Do Not read this Book. Seriously!

 If you start reading

you won't be able to stop

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0753D2KGN

“Centuries of vengeance awaken—and one woman’s secret power is the only defense.”

Long ago, in a faraway land, the ancestors shaped her destiny. The secretive world of the ancient clan she was born into is filled with mysteries and obscure traditions. Their beliefs are unbeknownst to her, and Ilona resigns to live the simple life of a small-town doctor. But her life goes into a tailspin on her twenty-ninth birthday.

She starts to develop unusual powers, which she finds exciting as well as frightening. She struggles to find answers, but those who try to reveal the clan secrets are severely punished.

A menacing man is following her and wants to kill her. Who is he?

Punished by the ancestors long ago, Mora has waited centuries for the chance to reunite with her beloved Joland and to gain power over the Hunor clan. Revenge has kept her alive for over 1600 years.

Ilona must search for the mysterious Destiny Box that holds a message from her Ancestors while she attempts to sort out her feelings for the men in her life.

She must activate her Chameleon ability and obtain unimaginable powers. The clan Leaders and Elders are worried, knowing that she can use her growing powers for absolute good or absolute evil. But they have no choice, they’re powerless against Mora and must place their trust in Ilona.

With the help of the clan’s Time Bender, her journey will take her back in time to when her people lived as nomads, to the castles of the 14th century, as they struggle to overcome the obstacles in their path due to the evils of Mora.

She must ensure the birth of the Child in the 4th century to save the future of the Hunor Clan.

The First Red Egg and Easter Traditions

 A short fiction story by Erika M Szabo

The First Red Egg

The world was still young when the first red egg appeared. Before calendars, before religion and Easter traditions, when people still listened to messages whispered by nature.

In a quiet village at the edge of a forest, a girl named Milena raised a lame hen in her hut. The bird had deformed legs and couldn’t keep up with the flock. It was an ordinary bird, pale and soft‑feathered, except for its eyes, which glimmered like embers in the sunlight.

One spring morning, after a long winter that had taken more than it gave, Milena found an egg in the straw, a smooth, warm, and impossibly red egg. Not painted. Not stained. Red as fresh clay, red as fresh blood on a pricked finger.

The elders whispered that such a color belonged only to omens.

The children said it must be magic.

Milena simply held it in her hands and felt its warmth as if something was alive inside the shell.

That night, a storm rolled over the village. Lightning split the sky, and the great stone that sealed the old burial mound on the hill cracked open. People feared what might rise from it.

But at dawn, when the storm passed, Milena climbed the hill with the red egg pressed to her chest. She placed it gently in the broken mound.

The moment it touched the stone, the egg cracked. Not with a shatter, but with a sigh. A warm light spilled out, soft and gold, washing over the hill and the village below. The cracked stone settled, and the air was still. Whatever had stirred in the night sank back into peace.

When the light faded, the egg was empty. Only its red shell remained, glowing faintly in the morning sun.

From that day on, people dyed eggs red each spring. Not for fear, but for remembrance, as a symbol of life stronger than destruction. A promise that even the darkest storm can be stopped and a reminder that sometimes the smallest things carry the ability to make things right.

Easter Egg Traditions

Decorated eggs long predate Easter:

60,000‑year‑old, engraved ostrich eggs have been found in Africa.

In ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Crete, eggs were placed in graves as symbols of rebirth and kingship.

Easter egg traditions weave together ancient symbolism, Christian ritual, and regional folk art, creating one of the most cross‑cultural springtime practices in the world. They carry themes you already love—rebirth, thresholds, hidden meaning, and ritual color—making them a perfect playground for mythic storytelling.

Why Eggs?

Across cultures, eggs symbolize fertility, rebirth, and the return of life. Christianity layered new meaning onto this older symbolism:

The egg became a symbol of the empty tomb of Jesus, its shell representing the sealed tomb and the cracking symbolizing resurrection. 

Early Christians in Mesopotamia dyed eggs red to represent the blood of Christ. This is the earliest known Christian egg tradition. 

Dyeing & Decorating Traditions

Red Eggs (Orthodox & Middle Eastern)

The oldest Christian practice: eggs dyed a single, vivid red.

Symbolizes sacrifice, resurrection, and the breaking of death’s hold.

