K is for King

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  Are you looking for the officially scheduled letter of the day?  

You can find my Post for I here.

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, my immanent collection of short stories, poems, and art inspired by fairy tales, myths, and folklore.  All through the month I’m sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, as well as some reflections on the power of the traditional stories that inspired me.)

        K is for Kickstarter, which is how I published this book.  I described the process last year for the previous book, and if you’re curious you can find out all about it here.

        As for this book, one of the short stories in Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns is called “King of Shadows,” and although it’s based on a particular character from European folklore, I’m not going to tell you which one, because in this case that would be a bit of a spoiler!  So instead of discussing the legends, I’ll just have to give you a somewhat longer selection of excerpts.  (And then you may be able to guess who this is, because the clues are all there.)

        There’s a little park with a couple of benches by the train station across from the Starbucks, and there’s this old man who always sits there.  I started working at the library a few years ago, and the old man was there then, sitting on that bench when I got out of the train, still sitting there when I came back to the station at the end of the day, except in winter when it was already dark.  Even if it was raining or snowing, there he was on the bench under the huge maple, summer and winter, from sunup ’til sundown. 

        …

        Weeks went by.  The squirrels accepted me and my birdseed, and the old man smiled when I spoke to them.  I told the squirrels about my cat and my girlfriend and my garden.  I told them about the books I was reading.

        …

        The squirrel didn’t answer, of course, but the old man caught my eye.  “I call him Robin,” the old man said, taking me by surprise.  I offered the old man some carrot sticks, but he shook his head and didn’t say another word, so that I found myself wondering whether I’d actually heard him speak at all.  But I started calling the dark-furred squirrel “Robin,” and the old man seemed to approve.

        It was another month or two, and beginning to be chilly sitting in the park some days, when the old man accepted a square of dark chocolate.

        “Now this is something special,” he said.  His voice was as rich and deep as the chocolate.  He may have looked old, but this time his voice held such strength that there could be no doubt he had spoken.

        I agreed about the chocolate, and then ventured, “What brings you here every day?”

        “I’m waiting for my wife.”

        “Where is she?”

        He shook his head.  “She could be anywhere.  Perhaps India.  I haven’t heard tidings of her in some time.”

        I frowned, wondering whether his wife was as old as he, or whether more likely she’d died years ago and he was suffering from dementia.  But if so, who let him out all day, and who took care of him all night?  I asked, “How long have you been waiting?”

        “Years.”  His gaze rose up to the branches above us, where Robin the squirrel had taken a sunflower seed to nibble.  “She cannot stay angry forever.”

        Well, that’s all I’ll say for this one.  But the moral, perhaps, is that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in some people’s philosophy.

        Also, never underestimate the magic powers of chocolate.

        Are you the sort of person who starts conversations with strangers at the park?  I’m afraid I’m not, but it’s a good thing the narrator of this story is!

[Picture: Illustration adapted from Grandfather, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2026 (See the original block print at NydamPrints.com).]

J is for Judgement

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, my immanent collection of short stories, poems, and art inspired by fairy tales, myths, and folklore.  All through the month I’m sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, as well as some reflections on the power of the traditional stories that inspired me.)

        The Judgement of Solomon is one of the most famous ancient stories of wisdom, but in case you’re not familiar with it, you can read it here.  It’s also the inspiration for one of the earliest pieces in my book Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns.  This one is actually a series of 5 poems, each from the point of view of a different character, and it’s probably one of my earlier attempts to imagine a myth from a genuinely human perspective, trying to feel the people not as stock characters merely fulfilling a role, but as humans living an actual experience.  The characters I chose are Solomon and the two women, of course, but also the infant himself, and the fifth character who’s merely implied: the swordsman ordered to divide the child.  How would you feel if you received such an order?  Here’s just a snippet of the swordsman’s poem:

     Well, I've squandered blood before,

     And laughed at the coppery smell, and sung

     At the deaths of my foes.  But a child?

        The illustration paired with these poems was not made to go with it.  It’s actually a self portrait with one of my own babies.  I titled it “The Whole World” because it’s trying to

express both how a parent is an infant’s entire universe, and how the converse can also be true: that a parent’s world can focus down to the infant, just as for the two women in this myth.

