Today is part two of two where we are talking to Melinda Kucsera about her novels. After today you will have heard about making up stories for her siblings, when characters take over your books, winging it to get your first book out there, book promotion struggles, what to do when unexpected storylines pop-up, and her favorite advice to not look at everyone around you as competition.

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Melinda Kucsera writes fantastic short stories, novels, and books when not being kidnapped by dragons or chased by armies of fictional creatures. (We do, on occasion, rescue her.) She leaves the running of her newsletter to a cast of lovable characters who hog her inbox.

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Welcome to Freya's fairy tales.

We believe fairy tales are both stories we enjoyed as children and something that we can achieve ourselves.

Each week, we will talk to authors about their favorite fairy tales when they were kids and their adventure to holding their very own fairy tale in their hands.

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Today is part two of two, where we are talking to Melinda Kusera about her novels.

After today, you will have heard about making up stories for her siblings when characters take over your books, winging it to get your first book out there, book promotion struggles, what to do when unexpected storylines pop up, and her favorite advice?

To not look at everyone around you as competition.

Robin of Larkspur trilogy when her daughter disappears without a trace, Robin embarks on a perilous quest to find her that tests her courage and determination.

In Robin of Larkspur books, one to three, join Robin on three thrilling adventures and risk it all to find her daughter.

In Hunter's Night, Robin treks through a treacherous winter wonderland filled with wolves, shapeshifters, and sentient trees to seek help from the rangers of Mount Eridren.

En route, she discovers a strange power.

That might help her if she could.

Figure out how to keep it from imprisoning her.

In Rogue night, Robin discovers the Rangers have a deadly secret they will kill to protect.

Robin must face a powerful golem and win the help of the mage bound to it.

But the new magic she found complicates things, and that help may cost more than she can pay.

In Rogue Ranger, Robin treks back into the enchanted forest with a powerful mage and his enigmatic companion as her guide and trackers.

One of her allies is not who they seem.

Encounters with shapeshifters, fallen gods, overzealous guardians, and strange magic spells threaten to turn the trio against each other.

Will their alliance last long enough for Robin to find her daughter?

So you did not have the money for an editor, so you just put it up like however edited you could get it yourself?

Yes, I had some family and friends read it, and I got some good feedback from them because they had never read fantasy books in their lives.

I write books where there's a lot of magic and some of they didn't understand.

So that was great.

I was able to go back and realize, like, okay, in my head it was one thing, but what we put on paper is not what was exactly something that anybody outside of my head would understand.

Let me fix this.

So sometimes it's great to get someone who doesn't read in your genre to read something, especially in that instance where it's like, I'm not writing about the modern world.

If I'm not clear, you're not going to know what I'm talking about.

But it was the first book that I finished and put out there, which was written in prose.

I just want to emphasize that it was not written in merch.

It had the saggy middle problem because I said it before.

I outline, but the characters don't follow the outlines.

Right now, I've gotten really good at getting the structure there, even if they don't follow the outline.

So it, like, what started strong and then kind of, like, went.

It got kind of, like, muddy in the middle, and I didn't realize.

So I put the original version out.

I actually sold a lot better than I thought it would.

And I think that's because I wrote my favorite story.

I wrote the chosen one with my twist on it.

He doesn't know he's chosen, and he's that hero with the heart of gold.

But he can't leave.

He can't leave his family and go away.

If he leaves, his son will die.

So he's got to stay with his family.

And so the problems have to come.

So the monsters and all the bad things have to come to him, and he has to stop, well, keeping his little boy alive.

And this little boy wants to be his sidekick.

So there's this fun family dynamic in there because his son is really little and it has decided that he is his sidekick.

So there's that fun dynamic in there that he's all trying to keep the kids safe.

And the kid's like, no, I want to come on adventure with you.

You can't.

But who's going to watch your little boy when there's no childcare into epic fantasy world, right?

So he's like, okay, I need to save a city, but I need to find a babysitter first.

Yeah, it's the same in mine.

So my story has, like, a prison world.

That's the fantasy.

So half of mine takes place in our world, and half takes place in this prison world.

And so for the half in the prison world, it's like the world got started several hundred years ago, or thousands.

I don't remember when the actual start of it is.

And so it's like, very primitive.

So all the weapons are like bow and arrow and swords and stuff like that.

And all the, they're using chamber pots and wash stands instead of having, like, an outhouse.

Even book one goes back and forth and back and forth.

