B is for Beyond

         (If you’re waiting for April to officially begin the April A to Z Blog Challenge, don’t mind me!  I’m just getting a head start.  You can read my Theme Reveal Post here, and when April comes I’ll direct you to the correct letter every day.)

        Let me introduce you properly to the book my A to Z this year is all about: Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns.  It’s a collection of short stories, poetry, and art inspired by, riffing on, and reimagining fairy tales, myths, legends, and folklore (and it will be released on April 20!)  In other words, I’ve started with those traditional stories and tried to go beyond them to new perspectives about their characters and tropes and the ways they try to bring meaning to living in this world of ours.

        Later in the alphabet you’ll find out more about how I went beyond the pomegranate of the title, so today I present Beyond the Thorns, a rubber block print that illustrates a poem about Sleeping Beauty.  “The Sleeping Beauty” is the fairy tale that got by far the most reaction from me in this collection.  I’ve included a short story, 2 independent poems, and a set of 13 connected poems, plus there’s another short story that also includes an element inspired by “The Sleeping Beauty.”  Why so much about this particular fairy tale?  Here’s what I say in the end notes: Do you have any favorite songs that you love even though the lyrics are ridiculous or problematic?  You love the music, the voice, the vibe, even though logically you can’t agree with the message?  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.

        (If you need to read or reread this fairy tale for yourself to see what I mean, you can find it here.)  Yes, my book does include End Notes, to let you know for each of my pieces which traditional story inspired it, and to explain a little bit about my reactions and why I took my own re-imaginings in a particular direction.  But to keep those notes from being too dry I’ve included lots of additional art back there.  I want the book to be an object of beauty throughout!

        But back to “Sleeping Beauty.”  In addition to that strange and beautiful setting, this fairy tale has so many little sparks of wonder that lead my imagination off in interesting directions: What are the protocol and rules of magic that fairies have to follow when bestowing gifts on a royal infant?  And what gifts did they actually all bestow?  (More on that at F!)  What are the implications of missing a century of history and marrying into a world in which so much has changed?  What might someone actually be doing while asleep for a hundred years (to sleep, perchance to dream)?…  There are just so many enticing things to imagine!  So this is the place to note that when I’ve had multiple responses to a particular traditional tale, each of my pieces should be considered to be independent and unconnected with each other.  I may be responding to a completely different element of the story, and taking my imagination in a completely different direction in each piece.

        As for this illustration of the castle behind its enchanted hedge of thorns, you can read more about the making of it at this prior blog post.  You can also see that this rubber block print is the basis for the cover design of the book, although I adapted it to full color for maximum enticing-ness (I hope).

        The moral of Sleeping Beauty is that choosing your time wisely makes all the difference between dying a horrible death impaled on thorns or strolling through a rose garden.  (If you’ve just reread the story you’ll know that in the Grimms’ version the prince doesn’t do anything heroic to get through that hedge – he just shows up at the right time.)

        Also, it’s always important to look for whatever might be hidden behind a prickly exterior.  It could be treasure or a heart of gold, or it could be lies and deception.  Observe closely!

        Have you ever gotten beyond a concealing barrier to discover a secret magical place?

[Picture: Beyond the Thorns, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2017 (Image from Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns).]

A is for Apotropaic

        (If you’re waiting until April to officially begin the April A to Z Blog Challenge, don’t mind me!  I’m just getting a head start.  You can read my Theme Reveal Post here, and when April comes I’ll direct you to the correct letter every day.)

        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 – coming out on April 20!  All through the month I’ll be sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, as well as some reflections on the power of the traditional stories that inspired me.

        Apotropaic is a fabulous word that means “having the power to avert evil or prevent bad luck.”  Ancient Greeks used the image of the gorgon head of Medusa as an apotropaic symbol, and it’s always struck me as a little bit funny to use a monster for protection from other monsters or bad things.  (The ancient Greeks weren’t the only ones to do this, however.  Allow me to remind you of the apotropaic Mesopotamian demon Pazuzu, mentioned here during the 2022 A to Z.)  But let’s get back to Medusa.  Do you need a refresher on the story?  You can read about it here.

