The Lover's Ghost – A Hungarian Fairytale

This next installment in the Rove City series, The Silver Skull, is based on a little-known Hungarian fairy tale called “The Lover’s Ghost.” I’ve written out my own version of the tale below.

As with all the Rove City fairytales, I did not remain entirely true to each beat of the original story, but I pulled quite a few structural and aesthetic parts from the story, and I like how it turned out.

You can read The Silver Skull here.

The Lover’s Ghost

Once upon a time, a young woman named Judith loved the handsomest lad in her village, John. They planned to marry, but before their wedding could take place, war broke out and the bridegroom was drafted. The maid promised to await his return and remain faithful until he returned.

The war raged for two years, and when it finally ended, Judith waited eagerly for her betrothed’s return. She waited for four (!) years, but still he did not return.

Eventually, she went to see her godmother (a witch, of course) and asked for advice. Her godmother told her, “Tomorrow with be the full moon. Go to the cemetery and ask the gravedigger for a human skull. Then bring me the skull. We will put it in a pot and boil it for two hours with some millet. Then we will know whether your lover is alive or dead. And maybe it will entice him to come home.”

Judith went to the cemetery the next day. The gravedigger happily gave her a skull, took it home, and cooked it.

After boiling for a bit, the skull said, “He has started.” After a bit longer, it said, “He is here, outside in the yard.”

The maid ran outside and saw John standing just past the threshold. His horse was snow-white, and his clothes were entirely white as well, including his helmet and boots. As soon as he saw her, he asked, “Will you come to the country where I live?”

She agreed, mounted the horse, and they made out for a while. (I’m serious, that’s in the original tale.) They rode through the countryside until they got to a village where they saw a bunch of men also clad in white who ran past. Then John said, “How beautifully shines the moon, the moon; how beautifully march past the dead. Are you afraid, my little Judith?”

“I’m not afraid with you, John,” she replied.

Hundreds more white-clad men rode past, and again John asked if she was afraid. She was not, when with him.

Finally, they arrived at an old burial ground. John dismounted and led her to an open grave. At the bottom was an open coffin with the lid off.

“Go in, dear,” John said.

“You go first,” Judith replied.

John descended into the grave and laid down in the coffin, but Judith ran away as fast as she could go, and took refuge in a mansion nearby. All of the doors were locked except one, which opened to reveal a long corridor. At the end was a body laid in a coffin. She hid near the fireplace.

As soon as John realized Judith had run away, he jumped out of the grave and raced after her, but he couldn’t catch up. When he reached the door, he said, “Dead man, open the door to a fellow dead man.”

The corpse inside sat up and walked to the door.

“Is my bride here?” John asked when the door had opened.

“Yes. She is hiding by the fireplace,” the corpse told him.

“Come,” said John. “Let us tear her to pieces.”

Just as John and the corpse were about to reach Judith, a rooster crowed. Dawn broke and the sun’s rays fell through the open door and into the room. The two dead man vanished.

At that moment, a richly attired man entered from one of the other rooms in the house. He approached Judith and embraced her gratefully.

“Thank you!” he exclaimed. “The corpse laid here was my brother. I have buried him 365 times, with the greatest pomp and circumstance, but he has returned each time! You have saved me from him. Let us marry and rejoice.”

And so Judith married the wealthy landowner.

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September Cat News: Blueberry and the Granola Bars

We have some exciting news this week! Blueberry won 6th place in the Appalachian Great Pyrenees Rescue Calendar contest! This means he will be featured on the May issue of the 2024 calendar. This is a fundraiser we participate in every year for the rescue where we got Blueberry.

Times are super tough right now due to the number of Pyrs being surrendered and the rising costs of inflation, so if you have a couple extra bucks, please consider donating.

To celebrate his exciting calendar contest win, Blueberry did a Blueberry thing, and got into the granola bars *again*. This time he only consumed 8 (last time was 17) apple flavored ones. We took him to the vet (because the doofus swallows them whole), and discovered that he now weighs 165lbs (and is not overweight!)! "What are you feeding him?" they asked us. Obviously, the answer is granola bars! He successfully regurgitated the granola bars and we will no longer be buying them lol.

He is fully recovered, and we are carefully reevaluating our food storage choices.

How Often Do You Think About The Roman Empire?