Still central in Orthodox Easter rituals today. 

Pysanky (Ukraine & Eastern Europe)

Intricate, symbolic designs created with a wax‑resist method.

Patterns often represent protection, prosperity, or cosmic cycles.

This tradition is ancient and deeply tied to regional folklore. 

Natural Dyeing (Global Revival)

Using onion skins, beets, turmeric, red cabbage, and other plants.

A return to pre‑industrial methods that highlight earth‑based symbolism. 

Fabergé‑Inspired Eggs (Russia)

Luxurious, jeweled eggs created for the Russian imperial family.

Modern versions use paint, glitter, or metalwork to echo that opulence. 

Rituals & Games

Egg Hunts

A modern Western tradition where decorated eggs are hidden for children.

Symbolically echoes the “seeking” of revelation or new life.

Some regions use real eggs; others use chocolate or plastic filled with treats. 

Egg Rolling

Popular in Britain and the U.S.

Rolling eggs down a hill symbolizes the stone rolling away from Christ’s tomb.

Historically tied to early Christian symbolism. 

Locsolkodás (Hungary)

Boys sprinkle girls with water or perfume on Easter Monday for luck and fertility.

Girls gift hímestojás, beautifully decorated eggs, in return. 

Ticselés (Hungary)

A traditional children’s gambling game using decorated eggs.

Shows how eggs became woven into everyday folk play. 

Modern Variations

Chocolate Eggs

Now widespread in Europe and North America.

A sweet evolution of the symbolic egg, often wrapped in bright foil. 

Plastic Eggs Filled With Candy

Popular in U.S. egg hunts.

A playful, commercial twist on the older ritual of gifting eggs. 

Why Botoxed Faces Feel Uncomfortable

 We depend on micro‑expressions to understand people

I always feel uneasy looking at a Botox‑frozen face because our brains rely heavily on micro‑expressions to read emotion, and Botox reduces or removes those cues. When you can’t “read” someone, your social brain flags the interaction as uncertain or harder to interpret.

Why Botoxed Faces Can Feel Uncomfortable

1. We depend on micro‑expressions to understand people

Botox reduces the movement of key facial muscles, especially in the forehead and around the eyes.

These areas carry the most emotionally informative signals: tension, surprise, concern, and empathy.

When those signals are muted, your brain gets less data to work with, which can feel like trying to read a book with half the words missing.

2. Your brain uses mimicry to understand others

Humans unconsciously mimic each other’s expressions — a tiny frown, a soft smile — and that mimicry helps us feel what the other person is feeling.

Botox disrupts this loop because the person can’t make the expression for you to mirror.

Without that mimicry, empathy becomes harder, and interactions can feel “off” or emotionally flat.

3. The facial feedback loop breaks

There’s a well‑studied phenomenon called the facial feedback hypothesis:

Your facial muscles don’t just express emotion — they help generate it.

When someone’s face can’t move, their emotional expressions are dampened.

That can make them seem less responsive, less warm, or harder to connect with.

4. Ambiguity makes the social brain anxious

Humans evolved to read faces quickly for safety and connection.

When a face is harder to interpret:

Your brain has to work harder.

Ambiguity triggers mild social vigilance.

The interaction can feel subtly uncanny or distant.

This is similar to why people feel uneasy around mannequins or CGI faces that are almost human but not fully expressive.

How do you feel about this?

https://www.authorerikamszabo.com

Kirkus has been considered a barometer of literary quality since 1933

 A prestigious award

I'm so happy for my fellow author and friend, David James, who received a glowing review and the award that Kirkus doesn't give out easily.

A Kirkus review functions as a high‑credibility signal inside the publishing ecosystem, especially for discoverability, industry attention, and marketing power. Its influence comes from its long history, its reputation for being blunt and independent, and the fact that librarians, booksellers, agents, and reviewers actively monitor it. A positive Kirkus review is treated as a mark of prestige. 

Escala's Wish - the Kirkus review to be proud of

ON AMAZON

A classic quest narrative that lovers of fairy tales are likely to enjoy.

"In James’ fantasy novel, the disastrous consequences of a single kiss cause a faerie to lose almost everything.

