Fairy Tale of the Month: September 2024 The Three Black Princesses – Part One

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Crystal Pyramid

I am returning from an evening stroll in the Magic Forest. I went to the pond and lingered there awhile watching the reflections in the water before going back to my study. It is pleasant to know that every visit to the forest need not end in some sort of drama.

However, as I enter my study through the French doors, there sits on my table by my comfy chair a crystal pyramid about three inches tall. I sit down to inspect it more closely.

Thalia and Jini are away tonight doing who knows what. Melissa, whom I had invited over for dinner, is off to some meeting instead. Duckworth is out of town on some business. Who would have dropped off an odd bauble and left without a word?

Beyond me and the bauble is a table lamp. The light it casts through the pyramid appears as a shifting, shadowy pattern on my side of the tabletop.

Why does the pattern move?

I pick up the pyramid, placing it in the palm of my hand, and peer into its facets, trying to discover the cause.

I now stand in a somewhat exotic, town setting, its architecture not familiar to me. There is panic in the air; soldiers and civilians appear to be scurrying about, but the scenario is frozen.

Without being told, I know what is happening. They prepare to battle; unless they can come up with six hundred thalers for ransom, their enemy would attack. Despite the promise of being made the mayor of the town to anyone who would pay the ransom, no one has come forward. What I am seeing dissolves before my eyes.

Now I am standing by a lake. The tableau in front of me is of soldiers restraining a raggedly dressed youth, as one soldier places coins in the hat of another man who is looking sadly at the youth.

Again, I know what is happening. The enemy has seized a young fisherman, but at his father’s pleading to let his son go, the captain compensates the father with six hundred thalers.

Another scene change, and I am at the back of a crowd gathered around a raised platform on which stand the town dignitaries and the elder fisherman. The scene informs me that the fisherman contributed the six hundred thalers to satisfy the ransom and is being declared the mayor. Further, it is declared that the fisherman will henceforth be addressed as “Lord Mayor” and no other title on pain of being hung from the gallows.

In the next image, I stand behind the young fisherman who is staring at the side of a mountain, which has opened up, revealing an ominous castle. At this point, he has escaped his capturers and has wandered to this spot to witness the miracle before him.

After this scene fades, he and I are inside the castle, in a room where all the furniture is draped in black cloth. Before us stand three princesses, dressed in black and of dark complexion except for a white spot on each of their faces.

I understand they mean him no harm and wish for him to release them from enchantment. He asks how and is informed he must not address them or look at them for a year. If he needs anything, he only needs to ask aloud, and if they are permitted, they will provide. After a time, he wishes to visit his family. He is transported back to his home in East India.

East India?

I now see the young man surround by guards holding spears toward him, along with a group of elderly men pointing their fingers at him.

Upon returning to his hometown, he asks after the fisherman and is told not to use that title for the Lord Mayor, but he persists. The lords of the city are about to take him to the gallows for this offense when he is allowed to visit his childhood home where he dons his old clothing and is recognized by the lords for who he is.

I then see him with his family—dressed in his poor clothing, his father, the Lord Mayor, in rich robes—the father and son embracing one another.

He then relates his story to all. However, his mother warns him against the black princesses and tells him to drip hot wax on them from a consecrated candle.

In the next image, he holds a candle above the sleeping black princesses. I know he is nervous and accidentally lets hot wax drip on the princesses. What I see next is more intense. The images flip rapidly, illustrating the actions of the princesses as they turn half white and rise up exclaiming—and I can’t tell you if I heard the words or read them—“You accursed dog, our blood shall cry for vengeance on you! Now there is no man born in the world, nor will any ever be born who can set us free! We have still three brothers who are bound by seven chains, and they shall tear you to pieces.”

In the last scene, the youth has escaped through a window, breaking his leg as the castle crashes into the ground and the mountain closes. There the images stop, my “understanding” ends, and I sit once again in my study staring at the pyramid.

Fairy Tales of the Month: September 2024 The Three Black Princesses – Part Two

AI Art

On Reflection

My shock increases when I look up and see myself seated across from me in a mirror-image comfy chair.

“What are you doing there?”

“I was about to ask you the same.”

“Well, this is most unusual. I don’t know what to think. I am—permit me to say—beside myself.”

“I knew you were going to say that.”

We regard ourselves for a while until I say, “Well, this is the pyramid’s doing. I’ll suppose it is its way of getting me to think about the story to myself.”

“Agreed,” myself returns. “What do we think about the story?”

“First,” I say, “we know it is the Grimms’ The Three Black Princesses.”

Myself nods. “Certainly one of the lesser tales, but it was in the first edition and not booted out like some of the others.”

“True,” I say. “Perhaps the pyramid wants us to reconsider the tale. I believe we dismissed it when we first read it.”

“True again,” says myself. “Let us tear it apart. We start with a town under siege, the deliverance from which is six hundred thalers.”

“A tidy sum,” I agree, “but if they had passed around the hat, I would think a town full of people, under attack, could easily ante up that amount of money, but that is not the case.”

“Instead,” myself picks up my thread, “the mayoral position is offered up as a bribe, but still to no effect until the fisherman arrives on the scene.”

“And he,” I continue, “acquired the money from the same enemy that had taken his son prisoner but felt somehow obliged to compensate the father with the same amount of money needed to lift the siege.”

“You are thinking what I am thinking,” myself says to me.

“Yes, the economics of this story stink.”

“But let us not be too harsh on this lack of logic. We both know that the fairy tales are not based on logical thinking. In fact, they wallow in defying it.”

“True, again,” I say to myself. “The fisherman becomes the Lord Mayor and is to be addressed by no other title. I can’t help but notice the passive tense of the declaration. The story does not tell us who—the active character—made the pronouncement. It is just there. Subsequently, it is implied that the word is enforced by the ‘lords’ of the town.”

“Good point,” myself nods, “which is a setup for later on in the story.”

“Correct, of course.” On impulse, I reach for my pipe and tobacco and see in my peripheral vision myself doing the same. The study is soon filled with the scent of Angel’s Glory, a blend I keep in reserve for special occasions.

“We now turn our attention,” I say, “to the young fisherman, who has escaped his capturers—they, therefore, gaining nothing for their efforts—and for no apparent reason, is admitted into an enchanted castle.”

“Let’s stop there and linger,” myself declares. “Why does the mountain open up for him?”

“Oh,” I say, “because he is us, or—as we experienced in the pyramid—we stand right behind him. We want the mountain to allow us into the enchanted castle. The fairy tales are always about us, a source of wish fulfillment.”

“I knew that,” says myself, “but I will never tire of hearing it.”

Fairy Tale of the Month: September 2024 The Three Black Princesses – Part Three

Psyche at the Couch of Cupid — Gayley, 1893

By Myself

“Next,” I say, “is actually the interesting part of the story: the three black princesses. I love all the furniture draped in black and the princesses themselves dressed in black. That suggests to us that there is some state of mourning going on, but we see no corpse.”

I puff on my pipe before speaking again. “The white spot on their faces, what can that stigmata signify?”

Myself ponders. “Black is the color of evil, but I don’t think white represents only good in our story’s images. I believe white is what widows wear in India among the Hindus and not black as in the West, and does this story have its actual origins in India, as the story itself suggests? What of the wax of the consecrated candle dripping on them and turning them half white?”

“We are getting ahead of our story,” I say. “At this point, he agrees to help them break a spell by not speaking to them or looking at them for a year. That is a pretty namby-pamby challenge. No herculean, impossible task, no suffering on his part. And yet, he can’t achieve it.”