A few days ago, my friend Sammy texted our group thread: "How often do you think about the Roman Empire?" I was not surprised when my spouse replied, "Every day," but my own answer was, "Almost never." Though I will confess, I think about it a lot more now that I'm married than I ever did when I was single—mostly due the the impromptu lectures on the Roman Empire I get from Josh on long car rides.

While not everyone specifically thinks about the Roman Empire on a daily basis, I bet you have something you think about uncommonly frequently too. Maybe it's bees (looking at you, Dad) or the inner workings of a guitar amp (looking at you, little brother), types of dirt (looking at you, Mom), or printing presses (looking at you, big brother).

For me, it's The Ship of Theseus.

If you're unfamiliar, The Ship of Theseus is a philosophical thought experiment, recorded by Plutarch. So yeah, it goes back a ways.

The story goes something like this. Theseus was the founder king of Athens, and after he slayed the minotaur (you may be familiar with the story of Theseus and the Minotaur?), he rescued the children of Athens and escaped on a ship to Delos. Every year, the Athenians commemorated this by taking the same ship—the Ship of Theseus—on a pilgrimage to Delos.

After a few pilgrimages, the ship returns to harbor with some damage, so a shipwright is hired to repair it. Luckily, the damage is minor so they only replace two planks of wood. The ship makes the pilgrimage just fine the next few years, but then, one year, it sails into a storm. The main mast is snapped, and upon the ship's return to harbor, the shipwright is forced to replace the mast, as well as quite a bit of the original wood of the ship.

After decades (or centuries) of this annual pilgrimage, many trips sailed through storms, regular wear and tear, and a few surprise pirate battles, every single plank of wood has been replaced. The original sailors are replaced with younger sailors. The masts are new. The sails are new. The nails are new.

Is it the same ship?

If so, what makes it the same if everything about it is different? If not, at what point did it stop being the same???

I don't know!!! But I love thinking about it. And applying the idea to other things.

For example, one of my neighbors wanted to edge her garden beds with uniform rocks. So rather than buying a bag of rocks from Lowes, she bought a bag of cement dust and made "rocks" with concrete and plastic bags.

Every time I walk past those damn rocks, I think about how they were originally rocks, then were ground into dust for cement, and then she added water... and turned them back into "rocks."

Are they the same original rocks?? Or are they new rocks???

I DON'T KNOW.

It's fascinating to apply to personal identity as well. For example, I was once five years old. I was a lot shorter back then. I had two sets of teeth in my skull. Turtles were a lot bigger. And I was really good at catching chickens.

Now, I'm a lot taller. I have less than one set of teeth in my skull, (no wisdom teeth), and turtles seem to have shrunken. I am not as good at catching chickens, though I'm pretty good at catching cats these days.

Add to that, that every cell of my body has been replaced roughly three times since then—

Am I the same as 5-year-old me???

I DON'T KNOW!!!

There are obviously tons of ways to answer these questions. But ultimately, there's not really a right or wrong approach. It all comes down to how you want to think about it.

I love thinking. It's one of my favorite things about being alive. And is probably why I've decided to write books—because writing books is basically thinking out loud so other people can read it. Of course The Ship of Theseus isn't the only random concept that plagues me. Pi drives me insane. The Trolley Car Problem? [Insert internal brain shriek here.] Birds. The shapes of things. Time travel. Ethics. My late mentor, Deidre. Trees. I think about trees a lot.

Anyway. What do you think about ridiculously often? Is it the Roman Empire? Or something else?

Writing Tips (Sometimes): Repetition, Repetition, Sweet, Sweet Repetition

This is part of my series of essays for writers. Get them delivered to your inbox by signing up here!

Me and Josh, one year ago, at a wedding!

Have you ever heard the term, “epizeuxis”? I first heard the word reading Mark Forsythe’s book Elements of Eloquence, which, if you’re a word nerd like me, I highly recommend reading.

Epizeuxis is a form of repetition, in which a word or phrase is repeated exactly and immediately. You may recognize, “Tiger, tiger burning bright.” That is epizeuxis. Or “Never, never, never, never, never,” from King Lear. It doesn’t have to be a single word only, however. “The horror, the horror,” from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness is also epizeuxis.

Another example, and one of my favorites, is from N.K. Jemison’s book, The Fifth Season. It says:

“But this is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
This is the way the world ends.
For the last time.”