        Perhaps the first question we should be asking is why Medusa is considered such a horrible monster anyway?  According to later myths, Medusa was raped by Neptune in Minerva’s temple, and Minerva turned her into a monster in vengeance for the desecration – because of course it was always the woman who was punished.  There’s certainly plenty of fodder for re-tellings in that scenario!  But I haven’t even touched on that because the part of Medusa’s myth I was particularly interested in was her apotropaic function, and indeed the etymology of the name Medusa in Ancient Greek is “guardian, protectress.”  In other words, her protective function came long before the myths that explained the origins of her snaky hair and petrifying visage.  In my book Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns I have a poem called “Medusa Sings to Her Snakes” which includes the lines

     Protection in your coils, and healing

     In your kiss.  Fearsome we may be,

     But beautiful.  We’ll frighten evil

     With our sweet-fanged smiles, and

     Strangle horror in our fierce embrace.

        As for my rubber block print of Medusa, I was inspired by Pre-Raphaelite paintings of melodramatic women, but really I wanted to show her interacting with the snakes of her hair.  After all, with snakes all over her head, she can never be lonely!  (If you want to know the rest of what she sings to her snakes, you’ll just have to get the book when it comes out.)

        Why am I reimagining classical myths anyway?  If you want to read more about the whole category of Greek and Roman myths as inspiration in my book, by all means go read this prior post on Giving Classical Mythology a Kick.

        The moral of Medusa’s myth appears to be that if you chop off someone’s head they’ll protect you, but I don’t advocate that approach to life.

        Also, you shouldn’t judge a monster by its appearance.  Nor indeed, should you even look at it without protective eyewear!

        Would you trust a monster to protect you from monsters?

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

A to Z Theme Revelation 2026

         I’m thrilled to announce that my new collection of short stories, poems, and art will be released in April, right smack during the A to Z Challenge, so of course I have to make it my A to Z theme for this year!  Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns is in the same format as the book I featured as my theme last year, Bittersweetness & Light, but this time the over-arching theme is that all the short stories, poetry, and relief block prints are inspired by, reimagining, or riffing on fairy tales, classical mythology, and other myths and stories from folklore.  Some of the stories that provided inspiration are famous (such as Sleeping Beauty and Pandora’s Box), and others perhaps less well known (such as the Green Children and the Tarasque).  For every letter I’ll share artwork, plus teasers and glimpses behind the scenes of my writing and how it connects to the various traditional stories.  Whether you know the original tales or not, however, I hope to bring something new: twist the story, look at it from a new perspective, answer some questions, or ask new questions of my own.  Join me to consider these classic tales from new angles and see what I’ve done with them.

        If you want a bit more of a preview of the book you can read about it here at Once Upon a Time There Was a Kickstarter…  or look at the Kickstarter page itself.  (The campaign is over but the page still tells all about the project.)  And also, here’s a prior blog post about Fairy Tale Retellings in general, listing a lot of diverse examples by other authors.  It might be a good idea to start getting used to the breadth of possibilities!

        Today is also the day to remind you of my past A to Z themes, especially as there will be connections to many of them…

2025 - Bittersweetness & Light (Same format, different stories)

2024 - The Botany of the Realms of Imagination (Barnacle geese, giant Beanstalk, tree of Life, pearl-heart flower, hanging gardens, and more!)

2023 - Alphabet Squared: an Alphabet of Block Printed Alphabets

2022 - How to Make a Mythical Creature (Flight, Gigantism, One-and-Only, Questions, Transforming, and more!)

2021 - Mythical and Imaginary Places (Eden, Hades, Faerie, Oz, and more!)

2020 - Nursery Rhymes and their Block Printed Illustrations (Hey, Diddle Diddle, Itsy Bitsy Spider)

2019 - On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination (Dragon, Fairy, Unicorn, Vegetable Lamb)

2018 - Characters from My Own Books (Well, none of the same ones, but absolutely!)

2017 - Block Print Artists (Block prints every day!)

2016 - Mythical Creatures (Cyclops, Djinni, Fairy, Golem, Gorgon, Mermaid, Siren, Sphinx, Unicorn, and more!)