        The moral of the Judgement of Solomon is that genuine love is not selfish, but wants what’s best for the beloved.

        Also, half a baby is not, in fact, better than none.

        And here’s the big question: how should soldiers, law enforcement, and others respond when given an order that seems immoral?

        By the way, would you like to hear me read an excerpt from Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns?  On May 1 I’ll be participating in a live, on-line group author reading by Strong Women-Strange Worlds.  I’ll be one of 6 speculative fiction authors who each get to read for 8 minutes in a fun, interactive, FREE on-line event open to anyone with an internet connection and an imagination.  As I said, it’s free, but registration is required to get the zoom link, so do check it out.  I’d love to see some A to Z folks in the audience!  You can find all the information and the link to register here.

[Picture: The Whole World, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2008 (Image from Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns).]

I is for Incident

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, my shiny new collection of short stories, poems, and art inspired by fairy tales, myths, and folklore, coming out on April 20!  All through the month I’m sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, as well as some reflections on the power of the traditional stories that inspired me.  Meanwhile, to see the range of varied topics my fellow A to Z bloggers are covering this year, peruse the Master List, and visit a few other blogs that catch your fancy.)

        My short story “Incident at Bullion Mill” is my early Industrial Revolution twist on the fairy tale “Rumpelstiltskin,” in which a mysterious “inspector” visits the mill girls who work the machines that spin straw into gold.  If you need a refresher on the original version of the fairy tale, you can read it here (although I took ideas from an even earlier version with a slightly different ending).  I had so much fun with this one, and I really enjoyed falling into rabbit holes doing a ridiculous amount of research into the workings of early flax mills, the slang of the early nineteenth century, and (for my illustration) aerial views of cities from hot air balloons.  You can read my blog post about that last topic here: Balloonist’s-Eye Views.

        In order to avoid too much of a spoiler, all I’ll give you today is the illustration and the very beginning…

     Each of us has been asked to make a statement of what we know about the disappearance of Mr Reuben Stiltman and Miss MaryAnn Miller yesterday around half past one past noon.  My name is Harriet Lamb.  I'm 19 years old and have been working at Bullion Mill for five years.  I'm a minder on the spinning floor.  Bullion Mill is a good deal smaller than most ordinary mills, just a single three story brick building and a clock tower enclosed in a high-walled yard beside Pudsey Beck.  The scutching and heckling of the straw are not so different from an ordinary flax mill, but it's when the bobbins are brought up to the spinning floor that the doors are locked and the magic begins. 

        The moral of Rumpelstiltskin is that knowing someone’s true name gives you power over them.

        Also, never marry someone whose proposal is contingent on how much gold you can make for them.

        I aspire to spin words into gold.  What’s your most magical crafting ability?

 [Picture: Incident at Bullion Mill, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2025 (Image from NydamPrints.com).]

H is for Hades

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, my new collection of short stories, poems, and art inspired by fairy tales, myths, and folklore, which is coming out this month!  All through April I’m sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, as well as some reflections on the power of the traditional stories that inspired me.)

        The classical (Greek/Roman) myth of how Hades, god of the underworld, abducted Persephone, daughter of the goddess of harvest and fertility, has meant many things to many people.  I suggest you read my previous post about Persephone to see some of the range of interpretation and art inspired by the story, and if you need to read some various versions of the original myth, you can find them here.  As for my book, it includes two pieces of writing about the myth of Persephone, and they’re completely different takes on the story.  I wrote the poem first, in which I imagined the tale from the point of view of the Shades in the Underworld, bystanders who witnessed an injustice and failed to act.

     Three times we watch a seed to living lips,

     three times there is no cry, no warning, “Death.”

     We are no longer human and forget what we once were.

You can read the entire poem at my earlier post Persephone in Hades.

        My short story, on the other hand, came later after I began to think more about the personalities involved.  It’s from the point of view of Persephone, in which I’ve imagined her as a tough noir-style dame: a seductive, resourceful, manipulative, strong woman who knows how to get what she wants in a world not made for women, where you have to take matters into your own hands. 