If you haven’t heard of epizeuxis, though I imagine you’re familiar enough with the technique, perhaps you’ve heard of diacope. Diacope is another form of repetition; Mark Forsythe calls it a “verbal sandwich,” and the most famous example of it is, “Bond, James Bond.” Or perhaps you’re familiar with this one: “Oh Captain, my Captain.”

Similarly to epizeuxis, diacope can be a repetition of a phrase, not simply a single word. “They told me, Heraclitus, they told me” is also diacope (William Cory).

There are a couple different types of diacope besides this one: the elaborative diacope and the extended diacope. The elaborative diacope includes some kind of adjective or adverb that makes the second repetition changed in some way. If diacope is a sandwich, an elaborative diacope has mayonnaise on one slice of bread.

The most famous example of this is from “America the Beautiful” by Katharine Lee Bates: “Sea to shining sea.” The word “shining” changes the second “sea,” just a tiny bit. It’s the mayo.

An extended diacope is simply a longer one with more words in the sandwich. I like to think of it as a towering hamburger with every topping you can imagine—lettuce, tomato, onion, you name it. Take this example: “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo!” or, from our collectively favorite musical, “Alexander Hamilton, my name is Alexander Hamilton.”

And what happens when you add epizeuxis and diacope together?

You get lines like, “Repetition, repetition, sweet, sweet repetition.” Or “Alone, alone, all all alone/ Alone on a wide wide sea,” which is from “The Ryme of the Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

I’ve been exploring techniques like this more often lately. In my experience, they’re not often discussed in the general writing community. You see a lot of comments like, “Don’t use adverbs!” but not a lot comments like, “I included epizeuxis in my most recent WIP and loved it!”

The main criticism of using tools like this, because of course somebody is adamantly opposed to it, is that it creates “purple prose,” which according to Wikipedia is: “overly ornate prose that may disrupt a narrative flow by drawing undesirable attention to its own extravagant style of writing.” (Oct 2022)

The great thing about this definition is that it’s entirely subjective! Whether or not “overly ornate prose” may or may not “disrupt a narrative flow by drawing undesirable attention” to itself is completely, utterly, one-hundred percent subjective.

I personally find that language in prose that’s too simple and plain draws unnecessary attention to itself (I say in a very snobby way lol) just as much as overly elaborate language can. And sometimes, I like it anyway.

What we like is personal, and it’s nobody else’s right to tell us the kinds of tools and techniques we should or shouldn’t use in our writing.

For me, the most important question is: what are these types of tools good for? Certainly, they create emphasis. Impact.

And there’s the answer. Use them when you want to create emphasis. Impact.

Use them to add weight to a moment.

Epizeuxis and diacope are like neon signs that say, “Dear reader, pay attention to this moment.”

So, if you want the reader to pause for a moment in a scene or on a phrase, just repeat, repeat, repeat—the key is to repeat.

Awwww look at my sweet potato taking a nap in the sun.

Writing Tips (Sometimes): Calling Bullshit On The Rules of Writing

This is part of my series of essays for writers. Get them delivered to your inbox by signing up here!

Another throwback this month: this is me and my little brother, Evan. He’s a music producer now; doesn’t look like this anymore lol.

I recently heard someone say, “I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they’re like dandelions.” To be clear, it was Stephen King who said that, and he wrote it in his book On Writing, which you may have heard effusively recommended to you like it’s the modern-day writing Bible.

If you haven’t figured this out yet, I have a lot of opinions, and my opinion on this particular quote is very strong. Which is that in this particular instance, Stephen King is full of shit.

Now, because I’m a writer and a lover of nuance, I’m going to give our esteemed horror writer a break here. He continues on to say in On Writing that he does use the occasional adverb in his own work because they occasionally serve a useful purpose, but he thinks they should be avoided in most cases, and newer writers tend to use them as a crutch, which is actually what he suggests you refrain from doing.

All fair enough, I suppose. But this has not stopped the writing world from latching onto this piece of advice and shouting it from the rooftops on Mr. King’s behalf: in Facebook groups when an unwitting newbie asks oh-so-innocently, “I’m doing NaNoWrimo for the first time—what writing advice would you give me?” someone will inevitably yell, “Don’t use adverbs!”; or in a critique group, when a critiquer goes through and crosses out every single adverb; or when a new editor has made it their god-given responsibility to eliminate every use of an adverb from every manuscript that crosses their desk.