“Again, we get ahead of our story,” myself reprimands.

I smile to myself. “Ok, back on track. The youth wishes to visit his family. Here we enter into the Beauty-and-the-Beast/Psyche-and-Cupid motif with a bit of gender reversal.”

“You know,” myself relights his pipe, “the clothing thing is inserted at this point, which reminds me of a Nassardim story.”

“Yes,” I say in delight, and we tell each other the tale in tandem.

“Nassardim, invited to a feast, shows up poorly dressed.”

“He is not allowed entrance and returns home to put on better clothing.”

“Now, with respect, he is accepted into the company.”

“To his host’s distress, Nassardim stuffs food up his sleeves, saying, ‘Eat, eat.’”

“’Nassardim,’ says the host, ‘what are you doing?’”

“’Well,’ says Nassardim, ‘when I appeared poorly dressed, I was sent away. When I reappeared well dressed, I was escorted in. Therefore, this feast is not for me but for my clothing.’”

We laugh at our own joke.

“Seriously though,” I say, “this story’s treatment of the motif in question is unusual.”

“There is,” myself contemplates, “the clumsy handling of the candle wax. First, a consecrated candle occurs in no other story that we know of. This is one of those Christian insertions for which the Grimms were open to, given their bourgeois audience.”

“What bothers us,” I say, “is that his mother instructs him to drop the candle wax on the princesses but with no indication as to why or for what purpose. When he does drip the wax, it is described in the story as an accident. Not to mention he is looking at the princesses in violation of his promise to save them.”

“Clumsy, as we agreed,” concludes myself.

“Let me press our point about how unusual this is,” I say. “Psyche drips the wax on the sleeping Cupid, then has to pursue her flown lover through the rest of the story. In our version of the motif, the dripping of the wax causes the sudden, closing apocalypse.”

“Yes,” says myself, “while he suffers a broken leg, what happened to the princesses’ blood calling out for revenge and their three chained brothers tearing him apart?”

“Not much,” I frown. “If I recall, we searched for a story about three chained brothers at the time we first read this but came up with nothing.”

“Now,” myself says, tapping out our pipe, “that we are at the end of the story, where the wax has turned the princesses half white; does that bring up the notion of yin and yang, especially with the previous white spot on their faces?”

“We both know that is a stretch,” I say. “The symbol of yin and yang does not appear in the Hindu representations.  It is more of a Taoist thing, but not unknown to Buddhists, but there are not that many Buddhists in India despite the religion’s origins. However, the notion tempts us.”

“A given,” myself agrees. “Therefore, overall, what do we think of this tale?”

“Despite the pyramid’s efforts,” I say, picking the crystal up again and looking into its facets, “and regardless of some enticing images, I’ll guess the story’s significance will continue to ellude us.”

I set the pyramid back down on the table. I see that I am alone in my study.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: Mid-month Writer’s Journey -September

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My book launch begins. There are a number of moving parts.

As I mentioned last month, I am using the promotional site Story Origin to give away my free, ever-evolving book, Stories and Poems of Trueterra. I am cross-promoting with four groups of authors. Below are links to these groups. Please check them out. These books are free. Be aware the authors will add your email to their list. As I said before, you can always unsubscribe.

https://storyoriginapp.com/to/MYUpSeq

https://storyoriginapp.com/to/Ame07RW

https://storyoriginapp.com/to/kBjz5xX

https://storyoriginapp.com/to/PIxeCHv

From the first list, I suggest Tales from Derian by Wendelyn Vega. It is very similar to my own in concept and a fun read.

From the fourth list is Clash of Goddesses by R.A. Goli. It is a bit of a reimaging of Norse mythology concerning Frigga and Baldur. It is 26 pages long and, I believe, a partial of a longer work. A lot of these free offerings are there to tempt you to follow that author.

When you click on a selection, you will get a box in which you need to click “yes” to acknowledge that you are sharing your email address. Then press the blue bar below to get the download options.

For the rest of my launch, I have mapped out things in a somewhat non-traditional way. That tradition is based on the old days of physical books only. What most authors do is get copies of their book to people to review it. That might only be a DOCX. Then on launch day, when the author pushes the publish button in KDP, they round up their reviewers to go into Amazon and submit their reviews ASAP. That is really quite an ask.

My pace is different. I published my book, Sword of Trueterra, last month at the introductory price of $0.99 for the ebook and the paperback at $8.95. I don’t consider that my launch because I didn’t tell anyone. I thought the book was as safely out of sight as if I had buried it in the sands of Egypt. Not so. The Sword of Trueterra paperback is selling  as well as The Vacant Throne paperback since they are now a series and appear together.

However, as of now, starting September 15th until September 20th, I am offering the Sword of Trueterra ebook for free on Amazon, a promotion that they allow, but only for five days every ninety days.

In other words, you can get the book for free. I am doing this in hopes you will give it a review (an honest review, please) on Amazon. You can put your review up anytime you wish, since the book is published. I want to have a good number of reviews before I “launch” during the week following November 1st. That is the date I will “stack” the promotion sites (and I will have the ASIN number for them).

I will also use Story Origin for getting reviews. Say, if you want more free books, go to Story Origin and agree to be a book reviewer.

January 1st is the date I will raise the prices from $0.99 and $2.99—end of book launch.

Fairy Tales of the Month: August 2024 The Jewel Mountain and the Dove Maiden- Part One

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Dove Maiden Feeding the Doves – Claudio Rinaldi

Usual Crowd

The usual weekday crowd has gathered: Thalia and myself in our comfy chairs, Johannes on the window-seat pillow, the fairy on Thalia’s shoulder, and the brownies lurking in the dark corners for the post-supperial entertainment. (Don’t try looking that up.  You won’t find it. It means post-supper with an inference of being superior.)

In our study/sanctuary, Thalia fingers my copy of Modern Greek Folktales, by R. M. Dawkins.

“Tonight’s reading is The Mountain of Jewels and the Dove Maiden.”

A young woodcutter, who worked morning till night to support himself and his widowed mother, fell in with a merchant with a scheme to acquire great wealth. Taking to sea with his fleet, the merchant brought them to an island dominated by a lofty mountain, its peak in the clouds.

The merchant gave the youth a sword, sewed him into an animal skin, and told him an eagle would carry him to the mountain’s top. The merchant instructed the lad to cut himself out of the animal-skin bag and throw down to him whatever he found.

All this happened, and the young man found the mountain top cluttered with diamonds, gold, pearls, and sapphires. These he threw over the mountain’s cliff to the merchant below. When the merchant’s ships were filled, he sailed away, abandoning the youth on the mountaintop.

Desperate, the lad searched for escape and found a subterranean staircase into a palace. There dwelt a blind ogre. Although at first frightened, the youth befriended the ogre, who doted upon him, giving him the forty keys to the palace rooms, but with the instruction not to enter the fortieth room.

Needless to say, the fortieth room was entered, where the youth found a magnificent garden, in which he saw a marble-lined cistern, into which descended three doves that removed their plumage, transforming into beautiful girls. The three splashed about in the water as he fell in love with the youngest. As quickly as they had come, they put back on their feathers and flew away.

Brokenhearted, the youth returned to the ogre and confessed what he had done. The ogre, rather than being angry, sympathized and told him to steal the plumage of the youngest, and she would become his wife.

This the youth did. After some time, and two children, the ogre allowed the family to return to the lad’s widowed mother. All went well until the dove maiden rediscovered her plumage. Before flying off, she told the widow how the husband could find her in the place that is all green, all red, with five white towers.