And I'm working on the first novella now, and that one takes place entirely in the prison world.

And so I keep having to remember they don't have a phone to text each other, so we have to magically make letters appear back and forth or something.

Oh, I mean, there's certain characters.

He has a brother, and his brother's always like, where is Sarn?

What is he doing?

Where is my nephew?

He has no way to find out.

He just has to go look for that.

Last I knew, they were heading to the.

So you put this second book out there at this time.

What were you doing?

You had your blog.

Were you still using your blog to do?

Was that the only thing you were using to help get your word about your book out there?

Were you using other methods to get your book out or knowledge of your book out to people?

My blog was, like the primary thing.

It went from zero to over 20,000 hits in six months when I started in 2015.

Okay, so when I started publishing in 2016, I still had quite a lot of, and I still have no idea where a lot of that came from.

The traffic, it just showed up.

There's this one post that has a ridiculous amount of views.

There was this.

WordPress had done this.

I don't even know if it was WordPress.

It was some kind of like, walkathon thing where they were trying to raise money.

And I work full time, and I also do a lot of commuting for the job.

So I'm often writing on my phone.

So I was like, okay, I'll do this, and I'm wandering around.

I don't currently have enough money to buy an audiobook to listen to.

I don't just hit the little microphone button on my phone and let's do some writing.

So I did, and I happened to post about it and what I wrote, and it just blew up.

Hey, that is luck.

And that is a huge way that I've talked to several authors that talk about, you can do all the promotion, you can pay for all the ads on all the places and post all the social media posts in all the places.

And a large part of it, it comes down to algorithm and luck.

My podcast episode, the most popular one, I am ranting about my characters because they won't follow the outline and I don't know what it is that they want to do in this book, and they won't tell me.

So I'm ranting for 20 minutes about this.

It is, like, ridiculously popular on Spotify, and I don't understand.

I'm glad.

But my badly behaving characters are very entertaining, apparently.

Hey, you got to take what you can get.

I mean, at this point.

And by the time this episode airs, my book will have been out for a few months.

But as I'm going through.

Do what?

When will this air, just out of curiosity?

It'll be late January.

Oh, my next trilogy might be out or very close to being okay.

And that's the one I was ranting about.

In that episode, there was an outline, there was a plan.

They put it into the fire and then took that oven that they put it in and set it on fire and sent that into the sun.

Yeah, I can't even describe the madness.

This will be late January, so my book will have been out for a few months.

But I knew, like, one I knew, and we already talked about this, that I was going to self publish this book.

I also knew that I wanted to have as big of an arc team as I could get because I know that my videos usually only get like 250 to 300 views if I'm lucky.

And so I knew if I'm only getting 250 views, and I've seen a bunch of other creators talk about only getting 250 views, I'm like, well, that's me if I'm getting 250.

But I bring on a team of 100 other people who get another 250 apiece.

That's a way bigger net for my book to be out there than if it's just me posting by myself.

I've never done the whole arc.

I mean, the only time I ever did the arc thing was through, what is this book?

Sirens.

But for multi author anthologies that I was a part of because it was in the contract requirement.

Right.

The reviews on there varied.

A lot of them were like, I don't usually read this genre.

And I'm like, okay, then why'd you take the arc?

So I was about halfway done with my book, and I knew that I needed to start getting beta readers lined up.

And so like a month or two before it was ready for beta readers.

I started posting on my TikTok saying like, hey, looking for beta readers.

And I just had one application because I work a full time job, I narrate full time, I podcast and I write books.

So I was like, I don't have the time to weed through three different applications for beta team and Arc team and street team.

So I just had it all on one application and then I had checkboxes for pick what team you want to be on.

And so I had a lot of people sign up that way to be beta readers and a lot of my beta readers, actually, I think pretty much all of my beta readers also wanted to arc read it once it was cleaned up and polished and edited and all that.

And then I brought on someone who helps promote authors and has a big list of people that arc read as well and they've been vetted and stuff like this.

And so I paid this person to help me build my team and got an additional 100 readers from that.

So I ended up with a big team of people.

Where did you find the person?

I keep hearing authors talking about the art creators and I'm like, I've never done this and maybe this is something I should do.

I will probably pay the lady a couple more times for a couple more books.

But then once you're out there and so many people know about you, I just saw an author posted about I need arc readers and within an hour had already over 100 people had signed up to Arc read.

So once people kind of know about your books, you don't necessarily have to pay someone to help you.

But I was like, I'm a debut.