Escala Winter wants to understand what it is to fall in love. She decides to kiss a mortal man, but when a wolf kills both that man and Escala’s best friend, Rihanna, the blame falls on Escala herself. She’s broken fey law, and her father, the ruler of the Court of Dreams, must judge her and decide her fate. Lord Rowan is torn between duty and love, while his wife, Morvena, plots the destruction of the stepdaughter who stands in the way of her own daughter Audrey’s ascendance. Rowan manages to save Escala’s life, but she’s banished from the court and forced to take on the body of an elf. She’s also condemned to live on the material plane unless she’s able to “remove the boulders from the True Cycle”—but what these boulders actually are remains a mystery: “It’s part of my sentence…I don’t know what it means.” Meanwhile, Morvena still wants the crown for herself and her daughter. She forms an alliance with Victor Graves and plans to kill both Escala and Rowan; Victor’s son, Jonathan, was the man Escala kissed, and Escala’s mother, Teresa, rejected Victor long ago. Escala, meanwhile, forges ahead on her quest and soon meets Harper and Roedyn, who initially believe her to be an elf but agree to assist her. They soon face direwolves and dragons alongside newfound friends Sticky and the Bard Wigfrith, who narrates the story. Later, it becomes clear that only Escala stands a chance of saving the Court of Dreams.

James’ novel is a high fantasy fable that draws from epic-quest myths and fairy tales to tell a story of redemption, duty, and love. Escala proves to be a compelling protagonist—the child of the ruler of the Court of Dreams and a mortal woman who left the Court, for fear that her daughter would never be accepted if she remained. The story’s dramatic stakes are established quite early on, as is the theme of Escala’s quest to understand the nature of love. The framing of the story, in which the Bard Wigfrith retells the tale for patrons at a tavern, adds a layer of narrative complexity that ameliorates some of the storytelling’s more didactic elements. It would have been intriguing if Wigfrith’s character development had a bit more depth, which might have made readers question the reliability of his narration. As it stands, however, the narrative is well paced throughout and evocative of many classic fantasy tales. The threat that Escala faces is also typical of a great many myths, and although a bit more could have been done to add nuance to the villains’ motives and to the lessons that Escala learns, the narrative arc is satisfying overall. Escala’s true quest is to learn to love and, by doing so, to aid the people who are most important to her.

A classic quest narrative that lovers of fairy tales are likely to enjoy."

January 7, 2026

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/david-james-2/escalas-wish/

The author

David James

David James (DJ) is an attorney and lives in Northborough, Massachusetts, with his wife, Tonya, who has somehow endured thirty years of his endless parade of ridiculous character voices echoing through the house. Together, they’ve raised three wonderful children, now off conquering the world through college, law school, and Boston courtrooms.

When he’s not writing fantasy novels, designing campaigns, or crafting multi-page backstories, DJ records and publishes Christian hip-hop under the stage name “DJ the Not So Ordinary.” His music is available on all major streaming platforms.

DJ is the creator of his homebrew fantasy world Valla. He is already hard at work on his second novel set in Valla, because, apparently, sleep is optional when your imagination won’t shut up.

Click to read more reviews

The Veil as Mystery and Hidden Truth

Veils symbolize the unknown, the parts of life that are not yet revealed

Veils sit at the crossroads of mystery, protection, identity, and the boundary between worlds. Across cultures, they’re never just fabric; they’re thresholds. They hide, reveal, shield, transform, and mark the moments when a person steps from one state of being into another.

The Veil as a Boundary Between Worlds

Many traditions treat the veil as a membrane between the seen and unseen, a soft barrier that separates ordinary life from the sacred or the supernatural.

Veils often mark the line between physical and spiritual realms, symbolizing mystery, hidden truth, and the unknown. 

In religious symbolism, veils can represent the divide between humanity and the divine, like the temple veil separating the Holy of Holies in Judaism and Christianity. 

This is why lifting a veil in ritual, myth, or story often signals revelation, enlightenment, or crossing into forbidden knowledge.

The Veil as Protection

In many cultures, veils are worn not just to hide but to shield.

They’re believed to guard against negative energies, creating a sacred space around the wearer. 

Ritual veils can protect the soul during moments of spiritual vulnerability — initiations, funerals, weddings, trance states.

In folklore, a veiled figure is often someone who is between identities, and therefore in need of protection from wandering spirits or ill intention.