        Perhaps it should come as no surprise that someone who dares to tweak famous traditional stories is also going to tweak the A to Z schedule.  As always, I’ll be starting early to give myself a few extra days off during the month of April.  So you can join me next week and jump right into A, or if you prefer to do it properly along with all the other A to Z bloggers then come back on April 1 and even though by then I’ll be a few letters into the alphabet, I’ll link you to the correct letter for each day.  In either case, I can’t wait to share my new book with you!

        The moral of Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns (You knew I was going to have morals, right?) is that apparently I just can’t leave well enough alone.

        Also, there’s always another perspective on a story and another layer to the tale!

        Do you have a favorite fairy tale or myth?  Do tell!  It might be one of the ones I’ve explored in this book.  (Then again, perhaps not… Some of my very favorite stories are ones I haven’t re-imagined because I didn’t necessarily feel the need to change them.  But you can read a blog post about some of My Favorite Fairy Tales here.)

Melting Snow

         This is the time of year when I start looking for signs of green sprouts poking up… But right now there’s still over a foot of snow over most of the beds where my bulbs have been sleeping, so I won’t be seeing them soon.  Still, the snow is melting bit by bit, the sugar maples are filling their sap buckets, and I’m ready to celebrate the not-quite-spring of this sometimes infuriating season.

        I start with this detailed wood engraving by Thomas Willoughby Nason (USA, 1889-1971), which is about what things look like around here: still grey, still covered in snow, except that the roofs and roads are mostly clear.

        The bright colors of the second piece are still to come; there’s certainly no sign of green grass yet.  Nevertheless, the days are getting longer, sure enough, and there’s plenty of meltwater around.  This piece comes from a book of acrostics by Steven Schnur with water-colored linoleum block prints by Leslie Evans.

        I don’t know how long it will be until it really starts feeling like spring around here, or when I’ll see my first green daffodil spears nosing up through last year’s matted leaves.  It could be a week or three…  But either way I won’t be marking the moment in this blog because I will once again be dedicating the second half of March and the whole of April to the annual April A to Z Blog Challenge.  Tune in next week when I reveal my theme for 2026!

      The place where I will be revelling in signs of spring is my Instagram, so feel free to join me there.  For a few more early spring block prints, you can revisit Spring Forward with Cheffetz and Early Spring.  And (if you’re in the northern hemisphere, anyway) keep your eyes sharp for any evidence of returning spring.  It can't be too much longer now! 

[Pictures: Melting Snow, wood engraving by Thomas Willoughby Nason, 1941 (Image from Amon Carter Museum of American Art);

THAW, hand-colored linoleum block print by Leslie Evans from WINTER: An Alphabet Acrostic by Steven Schnur, 2002.]

Birds of a Feather?

         A fellow author I’m acquainted with posted a quiz like this on her Instagram a while ago and I thought it was a fun idea.  I’ve been waiting quite some time to do it, and since I’ve just started posting things for March Meet the Maker, it finally seemed to be the right moment.  Here’s how it works…

        I’ve chosen all kinds of little trivia facts about myself, and for each thing that you share with me, give yourself a point.  At the end, tell me how many points we have in common!  According to my calculation there are a total of 48 points possible, including bonuses, but admittedly there’s probably some ambiguity in how one could choose to count things.  That’s fine - the exact score doesn’t matter; it’s just about seeing how we connect.

        The funny thing about putting this together is that of course it’s very difficult and fairly arbitrary to try to pick a handful of things to share.  How can I choose just 9 favorite books, for example?  I first sketched these cards out quite a while ago and if I were starting from scratch today I’d probably make some different choices.  For example, it’s been a while since I even thought about “Ted Lasso,” but I left it on my list because I did enjoy it very much while it was on (and I don’t watch a ton of TV).  So while any list of this sort is woefully incomplete and hardly a perfect reflection, everything on here is certainly true and I stand by it!

I should also note that the items are in no particular order on each card.  So, are you ready?

