The History and Mystery of Yemen’s ‘Well of Hell’ - The first-ever expedition to the bottom of a startling desert sinkhole found wonders—but only natural ones, by Sarah Durn October 20, 2021
"...Actually, there was a concern more sinister than reptiles and spirits when Al-Kindi finally reached the bottom: unexploded ordnance. Since 2014, Yemen has been in the midst of a bloody civil war and, Al-Kindi explains, pilots sometimes drop bombs into caves, since people seek shelter inside. “So that got me worried a bit,” he says. “Apart from that, it was a very enjoyable moment.” ...Al-Kindi estimates the sinkhole could be several million years old, but its origin, too, is the subject of local legend. One legend says an ancient king forced jinn to carve the “well” as a place to hide his treasure. In others, the well has always served to contain evil, uncontrollable jinn..."
I am reading an article about how every time ancient art depicts a goddess as sexually alluring, they always get labeled a "goddess of fertility". Even when there is no indication of children, pregnancy, or anything fertile.
The article argues that some goddesses were deities of sex and pleasure, without the maternal fertility aspect.
I am like 🤯 🤯 I have a whole entire archaeology degree and we never addressed this...
Hello, Myth Lovers! Join us for tomorrow's theme: Mythical Places. What myth features a mythical or legendary place, location, or landscape? Use the tag #MythologyMonday for reposts. See you tomorrow!
The Amazon River is the domain of Iara. Once an indigenous warrior, Iara was drowned as punishment for killing her jealous brothers in self defense, but instead of dying, she became a mermaid. Now, Iara gets her revenge by luring men into the river to drown them. #MythologyMonday
Hello, Myth Lovers! To celebrate the last #Monday in #MerMay our theme is #merfolk! Share your favourite myths about mermaids, mermen, and other mythological sea creatures! Which myths feature #merpeople in a central role? Did you create #MerMay mythological art? Use the hashtag #MythologyMonday for boosts!
@mythologymonday@AimeeMaroux I'd read variations of a Thai poetic saga about the prince Phra Aphai Mani. At one point he'd been seduced by a hideous giantess who disguised herself as a beautiful woman. When he realized the truth, he fled and was assisted by a family of merfolk. Unfortunately, the giantess got her hands on the mother and father merfolk, who met their end in a brutal fashion.
Hey Patrons, both current and future! This is just to remind you that supporters at even the lowest monthly levels get full access to the catalog of professional-grade releases of fiction and any nonfiction worthy of publication—feature-length, short stories, and everything in between.
This will include audio works also as soon as I find a suitable volunteer or find a way to compensate a professional.
All words are exquisitely hand-knitted by yours truly, as are all covers and interior artwork. For those of you with understandable allergies, none of that regurgitative "AI" stuff has been included in these releases.
All of these titles will be on sale June 1 (or VERY shortly thereafter, depending on your time zone) at the Ko-Fi shop, so get your sneak peek now!
Lessen that existential guilt and creeping sense of nagging dread by feeding your third-favorite deranged subversive?
All contributions go to food, rent, medicine, therapy, staying ahead of the bureaucratic nightmare of residency and citizenship, and poisoning those insidious parasitic and predatory organizational organisms that exploit and devour us.
#PennedPossibilities 323 — What's a piece of advice for writers that you listened to and are glad for?
An Australian author, Lucy Sussex, told us at Clarion West 1998 to be shameless in promoting ourselves. Being a shy person, networking and promotion has been a heavy lift, but I'm working on it and I know it's going to help. Mastodon: ☑️
#PennedPossibilities 322 — What piece of advice, as an author, did you once receive but hadn’t followed? Looking back on it now, you might wish that you had.
Advice: Don't only write novels. Write lots of shorter pieces.
When I started I saw that you could only make a living if you sold novels, so I wrote novels. That completely discounted the fabulous practice you get completing lots of smaller stories. Completing a novel takes lots of time and there's a mounting anxiety that in the end the plot will fail or no publisher will be interested. Yeah, true with short fiction, but the investment is far lower (or should be if you're doing it right). There used to be lots of magazines you could sell short fiction to... for pennies a word, but it was something, and it offered a chance to build a brand name and a following. Such notoriety could help you sell novels, too.
@sfwrtr
I couldn't agree more. If I recall correctly Ray Bradbury also said to start with short stories vs a novel "You don't know what you are doing." Aka too easy to get lost in it. Not to mention take so much longer to finish.
He also said it was impossible to write 52 bad short stories in a row. One of them had to be good. Hence the odds go up in your favor with short stories.
@DonDeBon Yep. Ray Bradbury. I think both him and Asimov told how they wrote a story DAILY for a few years (and submitting) before making that key first sale.
It was impossible to write 52 bad short stories in a row. One of them had to be good.
The flower and herb I have been studying over the last week has been St.Johns wort so made a pixel art of it.
In European folklore St.Johns wort (AKA Hypericum perforatum) has strong connections to protecting against spirits and St.John’s Eve was the day that the herb was the most potent. June 23rd.
It has strong associations with midsummer. It was also used in love spells as well.
#WordWeavers 2405.19 — How did you settle on your MC’s appearance?
Historically, I wrote my characters such that I found them attractive. I don't do that anymore.
Sometimes I don't have control, except for hair styles and clothes, or the lack thereof. The story or character may have certain in-the-moment requirement, like when the MC needed to train in an almost all-male fight gym as a prizefighter (she'd later win a championship). Of course she had tailored pink and black gym wear made of technical fabric that outlined every curve—which proved interesting.
