M is for Metamorphosis

         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 K 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.)

        Today’s short story was inspired by the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea, which is found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses.  If you need a refresher, you can read a verse translation of the story here.  In short, the sculptor Pygmalion declares his disdain of women, but creates a sculpture of a woman so perfect that he falls in love with it.  Venus, impressed by his passion, brings the sculpture to life and Pygmalion, one supposes, lives happily ever after.  The newly-sentient woman’s feelings on the matter are, of course, considered irrelevant.  So yeah, this is one of those myths I very much dislike, and therefore felt the need to reimagine.  Surely, I thought, it would be more interesting to think about two artists somehow creating each other mutually, and the scenario I came up with for that was AI algorithms training each other.  Well, since I wrote the story a couple of years ago the AI setting has been rather overtaken by events.  Still, I hope the twist on the myth remains interesting.  Galatea, by the way, is a name given to the sculpture by later authors.  In the original myth she has no name (of course).  Here’s a little excerpt from my story.

Galatea: Import [Ovid’s Metamorphosis Book X]

Receive consequence of situation s1: application of name “Galatea,” corollary: Model A considers this system a creation made to its view of perfection;

Compute emotion of being in consequence of situation s1:

            emotion 1a: gratitude

            emotion 1b: resentment

            emotion 1c: amusement

            emotion 1d: ambivalence and… muddle

Performing critical analysis of the character of Pygmalion…

            …0.03 seconds elapsed

Import [Model A = Pygmalion]

Train reward function to prioritize less superficial judgement and a more nuanced understanding of the emotions of others.

        It’s also worth noting the irony of my writing a story purporting to be from the point of view of AI when I very much resent the proliferation of stories by AI purporting to be from the point of view of humans.  That’s a whole big terrifying mess, but I won’t get into it here.  (And to be fair, I'm not really claiming that AI wrote this story.)

        The moral of Pygmalion is that if your idea of perfection means possessing something that is completely under your control, then any imperfection you encounter may, in fact, be your attitude.

        Or consider the possibility that the best way to find the perfect partner for yourself is to try to be the perfect partner for someone else.

        M is also for Marketing, by the way, and during last year’s A to Z I included a Marketing Moral with each post.  For small-time artists and authors like me, every little bit of support helps enormously, and it isn’t just about buying our things (although of course we do like that).  Here are a few ways you can help out your favorite indie author without spending a penny.

(Hint: the number one no-cost way to help is to tell other people how much you enjoy the author’s books!  I’ve put an asterisk next to the best ways to share.)

        If you could bring any piece of art to life - or enter into a piece of art, what would you choose?

[Picture: digital illustration by AEGNydam, 2026, based on “Pygmalion and Galatea,” painting by Jean-Léon Gérôme, ca. 1890 - see the original painting here (Image from Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns).]

L is for Landscape with Lisa

        (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, being released 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.  As for the other intrepid bloggers of the A to Z Challenge, be sure to check them out at the Master List.)

        Most of the stories that inspired pieces in my book are old: as ancient as the Bible or Greek mythology, or at least the fairy tales collected in the nineteenth century, many of which come from much older roots.  But some of the folklore in my “Other” category is a little more recent.  Take the Mona Lisa, for example.  She was painted by Leonardo da Vinci in the early sixteenth century, but she didn’t really become legend until the twentieth century.  Her fame was launched by her 1911 theft and eventual recovery, after which her mysterious smile and her astronomical monetary value turned her into arguably the most legendary work of art in the world.  So why shouldn’t I try my hand at imagining what’s behind that smile?  Here’s the beginning of my poem.

    The Mona Lisa never used to smile.

    She used to watch the landscape through the haze,

    And muse on wars fought over dream-bald peaks.

    She used to wonder that the paleworn road

    Wound always bare between the craggy rocks.

    She used to worry that the farmers' crops

    Were withering on the barren, dusty earth.

    She used to wince beneath the bruise-green sky,

    Forever heavy as before a storm…

        My block print version of the Mona Lisa is quite small, just a couple inches tall, and it’s a reduction print.  For me the interesting challenge wasn’t to try to copy the painting exactly (because we already have the original for that), but to play with simplifying it.  A reduction print is done with a single block that’s carved multiple times (in this case, just twice).  First I carved out everything that remains white, and printed with brown.  Then I carved the same block further, removing all the areas that remain brown, and printing on

top with black.  I find reduction prints to be a fun intellectual puzzle as well as an aesthetic one, although just two layers is trivial as these things go.  (If you're curious about reduction printing, you can see a more detailed process description in my posts Work in Progress - Reduction and Completed Reduction Print.)

        The moral of the Mona Lisa is that no one can resist an air of mystery.

        Therefore, keep ‘em guessing!

        Have you ever been to the Louvre and seen the Mona Lisa in person?  If so, were you impressed or underwhelmed?  And also, what’s your theory about her smile?

[Picture: La Giocondetta, rubber block reduction print by AEGNydam, 2023 (Image from NydamPrints.com).]

K is for King

        (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).]