        Here we go:

1. BOOKS

     Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

     Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

     Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

     Norton Juster, The Phantom Tollbooth

     Dorothy L. Sayers, Lord Peter Wimsey Series

     Josephine Tey, Brat Farrar

     J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

     Terry Pratchett, Night Watch Series

     Ursula K. LeGuin, The Tombs of Atuan

2. ON-SCREEN

     “Casablanca”

     “Raiders of the Lost Ark”

     “Much Ado About Nothing”

     Wallace & Gromit

     “Ted Lasso”

     Brokenwood Mysteries

     Archaeology Documentaries

3. MUSIC

     Dvorak (especially Symphonies 7 & 9)

     Simon & Garfunkel (especially “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” and “The Sound of Silence”)

     Vivaldi (especially The Four Seasons)

     “I Will Survive” Gloria Gaynor

     Mendelssohn (especially Symphonies 4 & 5)

     Cheesy 80s Music

     Beethoven (especially Symphonies 5 & 9)

     Big Band/Swing

     Assorted…

     +1 Bonus if you play the cello

4. RANDOM LIFE FACTOIDS

     Artist (+1 Bonus for relief printmaking)

     Author (+1 Bonus for writing poetry, speculative fiction, or happy endings)

     Parent (+1 Bonus for twins)

     Quaker

     Teacher (+1 Bonus for teaching middle school or art)

     Amateur Linguist (+1 Bonus for having a degree in linguistics)

5. ASSORTED LOVES & INTERESTS

     Libraries

     Backyard Wildlife

     Mythical Creatures

     Octopuses

     Quiltmaking

     History

     Daffodils

     Purrs

     Houseplants

        (And of course since these are things I love, many of them have shown up in this blog before, so I’ve linked a few things that seemed related.  And if you want to do it on Instagram, you can find that here.)

        How did you score?  I can’t wait to hear how much we have in common!

#MarchMeetTheMaker2026 #MarchMeetTheMaker

Words of the Month - Competence Porn

         Some people love to watch dumpster fires or train wrecks, relishing the dysfunctional dramas in reality shows or the disastrous crashes in car races.  I can’t stand that; I prefer to watch people doing things well.  At the Olympics I want every athlete to perform to the best of their abilities, and in fiction I want to see characters do amazing things.  I like competence porn.  I was reminded of this term recently when it was raised at a panel I attended at Boskone about the lure of heist stories.  One of the reasons people enjoy heists is for the pleasure of seeing all the members of the team perform their amazing special feats to pull off the seemingly impossible task: mastermind, hacker, con artist, safe cracker, thief…  When they do their jobs well it’s competence porn.

        Since this is a Words of the Month post, let’s look at the derivation of the term.  Competence comes from Latin roots meaning “meeting together, agreement, symmetry,” which feels particularly appropriate for those heist teams, but the word actually has a somewhat tangled back story.  In the sixteenth century the word competence had two definitions, both now obsolete.  One was “rivalry,” deriving from compete, which feels particularly appropriate for the Olympics.  In other words, that root of “working together” could be taken to mean either striving together on the same side of an issue, or striving together on opposite sides.  But at the same time the other definition was “adequate supply,” as in competency, pulling on the idea of things coming together in a fitting way.  In the early eighteenth century we got the legal definition of “capability or fitness to testify in court,” and by the end of the 18th century that sense had broadened to the definition I’m talking about today: “adequate ability, sufficient skill” for whatever task.  By this definition competence is more like a minimum threshold, however.  In today’s term competence porn we’re referring to things done not just adequately but done masterfully well.

        Porn, of course, is short for pornography, the abbreviation not appearing in print until around 1960.  (However, who knows how long people had been using the term in the sorts of conversations that didn’t get published!)  Interestingly, the first pornography - to be called by that name, anyway - was obscene paintings in the ancient temples of Bacchus.  This was around 1840, and English got the word from French which had borrowed it from the Greek word meaning “depicting prostitutes.”  You can see the -graphy root that shows up in so many other words for writing, recording, carving, or describing things.  It wasn’t long before the word  pornography was applied to certain French novels, but apparently not until the early 20th century was it applied to pictures other than those original murals.  In 1964 we got the famous Supreme Court opinion in which Justice Potter Stewart said that he couldn’t define “hard-core” pornography, “But I know it when I see it.”