The youth returned to the ogre for help in his search, and the ogre assisted him by giving him iron shoes and an iron staff. During his wanderings, he came across two men arguing over the possession of three magical devices: a hat of invisibility, a flying carpet, and an invincible sword. These items soon belonged to the lad, if by deceit. He wished himself to the place that is all green, all red, with five white towers.

He found his wife demoted, living in the stable of her father, the king. In order for him to reclaim her, they needed her father’s permission. The father would rather destroy the youth, but because of the hat of invisibility, he could not find him. Instead, he set the condition that the lad needed to turn a mountain into a garden overnight.

The dove maiden gave her husband a tile to be thrown down a particular well, from which would emerge thousands of men to do his bidding. By morning, the mountain had become a garden.

The father then demanded that the garden become the sea. With another tile, the youth accomplished the task.

The father then demanded to see the husband of his daughter. When he revealed himself, both the king and the queen rushed forward to devour him, but with the invincible sword, he slew them.

Reunited, the husband and wife returned to the ogre’s palace, where, in gratitude, the dove maiden restored the ogre’s sight, for it was she and her sisters who had stolen his eyes and hid them in a cave.

Thereafter, all lived in good health.

Huh. This is one for Augustus to interpret.

Fairy Tale of the Month: August 2024 The Jewel Mountain and the Dove Maiden – Part Two

John D. Batten

Augustus Interprets

“Not Elfish Gold?” Augustus exclaims with mock shock.

“I suppose my tastes have taken a turn toward the dark side. Black Dwarf and Fairies’ Delight will fill the bill this time.”

Augustus considers. “Toward the dark side, eh? Then let me tempt you with a bowl of Raven Black.”

“Raven Black; I think I had that once.”

“You did, but I have changed the blend a bit, I think for the better.”

We are already stepping into his testing room, he carrying a small canister. When our pipes are packed, we settle in.

“You have, I assume,” says Augustus, “a story to share.”

“Have you heard of The Jewel Mountain and the Dove Maiden?”

“I have not.”

“Greek,” I say and tell him the story.

When I finish, he contemplates for a while.

“I have not heard this story before,” he says, “and yet I have.”

I nod in agreement. “It is made up of well-known tropes.”

“And yet,  there is something fresh about it. Well, let’s pick it apart.”

He blows a couple of smoke rings before continuing.

“The theme of the woodcutter and his widowed mother is as old as it gets. The lad being waylaid by a merchant rings of Aladdin and the Lamp, which does not surprise me. There is only the Aegean Sea between Greece and the Middle East.

“The subterranean palace I know from A Sprig of Rosemary if nowhere else.”

“The Twelve Dancing Princesses has a subterranean palace as well,” I comment.

“Ah!” Augustus gestures with his pipe. “A blind ogre, that is new, and a sympathetic, friendly ogre as well. The Greek tales are filled with ogres, but not too many are friendly.”

“Now,” I say, “we come to the forbidden-room motif. A hero, yet more often a heroine, is given the keys to the castle and told not to use a certain one.”

Augustus frowns. “I think you are conflating two rather distinct motifs. In our story, it is the hero—and not a heroine—who gets the keys to the forty rooms of the palace and told not to enter the fortieth room. It shares similarities with another Greek tale, The Quest for the Fair One of the World—notice how long some of these Greek titles are—not to mention that part of the world’s obsession with the number forty.”

I skip over the number-forty obsession and focus on the gender question just raised.

“In the European tales,” I reflect as I speak, “when the heroine opens the forbidden door, there is something awful behind it. In the Greek tradition, when the hero opens the forbidden door, there  is a marvel, dangerous, but a marvel.”

“Have you . . .” Augustus hesitates for a second. “Have you ever had a dream about being in a house, a house you know very well, but you should not be there?”

I am a little stunned. “There is a third floor to my house,” I confess, “that appears to me a little uncanny.”

“In my dream,” Augustus goes on, “I am in my great-grandmother’s dining room, hiding under her table. All about me is the high-Victorian décor and its mysteries. I fear being overwhelmed.”

Are dreams and fairy tales our way of dealing with our invented realities?” I wonder.

Fairy Tale of the Month: August 2024 The Jewel Mountian and the Dove Maiden – Part Three

AI – Google Gemini

Wonder Tales

I pick up the thread of our conversation. “Next up is stealing the dove maiden’s plumage to oblige her to be his wife.”

“Again,” says Agustus, relighting his pipe, “another well-known trope. With mermaids it is their fishtails, with swan maidens their feathered robes. Invariably, they get their accoutrements back again. They cannot resist them when back in their hands, even to the point of abandoning their children by their forced marriages.

“However, I cannot help noticing that the dove maiden says, before flying away, ‘Look for me in the place where . . .’ instead of the usual, ‘You will never find me until . . .’ She appears to be encouraging her husband to find her.”

“And he does find her,” I say between puffs, “with the help of the ogre and three magical devices.”

“Yes, yes, the magical devices. Notice that one of them is a flying carpet instead of the seven-league boots, a nod to its Middle East influences.

“I find it a bit interesting in this fairy-tale motif that our heroes are not above trickery to acquire the devices, yet we don’t think any less of them for it, but rather how clever they are.”

I tap out my pipe and refill it with more Raven Black. “Add an ounce of this to my order, please.”

Augustus smiles. “The dove maiden’s predicament, I did not expect. Her father, the king, consigned her to the stable in punishment for . . . “ Augustus trails off.

“In punishment for marrying a human?” I suggest.

“Possible, even though that was not her fault; she was being humiliated.”

“It is also apparent,” I put in, “her husband cannot simply put her on the magic carpet and make an escape. There are three ordeals to face.”

“Which he does,” Augustus climes in, “with the help of magic, including his wife’s magic. This scene in the story has the freshness I mentioned before. Not only the dove maiden dilemma, but I am not sure I have run across the impossible tasks of turning a mountain into a garden and then the garden into the sea. And she aids her husband with a tile to be thrown into a well to produce an army for men to do the tasks. Where does that come from?”

“A sort of wishing well, with tiles instead of coins?” I speculate.

“Maybe.”

“The third task,” I continue, “is a bit different than the first two. The youth has been hiding beneath the hat of invisibility, and the king demands to see him.”

“Right, and as soon as he does, the king and queen attack to eat him. This event comes at the end of the story, but it is the first clue we have that they, too, are ogres.”

“And dispatched with the invincible sword,” I add. “Making good use of the magic available to him.”

“I think,” Augustus taps out his pipe, “the craziest thing about this story is the surprise ending where the dove maiden restores the eyes of the blind ogre that she and her sisters had stolen.

“This hints of an entirely other tale. I imagine the ogre seeing the bathing dove maidens, just like the lad did, but was found out and punished by them by having his sight taken away.”

“Hmmm,” I say, “you could be right. The ogre had access to that world through the fortieth door and warned the youth against opening it. But where was that world; all green, all red, with five white towers?”

“That, I am convinced, is a riddle, my answer to which is an apple.”

“An apple.” I echo.

“The unripe fruit is all green, the ripe fruit all red, and the towers are the five white petals of the apple blooms.”

“I like it,” I say. “All we need do is imagine a world inside an apple.”

“And that, my friend,” concludes Augustus, “is why ‘fairy tales’ should be called ‘wonder tales.’”

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: August 2024 Mid-Month Writer’s Journey

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It’s map time! For all you world builders out there, a fun, fantasy map is a must, I think. Given the state of applications today, un-artistic idiots, like me, can make a pretty decent map at little expense.