So I got, because I had been in the book space for so long as a narrator, I had more of a following already for narrating.

So I would post stuff on my narrating page that had over 2000 followers being like, hey, I'm doing this thing now.

And I would kind of talk about it on both the narrator page and I made an author page as well.

And so it was just like because people already knew me, I feel like I was able to get some a little bit easier.

When I've seen authors that have done really well, it's authors typically that are posting tips and tricks and what they do.

And like you're saying your frustrations with your characters, authors that post like that kind of stuff usually get bigger followings faster because you're posting your struggles and your wins and all of that.

I tried that.

Those videos got like ten views.

I'm not photogenic.

I've noticed that the people who do get the views they're complaining about that tend to be really pretty people.

I'm not one of those people like my videos that do well.

I'm not on the screen at all.

It's just the book.

Yeah.

I feel like it's so weird that mine.

I've always treated TikTok as more of like a vlog situation.

Like what you'd post if you were doing like a YouTube vlog or whatever.

That's how I've always kind of treated mine.

But I do notice some days I'm just frustrated with whatever, and people will be like, thanks for sharing this, because I'm having the same struggle, or whatever.

I've seen authors that if they just do say they started out as like a tips and tricks, and then they decide to go to more like, what you do with the page stuff, and then those videos will do terrible for them, so they'll make another account to do strictly just those kind of videos on that.

I don't know.

I don't want to have multiple accounts, though.

I just want to have the one account that is me and the videos of my face, me talking, that you have done wildly.

The best is me.

Like, I'm huge Lord of the Rings Tolkien nerd, and I've gone back and forth with some of the Tolkien community on the app.

I love so many of them.

I'm in their comments all the time, and sometimes the videos where I'll do at them or comment on something or when it was talking about the rings of power, because I haven't read everything that Christopher Torkain has written from his father's notes and things.

But I'm a big nerd.

I love that stuff.

But then if you read my cursebreaker, enchanted, the Cursebreaker series, like, it's very lord of the.

They can't.

Mordor has to come to them because he can't leave.

But, hey, I feel like that's how every book starts, though.

It's a song or a movie or something happens in your real life or another book, and you go, well, what would happen if.

And then that is where your book comes from.

Yeah, well, it didn't really come from what if Lord of the Rings.

It was like an amalgamation of many books and the chosen one trope, which I read a lot of.

But I did fix the saggy middle problem.

If you buy a copy of it, it's free.

The ebook.

If you get the ebook today or the paperback, it's not saggy in the middle.

It was only sagging because the first book should have been split into two books.

But at the time that I was writing this and grieving for my sister, I didn't realize that I had put two books together.

And it's when I was doing the third version and going through it that I realized that the first story there is an end.

There's a Danumont.

There's the whole, like, I forgot what that part afterwards is called.

After the Danumont.

You're using fancy words that I don't know.

So not helpful.

It ends.

It very clearly ends.

And then on the next page, the next book begins.

And I totally, for years did not see it.

And then once I split them, and I just made it part one and part two, and I put a note in the beginning why this is now different, if you were getting this.

Because, I don't know, just in case it updated on people's.

The old version with the shaggy, that's an old version that I took down because I redid it multiple times.

The book.

The latest version is.

Yeah, there's no saggy middle.

It's two complete books.

One is like 80 something thousand words, and the other one is like six.

Yeah, they're both about 80 something thousand words.

There's two complete books in there.

I just didn't realize it.

Hey, as long as you realize it at some point.

Yeah.

So I just didn't want people to think that it's still like, that it's not.

It's two complete books, but they're just so closely related.

I didn't want to let.

I was like, even though it's a giant book, I'm going to just keep them together because it's too closely related, I think, to break them up.

So what is coming next?

You said you have a series about to come out in January or the series or February.

The end of the series.

Oh, no.

This is a brand new trilogy.

It was not supposed to exist.

This was not on the plan.

I'm trying to finish out some of the other series that I have and the characters did something so wacky, so out there that had nothing to do with the outline.

I should be used to this by now.

I should just stop out.

It was so crazy that a character came from the future and was like, yeah, I had these people kidnap myself as a baby and I'm like, really?

That's the whole reason that your mother has been looking for you for three books.

Why would you do this?

That revelation came out in the fourth book, which I was trying to finish this year.

So the girl from the future, she's like, well, I'll tell you, but you need to write a standalone book for me and I will tell you my story.

And I'm like, okay, we'll do a standalone.