The Veil as Mystery and Hidden Truth

Veils obscure the face or form, inviting curiosity and caution.

They symbolize the unknown, the parts of life or self that are not yet revealed. 

In mythic storytelling, veils often hide gods, ghosts, brides, witches, or oracles, emphasizing their liminal nature.

To “lift the veil” becomes a metaphor for uncovering truth — or unleashing something powerful.

The Veil as Transformation

Across cultures, veils mark transitions, thresholds where identity shifts.

In Western weddings, the bridal veil symbolizes modesty, mystery, and the passage into a new life stage. 

In Hindu ceremonies, veils like the ghoonghat or dupatta signify respect, tradition, and familial bonds. 

In many rituals, veils are worn during initiations, representing the moment before rebirth or revelation.

A veiled figure is someone on the cusp of becoming.

The Veil as Identity, Modesty, and Power

Veils can signal belonging, status, or devotion.

In Islam, veils like the hijab symbolize faith, identity, and modesty, chosen as expressions of belief. 

In ancient Mesopotamia and Assyria, veils marked class and respectability, with strict rules about who could wear them. 

In modern contexts, veils can be reclaimed as statements of cultural pride and personal expression. 

The veil becomes a paradox: it hides, yet it declares.

The Veil in Folklore: Archetypes and Echoes

Across mythic traditions, veils appear in recurring motifs:

The veiled bride: innocence, danger, or a hidden identity.

The veiled oracle: truth too powerful to look at directly.

The veiled ghost: a soul not fully gone, still shrouded in the world.

The veiled goddess: mystery, fertility, or cosmic knowledge.

The veiled witch: protection from the gaze, or concealment of power.

In folklore, a veil is rarely just fabric. It’s a story device, a symbol of the liminal, the forbidden, the sacred, or the transformative.

https://www.authorerikamszabo.com

Why do Bad Things come in Threes?

 When three becomes ominous instead of sacred

Many cultures fear the number three because it sits at a crossroads: a number loaded with sacred power, balance, and cosmic completeness — which paradoxically makes it feel dangerous when that balance breaks. The fear isn’t universal, but the tension around three is.

Why three feels powerful, and therefore risky

Across civilizations, three is treated as a number of completion, divinity, and cosmic order.

That very power can make it feel volatile when invoked in the wrong context.

In many traditions, three represents a divine triad

The Christian Trinity, the Hindu Trimurti, the Egyptian Osiris–Isis–Horus triad. These structures frame three as a complete cycle of creation, preservation, and destruction. 

The Pythagoreans called three the first true number, symbolizing harmony and stability. 

Because it symbolizes wholeness, breaking or misusing the triad can feel like courting imbalance — a subtle root of superstition.

This duality, sacred and precarious, is the soil where fear grows.

Why “bad things come in threes”

The superstition that misfortune arrives in threes is widespread, even in modern Western culture.

It persists for three major reasons:

1. Pattern-seeking psychology

Humans are wired to find patterns, especially in chaos. When two bad events happen, the mind expects a third to complete the pattern. 

2. Folkloric storytelling structure

Stories across cultures rely on triads — three trials, three wishes, three warnings.

This narrative rhythm conditions people to expect events in sets of three. 

3. Historical superstition

One theory traces a specific fear — “three on a match” — to wartime, where lighting three cigarettes from one match supposedly gave snipers enough time to aim.   

Even if apocryphal, it reinforced the idea that the third action is the dangerous one.

When three becomes ominous instead of sacred

In many cultures, three is revered, but reverence can flip into taboo when:

A triad is broken (two without the third feels incomplete or unlucky).

Three marks a threshold: the third knock, the third omen, the third death.

Three symbolizes cycles, and cycles can include endings, not just beginnings.

This is why some traditions treat the third repetition of an action as magically charged, either protective or perilous.

Three often marks the moment when something shifts:

The first event is coincidence.

The second is pattern.

The third is fate.

That sense of fate, of crossing from randomness into meaning, is what many cultures fear.

Three is the moment the universe seems to speak.

Author of fiction and children's books

Erika M Szabo

https://www.authorerikamszabo.com

Life Moves in Circles

 Why Spirals Appear in Every Culture

Spirals are one of humanity’s oldest symbols. 