If you google “fantasy map generators,” you will see many options. Let me direct you to  the article 16 Best Fantasy Map Generator Tools: A New Tool by Shannon Clark. This piece is less than a year old but may be a little dated. Some of the generators she lists are free or have a free version. Many of these were developed with gamers in mind but can be used for illustrations as well.

I settled on Wonderdraft, largely for its intuitive nature and the modest price of $30. The program is downloaded and installed on your computer, as opposed to being in the Cloud. It comes with a large array of images (mountains, trees, buildings), but more can be purchased.

The program starts off by having you select a background (the sea) along with some other parameters, and then you plop in a land mass. There are a limited number of choices for the background and the texture of the land mass, but you can change the colors, intensity, and shapes. There is a manual plus tutorials. Here is a tutorial I found useful for getting started.

My other approach to learning Wonderdraft was to play with all the options and delete the out-of-control results. Rather much fun.

Returning to my mention last month about my failure to promote my freebie, Stories and Poems of Trueterra, on promotional sites, I now slap myself for forgetting about Story Origin. It is a very different model from the usual promotional sites. Rather than you paying them to put you in their email newsletter and list you on their website, Story Origin is a community of authors cross-promoting each other. It is $10 a month, and you have access to join small groups of authors in a particular genré and/or sub-genré who are cross-promoting the authors in their group in their newsletter (in my case, my blog) during a campaign period (usually a month).

There are various categories of campaigns, such as Sale, Reviews, and Kindle Unlimited.The category I entered was in four Giveaway campaigns, and they never asked for an ASIN number, which my giveaway does not have but other promotional sites insisted upon.

I will encourage you to visit these four campaign sites in September’s blog. Hey, free books in exchange for your email! You can always unsubscribe.

Also in September, I will be offering you a free ebook copy of my sequel to A Vacant Throne, which is Sword of Trueterra, in the hope you will review it on Amazon before my official launch date.

I will explain in September, in more detail, how I have set this all up for myself.

Fairy Tale of the Month: July 2024 The Girl-Fish – Part One

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H J Ford

Green Tea

“Look what Jini brought,” Thalia says as she and Jini march into the kitchen, setting on the table a pink-and-green aluminum can, while they grab three glasses and fill them with ice from the fridge. In bold letters on the can is the label “Nixie.” Further, I read that it is pomegranate green tea sparkling water.

“Courtesy of my cousin in America. This is his favorite drink,” Jini explains. “Well, non-alcoholic.”

Thalia giggles.

“Fitting,” I say, “naming a drink after a water spirit.”

We all take a sip. Pleasant. Sweet, but not too sweet.

“This is a little serendipitous, you know,” says Thalia. “Last night I read The Girl-Fish.”

“Oh?” Jini and I chorus. That’s all the encouragement Thalia needs to relate the tale.

There was a willful girl—pretty—but willful. Though dearly loved by her parents, she would do nothing to try to please them. Until, one day, her mother was so weary that even the girl could not ignore it, asked what she might do to help, and was sent down to the river to mend her father’s fishing net. She no sooner finished the repairs when she heard a fish splashing in the water. She cast the net and caught it.

However, the fish warned her, if she ate it, she would turn into a fish herself. The girl’s willfulness returned, and thinking that the fish held no power over her, she had her mother cook the fish for her. As predicted, she turned into a fish and managed to flop into the river.

Carried downstream to the sea, she met other once-human fish who took her to their queen. The fish-queen’s story was that she had once been an earthly queen, but soon after her son was born, a giant seized her crown as well as herself and her ladies-in-waiting, replacing them with his daughter and her minions, and placed a glamour upon the interlopers so that the king would never notice.

In despair, the real queen and her ladies threw themselves into the sea and transformed into fish. That was many years ago. Since then, the false queen died, returning the crown to her father, the giant. If the crown could be regained, they all could return to  their human form. The queen gave the girl-fish the ability to transform herself into any creature she called for to aid in getting the crown from the giant’s castle on a high mountain.

The first transformation was into a deer so that she could travel quickly. However, a prince was out hunting and cornered her. She pled with him, in her human voice, to spare her. Dumbfounded, he let her escape, and, belatedly, decided she must have been an enchanted maid and that he would marry no one else.

By turns, transforming into an ant, a monkey, and a parrot, she gained access to the giant’s castle and demanded the return of the crown. The giant bargained with her and requested a collar made up of precious blue stones from the Arch of St. Martin. This she achieved in the form of an eagle with a strong beak. Not contented, the giant asked for a crown made of stars in exchange for the fish-queen’s crown.

In the form of a frog, she collected the light of the stars reflected in a pond and wove the reflected light into a crown. The giant accepted this crown, fearing the girl’s powers might be greater than his own. With the queen’s crown returned, all the fish-people took on their human form.

They returned to the queen’s earthly home but found much had changed. The queen’s husband had also died, and their son was now king. The new king was delighted to find his real mother still lived, but she sensed in him a great sadness. He revealed to her that he was hopelessly in love with an enchanted maid in the form of a deer. With the queen’s help, the new king and the girl-fish were soon married.

“Wow, what a story,” Jini grins.

Thalia fingers the label of the sparkling-water can. “I’m thinking of asking our nixie about this tale.”

Jini’s eyes widen. “You have a nixie?”

“In the Magic Forest,” Thalia nods.

“Does she drown young men?”

“I hope not.” Thalia looks concerned.

“Maybe,” I say.

Fairy Tale of the Month: July 2024 The Girl-Fish – Part Two

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More Popcorn

I have armed the girls with a paper bag of popcorn. I can’t recall when I realized the nixie loves popcorn, but it has been a staple in my interactions with her ever since. I sit high on the bank and toss popped kernels to her down below. I am safe from being dragged down into the water by her, and the popcorn is an incentive for her to entertain my presence.

However, today, as we enter the Magic Forest and come near the nixie’s pond, a siren song is carried on the air.

“Oh, how pretty!” Thalia exclaims.

“Pretty” is not the word for it.

I feel it pulling at my soul.

When we come into view of the pond, there is Melissa sitting at the water’s edge, not three feet from the nixie, whose serenading has just ended, releasing me from its spell.

“Oh, how lovely,” says Melissa, then, looking up, sees the girls and smilingly motions them to come and sit beside her. The girls prance down the bank, settling themselves on either side of her.

What have I done?

When the nixie glances curiously at Jini, the girl hands over the bag of popcorn, which the nixie takes with delight.

No! That’s not how it’s done.”

I collapse to the ground, high up on the bank, out of reach.

“I have a story.” Thalia’s tone is formal, infused with respect for the nixie. “About which I’d like to hear what you have to say.”

The nixie nods, lying back into the water until only her face, haloed by floating green hair, and her hands, holding the popcorn bag, are above the surface. As Thalia tells the tale, the nixie lazily drops the treats into her mouth. I have never before noticed how sharp her teeth appear.

“I do remember her,” the nixie says when Thalia ends the tale. “Why she didn’t want to remain queen of the fishes, I don’t understand. What is this attraction to the land? Some of the mermaids have it. I don’t see what lures them.”

“Well,” says Thalia, “the fish-queen and girl-fish were born on land. I guess that’s a bond hard to break. One’s first home, I mean.”

The nixie nods her consent as Jini picks up the thread of the discussion. “But what of the girl-fish’s willfulness? Ultimately, she is rewarded. Why should willfulness be rewarded?”

