If you’re a fan of The Princess Bride the way that I am, then you’ll know the fire swamp.
The fire swamp is a place in the kingdom of Florin, where The Princess Bride is set. Nobody has entered the place and lived to tell the tale.
That’s because the fire swamp holds three perils.
The first is sudden bursts of flame from the ground. Those aren’t so bad, because they make a deep popping sound right before they explode.
The second is Lightning Sand. It swallows you up and sucks you in, like you’re falling through a cloud. Lightning Sand is very dangerous but rare.
The third is ROUS. In the words of Westley, the protagonist of The Princess Bride:
“Rodents Of Unusual Size? I don’t think they exist.”
… but of course they do. Right as Westley says that ROUS are just a matter of legend, a giant, pig-sized rodent launches itself at him and a deadly struggle ensues.
I thought this was all just a wonderful bit of fantasy. But like Westley, I thought that ROUS don’t exist, not really.
It turns out they do. For real. William Goldman, who wrote The Princess Bride, was a compulsive researcher. He probably found out decades ago what I found out just a few days ago.
There’s a place in the Amazon where ROUS live, right now.
The locals call these beasts ariranha, and Spanish-speakers call them lobos del río. They grow up to 1.5 meters in length, with an additional 70cm for the long and thin tail. While they aren’t technically “rodents,” they are carnivorous, they look very much like the ROUS in The Princess Bride, and for all I know, they love the taste of human flesh.
At this point, it would be wise to tie this into some lesson about copywriting and marketing.
The fact is, I really just wanted to share this fact, that ROUS really exist. I think it’s wonderful that there are large mammals I have never heard of, and that fantasy and wonder still exist in the world.
But let me work a little, and try to make this relevant to you too.
Yesterday, I wrote an email in which I tied in a snippet I had heard from marketer Ryan Lee into my own offer, which was looking for a partner for my longevity newsletter.
A bunch of people wrote me about the partner offer.
But a couple people also wrote me about the email itself. They liked how I had managed to connect the Ryan Lee quote with my own offer. How to do that? And do I have a system for it?
I actually do have a system. I even created a training out of it, called Insight Exposed. But I only rarely sell that training because I suspect that, while this Insight Exposed system has been tremendously useful and valuable to me, it’s not something that I can actually transfer to other people. At least that’s the my sense, based on the feedback (or lack of it) I’ve gotten for Insight Exposed, compared to my other trainings like Copy Riddles and Most Valuable Email.
So I decided to do something different.
Next Tuesday, August 20 at 8pm CET/2pm EST/9am PST, I will hold an AMA — Ask Me Anything — about the topic of research, notetaking, and “creativity.”
The AMA will be live on Zoom. You can register for it simply by clicking the link below.
There won’t be a free replay. If you cannot make it live, I can give you the first step of my system, which is simply to keep an eye out on your own reactions. “ROUS? Are real? That’s wonderful!” Write that down, and you never know when you might be able to use it.
Maybe that’s enough to get you going. But maybe you sitll have questions. If you, you can get me to answer them on the AMA. Here’s the link. Click it, and I’ll let you into the Zoomery when the time comes:
[Get real, you gotta be on my list for this. If you wanna sign up: https://bejakovic.com/]