To be clear, I like dandelions and I try to spread them everywhere I go. They are good for the bees.

And if the road to hell is paved with adverbs, there’s probably good reason for it. Like the fact that hell is an extremely, terribly, ridiculously awful place to travel to.

Personally, I like adverbs. I think they are useful. And I plan on using them whenever I damn well please.

But “avoid adverbs at all costs” isn’t the only rule that is repeated incessantly within the author community. Many writers cite rules like, “show don’t tell,” “use an active voice,” “use simple vocabulary,” “keep sentences short,” “don’t use metaphors or cliches,” “write every day,” and the list goes on.

There are rules for writing, rules for publishing, rules for design, rules for distribution, rules for marketing, rules for running an author business, and rules for exactly how a writer should spend every minute of every day of their writing life. There are rules for how to interact with other authors and how to interact with readers, rules for how much your work should cost, rules for when to give something away for free, rules for how often to appear in public and exactly how you should look when you do so, and rules for what types of author photos you should use. Rules for how many people should read your work before you publish or submit, rules for the process you should follow going from rough draft to published work, and rules for exactly how many words should be in each chapter. And for how many chapters in each book. And for how much percentage of the book should be reserved for each part of the story.

(In fact, someone reading this right now probably thinks I used the word “rules” far too many times in the previous paragraph and will probably email me to say I should have written it differently.)

There’s a reason I titled this post “Calling Bullshit On The Rules of Writing.”

It’s because all the rules are bullshit.

Because I’m a lover of nuance, I will say that I think there is generally a grain of truth in most of the rules that get thrown around. There is usually a useful piece of advice to be found somewhere. Like in “Show don’t tell”—Yeah, in many cases, it makes more sense to add detail, action, description, and active voice to draw your reader into the story and create an emotional experience. But on the other hand, telling can also serve to help draw your reader into the story, by allowing the reader to have the information they need without boring them out of their minds in the meantime.

No reader needs to know every detail of how every character spends their time (ever heard of pacing? Or tension?) so sometimes saying something like, “The character was happy to skip going to the grocery store with their mom,” is a million times better than saying, “The character dashed outside to meet their friend, relishing in the sensation of happiness that flooded through them at the realization that they didn’t have to collect groceries with their mother that afternoon.” It depends on the voice, style, and tone of the piece, as well as the genre conventions and needs of the story.

The same is true of adverbs. Sometimes, it suits the story better to say, “She smiled gratefully,” as opposed to “She flashed him a grateful smile,” or “She squeezed the man’s hand, wishing she knew the perfect words to say to express the grateful feeling that filled her as a result of his kind actions.”

It depends on the story.

But my main beef with the rules of writing is not just that they lack nuance and don’t always apply.

Nope.

Mostly, I hate the rules of writing because they make it so easy to forget that writing is supposed to be fun.

Writing is art! Writing is play! Writing is an expression of emotion, an exploration of an idea, a journey, a progression, a sparkle of delight.

Writing is like cooking a bowl of soup or rolling through a field of dandelions or traversing that inexorable road to hell. It’s challenging and rewarding and terrible and exciting and beautiful. And fun.

So what if there are “too many” adverbs in a piece? What are the stakes?

Is someone going to terribly suffer from a dreadfully painful heart attack because I capriciously used one too many adverbs? Or perhaps the ghosts of Strunk & White will rise from the dead to murder me because I dared engage in the heinous crime of purple prose! Perhaps all of my ancestors will roll over in their graves from the agony of my tacky use of cliches! And if my metaphor usage is like driving a car without an engine, starting a fire with damp wood, or beating a dead horse with a stick… exactly what harm is that going to do?

There may be consequences, of course. An editor might not like it. A reader might not like it. Your mom might not like it. Your English teacher might not like it.

But the good news is that it’s your art. The only person whose opinion ultimately matters, is yours.

And if you need to make some adjustments during revisions to meet the needs of a client, a teacher, an editor, a publisher, or whomever, you can do that.

But in the meantime, just remember, the rules are bullshit and writing is fun.

Another throwback of me and a llama. My uncle dared me a $1 to kiss it, so I did lol, and he had to pay me a dollar.