I've done that before.

I don't reckon if characters do something that's crazy.

I have a Patreon and I post four chapters a week and whatever the characters do, they go off and do something wild.

That's off the thing.

That's what gets posted.

And once it's posted on Patreon, I cannot change it.

That's my rule.

So I had to post this nonsense and then the character is like, well, if you do a standalone story for me, I will tell you why I did this.

And I'm like, okay, we can do this.

We can do a standalone thing to understand the madness that you were bringing to this other book that wasn't supposed to be here.

The whole point of the Robin Larks per series is supposed to be mother has no magic, her daughter gets kidnapped by magical creatures, and she, a regular normal human being who does not have magic, living in this magic world, in this enchanted forest, needs to find her daughter.

How do you do that?

Just exploring.

How does a non magical person deal with a magical problem?

And then it just went way off.

Apparently there wasn't enough magic in this series, so the characters decided we need to turn that dial to 200.

Oh, gosh.

I was like, okay, I'll write this down thing.

I put the note in the Patreon.

I let my patrons know that I'm going to do this.

We're going to stop working on book four and we're going to do this.

They were cool with it.

They want to know what the heck is going on.

So post.

So I started exploring that and this girl was like, well, it doesn't start with me.

And I'm like, how does it not start with you?

The whole reason I'm doing this is to understand why you had these people kidnap yourself as a baby.

That's all I want to know.

Well, no, it didn't start with me because somebody had to get the summoning Spell.

Like, where did I get that from?

I'm like, okay, so then now we're in h*** and there's this ex God of war and this person who claims she's an angel who's apparently asleep somewhere and needs him to wake her up.

Very sketchy.

I was like, where's going on here?

She's telling him he needs to break into this fortress like library that's somewhere else in h***, and steal this book of names.

And I'm like, wait, we're supposed to be here for a summoning spell?

And she's like, we'll get to that.

Okay, all right, I'm interested in the heist.

This is interesting.

Let's do that.

So we follow him for a bunch of chapters.

He does the heist thing.

Another God shows up, and just as he finds the summoning spell, I'm like, okay, he's found the summoning spell.

Clearly, this is going to be important.

This other God comes in, steals it from him.

Okay.

I was like, all right, now I see where kind of where things are going.

No, that was just book one.

And there was way more nonsense in there.

Not nonsense, just wild.

So anyways, what ended up happening?

I got mad at them, and I was like, you know what?

I'm going to go back and write book ten of my heart series, the Curse Breaker series, so we could find out what happens after book nine, which in book nine started.

Finally, people found out about his son.

He was keeping his son a secret because he was afraid he would lose him, because in that he's indentured because he has no money or anything.

And as an indentured person, you can't own anything because you have no money.

You're not getting paid because you're paying back your debts.

So how can you own anything if you can't support it, right?

So he has this little boy that he is taking care of, and people, his little boy, decides that he and his little friend are going to go find the baby dragon that was discovered in book six because nobody is talking about it.

And they want to know what happened to this baby dragon.

Where is this baby dragon?

Is the baby dragon okay?

Where's the mama dragon?

They have questions, they want answers.

They decide the way to get it is to sneak out instead of getting adults to come with them because that wouldn't be fun.

And go figure out what's going on.

It's not an adventure if a grown up comes along, right?

He runs into some of his father's enemies, and obviously they take him captive.

And then the little boy is like, okay, now I'm in big trouble.

We have to get out of this.

So he tries to blackmail his guardian angel to get him out of there because he doesn't want to be in trouble.

Eventually, he does get saved.

Nothing happens to him.

We don't harm children in the book.

We find all sorts of magical, fun ways to keep him safe.

Okay, even when he doesn't want to be safe.

That all happened and the father got hurt badly and all this, it was a crazy situation.

I'm not going to go into, you can recurse bigger reveal.

It was a crazy.

So you finished book ten and now you've gone back to write this trilogy.

I was trying to write book ten and this weird crystal shows up and I'm like, yo, we did the whole crystal thing.

We're not doing the crystal thing again.

They're like, no, this is different.

And then at the end of this whole crystal thing, this is why I had to end book ten on an absolute cliff because right after that, so the girl from book four of the grabbing of Blarksburg series, the grown up daughter from the future and her boyfriend were there.

The boyfriend is now in book ten of it was going to be in book ten of the Cursebreaker series.

And he's like, well, he's accusing my favorite character, sarin, of killing his girlfriend.

I'm like whoa.

