Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Creature Post and Winner

I know my creature posts are normally on Mondays but because the contest ended yesterday, I thought I would bump the Creature Mondays post until today. If you're impatient, go ahead and skip to the end of the post to see if you won the Amazon gift card!

Credit for picture - a painting by Linda Bergkvist

Today's creature are nymphs. In Greek mythology, nymphs are female spirits associated with a particular place or function in nature. In appearance, they are like young, beautiful, gentle girls. Although long-lived, they are not immortal.  Their lives end with the death of the natural object they are associated with, such as a tree. They personify the fertile powers of nature, such as the life-giving flow of fresh-water springs.

There are different kinds of nymphs:

Water nymphs are known as Nereids, and are similar to mermaids.

Land nymphs are tied to a physical geographical location. Oreids inhabt mountains and ravines. Alseids are in glens and groves. Aulonaids are in pastures and valleys.

Wood nymphs are tied to different trees. Dryads to oaks. Hamadryads to nut, elm, and fig trees. Meliae to ash trees.

One myth has Eros the god of love wounding Apollo the god of the sun with an arrow. As a result, Apollo fell in love with Daphne, daughter of Peneus, a river god. Daphne, as a follower of Artemis, had vowed herself to charity, ran away from Apollo. He chased her, and Daphne cried out to her father for help. Her skin turned into bark, her hair to leaves, her arm branches, and her feet roots. Apollo declared the laural tree as scared and wound a laurel wreath around his brow.

And now it's time to announce the winner!

The winner of the $10.00 Amazon giftcard is... Tiffany!

Congrats, Tiffany! I'll  be emailing you shortly.

If you didn't win, don't worry. I'm going to be posting a review tomorrow and be hosting another giveaway. I'll give you a hint - it's not a review for another book but something that you wear at the beach. :) Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter!

9 comments:

Lori M. Lee said...

Congrats to Tiffany.

And I like to think of nymphs as elegant and a little unsettling at the same time :D

Just as a note, that picture is a digital painting by one of my favorite artists Linda Bergkvist: http://www.furiae.com/

The source you got it from didn't seem to credit the artist, which always bugs me lol.

Creepy Query Girl said...

Congrats Tiffany!

Nicole Zoltack said...

Thank you for letting me know, Lori! I updated the post. It can sometimes be hard to give credit where credit is due, but I try to.

Anonymous said...

Love this picture!! Very nice.

Lori M. Lee said...

Er, I didn't mean to make it sound like you were at fault! I know there's no way you would have known who the artist was and you did credit your source! I was referring to the page where you got the image from lol. Sorry *sheepish*

Tiffany Drew said...

I hope that Tiffany is me, that would be pretty awesome :) Thank you!

That is a beautiful painting. I wish I had even half that artistic ability. I love the colors.

Thank you for taking part in the hop, Nicole! I hope you had a great Easter :)

Nicole Zoltack said...

There's no reason to feel sheepish, Lori! I'm just glad I can credit the artist, sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. This is such a beautiful painting, it deserves credit! :)

Carol Riggs said...

Gorgeous painting, very lovely, nice mood. And congrats to Tiffany, who won the gift card!! Woo!

Carolina M. Valdez Schneider said...

Something so incredible romantic about nymphs. I think it would be lovely to write a story with nymphs as characters.

Congrats to Tiffany!