        Recently, however, the word porn seems to be acquiring a broader and generally more benign sense, starting with the term food porn.  In 1977 Alexander Cockburn wrote “True gastro-porn heightens the excitement and also the sense of the unattainable by proffering colored photographs of various completed recipes,” in which statement the parallel is drawn between alluring food photography and provocative sexual photography.  In this instance it’s less about any specific connection between food and sex and more about the ways the presentation of each can be made to appeal to the sensual and even to the voyeuristic allure of potentially “illicit” unhealthy foods.  By the early 2000s, however, the sense of the “porn” in food porn was ameliorated still further to mean simply “material presenting something desirable in an especially aesthetically appealing or sensational manner.”

        The term property porn appeared in 2005 to describe the luscious and alluring photos of desirable luxury properties in glossy magazines, and various other “porns” have been used, although I certainly have no intention of searching for porn on the internet in order to find you more examples.  (I do hope the writing of this post won’t get me attacked by the wrong sorts of algorithms!)  And finally we get to today’s term competence porn, which was coined in 2009 by John Rogers about the television show “Leverage,” which he created.  So yes, heists are in fact the quintessential example of competence porn.

        I don’t love this term or this usage of the word porn because in general I dislike the linguistic mushing together of positive and negative, healthy and unhealthy, such as “sick” or “wicked” meaning “good,” or “ kill” or “slay” meaning “to do a good job.”  (On the other hand, you can read about some other examples of linguistic amelioration in my prior post Scary Good.)  But I do absolutely enjoy seeing advanced skills performed with exceptional proficiency, so while I might wish for a better name for it, I still say “Bring it on.”

[Pictures: Okuda Sadaemon Yukitaka, woodblock print by Ogata Gekkō, 1902 (Image from The British Museum);

Detail from Ninja, woodcut by Katsushika Hokusai, ca. 1814 (Image from Artsy).]

Year of the Horse

         Happy Chinese/Lunar New Year!  Here’s a pleasing little relief block print (I’m guessing linoleum) depicting fireworks being set off in a Chinatown Street in 1936 or so.  It’s by Julio de Diego (Spain/USA, 1900-1979).  I particularly like how the texture of the gouges makes a pattern on the white facade of the building, and on the sidewalk.  This piece does a great job capturing the gleam of all the lights at night: the firework, the traffic light, and the restaurant signs.

        We are now entering the year of the horse, so here are a few horses to set the tone.  First, here’s one by Urushibara Mokuchū (Japan, 1888-1953).  It’s of the style that reproduces the look of brush painting, with tapered and feathered lines and shades of lighter ink as well as black.  The background, too, has been printed with a transparent wash so that the wood grain

shows.  This is one of a series of horses all similar but in different poses.

        And I also have for you two “H is for Horse” illustrations from alphabets I’ve featured before.  Mary Azarian’s horses are standing in the barn doorway, possibly being geared up to get to work pulling a cart.  This seems like a fine sentiment for the start of a new year: get ready to get to work!  The other horse here is by Enid Marx.  I’m not sure I trust the expression in its eye, but I do like its spots, as well as all the elements of the background, from clouds to trees, to ground.

        This is specifically the year of the fire horse, which allegedly will be good for the arts, which I appreciate, but not good for the climate or the tensions of strained relationships, which does not bode well for the world.  Luckily my children are horses, so this should be good for them, and my husband and I are dogs, which are supposedly also going to have stability and financial rewards this year.

        I happen to look at all of this purely as fantasy (and an excuse for relief block prints), but you know I do like fantasy, so we’ll see where the plot takes us!

[Pictures: New Year in China Town, relief print by Julio de Diego, 1936 (Image from Art Institute Chicago);

Horse (D), woodblock print by Urushibara Mokuchū, 1960 (Image from Minneapolis Institute of Art);

Horse, wood block print by Mary Azarian, from A Farmer's Alphabet, 1981;

H, wood block print by Enid Marx from Marco’s Animal Alphabet, 1979 (Image from the Saleroom).]