So I had to cut that book off before that because I'm like, and he's like well, I'll tell you.

But this rogue God saying that you're going to make a standalone, you now have to make a trilogy.

And I'm like so yeah, that is the madness that I am dealing with.

A triple crossover that was never supposed to exist, that has resulted in this insane crossover.

The book one is completely written.

Book two of the crossover is probably going to finish.

I'm trying to finish it before thanksgiving and then I have to write book three and then these people do.

Don't get any more books.

No, I'm going back to my other books.

No more time travel.

No, this is it.

This is the only time that's happening.

It's insanity.

I'm not even explaining what it's about properly because I'm so mad how this came about.

I'm sure it's confusing everybody who's listening, but this is literally how it happens.

Welcome to my world.

I'm still trying to make sense out.

Of it so I like to finish off with what is the best piece of advice you've ever gotten and the worst piece of advice you've ever gotten and answer in whichever order you want to.

Let's see.

The best piece of advice is not to look at everyone around you as competition because if you do, then you're never going to be satisfied.

You have to define what success is for yourself.

Everybody's going to define it differently and that's why you can't look at other people as competition, because they may be defining success, like, radically different from what you are, and their goals may be different, and what they're doing may be radically different.

And that's okay, because they're trying to get somewhere that is not where you're trying to go.

That would be, like, the best piece of advice I've ever gotten.

Because if you look at everyone as competition, you will be miserable.

You'll be constantly comparing yourself.

But I think it's like the saying is, like, comparison is the thief of joy.

I think.

Yes.

So kind of like that.

But if you just focus on what you're like, look at what other people are doing, like, okay, that's interesting.

How are they doing?

Is there anything that they're doing that I can learn from or take from that?

And if you phrase it that way, sometimes what they're doing, there really isn't anything because it's totally different genre, or they're super into some app you've never heard of and you're not going to go into.

There's a lot of authors who are not on TikTok or doing TikTok.

So comparing yourself to someone who is on TikTok or getting jealous of them, that doesn't make sense because you don't want to go there and do that.

You're doing something different.

Right.

You can't really compare yourself to them.

So that was the best.

The worst has got to be.

Every single product that is targeted towards an author promises that if you do this thing, buy this thing, try this thing, you too will be a six figure author or whatever the thing is, every single one of those is wrong and lying to you because there's a lot of luck involved in this.

And I've seen it.

I've seen so many examples where people were doing the same things that I am doing, but they had one little piece of luck that I didn't get, and that shot them into a whole other thing.

I guess the worst piece of advice out there is that there's a silver bullet.

There's not.

There's not one way, one book, one class, one course that is going to take you from where you are to a full time author making six figures.

That does not exist.

There's a ton of luck involved.

There was an author near me that was doing a signing at Barnes and Noble, and he's doing his signing, and I don't think anybody was at his table.

This TikToker comes in that has, like, a ridiculous following and starts asking him about his book.

While he's filming it for TikTok.

And the guy blows up overnight because some random guy happened to know was walking through the Barnes and Noble to get into the mall that was attached to it, stops this guy's table, asks him some questions, blows up his book on TikTok, and then the guy had a bunch of news stories done about him and all this stuff, and I'm just like, that's not going to happen every day, right?

And you don't know how long that is going to last.

That's a wave.

It's lifting you up, but you don't know how long that wave is going to hold you up before it crashes down, because it's only because of that piece of luck that you have reached that height, and you don't know if that's going to continue because you don't know what to do to make it continue.

The people who consistently have the six figures and the thing, they have spent years building their own internal systems to get to that height and to sustain it.

The rest of us, we hit that and we're one and done because we don't know how to sustain it.

Right.

Unless we get lucky or you look.

Around and you go, how did that happen?

I don't know what happened.

I'm pretty sure that if I were ever to get to that point, it would have to be sheer luck.

I also write a ton of books, and every book is another shot.

Yes.

See?

And I write very slow because of everything I say.

I write very slow.

My husband is dyslexic and writes slower than me because he has extra challenges that I don't have to deal with.

But I write, and I have limited time that I can do it because of everything else that I do.

So I'm like, I would never commit to, oh, I'll have.

I see these authors that are like, oh, I'm going to have ten books out next year.

And I'm like, I might have two or three, and most of those are going to be novellas, but I'm not promising that to anybody.

I'm like, I'll put out a book when it's ready.

Yeah, no, definitely.

It's better to under promise and over deliver because that's always a better thing.

