2025 (See NydamPrints.com).]

V is for Venusians

         (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Bittersweetness & Light, my new collection of hope-filled, joy-inducing fantasy and sci fi short stories, poems, and art.  I’m sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, and I’ve also been sharing some of the background on why we urgently need joyful stories.  If you like strange creatures, magical worlds, and being reminded of the good to be found in the world, it’s not too late to come along with me!  It’s also not to late to visit other bloggers, to be found at the A to Z Master List.)

        These Venusian Medusae are one of the pieces of art that stands alone in the book, without illustrating a story or poem.  Or at least, I haven’t written anything that goes with it - but I still think it tells a story, and I invite everyone to imagine what that story might be.

        The title is “Symbiote City,” because I imagine that these diverse species of medusae are living symbiotically in the cloud decks of Venus, relying on each other to make life possible in a very challenging environment.  They are called medusae, by the way, not because of the petrifying Medusa of Greek mythology, but because “medusa” is the scientific name for jellyfish.  (Of course, fun Words-of-the-Month fact, the jellyfish are named after the Gorgon, presumably because of their tentacles.)

        This is one of those posts where, rather than bore myself with repetition, I will simply send you to read a prior post that explains what this rubber block print is all about: Symbiote City.  (And don't miss the link from there to even more speculation about Life on Venus.)

        Marketing Moral: While we’re on the subject of art, how about fan art!  Not only is it wonderful and affirming to the author whose work you’re fanning, but if you share it on-line or with friends it may pique the interest of others.

        Proper Moral: No man is an island.  Nor woman, nor jellyfish, nor any other creature.  And anyone who tells you they accomplished something big without any assistance from anyone else is lying.  So we should all go ahead and embrace our symbioses.

        Do you think there’s life out there somewhere?  What about sentient life?  What about sentient jellyfish life?

[Picture: Symbiote City (Venusian Medusae), rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2020 (Image from Bittersweetness & Light, but originals are still available at NydamPrints.com).]

U is for Utopia

         (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Bittersweetness & Light, my new collection of hope-filled, joy-inducing fantasy and sci fi short stories, poems, and art.)

        Utopia was written in 1516 by Thomas More, who coined the word from Greek roots meaning “place that is not a place.”  (Fun Words-of-the-Month fact: he had also considered using the Latin roots, which would have given us Nusquama.)  His book described a society that was supposed to be perfect, and while there’s a good deal of debate over just how satirical More was being and how perfect he actually thought his imagined society would be, nevertheless the name he coined has now come to mean any perfect society.  I don’t want to include too much of a spoiler about my own story here, but in “The Scanner’s Tale,” an asteroid scanner crash-lands in a strange, alien mushroom garden, and has to discover whether it’s a utopia or a nightmare.

        Here’s an excerpt.

        I was lying in the dark, leaning against something firm beneath my head.  The air was fresh, with a faint leafy scent.  There was an incredible sense of security.  Of care.  I opened my eyes to a dim, warm, greenish-yellowish glow, like the light of fireflies.  For a moment I thought I’d entered fairyland, with a million sparkling lights sprinkled through a fantasy garden around me.  Green and blue vines looped like party streamers everywhere.  It was beautiful, serene...  But my body was sore, and although I lay relatively comfortably, my left arm stung and throbbed, and I lifted it experimentally.  As I moved, I felt the faintest sense of resistance, as if I were covered in cobwebs.

        I looked down at myself then, and in that weird light I saw tiny threads laced all over my skin, pale and clinging, like I was already dead and a fungus was growing across my rotting flesh.  I think I shrieked, and found a thicker tendril at the corner of my mouth, oozing some sweet liquid.  I scrambled to my feet, rubbing at myself franticly to tear away the sticky network of tendrils, trampling away the slightly heavier webs that had grown across my feet, up to the edges of my boots where they could find my skin, as if they were drawn vampire-like to the blood on my shins.  An acrid smell filled the air from the ripped vines, and I felt as if something were tearing at me, although the growth was off me now.

        I bolted about five panicked steps in some random direction, flailing at the dangling threads that snagged at my face and hair, before I pulled myself together enough to look around and get my bearings.  I was in a cavern, although I could see the purple sky at one end where the cave became the bottom of a deep crevice opening to the surface.  The glimmering light came from some sort of luminous pods scattered through the growth, which wove across the entire space like a jungle.  I could see the place where I had been lying, propped between the roots of the largest plant-like thing.  I would call it a tree, except that it seemed softer and more flexible, and its skin – too soft and smooth to call it bark – was streaked in bright green and turquoise.  Its twigs and leaves were very slightly moving, and while I tried to tell myself that of course my panicked leap had shaken the branches, it looked more as if the leaves were feeling for me.  Or... smelling for me.

        The alien world in the story was inspired by mycorrhyzal networks, and the recent discoveries about these fungal communities have been blowing scientists’ minds.  If you haven’t read about them, go look it up right now!

        To illustrate the story, I collected a bunch of my various past block prints that included mushrooms and other plant life, and digitally collaged bits and pieces into a sort of jungle scene.  Then I added “alien” color to jazz it up.  Plus I made a variety of little mushroomy  bits to brighten up the pages through the story.  You can see some of the originals that donated parts here and here (but several others are sold out and no longer posted).

        If you’re wondering why some of my illustrations are “faux block prints” and others are these collages instead of original “real” block prints, the answer is in the medium itself.  If you remember the history of relief block printing, it was invented as a method of reproduction.  Before the invention of computers and printers, xerox machines, photography, and other simple methods of reproduction, block prints were the best way to print a repeated design on yards and yards of fabric or create hundreds of copies of a book or poster.  Relief block printmaking is a great way to make multiples — but it’s an incredibly inefficient way to make a single image.  There’s no point in my going through all the effort of carving a physical block, rolling with ink, and pressing on paper, all for a single image to scan, if I won’t be creating an entire edition of originals.  If an illustration for a particular story or poem is too specific to have appeal as a free-standing work of art, it doesn’t make sense to create a whole new block just to scan it once.  Instead, if I won’t have any use for actual originals to offer people as artwork in their own right, and all I really need is the digital image to put into my digital document, it makes a lot more sense just to work digitally in the first place.  (You can read more about my “faux block print” process here.)

        Marketing Moral: Nominate my book for awards and vote for it - if this is something you encounter.  Maybe most of us don’t get to vote on literary awards, but some awards do

involve nominations or votes from the public, so if the opportunity arises, keep my books in mind!

        Proper Moral: You can tell a tree by its fruit.  A utopian society will increase the happiness of all its inhabitants.

        Do you like mushrooms?  Adorable, gross, or tasty?  (And if you like your mushrooms fictional, check out my previous post Fantasy Fungus.)

[Pictures: Mushroom world digital collages by AEGNydam from Bittersweetness & Light, 2025 (See NydamPrints.com).]