     Most of the picture is in shadow, and if you want to know the whole story, you’ll have to look farther back.  Have you ever asked yourself what a grown woman was doing picking flowers all day?  Or for that matter, how a goddess could have been unaware of the implications of eating in the Underworld?  Of course you never asked.  No one ever does.  The party line is all innocent Maiden and pitiless brute, but there’s more to it than that…

        The thing about these ancient stories is that they’re not One Right Answer or one correct interpretation.  The reason they’ve stayed popular for so long is that they’re multi-layered and multi-faceted; every time you look at them from a different angle you see something else.  So there are a few traditional tales that have given rise to more than one re-imagining from me, and in those cases you should consider each piece to be independent: starting from the same point, but heading in a completely different direction.

        (As for this block print of Persephone, I tried to make it evoke a 1940s noir film poster.  I'm afraid that dramatic lighting is not my strong suit and I never get it exactly right, but at least I keep trying!)

        The moral of Hades is that if you see someone in trouble, be an up-stander!

        But also, things are not always as they appear.

        How do you feel about eating in the Underworld (or Faerie, which has similar mythology)?  Would you be able to resist that pomegranate?  Would you want to?

[Picture: Queen of the Underworld, rubber block print with watercolor by AEGNydam, 2025 (Image from NydamPrints.com).]

G is for Green Girl and Garden

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, my collection of short stories, poems, and art inspired by fairy tales, myths, and folklore – coming out on April 20!)

        The Green Girl is the narrator of one of the poems in the book, and it’s inspired by the legend of The Green Children of Woolpit.  This is one of the stories that, unlike “The Sleeping Beauty,” for example, is not exactly widely known.  If you want to learn about the legend and about my poem, go check out this prior blog post about them.  There you can read the background of the legend and also follow a further link to read the entire poem where it was published by New Myths in 2025.

        So to provide something new for today, G is also for Garden - the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, to be specific.  Here’s the explanation as it appears in the End Notes of my book: The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were listed as one of the Seven Wonders of the World by second century authors, but that was already long after they had apparently been destroyed by an earthquake.  Actual facts about this wonder therefore have to be supplemented with legend.  The hanging gardens were said to have been built around 600 BCE by Nebuchadnezzar II for his wife Amytis of Media, who missed the mountain greenery of her homeland.  Modern archaeology has found no evidence for such gardens in Babylon, and some scholars suggest other possible locations and histories, but the legend about Nebuchadnezzar II building the Hanging Gardens comes from Berossus in the early third century BCE.

        The inspiration for both my story and my artwork grew from the fact that “hanging gardens” always sounded so much more magical to me than mere plantings on terraces.  What if the gardens were actually hanging? 

        Clearly it would take djinn to create something like this, but what do you do when something goes wrong and the djinn aren’t around?  My short story imagines the adventure of Queen Amytis when her hanging garden blows away.

        As I mentioned back at B, yes, there are End Notes.  I wanted to give readers a place to find out which stories inspired each of the pieces in Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, so I’m not leaving anyone guessing - if they don’t want to be left guessing.  But I also wanted to give the reader a choice of when (or if) to get that background information.  Do you prefer to read the story first and let it stand on its own before you find out the background, or do you prefer to know all the possible references as you read?  Of course some of the source stories are famous enough to be obvious, but some, like the Green Children, are less so.

        Also, the Green Children and the Hanging Gardens both fall into my category of “Other” folklore, so if you want to read more about that category, here’s my prior post on Giving Legends and Folklore a Kick.

        The moral of the Hanging Garden is to make sure your castles (and gardens) in the air are securely tethered.

        Also, don’t plant Enormous Turnips on your Hanging Gardens.  The two gardening styles do not mix well.

        Here in the northern hemisphere my thoughts are definitely turning to gardening as Spring is really getting going.  Would you like a Hanging Garden of your own?

[Pictures: Twilight in a Green Land, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2025;

Hanging Garden, detail of a larger rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2021 (Images from Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, but you can see the whole piece at NydamPrints.com).]

F is for Fairies

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, my immanent collection of short stories, poems, and art inspired by fairy tales, myths, and folklore.  Plus, don’t forget to see what all my fellow A to Z bloggers are up to, at the Master List.)