But, yeah, I've also been publishing since 2016, so that's why I have so many books.

I don't write a ton of books per year because I work full time and everything, but I can write a couple of thousand words in an hour or two.

If I sit there and the characters want me to tell their story.

I don't always like what they're telling me, or I don't always like the direction that it's going in.

But yeah, thank you for coming on today.

Have a good rest of your Saturday.

Bye bye.

Melinda liked Aladdin as she got older because that story is so long we cannot fit it on the podcast.

So today we'll be reading the old house by Hans Christian Anderson.

The old house in the street up there was an old a very old house.

It was almost 300 years old, for that might be known by reading the great beam on which the date of the year was carved together with tulips and hot vines.

There were whole verses spelled out as in former times, and over every window was a distorted face cut out in the beam.

The one story stood forward a great way over the other, and directly under the eaves was a leaden spout with a dragon's head.

The rainwater should have run out of the mouth, but it ran out of the belly, for there was a hole in the spout.

All the other houses in the street were so new and so neat, with large window panes and smooth walls, one could easily see that they would have nothing to do with the old house.

They certainly thought, how long is that old decayed thing to stand here as a spectacle in the street?

And then the projecting window stands so far out that no one can see from our windows what happens in that direction.

The steps are as broad as those of a palace, and as high as to a church tower.

The iron railings look just like the door to an old family vault.

And then they have brass tops.

That's so stupid.

On the other side of the street were also new and neat houses, and they thought just as the others did.

But at the window opposite the old house, there sat a little boy with fresh rosy cheeks and bright beaming eyes.

He certainly liked the old house best, and that both in sunshine and moonshine.

And when he looked across at the wall where the mortar had fallen out, he could sit and find out there the strangest figures imaginable, exactly as the street had appeared before, with steps, projecting windows, and pointed gables.

He could see soldiers with halbirds and spouts where the water ran like dragons and serpents.

That was a house to look at.

And there lived an old man who wore plush breeches, and he had a coat with large brass buttons and a wig that one could see was a real wig.

Every morning there came an old fellow to him who put his rooms in order and went on errands otherwise, the old man in the plush breeches was quite alone in the old house now.

And then he came to the window and looked out, and the little boy nodded to him, and the old man nodded again.

And so they became acquaintances, and they were friends, although they had never spoken to each other, but that made no difference.

The little boy heard his parents say, the old man opposite is very well off, but he is so very, very lonely.

The Sunday following, the little boy took something and wrapped it up in a piece of paper, went downstairs and stood in the doorway.

And when the man who went on errands came past, he said to him, I say, master, will you give this to the old man over the way from me?

I have two pewter soldiers.

This is one of them, and he shall have it, for I know he is so very, very lonely.

And the old errand man looked quite pleased, nodded, and took the pewter soldier over to the old house.

Afterwards there came a message.

It was to ask if the little boy himself had not a wish to come over and pay a visit.

And so he got permission of his parents, and then went over to the old house.

And the brass balls on the iron railings shone much brighter than ever.

One would have thought they were polished on account of the visit.

And it was as if the carved out trumpeters, for there were trumpeters who stood in tulips carved out on the door, blue with all their might.

Their cheeks appeared so much rounder than before.

Yes, they blew Tirada, the little boy comes trey terada.

And the door opened.

The whole passage was hung with portraits of knights in armor and ladies in silken gowns, and the armor rattled and the silken gowns rustled.

And then there was a flight of stairs, which went a good way upwards and a little way downwards, and then one came on a balcony, which was in a very dilapidated state, sure enough, with large holes and long crevices, but grass grew there, and leaves out of them altogether, for the whole balcony outside the yard and the walls were overgrown with so much green stuff that it looked like a garden.

Only a balcony.

Here stood old flower pots with faces and a**** ears, and the flowers grew just as they liked.

One of the pots was quite overrun on all sides with pinks, that is to say, with the green part.

Shoot.

Stood by shoot.

And it is said quite distinctly, the air has cherished me, the sun has kissed me, and promised me a little flower on Sunday.

A little flower on Sunday.

And then they entered a chamber where the walls were covered with hog's leather, and printed with gold flowers.

The gilding decays.

But hog's leather stays, said the walls.

And there stood easy chairs with such high backs and so carved out, and with arms on both sides.

Sit down, sit down, said they.

How I creak.

Now I shall certainly get the gout like the old clothes press.

Ugh.

And then little boy came into the room where the projecting windows were and where the old man sat.