The nixie rises from the water, half her length, trying to contain her laughter. It, nonetheless, comes out as a frightening cackle. “Willful? She? Oh, you mortals do not grasp willfulness. We immortals are willful by our existence. Seldom do you who die retain your willfulness much beyond infancy. No, for me, this is a story of a girl losing hers.

“She starts out having her way. Then, for a moment, she has pity for her mother. After that, all is lost.”

“But didn’t her willful nature lead her to ignore the fish’s warning?” Jini points out.

“You might wish to see it that way,” the nixie responds. “But I can’t see becoming a fish as tragic as the story implies. The tragedy comes in the girl-fish falling into subservience to the queen, and all traces of her precious willfulness disappear.”

“Well,” Melissa suggests, “she does get to marry a prince.”

“All the more subservient,” the nixie pouts, settling back into the water and her popcorn.

Fairy Tale of the Month: July 2024 The Girl-Fish – Part Three

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Popcorn Bag

“I see this as a story of transitions.” Melissa taps a finger on her chin. “The heroine is first changed into a fish, against her will. Then she is given the ability to transform into whatever she calls for to reach her goals.”

“Oh, the frog,” says Jini. “That was my favorite. In that form, she collects starlight to make a crown. So cool.”

“That was my favorite as well,” says the nixie. “Collecting reflected starlight; I am going to have to try that. Probably on winter solstice when the night is longest.”

“I like the deer,” Thalia chimes in. “Deer are so elegant looking. I can just see her leaping away from the prince, his mouth hanging open.”

“My admiration,” Melissa smiles, “goes to her choice of becoming an ant to scale the giant’s castle wall.”

Both Jini and Thalia nod their agreement, and Melissa continues. “But the ultimate transformation, or more correctly transition, is the heroine’s change from the person she was at the start of the story to the person she becomes by the end.” Melissa turns to the nixie and adds, “For better or for worse.”

The girls giggle. The nixie rolls her eyes.

“What about the giant?” Jini asks. “I thought his ideas for the tasks were odd. He wanted jewelry. What giant wears precious stones and a starry crown?”

“And only two tasks,” adds Thalia, “not three.”

“Never liked that giant,” the nixie sniffs. “Not bright, but most giants usually aren’t.”

“Could be,” Melissa contemplates, “he was trying to think of difficult or impossible tasks. The first task wasn’t all that hard, but by the time she returned, he had come up with, what he thought to be, an impossible one.”

“But why not a third task?” Thalia presses.

“Because,” Melissa conjectures, “when he realized she could do the impossible, he became afraid of her power and surrendered the queen’s crown as he had promised.”

“Well,” says the nixie, “he is a coward, and, although he has had his moments, usually he can’t come up with more than two thoughts.”

There is another round of giggles from the girls.

The evening is coming on, and I don’t think it wise to be in the Magic Forest by nightfall.

“We should be going soon,” I call down the suggestion to them.

“OK,” the girls say together, then turn their attention back to the nixie. The nixie glances up and gives me an evil smile.

I know the nixie has the reputation for drowning young men, and while I am not youthful, she is immortal, which makes me look comparatively young. I creep a few more feet up the bank.

Now I can no longer hear what they are talking about. It goes on far too long for me, but eventually they stir; Melissa, Thalia, and Jini rising to their feet. The girls give the nixie an enthusiastic hand-waving, then turn to climb up the bank toward me.

What a relief. I am trying not to be obvious that I think this is an escape as I usher them down the path toward home, when I realize Melissa is not with us.

Turning around, I see her kneeling beside the pond’s edge. The long, slender fingers of her pale hand touch the tips of the nixie’s green, webbed fingers. The nixie speaks to her, then slips beneath the water’s surface. Melissa retrieves the floating, empty popcorn bag. I know her body language. She is deep in thought.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: July 2024 Mid-Month Writer’s Journey

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Two Items

There are two rather technical subjects I want to cover this month. First is formatting poetry in epubs, and second is my latest failure.

Poetry in epubs is tricky. I will refer you to Derek Haines’s article on the subject. My experience shadowed his advice. I was not trying to create poetry with KDP, which Derek covers, but with Draft2Digital, which he also talks about.

The central problem is that, appropriately, epubs expect the text of a paragraph to “flow.” Depending on what font size and style a reader is using, it will vary the length of a line on the device (laptop, table, or phone). The words in the paragraph need to flow to adjust to the physical space available to it.

Poetry is a fixed format, not a paragraph. It has lines and stanzas. In a Word document, if you turn on the hidden formatting symbols (in Home, hit the ¶ symbol), you will see that each line of the poem you have written ends with the end of paragraph symbol (¶). Draft2Digital disregards half of Word’s formatting and does what it wants. Each line of your poem is a paragraph? D2D puts spacing between each paragraph. It will stretch your poem out down the page and ignore the stanza breaks. Try it. It looks awful.

However, you don’t have to upload a Word document to D2D; you can upload your own epub created with Calibre, a free ebook converter. (Learning curve warming!) Calibre respects the Word formatting and is not all that hard to figure out. There is an extensive manual, which you can get to by hitting the Help icon. The point being you end up with an epub that looks like your Word document.

To some extent, the flow problem still exists. If the poem line is longer than the device and font size allow, it will still flow to a second line. If you have indented your poem, then the second line goes to the margin as a paragraph line would. You may want to consider not indenting the poem to alleviate the line’s appearance of staggering.

On to the next item. Last month, I mentioned the idea of using my free reader magnet, Stories and Poems of Trueterra, on promotional sites to get email addresses from interested readers. I immediately ran into a catch-22. All of the promotional sites assume you are promoting a book by lowering the list price temporarily. They also assume you have an ASIN number assigned by Amazon. Most require an ASIN number for you to list the book with them. Is Amazon now the only game in town?

KDP does not usually publish perma-free books, which is how I got involved with D2D, which will publish them. However, that means my book does not have an ASIN number. So that little project went belly-up.

By-the-by, Stories and Poems of Trueterra does not have an ISBN number either. Ebooks are not required to have one; print books are if they are to be sold. In my case, since the content of each edition of the work has changed—I have added a poem or story—I would need a new ISBN number every time, an expense I do not wish to incur.

Next month, I will talk about my latest endeavor, creating a fantasy map for Sword of Trueterra.

Fairy Tale of the Month: June 2024 Bird Dauntless – Part One

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Twelve Heads

We don’t have as many evening reads as we did when Thalia was little. In fact, the pattern has settled into readings on Sunday nights. A good way to start a week. Thalia, some time ago, took over the duties of being the reader. I enjoy being read to, and Thalia has such a soothing, yet articulate voice.

We have all gathered as usual, Thalia and I in our comfy chairs, Johannes curled up on the window seat, the fairy on Thalia’s shoulder, and the brownies lurking in a dark corner.

Thalia holds a new acquisition in her hand from Melissa’s bookshop. “Fairy Tales From the Far North, by P. C. Asbjornsen,” she announces. “From which I will read Bird Dauntless.”

There is a king with twelve daughters, of whom he thinks the world, but one day they disappear. Word of this strange event comes to a realm whose king has twelve sons. The brothers determine to find and marry the twelve princesses. Their father gives them a ship with Knight Redbeard to command and steer.

They search for seven years until they encounter a storm that lasts for three days. At the end of it, all are so exhausted that they fall asleep, except for the youngest prince. He sees a dog on an island and lowers a boat to rescue it. The dog leads him to a castle, and turns into a beautiful maid, with her father, a fearsome troll, sitting beside her.