Long before writing, people carved them into stone, painted them on pottery, wove them into clothing, and traced them into the earth. They show up in Hopi, Celtic, Māori, Norse, African, Greek, and Hungarian traditions, cultures separated by oceans, mountains, and centuries.

So why this shape? Why everywhere?

Because the Universe Is Built from Spirals. Ancient people didn’t need telescopes to notice the pattern. Snail shells, fern leaves unfurling, tornadoes, water swirling down a drain, the Milky Way. The spiral is nature’s signature, a quiet reminder that the small and the cosmic mirror each other.

Life Moves in Circles, Not Lines.

Many cultures saw the spiral as the map of a human life: Inward means memory, ancestry, the self. Outward means growth, destiny, transformation. It’s the shape of becoming, always returning, always expanding. Spirals appear in every culture because humans kept noticing the same thing: The universe is always turning, and we are turning with it.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star-the story behind the rhyme

Where the rhyme actually comes from 

The famous opening lines began not as a nursery rhyme at all, but as a poem titled “The Star” written by English poet Jane Taylor and published in Rhymes for the Nursery in 1806. 

Taylor’s poem originally had five stanzas, though only the first became universally known. It wasn’t written for children specifically, more a gentle, reflective meditation on light, night, and wonder.

The melody is even older

The tune we all know wasn’t created for the poem. It comes from a French melody called “Ah! vous dirai‑je, maman”, first published in 1761. 

This melody became wildly popular across Europe. Mozart later wrote a set of piano variations on it in the early 1780s, which is why many people mistakenly think he composed the tune. In reality, the composer of the original melody is unknown. 

How the poem and melody merged

The earliest known publication pairing Taylor’s poem with the French tune appeared in 1838, decades after the poem was written. 

Once the two were combined, the song spread quickly through English‑speaking households and became a bedtime staple.

Cultural echoes and adaptations

The opening lines have been referenced and parodied for over two centuries. For example:

Lewis Carroll twisted the rhyme in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland through the Mad Hatter.

Other writers and composers have created their own playful or poetic variations. 

Its simplicity and cosmic imagery made it a natural fit for both lullabies and literary reinterpretations.

Why it endures

“Twinkle, Twinkle” survives because it sits at the crossroads of:

Childlike wonder

Celestial imagery

A hauntingly simple melody

A poetic structure that feels timeless

It’s one of those rare pieces where poem and tune fuse so perfectly that it feels like they were always meant to belong together.

Author Erika M Szabo

www.authorerikamszabo.com

Love Is

 Valentine Snowdrop

On the morning of February 14th, the first hint of spring crept into the little town of Briar Hollow. Icicles dripped from slate-gray eaves, and the snow blanketing the Victorian rooftops had thinned to lacy patches. The air carried that peculiar softness, a mingling of melting frost and earthy smell of the soil that whispered of crocuses and the renewing of life.

Mara, the town's librarian with her copper-red hair twisted into a loose bun, locked the heavy oak door of the century-old library. A crimson envelope lay on the welcome mat. No postmark, no name. When she broke the seal, a pressed snowdrop fluttered into her palm.

The note inside, written in a slanted hand she recognized instantly, read: "Meet me where the river bends. ~A friend who remembers."

Mara drew a sharp breath. The river bend, that secluded crescent where the Briar Creek widened and slowed, where a crooked birch tree with bark like peeling parchment had been her teenage sanctuary. It was where she'd shared thermoses of cocoa laced with cinnamon with Rowan Blackwood, before he'd vanished from her life. She hadn't allowed herself to dwell on that boy with the dark eyes and ink-stained fingers in years, or rather, she had, but only in those twilight moments between wakefulness and dreams.

She hesitated by the door for a heartbeat, then began walking with quickened steps, the envelope clutched against her woolen.

When she rounded the final bend in the path, she saw him. A tall figure beneath the same crooked birch, whose branches were now etched with delicate frost. A man with shoulders broader than she remembered, but with the same familiar tilt to his head that had once made her sixteen-year-old heart stutter. In his gloved hands, he held a small bouquet of fresh snowdrops, their stems wrapped in twine.

"Rowan?" The name escaped her lips in a cloud of visible breath.