I thank you for the pewter, soldier, my little friend, said the old man.

And I thank you because you come over to me.

Thanky.

Thanky.

Or cranky?

Cranky sounded from all the furniture.

There was so much of it that each article stood in the other's way to get a look at the little boy.

In the metal of the wall hung a picture representing a beautiful lady, so young, so glad, but dressed quite as in former times, with clothes that stood quite stiff and with powder in her hair.

She neither said thanky, thanky, nor cranky, cranky, but looked with her mild eyes at the little boy, who directly asked the old man, where did you get her?

Yonder at the brokers, said the old man.

Where there are so many pictures hanging.

No one knows or cares about them, for they are all of them buried.

But I knew her in bygone days, and now she has been dead and gone these 50 years.

Under the picture, in a glazed frame, there hung a bouquet of withered flowers.

They were almost 50 years old.

They looked so very old.

The pendulum of the great clock went to and fro, and hands turned, and everything in the room became still older.

But they did not observe it.

They say at home, said the little boy, that you are so very, very lonely.

Oh, said he, the old thoughts with what they may bring with them.

Come and visit me.

And now you also come.

I am very well off.

Then he took a book with pictures in it.

Down from the shelf there were whole long processions and pageants.

With the strangest characters, which one never sees nowadays.

Soldiers like the nave of clubs, and citizens with waving flags.

The tailors had theirs with a pair of shears held by two lions.

And the shoemakers, theirs without boots, but with an eagle that had two heads.

For the shoemakers must have everything so that they can say it is a pair.

Yes, that was a picture book.

The old man now went into the other room to fetch preserves, apples and nuts.

Yes, it was delightful over there in the old house.

I cannot bear it any longer, said the pewter soldier who sat on the drawers.

It is so lonely and melancholy here.

But when one has been in a family circle.

One cannot accustom oneself to this life.

I cannot bear it any longer.

The whole day is so long, and the evenings are still longer here.

It is not at all as it is over the way at your house where your father and mother spoke so pleasantly.

And where you and all your sweet children made such a delightful noise.

Nay, how lonely the old man is.

Do you think that he gets kisses?

Do you think he gets mild eyes?

Or Christmas tree?

He will get nothing but a grave.

I can bear it no longer.

You must not let it grieve you so much, said the little boy.

I find it so very delightful here.

And then all the old thoughts with what they may bring with them they come and visit here.

Yes, it is all very well, but I see nothing of them and I don't know them, said the pewter soldier.

I cannot bear it.

But you must, said the little boy.

Then in came the old man, with the most pleased and happy face.

The most delicious preserves, apples and nuts.

And so the little boy thought no more about the pewter soldier.

The little boy returned home happy and pleased.

And weeks and days passed away, and nods were made to the old house.

And from the old house.

And then the little boy went over there again.

The carved trumpeters blew.

Traterada.

There is the little boy.

Traterada.

And the swords and armor on the knight's portraits rattled.

And the silk gowns rustled.

The hog's leather spoke.

And the old chairs had the gout in their legs and rheumatism in their backs.

It was exactly like the first time.

For over there, one day an hour was just like another.

I cannot bear it, said the pewter soldier.

I have shed pewter tears.

It is too melancholy.

Rather.

Let me go to the wars and lose arms and legs.

It would at least be a change.

I cannot bear it longer.

Now I know what it is to have a visit from one's old thoughts.

With what they may bring with them.

I have had a visit from mine.

And you may be sure it is no pleasant thing.

In the end I was at last about to jump down from the drawers.

I saw you all over there at home, so distinctly as if you really were here.

It was again that Sunday morning.

All you children stood before the table and sung your psalms, as you do every morning.

You stood devoutly with folded hands.

And father and mother were just as pious.

And then the door was opened.

And little sister Mary, who is not two years old yet.

And who always dances when she hears music or singing, of whatever kind it may be, was put into the room, though she ought not to have been there.

And then she began to dance, but could not keep time because the tones were so long.

And then she stood first on the one leg and bent her head forwards, and then on the other leg and bent her head forwards, but all would not do.

You stood very seriously altogether, although it was difficult enough.

But I laughed to myself.

And then I fell off the table and got a bump, which I have still, for it was not right of me to laugh, but the whole now passes before me again in thought and everything that I have lived to see.

And these are the old thoughts with what they may bring with them.

Tell me if you still sing on Sundays, tell me something about little Mary and how my comrade and other pewter soldier lives.