From the troll, the prince learns that the twelve princesses were stolen away by the troll’s master/king to scratch his twelve heads. The troll gives the prince a sword with which to slay his master/king, allowing the troll friend to be the new king. The troll says there is still another seven-year journey before them in order to get to their destination. The troll also warns that Knight Redbeard hates the prince and will kill him if given the chance.

After seven years, the pattern of the three days of storm repeats, and the youngest prince slips away from the ship as the others sleep, enters the castle of the twelve-headed troll, and finds him asleep as his friend, the troll, had predicted. He waves the princesses to stand back and quickly slays the king troll.

Having already started their return voyage, the princesses realize they have forgotten their crowns. The youngest prince offers to return for them while the rest remain at sea. The Knight Redbeard takes the opportunity to abandon the prince with threats of death for anyone who defies him. The prince is left stranded on the old troll king’s island.

To the prince’s aid comes the Bird Dauntless, an apparent resident of the old troll king’s palace. It flies him back to the new troll king’s palace—the prince’s friend—with magical speed.

Seven years later, after a three-day storm, the sleeping crew comes to the new troll king’s island. The youngest prince boards the ship, reclaims the sword of the new troll king for him, and sees that the youngest princess sleeps with a naked sword by her side and that the Knight Redbeard sleeps at her feet.

Another seven years pass as the crew travels back to the kingdom of the twelve princesses’ father. Toward the end of the seven years, the new troll king gives the prince an iron boat that will take him back and return by itself. When the prince comes in sight of his brothers’ ship, he raises an iron club to evoke a storm that allows him to pass by them unnoticed.

Pretending to be a storm-tossed sailor, the prince creates the rumor (however true) that the princesses are returning. When they do return, there is much joy except for the youngest princess, who is now obliged to marry the Knight Redbeard.

The prince, now pretending to be a beggar, offers up the crowns. Seeing this, the youngest princess reveals the deceit of the Knight Redbeard. The king has Knight Redbeard executed before he can do any more harm.

“And all, as you may suspect,” says Thalia, “live happily ever after.”

Fairy Tale of the Month: June 2024 Bird Dauntless – Part Two

Twenty-eight Years

“Twenty-eight years!” Melissa marvels. “Seven to the troll’s island, seven more to the king troll’s island, and fourteen more returning. What a patient people they must have been.”

I smile at her quip. “This is the stuff of fairy tales.”

We are sitting, again, on Melissa’s reading-space couch. She has generously provided a full teapot and cups.

“Obviously, you know the story,” I say.

“I read the book before I sold it to Thalia. That is one of the perks of being a bookseller. I read them before I sell them to my profit.”

“Very good,” I say. “But what are your thoughts on this tale?”

“Well, first is the twenty-eight-year saga.” Melissa holds her teacup to her mouth but does not drink, frozen in thought. “There is a cultural context to this tale that came out of the Middle Ages. The peasantry was tied to the land. They existed pretty much from hand to mouth. It was a mark of privilege to have the ability to travel. Besides religious pilgrimages, there were the Crusades. That men of royalty would go off for extended periods of time seemed to have been expected. Twenty-eight years is still excessive, but for the listeners of the time, not unimaginable.”

She finishes taking a sip of tea and continues.

“Then there is the strong suggestion that none of the characters age.”

“No, wait!” I exclaim. “The story does not say that.”

“You are right; it does not, but it is implied. Note that the heroes and heroines get married and live happily ever after. ‘Ever after,’ not ‘for the rest of their lives.’

“Death in the fairy tales is reserved for three categories of characters: witches, trolls, giants, and all other evildoers; kings that are old when the story starts so that the hero can inherit the kingdom; and mothers so that their progeny can have an evil stepmother. There is the caveat that if the king gives half his kingdom to the hero, he can avoid mention of his demise. Even taking an axe and cutting off the head of a fox may produce the enchanted brother of the heroine. Death is a bit elusive in the tales.”

“I am going to suggest you are exaggerating.” I sip my tea.

“Let’s take our tale,” Melissa persists, pouring herself another cup. “Our heroes and heroines return on the cramped quarters of a ship for fourteen years, at the end of which there is no mention of children being born during that time.”

Oh, she may have a point here.

Melissa takes another sip of tea. “They don’t get grumpy, there is no mention of graying hair, there are no medical issues. Why? Because they are suspended in time.”

“Now there is a notion I have not entertained before.” I set down my teacup. “Time often moves differently in the Celtic fairy world than it does in our world. Why shouldn’t it not move strangely in other tales as well? I will buy into your analysis.”

Melissa smiles. She has her little victory.

Fairy Tale of the month: June 2024 Bird Dauntless – Part Three

Peter Christen Asbjornsen

 So Many

“There is also quite a cast of characters.” Melissa absently rotates her teacup with her fingers. “This tale starts with twelve princesses, twelve princes, and their two fathers.”

“That’s twenty-six,” I say.

“Then there is the Knight Redbeard, two trolls, one troll daughter, and the Bird Dauntless.”

“Making an uneven thirty-one,” I calculate. “Unless we count the king troll’s twelve individual heads.”

“No, don’t.” Melissa smiles and takes another sip of tea. “Eleven of the princesses and eleven of the princes are a sort of corps de ballet, dancing around in the background, not coming front and center. Only the youngest prince and princess do we actually see.”

“Hmmm, a form of crowd control?” I say.

Melissa ignores my quip. “Out of the thirty-one characters, only two have names: the Knight Redbeard and the Bird Dauntless.”

I raise a finger. “Knight Redbeard I recognize. In the Danish folk tales with which I am familiar, he is the Red Knight, the stock villain. He is in the story to cause trouble, sometimes only for the sake of causing trouble.”

“I recognized him too. He is the one to be punished by death at the end of the tale and is brought back again in another tale to be killed once again. I must wonder if this was not a running joke among the tellers to recycle the bad guy.

“What I found most curious was the Bird Dauntless, starting with that curious name. Asbjornsen thought it important enough to name the story after it. The bird is a necessary component of the tale. The young prince would otherwise remain abandoned. Nonetheless, the bird only has a brief appearance and then disappears from the tale.”

“I have,” I say, “run across large birds rescuing heroes before. What jumps to my mind, for example, is The Underworld Adventure. In that story, the hero is abandoned by his two brothers when they are looking for missing ladies in an underworld. It is a huge bird that flies back to the upperworld, similar in feel to our tale. There, too, the bird serves its purpose and then is gone.”

Melissa considers this while drumming her fingers. “I suppose it is not unusual for characters to disappear from these tales. Besides the Bird Dauntless coming and going, the princes’ father gives them a ship, and then the story is done with him. We don’t even hear him being invited to the wedding. I also think the troll’s daughter got left behind—a beautiful maiden and shape-shifter—the story could have done more with her for my liking.”

“For myself,” I say, “I found the use of the three-day storm an interesting device. Every time the ship comes to one of the troll islands, their arrival is preceded by a storm, after which the crew falls asleep except for the youngest prince, who forwards the story.

“On the return trip, he raises an iron club, given to him by his troll friend, to create a storm so that he could slip by them unnoticed. I don’t recall ever seeing a troll/storm  relationship before.”

“Let me return to the character of the bird,” says Melissa. “What of the name ‘Bird Dauntless?’”

“I did Google search that,” I say. “I came up with nothing.”

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: June 2024 Mid-Month Writer’s Journey

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Freebies. Let’s talk about freebies.