        One of the iconic scenes in the famous fairy tale “The Sleeping Beauty” is when twelve fairies are invited to the christening of the princess to bestow their gifts… and of course one fairy is not invited.  (Need a refresher?  Read the fairy tale here.)  I love the way there are rules to the fairies’ magic: each gets to bestow one and only one gift, and one fairy cannot simply reverse or eliminate another fairy’s gift, but you can tweak it…  But another thing that’s interesting about this fairy tale episode is that not all the gifts are listed.  In fact, all we get are virtue, beauty, and riches, until the appearance of the thirteenth fairy and her curse.  So I decided to imagine what all 13 fairies bestowed, and why.  I wrote a poem explaining each gift, and to keep things interesting I tried to use a wide variety of different poetic forms, as well.  (Originally I’d thought I’d use 13 different forms, but I have to confess that I ended up with a few repeats.)  Some of these poems are quite short, such as the very first one:

Beauty.

Tyranny of eyes

To dictate what deserves esteem.

Despot vision demands its due,

And we obey.  I must give

Beauty.

While others are longer, including a villanelle (goodness) and a couple of sonnets (sense of humor, and the final mitigation of the curse).  The block print I give you today is the Seventh Fairy.  Can you guess what gift she’s bestowing on the princess?  I’m not sure she was present at my birth, but she definitely visited my children!

        Of course F is also for Fairy Tale, the single largest section of my book.  To see more about why I love fairy tales and what I’m doing with them in Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, you can read this prior post about Giving Fairy Tales a Kick.

        The moral of Sleeping Beauty is that you should be sure to invite all the fairies.  (E. Nesbit has a great short story, “Melisande,” about what happens if you don’t invite any of them!  I highly recommend reading it here.)

        Also, even with the best-laid plans, it’s good to be flexible and have a back-up plan waiting to step up if necessary.

        The great biologist and environmentalist Rachel Carson wrote, “If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.”  If you were a fairy, what wish would you bestow on a baby?

[Picture: The Seventh Fairy, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2025 (Image from NydamPrints.com).]

E is for Enormous

        (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, my collection of short stories, poems, and art inspired by fairy tales, myths, and folklore that will be released on April 20.  All through the month I’m sharing excerpts, as well as some reflections on the power of the traditional stories that inspired me.)

        “The Enormous Turnip” is a Russian folktale first recorded in 1863, although variants exist in other places.  (Don’t know it?  You can read it here.)  This is one of the stories that’s represented in my book only by the artwork (and a little comment) and not by a full story or poem.  It’s a charming folktale and in this case my artwork is a fairly straightforward illustration without re-imagining anything substantive.  I just love stories about cooperation!  Still, I did have fun on the circular composition of all the people and animals that have to help pull on the turnip before it can be yanked from the ground.

        The one thing that this story does lead me to wonder is what interesting things they might be able to do with a turnip this large.  Certainly they could feed a village, but hollowing out the middle would provide more than enough mashed turnip for meals while still leaving material for some other purpose.  Perhaps they could make it into a house, or if it’s not quite big enough for that, how about carving it into a pair of dugout boats, or using it as a dome atop their town hall, or maybe a bus shelter?  Any other ideas?

        The moral of the enormous turnip is that if you have a green thumb of this potency you’d better choose wisely what you plant.

        Also, the contributions of even the smallest members of the community are important, and we accomplish the most when we all work together.

        Speaking of community, would you like to join an on-line, world-wide community of authors sharing their work with readers?  I invite you to check out Strong Women-Strange Worlds, the place for free, twice-monthly live, on-line readings by women and non-binary authors of sci fi, fantasy, and speculative horror.  Each event features 6 authors reading excerpts of their own work – just enough to get the flavor.  Consider it a tasting menu of speculative fiction delight!  The audience can interact with the authors and each other in the chat throughout the readings, and there’s an opportunity for Q&A with the authors at the end.  I’ll be one of those reading in the May 1 event alongside some truly amazing authors, and I’ll be presenting something from Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, although I haven’t yet decided what.  I’d love to see some of my A to Z peeps in the audience.  Check it out: it’s

free, it’s from the comfort of your own home (or lunch break at work), and it’s a wonderful respite from doom-scrolling.  Find all the details, upcoming author panels, and links to register here.

        Okay, after that PSA, let’s get back to the Enormous Turnip.  Do you have a green thumb?  Have you ever had a gardening adventure that exceeded expectations?

 

[Picture: The Enormous Turnip, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 20 (Image from Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns).]