These days I do the best not to assign an appearance at all, instead keeping things vague and sticking to describing only what's absolutely necessary. My experiences with publishers is that'll they'll ignore your descriptions for cover art and promotion anyway. In any case, doing this allows the reader to imagine someone they would find attractive(†). The MC in the current WiP is described physically only as tall, shy, so beautiful that both sexes fall for her, and that she has "winter eyes," whatever that is. In the other story, the only thing I'm settled on is described by the devil-girl something like this:
"Take two finger length pieces of rusty rebar, sharpen one end, bend it ninety degree, and stick one above each temple, pointing backwards. Makes wearing hats problematic. Yeah. Gets messy when they try to grab you by the head in a fight, especially if it sticks in..."
She's also describes her very olive complexion; she's mentioned green eyes in a mirror and red hair everywhere. It could easily change in revision.
(†) A recent writer's prompt asked about my target audience. Can I say "imaginative?"
#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 9 Nbr 18 — Have you written sections where the action occurs against the clock? How did you do it?
My current story segment in serialization takes place over a very short time period, after the last third of the previous story taking place between dusk and dawn. The other story I am working on is a three act story, each act taking place over very few hours.
Writing stories in compressed time isn't much different than writing stories that take place more episodically over longer periods of time. In both cases, I write about what is important for the character and how they deal with events. An example may help.
In the serialization (obviously spoilers if you know which story I'm referring to), the MC realizes that though the leader has left on a military adventure to handle a "guerrilla insurgency," she sees evidence that same foe may attack the capital city. In theory, she's politically second in command. In practice, she has no real power. How she spends that day scheming and conniving with only a title to get a single frigate on patrol drives the story and the clock. It starts with a PTSD episode where she realizes she may be responsible again for innumerable deaths without the power to prevent them, then her working every contact she knows, butting heads with the generals who discount her experience running a crime syndicate (briefly), convincing a discriminated against officer who wants to accept discharge to instead command a museum-piece frigate, getting into a bloody fight with the XO, avoiding what the reader will see as assassination attempts, and it just gets worse with her love interests (plural!) pulling at her heart.
All in 12 hours. Tick-tock! That's one day of three days of escalating existential threats. The fourth day's events take place over one hour, which is about the time it would take to read.
Each Fenian warrior was equipped by the smiths working in the caves of Keshcorran with a sword and spear of superlative quality. „Each sword had a different name, details of which were related in the tale. Fionn’s sword was called Mac an Luin. The happy warriors were also provided with accommodation and when they awoke next morning,
they found themselves back on Slieve Luachra still bearing their new weapons.“
Source: Antiquarian Research in Co. Sligo as a Background to the #Mythology and Archaeology of Moytura by Eamonn P. Kelly #Celtic
Fergus delayed the host until such time as the men of Ulster should have gathered together an army. Because of love and affection for his kindred of the men of Ulster he did so.
„Medb perceived this and she upbraided him for it, and chanted the lay:—
Medb:
"Fergus, speak, what shall we say?
What may mean this devious way?
For we wander north and south;
Over other lands we stray!"
Fergus:
"Medb, why art thou so perturbed?
There's no treacherous purpose here.
Ulster's land it is, O queen,
Over which I've led thy host!"
Medb:
"Ailill, splendid with his hosts,
Fears thee lest thou should'st betray.
Thou hast not bent all thy mind
To direct us on our way!"
Fergus:
"Not to bring the host to harm
Make these changing circuits I.
Haply could I now avoid
Sualtach's son, the Blacksmith's Hound!"
Medb:
"Ill of thee to wrong our host,
Fergus, son of Ross the Red;
Much good hast thou found with us,
Fergus, in thy banishment!"
"If thou showest our foemen love,
No more shalt thou lead our troops;
Haply someone else we'll find
To direct us on our way!"
Source: The Project Gutenberg eBook of TÁIN BÓ CÚALNGE, by Joseph Dunn. #Celtic
9yo: Dad, when you cut off a hydra’s head and two more grow back, is it two more consciousnesses or just one new one or is there just one for the whole thing?
#Celtic#MythologyMonday: Afagddu (“utter darkness”) was a boy so ugly that his mother, the hag-goddess #Ceridwen, feared he would never attract a mate. Thinking that poetry might draw maidens even to an uncomely man, Ceridwen mixed herbs of inspiration for her son in her magical cauldron— but the young servant boy Gwion sipped the brew prematurely, thus draining its magic and becoming the great poet Taliesin as a result.
Source: P. Monaghan Encyclopedia of #Celtic #Mythology and #Folklore
#MythologyMonday: The #TuathaDéDanannrefined the art of brewing until the ale of their smith and brewer #Goibniu was strong enough to endow the drinker with immortality. #Irish epics connect ale with the festival of #Samhain, when the boundaries between this world and the #Otherworld were blurred.
Source: P. Monaghan Encyclopedia of #Celtic #Mythology and #Folklore
Hello, Myth Lovers! Join us for Monday's theme: Brews and Potions. Write out a story that talks about brewing beverages or potion making of special liquids and use the tag #MythologyMonday for boosts!
#mythologymonday It's less of a folklore and more pure alchemy, but I was always taken with the variation between practical and philosophical alchemy, and I think the former was brilliantly epitomised by Thomas Norton's Ordinalle of Alchimy, where he tries without thermometers to define effects like "the temperature at which duck fat melts"
According to Northern Finnish folklore, the northern lights are caused by the mythological firefox running around flinging sparks when its tail brushes against the vegetation. The Finnish name for northern lights, revontulet, literally translates to "fox fires". #Mythology
Puddles' incredibly atmospheric 2022 cover of Black Sabbath's iconic 1970 song War Pigs manages to make the song his own while preserving its greatness....
#Editors of #fiction, you've heard about @AmyJSchneider's new book The Chicago Guide to Copyediting Fiction. Should you get it? Wonder no more! Longtime editing pro Adrienne Montgomerie says she even quotes passages of it to her university #editing students! https://tinyurl.com/y27jauz6