Yes, he is happy enough that sure I cannot bear it any longer.

You are given away as a present, said the little boy.

You must remain.

Can you not understand that the old man now came with a drawer in which there was so much to be seen, both tin boxes and balsam boxes, old cards so large and so gilded, such as one never sees them now.

And several drawers were opened, and the piano was opened.

It had landscapes on the inside of the lid, and it was so hoarse when the old man played on it.

And then he hummed a song.

Yes, she could sing that, said he, and nodded to the portrait which he had bought at the brokers.

And the old man's eyes shone so bright.

I will go to the wars.

I will go to the wars.

Shouted the pewter soldier as loud as he could, and threw himself off the drawers, right down on the floor.

What became of him?

The old man sought, and the little boy thought he was away, and he stayed away.

I shall find him, said the old man, but he never found him.

The floor was too open.

The pewter soldier had fallen through a crevice, and there he lay as in an open tomb.

That day passed and the little boy went home.

And that week passed, and several weeks too.

The windows were quite frozen.

The little boy was obliged to sit and breathe on them, to get a peephole over to the old house.

And there the snow had been blown into all the carved work and inscriptions.

It lay quite up over the steps, just as if there was no one at home.

Nor was there anyone at home.

The old man was dead.

In the evening there was a hearse scene before the door, and he was born into it in his coffin.

He was now to go out into the country to lie in his grave.

He was driven out there, but no one followed.

All his friends were dead, and the little boy kissed his hand to the coffin as it was driven away.

Some days afterward there was an auction at the old house, and the little boy saw from his window how they carried the old knights and the old ladies away.

The flower pots with the long ears, the old chairs and the old clothes presses.

Something came here, and something came there.

The portrait of her who had been hung frowned at.

The brokers came to the brokers again, and there it hung, for no one knew her more.

No one cared about the old picture.

In the spring they pulled the house down, for, as people said, it was a ruin.

One could see from the street right into the room with the hog's leather hanging, which was slashed and torn, and the green grass and leaves about the balcony hung quite wild about the falling beams.

And then it was put to rights.

That was a relief, said the neighboring houses.

A fine house was built there with large windows and smooth white walls.

But before it, where the old house had in fact stood, was a little garden laid out, and a wild grapevine ran up the wall of the neighboring house.

Before the garden there was a large iron railing with an iron door.

It looked quite splendid, and people stood still and peeped in, and the sparrows hung by scores in the vine and chattered away at each other as well as they could.

But it was not about the old house, for they could not remember it.

So many years had passed, so many, that the little boy had grown up to a whole man.

Yes, a clever man and a pleasure to his parents.

And he had just been married and together with his little wife had come to live in the house here where the garden was.

And he stood by her there while she planted a field flower that she found so pretty.

She planted it with her little hand.

And pressed the earth around it with her fingers.

What was that she had stuck herself?

There sat something pointed straight out of the soft mold.

It was.

Yes, guess it was the pewter soldier, he that was lost up at the old man's and had tumbled and turned about amongst the timber and the rubbish and had at last laid for many years in the ground.

A young wife wiped the dirt off the soldier, first with a green leaf and then with her fine handkerchief.

It had such a delightful smell that it was to the pewter soldier, just as if he had awakened from a trance.

Let me see him, said the young man.

He laughed and then shook his head.

Nay, it cannot be he.

But he reminds me of a story about a pewter soldier which I had when I was a little boy and then he told his wife about the old house and the old man, and about the pewter soldier that he sent over to him because he was so very, very lonely.

And he told it as correctly as it had really been, so that the tears came into the eyes of his young wife on account of the old house and the old man.

It may possibly be, however, that it is the same pewter soldier, said she.

I will take care of it, and remember all that you have told me, but you must show me the old man's grave.

But I do not know it, said he, and no one knows it.

All his friends were dead, no one took care of it, and I was then a little boy.

How very, very lonely he must have been, said she.

Very, very lonely, said the pewter soldier.

But it is delightful not to be forgotten.

Delightful.

Shouted something close by, but no one except the pewter soldier saw that it was a piece of the hog's leather hangings.

It had lost all its gilding.

It looked like a piece of wet clay, but it had an opinion, and it gave it the gilding decays.

But hog leather stays.

This the pewter soldier did not believe.

Thank you for joining Freya's fairy tales.

Be sure to come back next week for Sam's journey to holding her own fairy tale in her hands and to hear one of her favorite fairy tales.