I mentioned my “reader magnet” in a previous blog. It is called Stories and Poems of Trueterra, which refers to my novel A Vacant Throne. There are stories and poems alluded to in this novel but usually does not present them in their full context. Stories and Poems has these in full, along with additional material written in the spirit of the originals and that I continue to write. When I add new stories or poems, I send off the new version to my email subscribers to remind them that I still exist and hopefully keep them engaged until I have another book to promote.

This is a standard practice in the self-publishing world. Typically, authors send out a newsletter to keep in contact with their subscribers. I prefer to write additional stories.

Another standard practice among self-publishers, particularly on Amazon (Kindle Direct Publishing), is to have a new release available for free for a few days to get things rolling. You can only do this for a few days on Amazon, then the price must return to normal. You cannot publish a free book on Amazon. My reader magnet is published on Draft2Digital and available through Smashwords.

Part two of this scheme of offering the new title for free is to “stack” the offers of promotional sites to help give away your book. Here I will refer to David Gaughran’s excellent blog on promotional sites for explanation.

I spent less than two hundred dollars to have multiple promotional sites to help me give away e-copies of A Vacant Throne. To my delight, during this campaign, there were 1300 + downloads of my book. To my distress, I appeared to have garnered one bad review for my effort and nothing more. I vowed never to do that again.

However, I recently had a “duh” moment. What if I use the promotional sites to give away my free book? On the promotion site, I will present a pitch for Stories and Poems of Trueterra with a line somewhere informing the reader that they will be directed to my opt-in page on Mailerlite. I think that is only fair. I only want people who have some interest in what I am writing. I might get hundreds of subscribers.

Is this a long shot? Yup. But if 9% of them respond in the future, this could be well worth it. I’ll let you know how it turns out in a future blog post.

Also, I will soon be sending out a new version of Stories and Poems to all of you on my email list. My present concern is how the poems’ formatting appears on the various e-readers. Please let me know in the comment box if there are no breaks between stanzas, strange indenting, etc. If you are not receiving Stories and Poems of Trueterra, here is your chance! And don’t worry, you have my promise that our email address is safe with me.

Next month, I might be blogging on the formatting of poems for epubs, depending on what feedback I get. There are problems.

Fairy Tale of the Month: May 2024 The Prince and the Tiger Girl – Part One

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Tiger Family, Korean – Joseon Dynasty

Unnatural Child

I am alone this evening—sort of. Thalia and Jini are in the kitchen, along with the fairy, making themselves a late-night snack. I am making myself scarce per Thalia’s instructions. Well, there is nothing I could add to the young girls’ sleepover prattle.

Along with a bit of whiskey, I entertain myself with the trick of running my finger across the spines of books on my shelves, picking one out on impulse, closing my eyes, and opening to a page.

The book I choose is Folk and Fairy Tales from Denmark: Stories Collected by Evald Tang Kristensen, Vol. 1, edited by Stephen Badman. In bold letters is the title, The Prince and the Tiger Child. I settle into my comfy chair and take a sip of whiskey.

There is a husband and wife who have no children and blame each other. The wife goes to the wise woman, who gives her the odd advice to go home, pretend to be ill, and send her husband to her for the cure.

This is done, and the husband is given a small, covered pot, with the instructions not to look inside. He, of course, does and sees three small, cooked fish that he knows as smelts. A bit peckish, he eats one of the smelts. Nine months later, his wife gives birth to a child, and so does he.

When his wife goes into labor, he hides in the woods and gives birth to a daughter, whom he abandons, mortified at what has happened to him. She is discovered by a wyvern that takes the child into its mouth, but before it can consume the babe it is attacked by a tigress. The tigress, having recently lost her cubs to hunters, takes the child as her own and nurses it.

Years later, the “tiger girl” is discovered by a young king out hunting when his horse paws at the entrance to the girl’s hiding place. The young king marries the girl, much to his mother’s distress. The old queen insists the girl is little more than a wild animal.

When the young king is obliged to go off to war just before his child is born, his mother takes advantage. She steals the child, gives it to her maidservant to be drowned, smears the girl’s mouth with blood, and declares the mother has eaten her own child.

Upon returning from war, the young king refuses to believe what he hears. Two more times his wife bears a child; each time the baby is spirited away, given over to be drowned, and the old queen insists the girl has eaten her children.

However, the maidservant, whose duty it was to drown the infants, did not have the heart to do so. Rather, she put each child in a watertight box and floated the poor being down the river toward its fate. Each time, a different miller and his wife find the floating box and adopt the child as their own.

Meanwhile, the old queen keeps up her campaign, declaring the girl should be burnt. The young king cannot bring himself to that justice. Instead, he sends his queen from the court to tour the kingdom, never to return. She leaves, well provided for, in a carriage drawn by six horses.

As soon as they pass through the gate of the capital city, the young queen finds her voice. Immediately, she instructs her driver to go to the mill where her eldest son now lives. She is well received, and after dinner, as is customary, they play a riddle game. However, the queen demands high stakes if they cannot guess her riddle. She wants another carriage with six horses, a coachman, and their child—her child—as a servant.

The riddle is, “My father is a fish, my mother is a man, a wyvern bore me in its mouth, and I was brought up by a tigress; a horse gave me a husband. I bore my husband three healthy children, all of them died, but all three are still alive.” The miller and his wife, of course, are clueless.

The queen repeats this quest two more times until she has all of her children. When she eventually returns to her husband’s capital city, she enters the castle courtyard with four sets of carriages, one for herself and three for her sons. She is, also, unrecognized by the king or the old queen.

After dinner, the riddle game commences. This time, the young king knows enough about the clues to guess that this is his wife, and all is revealed. The evil old queen is consigned to the punishment she wished upon her daughter-in-law.

“Oh, nice,” I say aloud. “I can confound poor, logical Duckworth with this one when we take our walk tomorrow.”

I empty my whiskey glass.

Fairy Tale of the month: May 2024 The Prince and the Tiger Girl – Part Two

Tiger in the Jungle 1893
Paul Elie Ranson

Hill Garden

Duckworth and I wander about Hill Garden and its winding, multilevel pergola at Hampstead Heath, often described as a “secret garden.” Built by Lord Leverhulme as a place to entertain guests in good weather, it had fallen into near ruins but then restored by the City of London Corporation. It makes for a marvelous ramble up and down stairs and through the gardens on a spring day. Especially with the wisteria hanging from the pergola rafters.

I have just finished relating The Prince and the Tiger Girl to Duckworth, and I try not to smile at his bemused expression.

“Let me get this straight,” he gestures with a finger in the air. “A tiger in Denmark?”

“It was there to attack the wyvern,” I say. “Or in other words, they both were exotic beasts to this story’s listeners, on a par with dragons and unicorns.”

“Okay,” says Duckworth. “I’ll let you get away with that one and move on to a more serious story offense.”

“And what might that be?”

“Things like a prince out hunting finding a beautiful woman hiding in some wood; having an evil queen abducting children and rubbing blood on the heroine’s mouth—as improbable as these things are—I understand that these are familiar tropes in the fairy-tale canon.

“However, having the heroine pass through the gate of the city and suddenly be able to talk and know where her children are—knowledge she can’t possibly possess—goes too far beyond logic.”

“Duckworth! I’m ashamed of you,” I declare, suppressing my mirth and pretending to be annoyed. “How often have I told you that one cannot apply logic to fairy tales?”

“Well,” he grumbles, “if not logic, what reason can you apply to explain her sudden insights?”

We come to a bench under one of the pergola and breathe in the scent of the wisteria.

Presently I say, “That she was passing through a gateway is significant. She was leaving her old world into another. Her purpose in the new world was to find her way back to her old world with all the injustices foisted upon her corrected. That is to say, to reclaim her children.”