He nodded, suddenly boyish despite the faint lines around his eyes. "I moved back last month," he said, his voice deeper than in her memories. "I kept trying to find the right moment to see you. Then I remembered this place, how it was always ours somehow."

Mara stepped closer, her boots crunching on the half-frozen ground. The river whispered beside them, dark water sliding beneath a thin crust of melting ice. "You remembered the snowdrops," she said, touching the velvety petals. "You once told me they were the color of hope."

And as they walked back toward town, side by side but not quite touching, the February snow retreated in earnest beneath the strengthening sun, revealing small patches of determined green as if the world itself, after the longest winter, was finally ready to bloom again.

Author Erika M Szabo

"Love is" quotes by author friends:

"Love is...an emotion

A bond, unbreakable

A strength that holds together

Even when you're falling apart

A knot that binds the heart

Sometimes it hurts

But it doesn't dissolve

It's containment

Without a container"

"Love is remembering to love yourself AS WELL as others"

"Love is not an accident or a passing spell—it is a choice, remade each day, in every moment, no matter the form or the relationship that says, 'I am giving part of myself to you because I can’t NOT"

The story behind Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary

 Bloody Mary

Mary, Mary, quite contrary

How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockleshells

And pretty maids all in a row.

The darkness is very real, though also wrapped in centuries of folklore and political propaganda.

According to one widely circulated interpretation, the rhyme is a veiled commentary on the violent reign of Queen Mary I of England, better known as Bloody Mary. The rhyme ties each innocent‑sounding garden image to tools of torture or execution used during her persecution of Protestants.

Mary, Mary, quite contrary

“Contrary” refers to Mary’s refusal to accept the Protestant reforms established by her father, Henry VIII. When she took the throne, she violently attempted to reverse the English Reformation and restore Catholicism.

How does your garden grow?

The “garden” is interpreted as a graveyard, filled with the bodies of Protestant martyrs executed under her rule. During her five‑year reign, hundreds were burned at the stake.

With silver bells and cockleshells

Silver bells are believed to refer to thumbscrews, a torture device used to crush fingers.

Cockleshells are thought to be genital torture clamps used on male prisoners.

These interpretations come from sources that frame the rhyme as a catalogue of torture instruments associated with Mary’s regime.

And pretty maids all in a row

Two major theories circulate:

Execution victims lined up for hanging or burning.

Or, more symbolically, the “maids” may refer to the Maiden, an early form of guillotine used in Scotland and sometimes associated with English executions.

Are these interpretations historically proven?

Not definitively.

Nursery rhymes often accumulate folklore explanations long after their creation, and scholars debate how literal these connections are. But the association with Bloody Mary is one of the most persistent and widely repeated.

What’s undeniable is that the rhyme’s imagery—bells, shells, maids—maps neatly onto the tools and consequences of Mary’s brutal campaign against Protestants. Whether intentional or retrofitted, the symbolism resonates.

Click below to find me:

What is the Worth of Her Painting?

 Is it really worthless?

Listen to a chapter

EBOOK & AUDIOBOOK

Cozy small-town mystery

When Danielle finally quits her boring accountant job and opens an Antiques & Stuff store, her life changes for the better. But soon, her happy life starts to spin out of control when the snobbish new owner of the Couture mansion brings a seemingly worthless painting into her shop. The ownership of the painting is questionable, and the town’s future is threatened by the plans of the ruthless, rich owner who wants to build a leather factory on the estate, too close to town.

An unexpected visitor arrives, and he may possess the much-needed solution to everyone’s problems in this quaint little town.

An art expert's lie

To arrogant socialite

Help worthless painting

Make past wrongs right

When actual value

Is brought to light

~Cindy J. Smith

Will She Listen?

 Supernatural suspense

EBOOK & AUDIOBOOK

Lauren has everything she’d ever wished for. Great career, financial security, loving husband, and devoted friends.

When her Raven spirit guide warns her of impending danger, she takes the message seriously, but she doesn’t have enough time to perform the protection spell her grandmother taught her. Someone breaks into her office, and after the brutal attack and the Raven’s repeated warnings, she knows her life is still in danger.

Who wants her dead and why?

“This book contains no AI-generated writing, crafted entirely by a human author.”

Listen to the audiobook sample

EBOOK & AUDIOBOOK