“Good,” says Duckworth, “as far as it goes, but what about her unaccountable knowledge? Where does she get that from?”

I put my hands to my chest dramatically. “Why, from us, the listener/reader. In the theatre, I think it is called the fourth wall. This is the breaking of the fourth wall, if only for a moment, and the heroine now knows what we know.”

“Oh, poppycock!”

“No, listen. How do we know, you and I, sitting here, on this bench, smelling the wisteria, are not, in fact, the imagination of some writer scribbling us down? What thoughts could that writer put into our brains?”

“Double poppycock!”

I see I will not convince him and take my argument no further. With no signal between us, we rise and continue our amble.

“Here is another thing that bothers me,” Duckworth picks up the conversation. “Not just in this tale but in others as well, the characters inexplicably do not recognize each other, even if, as in this case, they are husband and wife. I recognize long-ago friends from public school, for heaven’s sakes.”

“Ah, here I can give you a possible, logical—which you so adore—explanation. She wore a veil.”

Duckworth cocks his head to indicate I should continue.

“In medieval times and beyond, women of worth wore veils in public to indicate their modesty and high station. Our young queen would certainly have worn a veil and had reason to hide her identity until she had proven herself.”

Duckworth knits his brow. “I thought that was an Islamic thing.”

“No, no. Muslims are newcomers to the religious world. They took the veil from Jewish and Christian traditions of the time. Young girls, serving maids, and prostitutes did not wear the veil. Prostitutes, in particular, could be severely punished for the effrontery of wearing it.”

“Well,” says Duckworth, “you won two out of three arguments, but really, we being figments of someone’s imagination takes the cake.”

Fairy Tale of the Month: May 2024 The Prince and the Tiger Girl – Part Three

1832 Antoine-Louis Barye

A Metaphor

“It is clearly metaphorical,” Melissa says with her usual certainty, taking a sip of tea.

“Metaphorical of . . .” I ask.

“Of women’s journey.”

We sit in the reading area of Melissa’s bookstore, each with a cup in our hands and the teapot in its cozy on the table in front of us, along with a copy of Folk and Fairy Tales of Denmark from which I have just finished reading aloud. Two customers wander through the store. From where we sit, Melissa can keep an eye on the register.

“Really?” I say. “I wasn’t seeing that and am not sure that I do, at least not in terms of metaphor. Her birth, for example, I thought of as something of a joke that worked into her riddle later on. How is that metaphorical?”

“At the time this story was collected—and in some cases still today—a male child was more valued than a female child. The male child was the one to carry on the family name. The male child would receive a higher education or be apprenticed out to learn a trade. For a man to ‘have’ a daughter could be a disappointment.”

“And her abandonment?” I ask. “Little girls aren’t usually left in the woods.”

“Well,” Melissa says, becoming a little unfocused. “In a way, they can be. Again, a girl’s brother may be given the greater share of a family’s resources and attention, and she rather left behind. The tigers and wyverns? These are the good and bad influences that come in and out of a girl’s unstructured career pretty much at random, as opposed to the careful grooming of a brother’s path to success.”

I sense this story is hitting close to home—not my intention—and I alter the trajectory.

“Then enters the prince to change everything?” I suggest.

“Change everything, “Melissa echoes. “Not really.”

So much for a new trajectory.

“He is simply another male figure,” she continues. “However, there is a change. Instead of abandoning the girl, he takes control of her through marriage.”

I know Melissa is divorced. I am going to pour myself a cup of tea and pretend I don’t notice the parallel.

Melissa takes another sip of her tea, then says, “In the context of this story, the prince tries to take control, with all benevolent intentions, but is unable or skillful enough to do so. Another actor, with their own agenda, thwarts his efforts. His own mother.

“I will sympathize. Had it been an advisor, stranger, or friend, he should have been—and rightly so—skeptical of their opinions. But his own mother? That is a special bond hard to break. Yet, he resists.

“In the end, after a campaign of lies and deceit and the claim that the young queen should be burnt, he sends her away from court. The ‘he’ abandons her all over again.”

Ouch.

I will try to divert. “What of the passing through the gateway? What of her suddenly knowing the unknown?” I take Duckworth’s position at this point.

“Yes, that is the transformation. We have often talked about transformations in fairy tales. Endlessly, actually, and here is another.

“When she passes through the gateway, she is liberated from her past. She comes into her own. When that happened to me, I understood things I had not been told. I simply knew as she did.

“Our heroine goes forth and reclaims her life. She takes back, through riddles, her children, all males. I wish there had been a daughter, but that’s just me.

“Myself? I made other choices. I had no children. I abandon the men in my life as they have abandoned me. You, my friend, are a bit of an exception.”

One of her customers comes to the counter, and Melissa rises to attend, ending our conversation.

Thank goodness.

Your thoughts?

Fairy Tale of the Month: Mid-month Writer’s Journey

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If I am going to be giving advice to fellow struggling authors, then I imagine I am obliged to talk about email lists. On this topic, I am in the Hubert Humprey camp; an old-time Minnesotan politician—that I remember him dates me—of whom it was said he could talk about any subject, any time, any where, whether he knew anything about it or not. Witness that I have thirty-three fans on my email list, that should disqualify me from opening my mouth on this topic, but here goes.

In the self-publishing world, if you have a large email list (10,000 for example), to which you can market, then you are ahead of the game. How do you get such a list? It is with a “reader magnet.” You offer something for free in exchange for their email address. Then the trick is, you, the author, need to keep them engaged with more content, such as a newsletter, so that they don’t forget who you are when it is time for you to say, “Hey all, I’ve got a new book!”

I have a reader magnet. It’s called Stories and Poems of Trueterra (click if you dare), an on-going ebook of short stories and poems related to my fantasy world. Periodically, I add another story or poem, then send it off to my email list, all thirty-three of them, as a way of saying, “Hey, I’m still here.”

My failure is that the new material is very periodical, maybe four times a year, not weekly or daily like most email lists that I am on. Yet, I can’t see myself filling up other people’s email folders with prattle, attempting to remind them of my existence.

I am sure you have the same experience as I when we surrender our email address to a virtual stranger, then see our screens populated with items of marginal interest. We can unsubscribe or ignore. I tend to open, glance, and if nothing catches my interest, move on. I do try to keep a finger on the pulse of the market.

Rather than focusing on an email list, I prefer blogging to get attention. Readers come to my blog when they want to read it, not because I am foisting it upon them. I am much more comfortable with that approach. Between this mid-month blog and my end-of-month fairy-tale blog, in April I got six hundred and thirty visitors and eight hundred and three views. Is this a good approach to marketing my book? Probably not, but I have settled into it.

Speaking about being on others’ email lists, there are two that I have found useful. One is Bryan Cohen’s free 5-Day Amazon Ad Profit Challenge. This is a course he runs a couple of times a year, the next one in July. Yes, he is trying to sell you a larger course, and you will have to put up with his unending, positivity-generating, enthusiasm, but he will give you actionable information. In fact, he will handhold you through creating the three basic types of Amazon ads, step by tiny step. If you are interested in Amazon ads, there is no better free course that I am aware of.

On broader topics in self-publishing, there is David Gaughran’s extensive and free Starting From Zero course. He generously shares an immense amount of information in a readable and viewable manner. I highly recommend, and I think I will revisit it again soon. He also has a useful newsletter that comes out most Fridays.  

PS. My email list resides on MailerLite, which I talked about before in December’s mid-month blog. I am using MailerLite at David Gaughran’s suggestion.